not often appeal to the sense of the beautiful--from the Eiffel Tower
to the Forth Bridge. They can never be mistaken for architecture, they
are triumphs of engineering, but they remain skeletons, and they are
too big to be put in the cupboard. Perhaps our engineers are busy
devising skeletons for the future to clothe and invest with life and
beauty--or to _bury_! Yet for all that constructive lines--at least,
simple ones which the eye can follow are, as a rule, beautiful lines.
But I think if the sense of beauty was really a living and
effective force, we should consider it a crime to destroy natural
or architectural beauty, or to take away the public possession or
enjoyment of it by any means, and should insist that the problem of
utility was but half solved unless the result was harmonious.
At present the world seems too busy about other matters--dissecting
and analysing, experimenting, buying and selling, manufacturing and
speculating, to care collectively for beauty, perhaps, and truth is
at present too many-sided and composite to be easily reconciled with
beauty. All is tumult and conflict, and through the smoke and dust of
the commercial competitive battle in which we spend our lives we are
not quite sure when the sun is shining, and when we _are_ sure, are
perhaps too busy making the proverbial hay to notice the beauty of it.
That is only for artists and idlers, and the world has such a horror
of idleness that people, not condemned to hard labour, have acquired
a habit of being extremely busy about nothing in particular, and it
is supposed to be a conclusive argument against Socialism to ask
"What will you do with the idle?" which seems a little like raising an
objection to eating your dinner because you don't know what you will
do when you are not hungry!
Artistic ability and power of design are often talked of as if they
were in the nature of conjuring tricks, and their exponents like those
automatic machines at the stations which only require "a penny in
the slot" to satisfy every ordinary modern human requirement from
butter-scotch to green spectacles.
It is not sufficiently realized that the sense of art and the power
of its creation is a growth of the mind (as well as facility of hand)
which must have its processes of germination and fruition.
Art is not nature. It is a commentary or creative variation upon it,
but in the progress of its own development art follows natural laws.
Truth and Beauty are true lovers, but the course of true love never
did run smooth. While Truth in various disguises is roaming desert
places, sometimes like a knight errant fighting with sphinxes and
dragons, sometimes, like Thor with his hammer, striking blows, the
effects of which are only seen long afterwards; Beauty, like an
enchanted princess, is often shut up in gloomy castles closed round
with thorny woods or thronging factory chimneys. It is our business
to re-discover her, to awaken her, to interpret her afresh to the
world--to show that if beauty sleeps, our senses are only half awake,
and our lives a meaningless monotony.
[Footnote 5: Mr. Liberty Tadd has since developed his system
and has embodied his teaching in a large and fully illustrated
work--"New Methods in Education." He has visited this country
and given lectures in exposition of his method, a part of
which is known as bi-manual training, or ambidexterity,
upon which there is an interesting book by Mr. John Jackson,
F.E.I.S., with an introduction by Major-General R. S. S.
Baden-Powell, C.B., published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench
and Co.]
ON SOME OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS ALLIED TO ARCHITECTURE
ON SOME OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS ALLIED TO ARCHITECTURE.
AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
I have been asked to address you on the Arts allied to Architecture.
Now, as students of Architecture you will feel, considering how
closely associated all the arts of design have been in the past, with
Architecture as the mother-art, that it would be very difficult to
draw a line between them, or to define the precise point at which any
one of them naturally part company to be considered as a separate art.
In the course of evolution many causes and forces have combined to
change their relationship, however, and to give some of them a more or
less independent position relatively to what they once had, as in the
case of modern painting and sculpture; although these arts in their
origin appear to be more closely related and essential to the forms of
architecture with which they are combined than almost any of the other
crafts. Indeed, it would almost seem as if sculpture might dispute the
claim of primogeniture with architecture itself, since cave-dwelling
and rock-cut temples seem more of the nature of the former; and also
when we come to the wall sculptures of Nineveh and find winged bulls
forming gateways; or see, as at the gate of Mycenae, beyond the
builders' cyclopean craft of stone on stone, the only architectural
forms and ornament in the sculpture of the slab over the gateway
itself, in the column each side of which the lions stand, and in the
carved discs and spirals below them.
