A.W.N. Pugin’s “True Principles” Gothic Furniture Evolutionary, Revolutionary, Reactionary? Peter N. Lindfeld However much we may be indebted to lustrations laid down for the frst time the 15.1 Illustration of the extravagant style those ancient supporters of Pointed Ar- design principles that were to establish the of modern Gothic furniture and decora- chitecture who, faithfully adhering to its genuinely structural and medievally based tion, published in A.W.N. Pugin, Te True Principles of Pointed or traditions at a period when the style fell Gothic, as opposed to the decorative and Christian Architecture. into general disuse, strove earnestly, and fanciful Gothic, as the primary style of the [New Haven, CT, Yale Center for in some instances ably, to preserve its nineteenth century”.2 British Art: NA440 P9 1841] character; whatever value in the cause Te importance and infuence of Con- which we may attach to the crude and trasts and Te True Principles can not be isolated examples of Gothic which be- disputed.3 Unpublished manuscript sources, long to the eighteenth century, or to the however, indicate that the core idea in Pu- eforts of such men as Nash and Wyatt, gin’s polemical outpourings in Te True there can be little doubt that the revival Principles - the identifcation and restoration of Mediæval design received its chief of medieval design’s essential nature - is not impulse in our own day from the en- particularly revolutionary. Tis is especially ergy and talents of one architect whose the case when examining his and other ar- name marks an epoch in the history of British art, which, while art exists at all, chitects’ designs for furniture. Although the can never be forgotten […] Augustus religious and moral aspects of Pugin’s Gothic Northmore Welby Pugin.1 were certainly ground breaking, the desire to produce Gothic Revival furniture based As the above passage indicates, Charles upon a sound understanding and detailed Locke Eastlake (1833-1906) considered examination of medieval sources was not. A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852) to be the most Tis chapter begins by examining the genesis important architect for the advancement of of Pugin’s “true principles” Gothic design the Gothic Revival in nineteenth-century rationale, especially as applied to, and mani- Britain. He and Charles Barry (1795-1860) fested in, furniture. It continues by chal- designed and executed the most prestigious lenging the originality of Pugin’s reforming and visible Gothic Revival commission of theory of Gothic by considering the work of the century - the Palace of Westminster other designers, architects and gentlemen (1840-1860) - and Pugin’s tracts, includ- that predate, or are contemporary with, ing Contrasts (1836 and 1841) and Te True Pugin’s output, and which refect a desire Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture to develop Gothic based upon a renewed (1841), promoted new research and manifes- understanding of medieval precedents. to-like interpretations of Gothic architecture It concludes by ofering a nuanced reading of and design. Subsequent authors have shared Pugin’s reformed Gothic and situating him Eastlake’s perspective, and established col- within the broader antiquarian context of 1 Eastlake, A History of the Gothic lectively Pugin as the pre-eminent exponent Georgian and Victorian Britain. Revival, 145. 2 Atterbury, A.W.N. Pugin: Master and reformer of the Gothic Revival. Paul of Gothic Revival, 9. Atterbury, for example, states that Pugin’s 3 See, for example, Hill, “Refor- Contrasts (1836) was “a revolutionary book mation to Millennium”, and Id., whose outspoken text and polemical il- God’s Architect, 241, 243, 246. 215 Te rationale behind Pugin’s designs a sofa or occasional table from “True Principles” Gothic details culled out of Britton’s Cathedrals, and all the ordinary articles of furniture, In his manifesto of 1841, Te True Principles, which require to be simple and conveni- Pugin succinctly outlines the “two great rules ent, are made not only very expensive for [Gothic] design”: but very uneasy. We fnd diminutive fy- ing buttresses about an armchair; every 1st, that there should be no features thing is crocketed with angular projec- about a building which are not neces- tions, innumerable mitres, sharp orna- sary for convenience, construction, or ments, and turreted extremities. propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should A man who remains any length of time consist of enrichment of the essential in a modern Gothic room, and escapes construction of the building.4 without being wounded by some of its minutiæ, may consider himself extreme- ly fortunate. Tere are ofen as many Although referring to architecture, these pinnacles and gablets about a pierglass points had a widespread infuence upon frame as are to be found in an ordinary the decorative arts. Sir George Gilbert Scott church, and not unfrequently the whole (1811-1878) in 1857 observes that Pugin’s canopy of a tomb has been transformed “principle of truthfulness is universally for the purpose, as at Strawberry Hill.7 acknowledged as the […] guiding star”.5 Tese ideas were extended to furniture, and Pugin used them as a yardstick by which to Pugin’s illustration accompanying this text judge the work of his predecessors and con- [15.1] is clearly exaggerated to amplify his temporaries. Teir furniture was, of course, main point: the absurdity of micro-architec- found wanting. Indeed, Pugin represents the tural ornament applied to modern Gothic advent of his “true principles” Gothic as a furniture. It makes the reader thankful not watershed in the history of Gothic Revival to have lost an eye when moving through 4 Pugin, True Principles, 1. design: earlier “whimsical” Gothic Revival the room - especially near the coronation- 5 Scott, Remarks on Secular and furniture were essentially misconceived throne-like chair with its manifold crockets, Domestic Architecture, 237. copies of architecture and religious furni- pinnacles, fnials and fying buttress.8 6 Pugin, True Principles, 40. 7 Ibid., 40-41. ture - choir stalls - inappropriate for, and Pugin identifes this misapplication of Goth- 8 Such furniture was not widely incompatible with, the nineteenth-century ic sources and motifs as an historical prob- produced between 1740 and domestic setting. lem. Blame is placed on furniture designers 1841, and the closest examples Ultimately, such work failed to observe and makers culling inappropriate details are reserved in comparison. Tey his two great rules, or “real principles of from plates in Britton’s Cathedral Antiquities are Robert Adam’s chairs for Gothic”, and, thus, was subject to criticism.6 of Britain (1814-1835): details from medieval Croome Court, Worcestershire, In a typically scathing and exaggerated man- choir-stalls clearly, for Pugin, had no place and Alnwick Castle, Northum- berland, as well as a derivative for ner, Pugin states that: on beds’ testers. Audley End, Essex. For Croome Censure was not restricted to other de- and Alnwick see Harris, Te Ge- In pointed decoration too much is signers, for Pugin criticises his own adoles- nius of Robert Adam, 43, 90-92, generally attempted; every room in cent work: and for Audley End: see Sutherill, what is called a Gothic house must be “John Hobcrof and James Essex ftted with niches, pinnacles, groining, I have perpetrated many of these at Audley End House”, 24. Te tracery, and tabernacle work, afer the enormities in the furniture I designed other notable example is the manner of a chantry chapel […]. Tese some years ago for Windsor Castle. President’s chair of Magdalen observations apply equally to furniture; At that time I had not the least idea of College, Oxford, designed by - upholsterers seem to think that noth- the principles I am now explaining; all Richard Paget in 1789. See Mag- ing can be Gothic unless it is found in dalen College Archives, Oxford, my knowledge of Pointed Architecture MS 641, 22 July 1789. some church. Hence your modern man was confned to a tolerably good no- 216 15.2 A.W.N. Pugin, Design for furni- ture and fttings in the Gothic Revival style, made for the dining room and gallery in the private apartments for George IV. Drawing, 1827, 22.2 x 42.6 cm. [London, Victoria and Albert Museum: E.787-1970] tion of details in the abstract; but these Gothic motifs designed to produce a decid- I employed with so little judgement or edly un-archaeological and overwhelmingly propriety, that, although the parts were decorative efect. correct and exceedingly well executed, Pugin’s satire of modern Gothic furniture 9 Pugin, True Principles, 41-42. collectively they appeared a complete also resonates with the work of his father, 10 In his diary for 16 June 1827 9 burlesque of pointed design. Auguste Charles Pugin (1768/9-1832), Pugin records that he “went to including highly cusped Regency-style de- design and make working draw- Tis passage amplifes the gulf and methodo- signs reproduced in Rudolph Ackermann’s ings for the Gothic furniture of logical shif not only between his reformed Te Repository of Arts (1825-1827), and Windsor Castle at £1 1s per day, for the following rooms. Te long work and that of others, but between his old, the frontispiece to Pugin’s Gothic Furniture 12 gallery, the cofee room, the vesti- apparently uninformed, furniture at Windsor (1827) [15.3]. Te similarity between the bule anti-room, halls, grand stair- Castle [15.2], and his new “true principle” style, type and arrangement of furniture in case, octagon in the Brunswick Gothic.10 Pugin’s criticism, tellingly, extends A.C. Pugin’s frontispiece and A.W.N. Pugin’s Tower and great Dining Room” back to one of the most important and infu- modern Gothic plate [15.1] is no accident, (National Art Library, London, ential sites for the mid-eighteenth-century and it actively promotes comparison with, MSL/1969/5204, f.