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THE ART OF 
 BUILDING A HOME. 
 
MANCHESTER : 
 Chorlton & Knowles, Mayfield Press. 
 
 1901. 
 
HE ART OF 
 BUILDING 
 A HOME. 
 
 A Collection of Lectures and 
 Illustrations by Barry Parker 
 and Raymond Unwin. 
 
 Longmans, Green & Co., 
 39, Paternoster Row, Lon- 
 don, New York, & Bombay, 
 1901. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 OME time ago I published a 
 reprint of two of my articles 
 with illustrations which had 
 appeared in "The Building 
 News." 
 
 This little publication,though 
 long out of print, being still 
 constantly asked for ; and the 
 need of something to take its place being felt by 
 us ; the question of re-issuing it arose. Instead of 
 doing this, however, it seemed better, as being a 
 later and fuller expression, to collect two or three 
 of the lectures which my partner and I had from 
 time to time written for various audiences; and to 
 add by way of illustration some of the sketches 
 and photographs we had by us. 
 So came into existence this book in its present 
 form. 
 
 BARRY PARKER, 
 
 The Quadrant, Buxton, 1901. 
 
CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK. Page. 
 
 Introduction i-vi 
 
 I. Of the Smaller Middle Class House i 
 
 Barry Parker. 
 II. Of the Dignity of All True Art 21 
 
 Barry Parker. 
 
 III. Of our Education in Art ... 37 
 
 Barry Parker. 
 
 IV. Of Art and Simplicity ... 55 
 
 Raymond Unwin. 
 V. Of Furniture ... ... 69 
 
 Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. 
 VI. Of Building and Natural Beauty 83 
 
 Raymond Unwin. 
 VII. Of Co-operation in Building 91 
 
 Raymond Unwin. 
 VIII. Of the Art of Designing Small 
 
 Houses and Cottages ... 109 
 
 Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. 
 
 List of Plates and Plates at the end. 
 
INTRODUCTION. i 
 
 HE way we run in ruts is 
 wonderful : our inability to 
 find out the right principles 
 upon which to set to work to 
 accomplish what we take in 
 hand, or to go to the bottom 
 of things, is simply astonish- 
 ing : while the resignation 
 with which we accept the Recognised and Usual as 
 the Right and Inevitable is really beautiful. 
 In nothing is this tendency more noticeable than 
 in the art of house-building. We begin by consid- 
 ering what, in the way of a house, our neighbours 
 have ; what they would expect us to have ; what is 
 customary in the rank of life to which we belong ; 
 anything, in fact, but what are our actual needs. 
 About the last thing we do is to make our home 
 take just that form which will, in the most straight- 
 forward manner, meet our requirements. 
 It is too often evident that people, instead of being 
 assisted, and their lives added to, by the houses 
 they occupy, are but living as well as may be in 
 spite of them. The house, planned largely to meet 
 supposed wants which never occur, and sacrificed 
 to convention and custom, neither satisfies the real 
 needs of its occupants nor expresses in any way 
 their individuality. 
 
 The planning having been dictated by convention, 
 all the details are worked out under the same in- 
 fluence. To each house is applied a certain amount 
 of meaningless mechanical and superficial orna- 
 mentation according to some recognised standard. 
 
INTRODUCTION. n 
 
 No use whatever is made of the decorative prop- 
 erties inherent in the construction and in the 
 details necessary to the building. These are put as 
 far as possible out of sight. For example, latches 
 and locks are all let into the doors leaving visible 
 the knob only. The hinges are hidden in the re- 
 bate of the door frame, while the real door frame, 
 that which does the work, is covered up with the 
 strip of flimsy moulded board styled the architrave. 
 All constructional features, wherever possible, are 
 smeared over with a coat of plaster to bring them 
 up to the same dead level of flat monotony, leav- 
 ing a clear field for the erection of the customary 
 abominations in the form of cornices, imitation 
 beams where no beams are wanted, £s? plaster brac- 
 kets which could support, and do support, noth- 
 ing. Even with the fire the chief aim seems to be 
 to acknowledge as few of its properties and char- 
 acteristics as possible ; it is buried as deep in the 
 wall, and as far out of sight and out of the way as 
 may be ; it is smothered up with as much uncon- 
 genial and inappropriate "enrichment" as can be 
 crowded round it ; and, to add the final touch of 
 senseless incongruity, some form of that massive 
 and apparently very constructional and essential 
 thing we call a mantelpiece is erected, in wood, 
 stone, or marble, towering it may be even to the 
 ceiling. If we were not so accustomed to it, great 
 would be our astonishment to find that this most 
 prominent feature has really no function whatever, 
 beyond giving cause for a lot of other things as 
 useful and beautiful as itself, which exist only that 
 
INTRODUCTION. m 
 they may be put upon it, "to decorate it." 
 Could we but have the right thing put in the right 
 place and left alone, each object having some vital 
 reason for being where it is, and obviously reveal- 
 ing its function ; could we but have that form given 
 to everything which would best enable it to answer 
 the real purpose for which it exists ; our houses 
 would become places of real interest. 
 The essence and life of design lies in finding that 
 form for anything which will, with the maximum 
 of convenience and beauty, fit it for the particular 
 functions it has to perform, and adapt it to the 
 special circumstances in which it must be placed. 
 Perhaps the most fruitful source whence charm of 
 design arises in anything, is the grace with which 
 it serves its purpose and conforms to its surround- 
 ings. How many of the beautiful features of the 
 work of past ages, which we now arbitrarily repro- 
 duce and copy, arose out of the skilful and grace- 
 ful way in which some old artist-craftsman, or 
 chief mason, got over a difficulty ! If, instead of 
 copying these features when and where the cause 
 for them does not exist, we would rather emulate 
 the spirit in which they were produced, there 
 would be more hope of again seeing life and vigour 
 in our architecture and design. 
 When the architect leaves the house, the subservi- 
 ence to convention is not over. After him follow 
 the decorator and the furnisher, who try to over- 
 come the lifelessness and vapidity by covering all 
 surfaces with fugitive decorations and incongru- 
 ous patterns, and filling the rooms with flimsy 
 
INTRODUCTION. iv 
 
 stereotyped furniture and nick-nacks. To these 
 the mistress of the house will be incessantly add- 
 ing, from an instinctive feeling of the incomplete- 
 ness and unsatisfactoriness of the whole. Inciden- 
 tally we see here one reason why the influence of 
 the architect should not stop at the completion of 
 the four walls, but should extend to the last detail 
 of the furnished house. When his responsibility 
 ceases with the erection of the shell, it is natural 
 that he should look very little beyond this. There 
 is no inducement for him to work out any definite 
 scheme for a finished room, for he knows that if 
 he had any aim the decorator and furnisher would 
 certainly miss it and would fail to complete his crea- 
 tion. If, when designing a house, the architect were 
 bearing in mind the effect each room would have 
 when finished and furnished, his conceptions 
 would be influenced from the very beginning, and 
 his attitude towards the work would tend to un- 
 dergo an entire change. At present he but too 
 readily accepts the popular idea of art as a thing 
 quite apart from life, a sort of trimming to be add- 
 ed if funds allow. 
 
 It is this prevalent conception of beauty as a sweet- 
 meat, something rather nice which may be taken 
 or left according to inclination after the solid meal 
 has been secured, which largely causes the lack of 
 comeliness we find in our houses. Before this idea 
 can be dispelled £s?we can appreciate either the place 
 which art should hold in our lives or the import- 
 ance of rightly educating the appreciation of it, we 
 must realise that beauty is part of the necessary 
 
INTRODUCTION. v 
 
 food of any life worth the name ; that art, which 
 is the expression of beauty as conceived and creat- 
 ed by man, is primarily concerned with the mak- 
 ing of the useful garments of life beautiful, not 
 with the trimming of them ; and that, moreover, 
 in its higher branches art is the medium through 
 which the most subtle ideas are conveyed from 
 man to man. 
 
