Architects and the 'Building World' from Chambers to Ruskin: Constructing Authority
Cambridge University Press
Edition: First Edition, 10/13/2003
EAN 9780521811866, ISBN10: 0521811864
Hardcover, 394 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
This study peers behind the veil of architectural styles to the underlying social microcosm of the 'building world' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to examine how the fragile authority of the architect took root there. Bringing to architectural history methods more familiar from studies of the social content of poetry and painting, Brian Hanson is able to establish often surprising relationships between many of the key figures of the period - including Chambers, Soane, Barry, Pugin, Scott and Street - shedding light also on lesser figures, and on agencies as diverse as Freemasonry and magazine publishing. John Ruskin in particular emerges here in a different light, as do his arguments concerning 'The Nature of Gothic'. In line with rethinking of the pace of industrialization, and the dynamic between the metropolitan centres and the more slowly evolving 'fringes', Hanson concludes that in some respects Ruskin was closer to William Chambers than to William Morris.
Introduction
Part I
Section 1. 'The Shadow of their Wings'
The Architect among Builders
1. John Gwynn
2. William Chambers
3. The example of Chambers
Section 2. 'The Poetry of Architecture'
The Architect above Builders
4. Joseph Gwilt
5. John Soane
6. The example of Soane
Part II
Section 3. 'Mystery and Craft Are Gone By'
The Poet's Descent
7. A language of men
8. The pictorial art
Section 4. 'He Never Condescended'
Coming to Terms with New Disciplines
9. Charles Barry
10. Pugin
11. A. J. Beresford Hope and the Ecclesiologists
Part III
Section 5. 'Conjunctive All'
The Sharing of Knowledge in Building
12. John Britton
13. The Artizan
Section 6. 'Orthodoxy of Practice'
The Builder and a New Freemasonry
14. Josiah Hansom and The Builder
15. Alfred Bartholemew, The Builder and the freemasons of the Church
16. Bartholemew's College
17. Godwin's Builder
Part IV
Section 7. Ruskin's Changing Prospect
18. Ruskin, Leeds, Lamb, and Loudon
19. The poetry of architecture
20. Modern Painters I and II
21. The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Part V
Section 8. Ruskin's Descent
22. Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle
23. The Stones of Venice
James Fergusson and E. L. Garbett
24. Ruskin in 1854 and 1855
25. Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites
Part VI
Section 9. Incarnation
26. Ruskin, G. G. Scott and the architectural museum
27. Ruskin, Acland, and the Oxford Museum
28. Deane and Woodward
29. Pre-Raphaelite painters and sculptors and the Oxford Museum
Part VII
Section 10. Ruskin's Reception
The 1850s and 1860s
30. John Pollard Seddon and the 'puginisation' of Ruskin
31. G. E. Street
father of the Arts and Crafts
32. E. W. Godwin - the 'art-architect'
33. The architectural museum in the late 1850s
34. The failure of the Oxford Museum
35. Ruskin's lectures to architects
Part VIII. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.