Again, when we come to the buildings of ancient Athens, temples of the
Parthenon type might almost be described as frames or pedestals for
sculpture, although in the case of the Parthenon the architecture and
sculpture are so perfectly united that we hardly think of them apart.
The sculptor seizes upon the deep pediments and the triglyphs to tell
his mythical and symbolic story, and emphasizes them in bold relief
and counterbalancing mass; to which the lines of roof and cornice, of
entablature and column play a harmonious accompaniment, while the more
delicate frieze completes and unites the whole scheme. Though we know
that sculpture was not left to the cold embrace of white marble, but
must have been beautiful in colour as it now is in form, the genius
of sculpture seems to dominate here. Greek architecture, too, only
repeats in stone and marble and on a large scale the primitive
construction of wood; and this takes us back to the days of the sacred
ark, or the tabernacle of the Israelites, more of a shrine or tent
than a building, which depended so much for its beauty upon the
adornment it received from--"The cunning workman, the engraver, the
embroiderer in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and
of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise
cunning work" (Ex. xxxv, 35). Certainly here, as in the descriptions
of the building of Solomon's temple all the arts appeared to
co-operate and were equally important to the beauty of the result, and
we get a splendid picture of oriental colour and ornament. The account
of the olive-tree doors of the temple carved with cherubim and palm
trees and open flowers and overlaid with gold, shows the early use of
a craft very dear to the modern decorator--gilding: though it probably
means a more substantial kind than that of the modern frame-maker,
since the text has it that "he covered them with gold fitted upon the
carved work" (1 Kings, vi, 35).
The craft of working thin plates of gold and other metals in repoussé
is clearly a very ancient one, and contributed to what must have been
a very splendid effect in interior decoration. Our use of silvered or
gilded metal in modern wall sconces and door plates may be a relic of
times when it was more extensively used and on larger surfaces, but
one can hardly imagine a more splendid effect than a wall covering of
beaten gold.
The ordinary brass or copper repoussé work of our own day is either
worked from the surface only by following the lines of the design
drawn on the metal by a tool called a tracer, straight or curved,
as may be required for straight or curved lines, although a straight
tracer will follow all but very small curves. The tracer is tapped
with a broad-ended hammer according to the amount of relief intended.
I should have said the sheet of metal is fastened down over a sheet
of lead by screws or nails to a deal board before working on. When the
outlines of the design are hammered out, the background, which bumps
up between the traced lines, has to be matted. This may be done by
various patterned tools called matting tools. Your design, when the
matting is done, will stand in low relief from its ground, and may be
polished as much as desired. Although a pleasing effect of soft relief
is obtained, this is not carrying the work very far, and would only
satisfy amateurs. True repoussé work consists in actually modelling by
the hammer and punch, and for this both for delicate and bold relief
it is necessary to reverse the metal on the pitch block. This is
formed of a mixture of pitch and Russian tallow sprinkled with plaster
of paris, which forms a somewhat firm but easily indentable substance
when warmed, and can be held together in tin trays. While the pitch is
soft you must press in your metal plate the reverse side up and then
beat up the hollows of the design as they have been defined by the
tracer on the face of the work and which show clearly on the back. The
tools used for doing this are rounded punches of various forms. The
hammering is done rather persuasively, as sudden blows make sudden
dents, which are not easily smoothed. Parts of the work, again, may
be hammered on the surface over a lead or pitch block, or it may
be hammered over a pattern carved in wood. This method is used when
several forms recur, or it is desired to repeat the same pattern.
[Illustration: Black & white marble
Roman mosaic pavement.
Baths of Caracalla.
From sketch made in 1871.]
[Illustration: Patterns of Roman mosaic
pavements.
Baths of Caracalla.
From sketches made in 1871.]