 Understanding something of the true meaning of 
 art, we may set about realising it, at least in the 
 homes which are so much within our control. Let 
 us have in our houses, rooms where there shall be 
 space to carry on the business of life freely and 
 with pleasure, with furniture made for use ; rooms 
 where a drop of water spilled is not fatal ; where 
 the life of a child is not made a burden to it by un- 
 necessary restraint; plain, simple, and ungarnished 
 if necessary, but honest. Let us have such orna- 
 ment as we do have really beautiful and wrought 
 by hand, carving, wrought metal, embroidery, 
 painting, something which it has given pleasure to 
 the producer to create, and which shows this in 
 every line — the only possible work of art. Let us 
 call in the artist, bid him leave his easel pictures, 
 and paint on our walls and over the chimney cor- 
 ner landscapes and scenes which shall bring light 
 and life into the room ; which shall speak of nature, 
 purity, and truth ; shall become part of the room, 
 of the walls on which they are painted, and of the 
 lives of us who live beside them; paintings which 
 our children shall grow up to love, and always con- 
 nect with scenes of home with that vividness of a 
 
INTRODUCTION. vi 
 
 memory from childhood which no time can efface. 
 Then, if necessary, let the rest of the walls go un- 
 touched in all the rich variety of colour and tone, 
 of light and shade, of the naked brickwork. Let 
 the floor go uncarpeted, and the wood unpainted, 
 that we may have time to think, and money with 
 which to educate our children to think also. Let us 
 have rooms which once decorated are always dec- 
 orated, rooms fit to be homes in the fullest poetry 
 of the name; in which no artificiality need momen- 
 tarily force us to feel shame for things of which 
 we know there is nothing to be ashamed: rooms 
 which can form backgrounds, fitting and dignified, 
 at the time and in our memories, for all those little 
 scenes, those acts of kindness and small duties, as 
 well as the scenes of deep emotion and trial, which 
 make up the drama of our lives at home. 
 B. P. 
 R. U. 
 
THE SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 
 A lecture delivered before an audience of archi- 
 tects in 1895. 
 
 Ntheclassofhouse with which 
 we are to deal to-night, there 
 are so many directions in 
 which improvement is need- 
 ed, that it will only be possi- 
 ble for me, in the space of one 
 lecture, to refer to a few of 
 them, and to those specially 
 which will illustrate most suggestively the main 
 principles for which I contend: suggestively, in the 
 hope that some present will do me the honour of 
 giving further thought to what I shall touch upon, 
 than is possible to them during the length of time 
 assigned to me this evening. 
 The influences which our common every-day sur- 
 roundings have upon our characters, our concep- 
 tions, our habits of thought and conduct, are often 
 very much underrated ; we do not realise the power 
 they have of either aiding or hindering the de- 
 velopment in us of the best or worst of which we 
 are capable. 
 
 Of the capacity the mere contour of a moulding 
 has to bear the impression of refinement or vul- 
 garity, we,as architects, are fully aware ; but, I think, 
 may not quite as fully realise the harmful influence 
 of imperfect and unspontaneous drawing, or ill- 
 conception in pattern design, or ill-assorted com- 
 binations of colour. 
 
 The thing of first consideration in designing a 
 house is convenience, workability. The plan is that 
 
■ ■ ■ 
 
 SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 2 
 which should be first thought of ; so, in our small 
 middle class house, I will try to suggest one or two 
 of the improvements that seem to be most wanted 
 in planning. 
 
 First of all, for the sake of any who may be here 
 who are not architects, I will just point out what 
 is the most comfortable form of room for a sitting 
 room with respect to the relative positions of the 
 door, windows, and fire. If your room must, of ne- 
 cessity, be square or ob- 
 ^ long(which should be the 
 |jcase as seldom as possi- 
 ^ ble), the form most con- 
 ^ ducive to comfort, is of 
 ^course this: diagram 1. 
 
 J S / 'JfjThe secondbest arrange- 
 
 ment, (when this cannot 
 be got) is to have the door 
 and fire both on the long 
 wall, diagram 2. When 
 the door is on the oppos- 
 ite wall to the fire, you 
 never feel to be able to 
 get out of the draught of 
 it ;and of course this kind 
 of thing, diagram 3, is 
 too palpably bad to need 
 that anything should be 
 said regarding it. 
 One of the first defects 
 we notice in the plans of 
 ^ houses of the class we 
 
 ■ ■ ■ 
 
 1 
 
 are speaking of, as usu- 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 3 
 ally laid down, is that there are too many rooms & 
 all therefore necessarily too small. In the larger 
 middle class house there are generally drawing 
 room, dining room, library, kitchens, and offices, 
 all tolerably good rooms. Now, when a smaller 
 house is wanted, the general custom seems to be, 
 to put exactly the same number of rooms, only 
 reducing all in size. Would it not be far better to 
 reduce the number of rooms, keeping such rooms 
 as we do retain, large enough to be healthy, com- 
 fortable, and habitable ? 
 
 Are not many of the houses we know only too well, 
 most distressing in this respect, divided up, as they 
 are, into a number of small compartments, we can- 
 not call them rooms, all far too small to be healthy; 
 too small to be really fit for human habitation. 
 And what is gained by this cramping ? Only that 
 there shall be one or more of these compartments 
 practically useless. In far the greater number of 
 these houses the third room is never used, or used 
 merely because it happens to be there, and its chief 
 end seems to be to provide a place for the women 
 of the household to spend any spare time they may 
 have, cleaning down, dusting &c. 
 Now many people have a feeling that there is a 
 certain cosiness in a small room entirely unattain- 
 able in a large one ; this is a mistake altogether ; 
 quite the reverse has been my experience, which 
 is that such a sense of cosiness as can be got in the 
 recesses of a large room, can never be attained in 
 a small one, be it no larger than a sentry box. But 
 if your big room is to be comfortable it must have 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 4 
 recesses. There is a great charm in a room broken 
 up in plan, where that slight feeling of mystery- 
 is given to it which arises when you cannot see 
 the whole room from any one point in which you 
 are likely to sit ; when there is always something 
 round the corner. 
 
 And what is made of the hall ? Generally one of 
 two things ; either it is a passage with a kind of 
 step-ladder for a staircase and a hat stand in it, 
 with not room enough for you to hold the door 
 and let a friend out ; or it is a great bare cold com- 
 fortless waste space, in the centre of the house: 
 instead of being, as it might, the most comfort- 
 able and homely room, the centre of the common 
 life of the household. 
 
 Of course a hall of this kind needs some care in 
 planning. In the first place, the staircase must oc- 
 cupy exactly that position in which it can be made 
 an ornament and a pleasing feature in the room, 
 all of which it is quite capable of being, and a 
 position in which it does not detract from the cosi- 
 ness, or give any unpleasant feeling of draughti- 
 ness, or too great openness. In the second place, 
 the doors necessarily opening into a hall must be 
 carefully so grouped that the parts of the room 
 in which anyone would sit, shall be out of the 
 draught of them as far as possible. 
 Any house is cold all through the winter months 
 unless a fire of some kind is kept burning in the 
 hall; many people, therefore, find it necessary to 
 have a stove or heating apparatus ; and, in most 
 houses, it is thought necessary to have two other 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 5 
 fires burning, one in the living room, and one in 
 some other room that there may be somewhere to 
 show visitors. Now when the hall is also a sitting 
 room, with a fire in it, we get, for the trouble and 
 expense of two fires, all the advantages ordinarily 
 attaching to three. 
 
 I must now pass on to Decoration and Furniture. 
 The best test of the artistic merits or demerits of 
 a room as a whole, is the impression it makes, on 
 one's entering for the first time. We can get ac- 
 customed to anything, and it is from this fact, taken 
 in conjunction with what we have already noted, 
 of the power as an influence for advancement or 
 degradation of beautiful or unbeautiful surround- 
 ings, that the importance of our subject to-night 
 is partly drawn. And what should be our feeling, 
 on entering a room ? Simply this : How exquisite- 
 ly comfortable ! For the first essential in the form and 
 design of any decorative object, ( and everything in a 
 room should be a decorative object), is reposefulness. 
 I feel herein to be guilty of giving utterance to a 
 truism, and I should hardly dare to state so ob- 
 vious a fact, were it not that I see this first prin- 
 ciple so almost universally violated ; for, if this test 
 of reposefulness is the test, the average farm house 
 kitchen has an artistic value far beyond that of 
 ninety-nine out of every hundred drawing rooms 
 in the kingdom ; and I will endeavour to show 
 why. 
 
 The first fault in our rooms which contributes to 
 this result is over decoration. This is an almost uni- 
 versal failing. Everything has a pattern on it and 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE 6 
 almost every pattern is mechanically produced, 
 run out by the yard, and cut off just where it hap- 
 pens to be when the time comes for it to finish. 
 No pattern bears any relation to any other pattern, 
 and the whole effect is fidgety, fussy, and painful 
 to a degree. Nothing is let alone, but every sur- 
 face must needs be worried and tortured into some 
 unwholesome form of altogether soul-less orna- 
 ment. We cannot even find rest for our weary eyes 
 on the ceiling, for tortuous intricacies of design 
 meet them there also. 
 
 The second fault I wish to refer to, is that all this 
 ornament is made to shout, everything is clamour- 
 ing for notice. It would not be in place for me to 
 say much here about those rooms in which any 
 one element of decoration is in such flagrantly bad 
 taste as to be noticed, immediately on entering, 
 with a sort of start and feeling of "Oh ! wall-paper," 
 or "Oh! carpet," or whatever it may happen to be. 
 (A designer will often aim at this for the sake of 
 the advertisement and at the sacrifice of his artis- 
 tic principles). But even when this extreme is not 
 reached, everything seems trying within certain 
 limits to assert itself, to attract attention. 
 Now any ornament you notice when you do not 
 look for it, or perhaps I might better say, when 
 you do not wish to think of it, is necessarily in bad 
 taste. The degree of assertiveness admissible in a 
 decorative object depends upon the degree of its 
 naturalisation or conventionalisation, or, to put it 
 another way, on the degree in which it is fine or 
 mechanical. And though we cannot pretend to 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE 7 
 regulate by rules of this kind, pictures which are 
 direct mirrors as far as possible of real things, yet, 
 in so far as they are mural decorations, they come 
 under this law. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's wall, painted to look like a vinery, 
 would admit of much more forcible treatment, 
 being entirely painted by hand and as true to na- 
 ture as possible, than would a wall with sprinted 
 vine pattern on it in which there necessarily was 
 repetition. And natural flowers painted may fit- 
 tingly be treated much more forcibly than would 
 be admissible in a purely conventional design, be- 
 cause natural flowers, hills, £s? trees, cannot become 
 assertive enough to influence one disquietingly. 
 Therefore the more nearly approaching to nature, 
 the more assertive may be our ornament, or rather 
 the less assertive it will be from this very reason, 
 and therefore may be the more forcible in treat- 
 ment. So we can stand, in a conventional pattern 
 design, a degree of contrast in tones, which we 
 could not tolerate in flat masses of colour. 
 One of the chief underlying causes of this failing 
 of fussiness we have noted, is, that a room is scarce- 
 ly ever designed as a whole, never enough thought 
 of as a whole. The designer of each individual 
 thing, knowing nothing of the form or character 
 which anything else in the room was going to take, 
 thought only of his own design, & worked enough 
 interest into it to make it all-sufficient in itself; 
 and the consequence, when his design gets put 
 into a room in conjunction with a lot of other 
 things, all designed in just the same spirit, is, 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 8 
 that restlessness we have been deploring. 
 A room is a place in which to think of other things 
 besides those relating exclusively to the room itself, 
 and so much incident and interest should not be 
 worked into it as to distractingly affect the pursu- 
 ance of these thoughts & occupations. I say again, 
 any ornament which you notice when you do not 
 wish to is necessarily in bad taste. 
 When choosing anything, a wall paper for in- 
 stance, we forget that we are, while so doing, de- 
 voting all our thought and attention to the design 
 we are considering; and that, though pleasing un- 
 der these circumstances, it may not be equally so 
 to have by us when we wish to think of other 
 things, or in the position for which we intend it. 
 Now no flat mechanical ornament, designed to 
 cover a large space, should ever be so designed 
 that you are able easily to trace the pattern at the 
 other side of the room. Please do not understand 
 from this that it should be small in design; far 
 from it ; things small in design are, almost neces- 
 sarily, finikin and therefore unreposeful; but 
 being quiet and retiring in colour and contrast of 
 tones, whether large or small, let it reveal, when 
 you come to have leisure to examine it, vigorous 
 broad and direct treatment, good loving thought- 
 ful drawing, real artistic conception, and percep- 
 tion of beauty in form and line. 
 How seldom we get these qualities : how laboured 
 and unspontaneous most patterns are ! Into what 
 unwholesome forms the ornament is tortured, how 
 the one aim seems to be to make the design as 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 9 
 restless and fussy as possible ! A sort of feeling 
 pervades the whole, that the designer could not 
 let the thing alone. 
 
 I think we must not now go far into the faults in 
 actual draughtsmanship most common in our de- 
 signs. But one thing is very striking : our designers, 
 almost without exception, seem to be out of their 
 depth directly anything in the way of foreshorten- 
 ing is required of them ; this cannot but lead us 
 to the conclusion, that drawing from Nature does 
 not form a sufficiently important part of their 
 training. In fact I have myself known several men, 
 engaged entirely in drawing ornament, who never 
 drew a bud or twig from Nature in their lives. 
 However this may be, the fact remains that very 
 few of our designers seem able to draw a leaf turn- 
 ing over with any truth and accuracy. 
 Another cause of failure in our rooms is the dread 
 of repeating ourselves. With my wish that a more 
 wholesome feeling in this may spring up among 
 all engaged in artistic work, I am perhaps more 
 anxious to have your sympathy than with anything 
 which has gone before. Let us then do nothing dif- 
 ferent from what we have done before^ until we feel 
 it to be better than what we have done before. 
 Now this fear of repetition is no imaginary evil, 
 but a very real and living one. How often do we 
 all attempt something fresh, knowing it not to be 
 the best we can do, (best I mean more in kind than 
 degree) simply from a weak dislike that people 
 should say of us, that we have only one style. How 
 often do we turn out a design for a certain purpose 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 10 
 and position, knowing it to be not so good as one 
 we have before made for a similar purpose and 
 position, simply because we have not strength to 
 repeat what we believe to be best, lest people 
 should think that is all we can do. In so doing we 
 preclude all possibility of development. 
 Now observe, this never occurs during the pro- 
 gress of any living art in the past. The man who 
 had carved one Early English capital did not, 
 when next he had a capital to carve, say, " I know 
 nothing more beautiful^ but I must at any rate do 
 something different, I must not put the same capi- 
 tal here again." On the contrary, his aim was to 
 carve a similar capital again, only he would try to 
 do a better one; for probably he had noticed some 
 little point in which he could improve on the last 
 he did ; some way in which he could mass his light 
 and shade so as to give them a more pleasing form 
 when seen at a distance ; or some more lovely feel- 
 ing it was possible to introduce into the reveal of 
 a leaf or the curve of a stem. 
 You must forgive me if I dwell on this a little. 
 For it is of vital importance that all of us who have 
 any hope or wish to see a living art again existent 
 among us, should realise the full significance of 
 this. There are many other changes which must 
 take place in our practice of the arts, and these very 
 radical changes, before living art is again possible 
 to us; but if I can bring home to anyone, directly 
 or indirectly, the full significance of this, I shall 
 have done something towards this great end. 
 In excuse it may be and is said, "This aiming at 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 1 1 
 change, variety, novelty, &c. is demanded of the 
 designer by a capricious change-loving public, 
 broadly speaking, incapable of any true judgment 
 or appreciation of good and bad in art." In reply 
 to this, I think we cannot do better than recall 
 what Mr. Ruskin says on this head. "You may 
 like making money exceedingly; but if it come to 
 a fair question, whether you are to make five hun- 
 dred pounds less by this business, or to spoil your 
 building, and you choose to spoil your building, 
 there's an end of you. So you may be as thirsty for 
 fame as a cricket is for cream; but, if it come to a 
 fair question, whether you are to please the mob,or 
 do the thing as you know it ought to be done; and 
 you can't do both, and choose to please the mob,- 
 its all over with you; — there's no hope for you; 
 nothing that you can do will ever be worth a man's 
 glance as he passes by." 
 