Another art of very early association with Architecture is mosaic,
which may be said to be perhaps the most permanent and most splendid
kind of architectural decoration ever used. In the matter of marble
mosaic the Romans, though not the inventors of the art, in their
pavements carried it to great elaboration, and worked it in many
forms, the most successful being, to my mind, the simpler forms of
flat pattern-work such as are seen in the baths of Caracalla at Rome,
where white marble, or black, or black or white, is very effectively
used, and there are some admirable scale-pattern borders. These make
more reserved and satisfactory decorations for a floor than the shaded
pictorial battle-pieces and figures of gladiators such as are seen
at the Borghese Villa. In the Bardo Palace Museum at Tunis there is a
very fine collection of Roman mosaic pavements. There has been a very
extensive revived use of marble mosaic for the covering of entrance
floors and halls in our own time; but it has been rather too much of
the second-hand Roman type, although at its best it is a good type,
and, as we know, many original Roman examples have been discovered,
so that we are not without historic models in our own country. Marble
mosaic is usually somewhat limited in colour but looking to the
variety and beauty of tint to be found in marbles there is perhaps
more restriction than need be, as well as in type of design. I made a
design for the floor of a bank at Cleveland, Ohio, when I was in the
States, which I am afraid might have tried the colour-resources of the
mosaicist, since I introduced a symbolical figure of Columbia coining,
wrapped in a robe of stars and stripes, which, however, would look
sober enough when translated into marble tones.
[Illustration: PATTERN OF ROMAN MOSAIC PAVEMENT, FROM THE
BATHS OF CARACALLA.]
For real splendour of colour we must turn to glass mosaic, and for
magnificent examples of its architectural use we cannot do better
than look at the churches of Ravenna. My friend, the late J. T.
Micklethwaite, speaking of mosaic, once humorously remarked that
mosaic in decoration was "like beer--of no use unless you had a lot of
it." (That is all very well for those who can imbibe, and the dictum
should appeal to Britons.) However, the use of mosaic at Ravenna and
St. Mark's shows what my friend meant. In the mausoleum of Gallia
Placida, a small rounded arched and vaulted Byzantine building of
the fifth century, there are no mouldings or carving, or any kind of
architectural enrichment, to interfere with the effect of the complete
lining of mosaic, chiefly in pale tones of gold and colour on a deep,
subdued but rich blue ground. The effect is very solemn and splendid.
The actual workmanship of the Ravenna mosaics would no doubt be
considered rough by the more mechanical modern mosaicist who does not
accept the cube principle in using tesserae. The head of the Empress
Theodora at San Vitale, for instance, is very simply done. The
tesserae are few--but since the effect from the proper distance is
fine, they must be fit though few. Then these mosaics like all the
ancient ones, must have been worked from the surface. This gives
a certain play of surface and depth and richness of colour, each
tesserae not having been set at precisely the same angle to the plane
of the wall, or to its neighbour cube.
The modern Venetian way is to make the panels perfectly flat on the
surface, the cement being spread over the tesserae when arranged face
downwards. The modern Venetian workmen will copy a cartoon properly
tesserated with the utmost precision, as I have discovered, but his
panels have not the surface sparkle and variety of the old work. The
method of putting in the tesserae from the front has however been
revived since I made my designs. The design by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
for the dome of the New American Church at Rome was worked in this
way, and recently a mosaic altar-piece of "The Last Supper," for a
church in Philadelphia, was executed in this way by Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Holiday, the tesserae being inserted in a layer of putty.
In London we have the great work of Sir W. B. Richmond in the choir of
St. Paul's, which was all worked from the surface--the tesserae being
set in red lead putty which, occasionally allowed to show at the
joints, gives a certain warmth of tone to the whole. Whatever
difference of opinion there may be about the decoration of St. Paul's,
the designs of Sir William Richmond are exceedingly fine and conceived
in a noble spirit.
Mr. Anning Bell has carried out a charming design in mosaic worked
from the surface for the exterior of the Horniman Museum. One
projected for the exterior of the Whitechapel Picture Gallery, from a
design of my own, has not so far been executed for want of funds.