 A further cause of failure in decorating and fur- 
 nishing is virtually the same as we noticed when 
 speaking of planning. When a small middle class 
 house is wanted, what is usually done, we saw, is 
 virtually to take a plan suitable for a larger house 
 and reduce it every way, instead of designing a 
 house suited to the new requirements. This same 
 mistake is generally made in the decoration and 
 furniture ; instead of these being designed to suit 
 the condition or circumstances in which they are 
 to be placed, each designed for its position and 
 purpose, and good and honest as far as it goes, 
 what do we find ? Cheapened imitations of the sort 
 of thing common in the larger house, cheapened 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 12 
 by being badly made, by veneer on pine instead 
 of solid wood, by cast metals and ornament made 
 to look like wrought, by machine carved wood, 
 by marbled slate, &c. P. G. Hubert in his little 
 book entitled "Liberty and a Living," says: "One 
 of my critics, for whom I have great personal de- 
 ference, tells me that my theory of life tends to a 
 relapse into barbarism, and in illustration of the 
 truth of his position, he pointed one evening to a 
 music stand near the piano with the remark: 
 "With your ideas, that stand would never be made 
 of mahogany and elaborately ornamented, but 
 would be of pine, perhaps stained." 
 "Well, suppose it was, I am inclined to think that 
 the greater use of common material, stained pine 
 and other cheap wood, in the houses of people of 
 taste is a distinct indication of a needed reform. 
 Take the little music stand in illustration. Its pur- 
 pose is to hold a number of music books and loose 
 sheets of music. It has three or four shelves, and is 
 so made as to stand in a corner near the piano and 
 take up but little room. It is made of mahogany, 
 highly polished, £f? is ornamented, as most people 
 would call it, with a sort of stucco-beading, which 
 to me is distasteful. But it cost money, and there- 
 fore has its reasons for being in certain eyes. I have 
 forgotten what it cost me-probably from fifteen to 
 twenty dollars. Thanks to the growth of good 
 taste, I can to-day pick out from half-a-dozen 
 books I know of a little design for a music stand, 
 or sketch it myself, and the nearest carpenter will 
 make the thing in a day at a cost of two or three 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 13 
 dollars for wood, labor, and staining. The result 
 will be something which is pleasanter to my eye, 
 and I will venture to say to the eyes of nine out 
 of ten persons of educated taste. The other fifteen 
 or sixteen dollars saved may be devoted to books, 
 pictures, music — any of the things which really 
 add something to life. The music stand of stained 
 pine will do its work just as well as the one made 
 of mahogany, inlaid with stucco beading-in fact it 
 will do it better,for it will not need a periodic rubb- 
 ing on the part of the parlour-maid to keep it 
 bright and polished, and it can be moved about 
 when occasion demands, as it weighs but little. It 
 is as strong as the other, and it will last a hundred 
 years." 
 
 And now for the last cause of failure of which I 
 shall speak, and this is : the very marked feeling 
 which everything has of not having been designed 
 for its place: the look everything has of being 
 ready to move at any moment. Most things to look 
 right and happy in their places must be designed 
 for their places. The advantages attaching to a room 
 furnished in this way, and largely by means of 
 fixtures, I think the accompanying sketches will do 
 something to illustrate. 
 
 There is a unity, completeness, comfort, and re- 
 pose about such a room, which can never be got 
 in a room in which the furniture &c. is not de- 
 signed for its position and looking at home there, 
 but is just temporarily stuck where it happens to 
 stand, with .a look of being on the alert, and ready 
 to move on at a moment's notice. 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 14 
 But it is time to sum up our position and note 
 the general conclusions to which we are led. I have 
 described some of the defects we most commonly 
 see in planning, and the arrangement of the hall; 
 the entire want ofreposefulness, (that infallible cri- 
 terion of good ornament), that troubles the man 
 of taste in nearly all domestic decorative work; and 
 the lack of fitness in the furniture that is gener- 
 ally crowded into the rooms of smaller middle class 
 houses, which adds the final touch to the complete 
 failure, from an artistic point of view, of the great 
 majority of such rooms. 
 
 I further mentioned as causes generally contribu- 
 ting to this failure, over-decoration, the covering 
 of all surfaces with a mass of incongruous patterns, 
 quite fatal, even where the designs are in them- 
 selves good: the efFortfulness of most ornament, 
 by which every pattern seems to clamour for notice, 
 in which connexion I stated as a guiding principle, 
 that any ornament you notice before you look for 
 it, is likely to be in bad taste. Further I noticed 
 the laboured and unspontaneous character of so 
 many of the designs themselves and the lack of 
 good drawing in them, and hinted that this arose 
 partly from the designer's dread of repeating him- 
 self, and his eagerness to produce something fresh 
 without considering whether it was better. Finally 
 I drew attention to the way in which so many 
 rooms are furnished with cheap imitations of bet- 
 ter or more esteemed materials, decorated with 
 cast, or otherwise mechanically produced imita- 
 tions of hand-wrought ornament, and the general 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 15 
 unfitness, and ready-to-move look, which results 
 from there being no fixed furniture, but all having 
 been designed without any thought of the room, 
 and the room planned without any view to its fur- 
 niture. 
 
 I have several times hinted that the entire lack of 
 unity, which is the inevitable result of all this, must 
 continue, so long as our rooms and our houses are 
 never thought out as a whole, so long as one man 
 plans the building, another arranges the decora- 
 tions, and a third picks up the furniture of twenty 
 designers, here and there and everywhere. It is es- 
 sential to any good result, that one man should 
 design the house as a whole. I do not mean neces- 
 sarily that he should design everything in it, or 
 draw with his own hand every detail ; but he must 
 exercise a controlling power, selecting where he 
 does not design, and ensuring that the work of all 
 may be done in a spirit of co-operation towards 
 the complete whole which he planned. 
 You will all be wishing to ask me, I doubt not, 
 how this is possible in our days of speculative 
 building, short leases & shorter tenancies. I must 
 at once admit that to a large part of this work such 
 a system is inapplicable, though even here much 
 could be done if each department made what 
 improvements are possible irrespective of the 
 others. The lack of power to control the decora- 
 tions does not excuse a badly planned hall. But 
 outside the purely speculative building there is 
 yet a large amount of work to which the system is 
 applicable, in greater or less degree, such degree 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 16 
 mainly depending on our clients: and here we have 
 the real difficulty. We are powerless to compel our 
 clients, nay, to a large extent, the client has a right 
 to have his own way. 
 
 I suppose a doctor is in a similar fix ; he is called 
 in to prescribe for a patient and finds his prescrip- 
 tion is useless because the patient will continue to 
 smoke ; he does not, if he is worth anything, ac- 
 cept the situation ; but he explains that smoking 
 is, in this case, fatal, that it renders his skill un- 
 availing; and, if all his advice is neglected, he will 
 finally refuse to act. 
 
 Architecture is rightly called a profession only 
 when the architect advises his client what is best, 
 and brings the whole weight of his knowledge and 
 experience to persuade him from anything foolish, 
 or in bad taste. When he produces to order some 
 plan of which he cannot approve, he is merely a 
 merchant of plans. 
 
 While speaking of this duty of the architect, I 
 would not be thought to make light of many con- 
 ditions of modern life which will, so long as they 
 continue, and to the extent to which they spread, 
 hinder all attempts to produce beautiful and dig- 
 nified homes. One such condition is the instability 
 of social position ; everyone is seeking to get a step 
 further up the social ladder. The result is a de- 
 mand for houses which look as though they be- 
 longed to the social grade next above that of the 
 people who are to live in them. To such untrue 
 aims art refuses any countenance ; and it is well. 
 But there is an already great and daily increasing 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 17 
 number of those who are weary of this fruitless 
 struggle, of a life spent in work entirely without 
 interest or beauty, or the power of giving a vestige 
 of real pleasure, that they may have the means to 
 acquire things without interest, beauty, or the pow- 
 er of giving any pleasure beyond the sordid satis- 
 faction of letting Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So see they 
 can afford to have them. These are anxious to find 
 houses suited to their genuine wants, houses in 
 which the work will be reduced to a minimum, and 
 the beauty increased to a maximum, by the only 
 true method of making all the useful and neces- 
 sary things beautiful ; not by the false method of 
 keeping all useful & necessary things out of sight, 
 trying to conceal their purpose or to appear un- 
 conscious of their existence, and substituting for 
 them things recognised to be useless but regarded 
 (so long as the fashion lasts at any rate) as beauti- 
 ful. 
 
 This polished mahogany life of ours, with stucco 
 trimmings and jerry joints presented for view to 
 our visitors and acquaintances in the front room, 
 is not, I believe, what many of us really want ; we 
 are tired also of the dismal and cramped, but at any- 
 rate real, back office, back room, and kitchen life; 
 & many are looking for houses in which they shall 
 not spend their labour for that which is not bread, 
 but shall be able to live a life of less artificiality 
 than our present complex 1 9th century existence, 
 a truer, healthier life altogether. 
 I have just said, that the true method of making 
 a room beautiful is to make all the necessary and 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 18 
 useful things in it beautiful ; so much is this true 
 that it becomes almost impossible to design a real- 
 ly beautiful room that is to have no useful work 
 done in it or natural life lived in it. An architect 
 called upon to design a room in which nothing 
 more earnest is to be done than to gossip over 
 afternoon tea has, indeed, a sad job. 
 For a room must always derive its dignity or 
 meanness from, and reflect somewhat, the character 
 and kind of occupation which is carried on in it. 
 For instance, the studio of an artist, the study of 
 a man of letters, the workshop of a carpenter, or 
 the kitchen of a farmhouse, each in its position 
 and degree, derives a dignity and interest from the 
 work done in it. And the things in the room bear 
 some relation to that work, and will be the furni- 
 ture and surroundings natural to it ; as the bench 
 and tools in the carpenter's shop ; the easels and 
 canvasses in the studio ; the books and papers in 
 the study; and the bright pans and crockery in the 
 kitchen. All these lend a sense of active, useful, hu- 
 man life to the room, which redeems it from vul- 
 garity, though it be the simplest possible ; and no 
 amount of decoration or ornamentation can give 
 dignity or homeliness to a room which is used as 
 a show room, or in which no regular useful life is 
 lived. For in the work room all things have a place ^ 
 by reason of their usefulness, which gives a sense 
 of fitness and repose entirely wanting in a room 
 where a place has obviously had to be found for 
 everything, as in a drawing room. 
 How far things beautiful alone, are to be allowed 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 19 
 place in our rooms I am not prepared to say. Thor- 
 eau, you will remember, threw away his fossil, the 
 only ornament in his room, because it required 
 dusting. While not suggesting that we should fol- 
 low his example to such an extreme, I yet think 
 that in retaining his spade and his axe he retained 
 more of true decoration. And I believe in the main 
 that the more adapted to its use anything is, the 
 more graceful will it be in shape. The bent handle 
 of the axe, more comfortable to hold, is also more 
 beautiful than the straight, and in the degree the 
 curve and form of the handle is adapted to its uses 
 as an axe, by just so much the more beautiful it 
 becomes. 
 
 The charm of the farmhouse kitchen, with every- 
 thing in its place because of its usefulness, can of 
 course be increased to an unlimited extent by mak- 
 ing all the useful articles also beautiful in form, 
 and harmonious in color. This is the line on which 
 alone, I contend, a really beautiful room is to be 
 got ; and I would discourage all attempts at adorn- 
 ment by finding places for useless things. 
 I am glad to think that, owing to the great increase 
 of education and employment among ladies, there 
 will be less and less call for the old-fashioned draw- 
 ing room ; ladies will want a room to work in, not 
 to dawdle in. 
 
 Pardon me if I seem to have dwelt over long on 
 some of these difficulties in the way of designing 
 really beautiful rooms. I have done so in the belief 
 that they do not, as at first may appear, lie outside 
 our province. For I believe, as professional men, 
 
SMALLER MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE. 20 
 we have just such power of influencing our clients 
 by helping them towards a more natural life as the 
 doctor has in such matters as diet; and particularly 
 is this power evident in the domestic branch of the 
 profession, with which we are dealing. 
 In building a man's shell for him we certainly can 
 influence very largely the life he will live within 
 it ; and while it is our duty to make that shell fit 
 the life as well as possible, it is surely also our 
 privilege to make it conduce to the realisation of 
 the best of which he is capable. 
 In so far as we do this, we shall rise above the mere 
 planner of houses and take our places in the work 
 of planning and moulding the future life of the 
 people. 
 
 BARRY PARKER. 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 21 
 
 HE kinship between all the 
 various branches of art is so 
 very close, that instead of 
 speaking of them as different 
 arts, it would really be more 
 accurate to describe them as 
 only different media for ex- 
 pression of the same truth. 
 Our object in trying to express ourselves in some 
 one form of art, is to bring home to those to whom 
 this form most appeals, truths which we see are 
 passed over by them unheeded and uncompre- 
 hended when expressed in another. Many of the 
 principles and truths I hope to bring before you 
 are so much more easily set forth in other arts than 
 that of language, that the attempt to use this form 
 would seem unnecessary and undesirable were it 
 not for the truth of what I have just said, that each 
 of the arts appeals £s? clearly expresses its meanings 
 and teachings only to a part of those to whom it is 
 addressed. All feel something of the meanings ex- 
 pressed through art, no matter what form of ex- 
 pression may have been chosen, but every one will 
 be more directly appealed to and will more clearly 
 understand the message expressed in one art than 
 they would that, or some other message, expressed 
 in another. 
 
 It cannot be denied that many get from music 
 what they see not in poetry, while others learn 
 from poetry what they miss in music, painting, 
 sculpture, or architecture ; that some can feel and 
 know truth in architecture they find not in the 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 22 
 
 drama, and many learn from the drama what no 
 other art can teach them. 
 
 For though it is true that many of our greatest 
 artists could have expressed themselves, as some 
 have expressed themselves, with equal power 
 through several media; many of our greatest poets 
 might have made equally great painters, and our 
 painters, poets ; still few could possibly find time 
 to acquire equal knowledge of several arts. And 
 though most men, being masters of one art, will 
 have abundant sympathy and love for the others, 
 yet life will prove too short for them to come to 
 feel and know the messages or truths of any other 
 with equal clearness. But, having them in the 
 depths of their natures, they will feel, though dim- 
 ly perhaps, that they are all one, and that their 
 vital truths belong to all alike, and are essentially 
 the same in all, and are of the very life of all that is 
 worthy, all that is beautiful, true, or noble. 
 Now all the greatest truths are so broad and uni- 
 versal in their very elements, that they are incap- 
 able of clear definition and must depend on the 
 subtleties of true art for expression. And in this 
 lies the dignity of all true art, in that by it and 
 through it only can the highest truths be taught, 
 or true education reached. 
 
 Music is the most perfect means of saying what 
 cannot be expressed in words. None of us can 
 translate into words what has been revealed to us 
 through music, it is a means of expression above 
 and beyond words ; painting, poetry, sculpture, 
 architecture, even a mere colour scheme, can all tell 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 23 
 
 us much which is beyond the power of any direct 
 expression. The deeper the truth the more de- 
 pendent it is upon one or other of these arts for 
 its expression. None of us can say what music has 
 brought home to us, none of us can tell what a 
 beautiful building has said to us. If we try to give 
 all these things in words, "beauty," "truth," or 
 that hopelessly feeble phrase "elevating influence," 
 and kindred terms, are all that come to our aid 
 with which to tell of them. Into these weak inade- 
 quate words we have to read all that which we have 
 learned from other arts, &f so give them a meaning 
 they are incapable of conveying, unless we have 
 felt it through influences above and beyond them. 
 Music, the most perfect of the arts, is the most sub- 
 tle, the most inexplicable. It seems to be, (if I may 
 use the expression), the most direct gift of God to 
 man, excepting of course that revelation of Him- 
 self which we call Nature, and which is above all 
 arts or anything needing man's instrumentality. 
 Why has music this power of calling forth all that 
 is best in us, of making us feel the great things 
 beyond expression ? We cannot say. 
 We feel, and so we know and realise, that music 
 never deceives, and is the only art which is never 
 misunderstood. Her revelation is either taken or 
 left, it is either comprehended or passed by un- 
 heeded, but it is never misconstrued. It may be 
 understood and felt in a degree only. It may give 
 more of its message to one than to another, but in so 
 far as it is understood at all, it is truly understood 
 and never misleads, and herein lies its greatness. 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 24 
 