I have often thought, when looking at the beautiful arrangements
of tint in the fine shingle of some of our sea beaches, that the
materials for a very effective kind of mosaic, at small cost, might be
found there, and adapted for the ornamentation of the external walls
of seaside houses, in friezes, strings, panels, or even entire walls.
In thus reviving the ancient art of pebble-mosaic, a charming local
character might thus be given to the buildings of certain of our coast
places which would add very greatly to their attractions. The thing,
of course, would need some intelligence and taste, without which
indeed the most costly and beautiful materials in the world may be
wasted.
One of the most charming and simple ways of decorating external walls
is to be found in the patterns indented in the plaster of the surface
filling of half-timbered houses such as are so plentiful in Suffolk
and Essex. It is a characteristic and ancient method which it is
gratifying to note is made use of by modern architects and builders in
that district. Figures and ornament in relief are also used. A mixture
of Portland cement and lime is a good material for this purpose, as it
does not set too quickly, but finally sets hard and is durable.
Delicate plaster relief-work for ceilings and friezes is also a
very charming method of interior decoration, and there are very fine
examples scattered over the country, though its original home was, I
presume, in Italy, whose craftsmen still maintain their pre-eminence
in the skill with which they deal with the manipulation of all kinds
of plaster-work. Plaster and stucco must have been largely used in
ancient Rome, and there are very beautiful, both bold and delicate,
examples in the decorations of the famous tombs of the Via Latina. In
one instance, on a wagon vault, the figures appear to have been worked
directly in the soft plaster and the relief-work is used with vigorous
indented lines. The effect of the work is wonderfully direct, simple,
and fresh, and suggests having been done with speed and certainty.
Raphael, influenced no doubt by old Roman work, introduced modelled
portions in his painted designs for the Loggia of the Vatican. The
usual modern method is to model the design in clay, mould it in
gelatine, and then cast it in fibrous plaster panels (supposing it
is for relief work) and screw them in position, stopping the joints
afterwards. This, though it has many conveniences, is not so artistic
in its results as when the design is worked directly in stucco or
gesso in its proper position; but if we could be sure of finding
the plasterers and craftsman to do it, we should but rarely find the
opportunity, or the client who would allow time for such work _in
situ_.
A middle course is to model your design--say, for a frieze or
ceiling--in gesso or stucco of some kind on fibrous plaster panels;
and the design may be planned so as to cut up into convenient-sized
panels to work on an easel in the studio, and be fixed in position
afterwards.
I have worked panels in this way using plaster of paris, thin glue,
and cotton wool. The ground should be wetted, or the suction stopped
by a coat of shellac, or the work is apt to dry too quickly and peel
off.
For delicate relief ornamentation, say, in wall panelling and
furniture, a kind of gesso duro is good. This is a mixture of
whitening, glue, boiled linseed oil and resin. It is mixed to a creamy
consistency, the whitening being first soaked in water. The gesso
is laid on with a brush--long pointed sable is best. The gesso sets
slowly, but very hard, so that any part of the work could be scraped
down if necessary.
Another effective method for external and interior work in decoration
is sgraffito, also of Italian origin. It consists in cutting or
scratching a design through one or more layers of mixed lime and
cement on to coloured grounds. A ground is laid on the plaster of
the wall, say, of black, made by mixing black oxide of manganese and
breeze from a smith's forge with the cement. When this is set, a layer
of mixed lime and cement is laid over the black, about a quarter of an
inch or more thick. When this layer has partly set, and is about the
consistency of cheese, you cut your design out, its lines and masses
defined by the black ground beneath as you cut away the top layer. Two
or three colours may be used in the same way, one being laid over the
other, and the effect produced by cutting down to the different layers
as you wish.
I once came to a town in Bohemia, Pracatic, a wonderful old place,
with a fine deep Gothic gateway, with a fresco of a knight-at-arms
over it. The walls of the principal houses appear to have been
entirely decorated with designs in sgraffito. The Rathaus or town
hall was the most elaborate and best preserved, and was covered with
designs from Bible story, divided by pilasters, and panelled in scroll
ornament.