 Some there are who say they can express by lan- 
 guage or other arts what the musician is speaking 
 of in his music; this only shows that all in which 
 music transcends other arts is beyond their con- 
 ception. The messages music has for us are above 
 and beyond. such things as can be put into words, 
 and to have it merely telling a story which could 
 equally well, or perhaps even better, have been 
 told in words, or even to have it imitating the 
 sounds of the sea, the voices of the storm, the 
 whisper of the trees, or the sorrow of the wind, is 
 to miss much of its greatness. 
 The messages of music may have been at some 
 times the same as those of Nature, in the sea, the 
 stream, or the trees, but to make it merely a less 
 comprehensible language, telling us what written 
 or spoken language can tell us, is to take from it 
 much of its nobility and to deprive it of some of 
 its most sacred prerogatives. 
 So if we follow this through we see its truth in 
 all the arts. Poetry, partaking of the character of 
 music, can bring home to us things too subtle, too 
 high, to be told to us in prose, but may be mis- 
 understood as music cannot be. In its highest in- 
 fluences, in those elements which it has in common 
 with music, it is, like music, either taken rightly or 
 not comprehended at all, but in many of its lesser 
 and more definable messages it may be misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 A very little thought will show how absolutely 
 true in literature is what I have said, as to the posi- 
 tion art must hold as the only means of expressing 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 25 
 the greatest truths, and will show too, that just as 
 our theme advances in dignity, will it increasingly 
 need the aid of art to give it expression. The mean- 
 est things of life are most easily expressed. We 
 can give our financial position with clearness in 
 figures. We can express the composition of a gas 
 with absolute accuracy in a formula. We can give 
 almost any mere scientific fact in words. We can 
 even state the properties of a triangle with some 
 definiteness. But beyond this we cannot go with- 
 out calling Art to our aid; and the higher we at- 
 tempt to, soar the more dependent upon her do 
 we become. 
 
 Our laws and legal documents are a constant com- 
 ment upon and illustration of the utter failure in- 
 evitably resulting from any attempt to express 
 with absolute accuracy, without the aid of art, any 
 of those things which involve questions of moral- 
 ity, love, truth, justice, or any of the higher quali- 
 ties of our nature ; for they have always been and 
 must always be the most obscure, involved, and 
 incomprehensible attempts at expression in any 
 language. 
 
 So we go upwards from the scientific formula and 
 the laws of geometry, past the legal document to 
 the newspaper article, and everyday prose, until we 
 come to the more matter-of-fact forms of philoso- 
 phy, thence on to parable, fiction and fairy tale, £s? 
 from these to sculpture, architecture, painting, and 
 poetry, calling in at every stage more and more of 
 the aid of art, until we arrive at last at that most 
 perfect art, and most complete expression, music. 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 26 
 
 And observe, all the way through the series we 
 have moved less and less within the regions of 
 definitely statable facts, and more and more in the 
 regions of those truths which can be felt £s? known, 
 but not definitely expressed. 
 Great truths, which are for all time and all peoples, 
 must be expressed in an art at any rate as high in 
 dignity as parable in one of its many forms. The 
 greatest teachers have recognised this. All great 
 truths must be presented in a form in which those 
 who are capable of realising them can find them, 
 while others miss,^ each can take away what he can 
 comprehend. This is only another way of saying 
 again, great truths can only be expressed through 
 the medium of art, for it is an essential property 
 of all true art that it shall suggest and imply more 
 than it actually says. 
 
 I have said art is the only true educator between 
 man and man, and a knowledge and appreciation 
 of those things which through art alone we can 
 learn, is the only true education. But I would 
 not for one moment be thought to lose sight of 
 the fact that Nature can and does teach us more 
 than any work of man. She has influences over us 
 tending to the highest education ; with these I was 
 not concerning myself in the above, for I was 
 speaking of man's influence upon his fellow man. 
 I am to try and give some idea of wherein lies the 
 life and vitality of some of the humbler branches 
 of art. I say humbler, for I will have none of the 
 shallow hypocrisy of those who, not being able to 
 paint a great realistic picture, pretend that their 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 27 
 little conventional decorations are a higher and 
 nobler branch of art, and who, because the great 
 picture may be still greater by being also decora- 
 tive, and can only attain to its greatest when it is 
 also decorative, argue that all decorative art is 
 greater than pictorial. 
 
 It is my aim to show that to these applied arts also 
 belongs much of that power to express those high- 
 er things which are felt and known only through 
 art. 
 
 We all know that the mere form of a chair, the 
 contour of a mould, the shape of a bracket, a 
 scheme of colour, have power to affect us, in a de- 
 gree, in just the same way music does, and, with 
 awe let us realise it, even as Nature herself does. 
 And I would have every craftsman and every prac- 
 tiser of the arts as deeply impressed with the dig- 
 nity this places upon him, and the responsibilities 
 it brings with it, as he can possibly be. I would 
 have him feel this truth, that in his degree he is 
 instrumental in either forwarding or retarding his 
 fellow men in their highest and truest education; 
 that in just so far as his art is true or false, real 
 and vital, or feeble and insincere, he is advancing 
 or hindering this great work ; that true art is the 
 grandest work of which humanity is capable, and 
 that through it alone can man advance to higher 
 things than those of which he is now capable. 
 We can none of us know, and certainly none of 
 us are in any danger of over-estimating, the good 
 influence of a beautiful building upon all those 
 who pass and repass it daily; and the smallest and 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 28 
 
 most insignificant article in our daily use has, in 
 its own degree, like power to help or hinder our 
 development. 
 
 Wherein truth in art consists, none but the artist 
 can know, and he cannot tell to another what he 
 knows of it himself ; he has learned it, first from 
 an inborn instinct and gift, and second, by that 
 education which true art only can promote, and 
 others can only come to a knowledge of it in the 
 same way. 
 
 The whole spirit and trend, all the outside cir- 
 cumstances, influences, and conditions of modern 
 life, are against the artist and true art. The present 
 individualistic and competitive basis of society 
 makes a living art almost an impossibility, but I 
 do not propose we should concern ourselves now 
 with questions which are not within the designer's 
 power, but only with those things which he can 
 and must see that he personally rightly under- 
 stands and practises. 
 
 No good work in any field of art was ever yet done 
 in a hurry; it maybe done quickly, with the utmost 
 energy, this will probably only give it vitality, but 
 all outside pressure means death to art. 
 All true art work must always be done under the 
 very keenest stress of mental effort; it cannot be 
 slovenly, careless, or interestless in its smallest de- 
 tail, but must be wrought with every faculty alert 
 with an absorption and concentration amounting 
 to abandon, and it must be done, can only be done 
 for the love of it. Other motives there may be, and 
 in greater or less degree there will be, but this 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 29 
 
 must be first and paramount, or true art is im- 
 possible. 
 
 A very fruitful cause of failure is the effort to be 
 original. In the loathsome distortions of fashion 
 we see daily the result of this attempt to originate 
 new forms, simply for the sake of novelty, without 
 the slightest reference to any feeling for beauty or 
 fitness. Originality has no value other than a pure- 
 ly commercial one, unless the original thing has 
 advantages over the commonplace. Most of the 
 things which we have about us show unmistakably 
 that their designers went to work in the wrong 
 spirit from the very first. We see at a glance that 
 the position taken up was this. The designer has 
 said to himself " This is generally done so and so, 
 in such and such a manner; now how can I modify 
 this to make it in some degree original : where can 
 I introduce a little novelty ? 
 No good result was ever yet arrived at by any one 
 who took up this position. No: the way to go to 
 work is, to get clearly into your mind the func- 
 tions, duties, requirements and limitations of the 
 thing to be designed, then choose the material or 
 materials which will enable it best to fulfil its func- 
 tions, duties, and requirements, and keep within 
 its limitations. Afterwards, with a full knowledge 
 and candid recognition of the properties and char- 
 acteristics of your materials and the best way of 
 using them, set to work to evolve the form which 
 will, in the simplest and most direct & at the same 
 time most beautiful and decorative manner, fulfil 
 the requirements, and the result will bear the im- 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. [5 30 
 
 press of your own personality, it will have your 
 own feeling, and will probably also have something 
 of true originality. 
 
 You may if you like, with all this clearly in your 
 mind, pass in review the customary forms em- 
 ployed to fulfil the conditions, retaining such char- 
 acteristics as you see are valuable either because 
 they advance the objects, or add to the comeliness, 
 but this must come second not first. 
 I would like you to notice in passing that this right 
 and true method of going to work in design is 
 entirely inapplicable to all things having no func- 
 tions to fulfil, by such a throng of which we are 
 now surrounded. 
 
 The whole trend of modern civilisation would 
 make the outlook for the artist one of blank hope- 
 lessness, were it not that there are signs of a re- 
 action, due to the efforts of great men who have 
 fought hard that art may not die. 
 We call the present the " Machine Age." Now the 
 influence of machinery on art is one of the most 
 degrading we have to contend with, for every ad- 
 vance made by machinery must mean a corres- 
 ponding retreat on the part of art. 
 When I have expressed the keen sense of pleasure 
 given me by the beautiful variety of surface, the 
 light and shade, the crisp, clean adze cuts, the vital 
 human interest, of some old beam, the commercial 
 mind has said to me " If the workman who wrought 
 it had possessed the tools with which to get it up 
 to a better surface^ he would not have left it as it is." 
 This is probably true, but it does not affect the 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 3 1 
 question of the relative beauty of the two beams, 
 the absolutely square,smooth,machine planed one, 
 and the irregular rough hewn one so full of char- 
 acter and interest. The artistic value of each is a 
 question quite apart from such considerations. To- 
 day, if we require a beam in our building, we take 
 every bit of natural character out of it, and bring 
 it, by mechanical processes, to as dead and flat, as 
 lifeless and monotonous a state as possible, then 
 we stupidly try to replace some of the natural and 
 characteristic beauty we have been at so much 
 trouble to get rid of, by some form of applied or- 
 nament, moulding, or what not, which probably 
 has only this one result, that it obscures the one 
 trace of natural beauty which has been able to sur- 
 vive the previous processes, that is the grain and 
 figure of the wood. Afterwards we stand and look 
 at it, with a sort of feeling that there is something 
 wrong, and wonder why it was so much more 
 beautiful before. 
 
 This is only one illustration, it would be easy to 
 give hundreds. For beauty of texture and surface 
 are nothing to the machine producer or the com- 
 mercial spirit of to-day. 
 
 When I say I want a piece of copper just ham- 
 mered out to the size and shape I require without 
 that grinding and polishing by which all trace of 
 the hammered human hand is lost in mere smooth- 
 ness and mechanical finish, the workman tells me 
 it will be injurious to his credit, people will see 
 nothing in it but bad workmanship and inability to 
 finish. He would prefer to efface the sympathetic 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 32 
 
 surface and natural beauties of the beaten metal 
 as completely as possible, then he would put it 
 in a press and stamp some meaningless pattern on 
 it, but the result would be entirely uninteresting 
 to him, and he would have no satisfaction in it, 
 unless sheer commercialism had utterly killed 
 every grain of everything higher than itself in his 
 nature. 
 
 Think of the beauty of leaded glass compared with 
 the lifeless hard mechanical perfection of polished 
 plate. This beauty has nothing to do with its old- 
 fashioned look, with romantic associations, or 
 quaintness of efFect ; it is simply an inherent prop- 
 erty of all leaded glazing, due to the wonderful 
 and never ending charm of the play of light and 
 shade on the different panes, each one catching the 
 light slightly differently from any other, some glis- 
 tening brightly, others dead and sombre, and the 
 rest occupying every tone between the two. One 
 sheet of glass with the leading laid upon it would 
 be more ugly and meaningless than the plate glass. 
 Many would-be artistic people think that it is an 
 essential characteristic of the artistic that it should 
 be in some degree eccentric or unusual. This is as 
 great a delusion as any one could well labour under. 
 That it is the case at the present time cannot be 
 denied; but it is because we have sunk to such 
 depths of degradation, that the artistic has become 
 the eccentric and unusual, not that to be different 
 from the ordinary is the property of the artistic. 
 There was a time when the exact reverse was the 
 case, when simple natural beauty was the rule in 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 33 
 
 all things and ugliness the exception, and the un- 
 usual and eccentric was then the inartistic. 
 So also many would-be artistic people think that 
 things derive an artistic value simply from being 
 old or old-fashioned. This again is entirely untrue 
 except of such things as undergo a modification 
 and change for the better in themselves at the 
 hands of old Father Time. But this too is an error 
 easily accounted for, as at the present time, as re- 
 gards the common things of daily life, the stand- 
 ard of design is so debased that it would be almost 
 impossible to bring out of the past (at any rate of 
 centuries before the last), forms for these which 
 would not surpass in beauty those now current 
 among us. If art in our homes were living and 
 progressive the old and old-fashioned would be 
 the ugly and inartistic. 
 
 A perfectly frank recognition of construction and 
 an honest compliance with its demands is an ab- 
 solute essential of all good designs ; any attempt 
 to disguise or thwart, or failure to acknowledge, 
 the necessary characteristics and features of con- 
 struction, must result in artistic disaster and is in- 
 deed a very fruitful cause of it. So also is that 
 kindred error, the adoption of a less perfect con- 
 struction to get the form wanted. It is not necessary 
 I should dwell upon this now, for it is recognised 
 by all art teachers, though by very few of those 
 who practise the applied arts, and illustrations of 
 the truth of it meet us in abundance on every hand 
 and will occur to all. 
 
 Neither is it necessary (and for the same reasons) 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 34 
 
 that I should say much about imitations & shams ; 
 wood made to simulate stone or marble ; iron cast 
 in forms suited only to wood ; wood worked into 
 forms suited only to stone, or in imitation of stone, 
 as in tracery and groining. The evil of all this is 
 too well known, and I have had to pass over it for 
 the sake of what is less recognised and not so often 
 brought before us. To put the right thing in the 
 right place; to give it its most appropriate form, 
 and above all things the form which will best en- 
 able it to fulfil its functions and uses, and withal 
 the simplest, most direct, and the most perfect 
 in construction ; this is the first duty of every de- 
 signer, and in doing this he will generally find he 
 gets the maximum of beauty. 
 The conscious effort to be original will always pro- 
 duce abortions and painful results ; the only origi- 
 nality worth anything is arrived at in trying to do 
 something better not something new; and the true 
 artist shows himself in giving beauty of form, of 
 colour, and design to the necessary and useful, and 
 adding that higher usefulness belonging to a work 
 of art. But may we not have ornament, pure or- 
 nament which has no other definite use ? Certainly 
 we may, but let us at the very outset apply this 
 test to it. It does not, we say, fulfil any useful pur- 
 pose on the physical plane, does it fulfil any pur- 
 pose on that higher plane of which I have spoken ? 
 Is its educational influence good ? If so we will 
 welcome it. If not let it go. And I fear, when this 
 test is applied, it will be found that there is but little 
 of the enormous profusion of the (so-called) or- 
 
THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART. 35 
 
 nament spread over everything about us, which 
 would not have to go. 
 
 Most of us would do well to change it all for one 
 or two good pictures, a bit of really beautiful met- 
 al work, carving, or embroidery, done by an artist 
 with his own hand, and possessing something of 
 that dignity of true art I have tried to show. 
 BARRY PARKER. 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 37 
 
 Y subject is "Our Educa- 
 Lj^l ^V\SS^4 Wtf tion in Art/' & I approach 
 *^ XlX'wl "I lit with a sense of trepida- 
 tion, feeling that the task 
 I have set myself is one of 
 very great difficulty, and 
 ^M'l^^^S'/^Obeing, as I am,so fully alive 
 3to the tremendous issues 
 involved in our holding right or wrong views upon 
 art education. 
 
 The place in our lives which Art must fill is so 
 exalted that it is with reverence I would consider 
 the way in which we should teach or be taught to 
 express ourselves in art, or learn to read the mean- 
 ing of others expressed through that medium. 
 Those who have come to realize that only by the 
 employment of Art can the highest truths which 
 we are capable of receiving be conveyed from one 
 man to another, must feel that the method of pre- 
 paring ourselves to wield so great a power, or 
 render ourselves receptive of such an influence, 
 should be most earnestly considered . I have taken 
 "Our Education in Art" as my title, instead of 
 "The Education of an Artist' ' or any other title 
 which would have fixed more definitely the limita- 
 tions within which I should confine myself, be- 
 cause I want what I am about to say to have a 
 much wider application than it would if simply 
 taken as addressed to those who propose to prac- 
 tise an art. For, to train all to an appreciation of 
 what is good, true, and beautiful, in Art, is hardly 
 less important than to train artists capable of 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 38 
 expressing what is good, true, and beautiful. 
 All have not vouchsafed to them the power to ex- 
 press themselves in an art, but all are in some de- 
 gree influenced by the artistic qualities of the 
 things by which they are surrounded, and I wish 
 to suggest a way of learning to appreciate what is 
 good and true and beautiful in art, even more than 
 a way of learning to create such art. That there 
 shall be those who can appreciate good art is nec- 
 essary to its life. That we should have those who 
 can create it is not enough ; this is the work of the 
 few ; the work of the many is to make an atmos- 
 phere in which it can live. I would impress as 
 gravely as possible upon those who aspire to the 
 practice of an art, not only the dignity belonging 
 to what they would undertake, but the tremendous 
 responsibility attaching to it. 
 The first thing that must go to the making of an 
 artist is that he should have that within him which 
 craves for expression, and which can only be ex- 
 pressed through the medium of an art. This first 
 essential is given to many to whom the power to 
 express it is not given, but without it the facility 
 to express will be a power for harm not for good : 
 it is the presence of great qualities, not the ab- 
 sence of bad, which makes a work of art. 
 The artists great responsibility lies in this: every 
 time he creates anything capable of bearing the 
 impress of the true art instinct, he brings into ex- 
 istence that which will have an influence upon all 
 who see it, and will quicken or deaden in them this 
 high instinct. The thought that, if he create not 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 39 
 