Sgraffito is still extensively used in Italy and Germany, where one
sees much more elaborate work in it, and on a more extensive scale
than anything here, unless we except the considerable and excellent
work of Mr. Heywood Sumner in this material. He, however, has used it
chiefly for interior wall decoration and churches. He generally uses
three colours, red, green, and black, by which his large, simple, and
bold designs are well expressed. Our climate--more especially town
climate--is generally unfavourable to the effectiveness and permanence
of the work as exterior decoration. There is, however, an excellent
object lesson in sgraffito of various kinds to be seen on the back
wall of the Science Schools at South Kensington, the work of the late
Mr. Moody.
It seems curious that more has not been attempted in the way of
external decoration by means of coloured and glazed tiles. The colour
in these is permanent enough, and good quality of colour can be
obtained. I fancy pleasant effects could be produced by facing the
front of houses with coloured tiles, and introducing friezes and
plaques beneath and between the windows. The ground story of many
brick houses in London streets are cemented and painted. Why not try
the effect of coloured tiles instead? Mr. Halsey Ricardo, it may be
mentioned, has used De Morgan tile panels most effectively in a house
he designed in Addison Road, Kensington, which is distinguished also
by a beautiful roof of green glazed tiles from Spain. Mr. Conrad
Dressler has also designed extensive mural decorations in a kind of
Luca della Robbia manner, which is very effective. For splendour of
effect, too, few things could equal designs produced in lustre.
Tiles, of course, have long held an undisputed position as decorative
linings for fire-places. A new domestic application of them is
suggested in that little gem of a picture by Van der Meer of Delft,
recently added to our National Gallery, where white Dutch tiles with
blue figures are fixed along the wall on the floor line, where one
usually sees the wooden skirting.
Of the beauty of the effect of raised figures treated in faïence
colours and glazes as an architectural decoration there is a splendid
example in the frieze of archers from the palace wall of Darius, now
at Paris, apparently made of moulded bricks glazed with colour, a
good reproduction of which was to be seen in what was formerly the
architectural court at the Victoria and Albert Museum; where also we
could study the bold and beautiful frieze of Luca della Robbia from
the Ospedale at Pistoia. One wants to see it in the full Italian
sunshine and in its proper architectural setting fully to appreciate
its fine decorative effect, and it is to be regretted that these
reproductions of architectural decorative works are not exhibited
in the Museum with an indication of their framework to show their
relation to the buildings of which they form part.[6] It would be
better to have fewer examples properly displayed, I believe, than a
multitude crowded together, with no means of judging of them in
their proper relation to their surroundings. If the examples were
accompanied by good and clear drawings or photographs of the entire
buildings it would be useful.
At Pistoia, also, there is a charming porch to the cathedral covered
with Robbia ware in white, yellow, and blue, in association with black
and white banded marble.[7] Such examples show with what beautiful
decorative effect majolica can be associated with architecture.
To Italy, again, we must look for the most beautiful illustrations of
the unity of painting with architecture, from the work of Giotto at
Padua and Assisi to the crowning work of the Renascence, the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel by Michael Angelo. The most perfect example of
mural decoration in Italy I have seen, is, however, to be found in the
Appartimenti Borgia in the Vatican, painted by Pinturrichio, a very
beautiful model of which can be studied in the Victoria and Albert
Museum (it was formerly in the Italian Court). Here we have a scheme
of decoration at once restrained and rich, in strict relation to the
construction, and yet full of variety and beauty of detail; and it is
interesting, too, as an example of the use of gilded gesso used both
for details in the wall pictures, as well as for arabesque ornament,
and bordering on the vaulted ceiling. The lower wall was evidently
originally intended to be covered with tapestry hangings, as there
is a moulding with the little hooks to hold them; and this would have
completed the effect of the whole in a rich and reposeful way. Another
very rich and beautiful instance of the earlier Renascence mural
painting may be seen in the Riccardi Chapel at Florence by Benozzo
Gozzoli. Some full-sized copies are at South Kensington, notably one
of Lorenzo de Medici in a gilded dress going a-hunting.