 something better than would have been created by 
 others,had he left it to them,he is doing harm in the 
 world, not good, is one that should come home to 
 him very solemnly. To the art worker belongs this 
 privilege — that his art can be a great power for good ; 
 and this responsibility— that he must of necessity 
 have done either harm or good by his work, and 
 that unless he has done something which is beyond 
 and above the conception of the general run (nay, 
 of the great majority)of his fellow-creatures, some- 
 thing they feel to have a little more in it, and to 
 be a little more than they can grasp, he is not 
 merely harmless, he is a failure. For as in life gen- 
 erally, so in the artistic life, he who merely does 
 what no one can attach blame to, and has not done 
 better than others would have done in his stead, 
 has lived to no purpose. Virtue is not a negative 
 quality in art or in life ; it does not consist in keep- 
 ing the Ten Commandments. "All these things 
 have I kept from my youth up : what lack I yet ? " 
 This man 1 900 years ago had grasped the truth 
 of what I have said above better than most of us 
 have to-day. 
 
 I will herein confine myself to speaking of those 
 arts which depend upon our eyes for their means of 
 appealing to us ; and as I wish that these suggestions 
 may be of real practical value, to all who desire to 
 appreciate what is artistically good and true, I must 
 leave out of our consideration, for the moment, all 
 the greater qualities which belong to art; and con- 
 fine myself to showing how we must first learn to 
 see, and to what I may call the purely technical side 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 40 
 of learning to see and represent. For simplicity I 
 will take the art of portraying Nature, as seen in 
 her landscapes, as my example of how to learn both 
 to see and to draw ; for the process is the same in 
 either case. 
 
 Now when first one attempts to paint a landscape, 
 one is over-whelmed by the tremendous number 
 of difFerent things one sees in it and has to take 
 into consideration at the same time. There is the 
 form and drawing, the light and shade, the atmos- 
 phere and its effect upon the local tints or real col- 
 ours of each individual object in the landscape, the 
 overpowering profusion of detail, the reflected 
 lights and reflected colours, the relative value of 
 objects, the texture, and character of surfaces, the 
 composition, what we call the accidental effects; 
 and last but not least, the teaching and meaning, 
 the particular message Nature has to convey in 
 the whole scene. And only by long and patient 
 study of each of these separately^ can we acquire 
 the power to grasp them all together in the way 
 which is necessary when painting. 
 Were I to teach, I should make my pupils go 
 through a long and patient study of each of these 
 separately devoting much thought to each in turn, 
 quite apart from the use of pencil or brush ; for it 
 is impossible to represent one without the others, 
 but not impossible to study one, without the others. 
 And that we should be able to first dissociate one 
 from another in our minds, and then see the in- 
 fluence of one upon another, is absolutely neces- 
 sary to a true portraiture of Nature in landscape. 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 41 
 I would then begin with the simplest of the things 
 in my category, and impart to my pupils a know- 
 ledge of form (probably best done by some simple 
 process of modelling), and I would go on to the 
 drawing of form without reference to light and 
 shade. Next I would teach them to see form in 
 masses of light and shade only, leaving out of con- 
 sideration at the first (as far as possible) the influ- 
 ence of reflected light, but eventually giving much 
 time and thought to enabling them to see the re- 
 flected light truly, and to measure its gradations 
 and degrees accurately. From this they should go 
 on to represent textures and character of surfaces, 
 and not until all this had been done would I bring 
 in the use of colour. This should begin by the 
 accurate matching of local tints, before the repres- 
 entation of the colour effects produced by atmos- 
 phere with its varying degrees of moisture, of 
 density and transparency or opacity, its power of 
 diffusing light, and its effect on distance, was 
 attempted. Next I would allow sketching with ref- 
 erence to composition, grouping, and much study 
 of the relative values of one object to another in 
 the landscape, affected as it is by all the foregoing, 
 and difficult of explanation as it always is, even in 
 view of and with a perfect knowledge of all the 
 foregoing. Finally, being first able to see and feel, 
 then we would go on to try to catch & portray the 
 moods and messages of Nature, and the poetry of 
 the whole. 
 
 I would then point out to the accomplished crafts- 
 man, that he, upon sitting down to paint from 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 42 
 Nature, must first ask himself what it is which 
 makes a picture (in the true sense of the word) in 
 what is before him, and why he has chosen this 
 particular subject: and he must never for a mo- 
 ment allow himself to lose sight of this. Much 
 there is he must of necessity leave out, but he must 
 grasp the essentials and retain these. His study 
 has taught him to see things as they present them- 
 selves to his eye,rather than as he knows them to be. 
 In a sentence, he has learned to know what he sees, 
 not to see what he knows: he is aware that yonder 
 hill in the distance, were he there, would be green, 
 but that seeing it as he does, affected by the inter- 
 vening atmosphere & light, it is blue. The painter 
 must by training, and power of analysing causes 
 of effects, be able to see his subject somewhat as he 
 would were he suddenly dropped into his seat from 
 another planet, without any knowledge of the ap- 
 pearance on closer inspection of the component 
 parts of his subject. May I explain some of what I 
 have said, with the aid of a simple example, a stone 
 wall bounding a green field, the wall casting a shad- 
 ow on the grass. Of drawing pure and simple there 
 is not much; there is the form of the stones in the 
 wall, the irregularities of the contour of the field, 
 the shadow of the wall & the modifications which 
 the rise and fall of the surface of the field effect in it, 
 presenting it to the eye now more foreshortened 
 and now less as the angle between the wall and the 
 ground changes. In the reflected light there is much 
 to note and dissociate in our minds from the direct 
 lighting. In this we should see that the shadow on 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 43 
 the shade side of the wall is much lighter than the 
 shadow cast by the wall upon the grass. This re- 
 sults from the fact that the grass from its horizon- 
 tal position receives far more diffused light from 
 the atmosphere and the sky than does the vertical 
 surface of the wall ; therefore it reflects more light 
 upon the wall than the wall can in its turn reflect 
 on to it. But though the shadow on the shade side 
 of the wall is lighter than the shadow on the grass, 
 the shade side of the wall will be darker than the 
 grass within the shadow of the wall ; and this is 
 not due to the local tint, the grey of the stone and 
 the green of the grass, for probably the horizontal 
 surfaces of the stones on the top of the wall, show 
 as light as the part of the grass which is also in the 
 full blaze of the sun ; it is due to the different 
 character of surface or texture of the grass field and 
 the stone wall, and the different effect upon each of 
 varying degrees of lighting. So observe, all these, 
 the light and shade, the diffused and the reflected 
 light, the character of the surfaces, the local tints 
 and the atmosphere & distance from the observer, 
 all affect the relative value of the tone of the grass 
 and wall, which value must be seen truly before it 
 can be painted truly. 
 
 As I said, for simplicity, I have herein so far fol- 
 lowed out the course of study as applied in land- 
 scape only, but at the right stages I would have the 
 student, in exactly the same way, study the seeing 
 rightly, and then drawing rightly, first plants, then 
 animals, then the human figure ; then finally I 
 would let him apply his knowledge and artistic 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 44 
 
 feeling to design. 
 
 Art is at its greatest when applied. If the great 
 picture, while retaining all its merits as a picture, 
 can at the same time also hold its own as an ele- 
 ment of decoration and lend its aid to producing 
 the general effect to be made upon us by the whole 
 building, it is by so much the greater. I would not, 
 until the final stage, encourage the study of any 
 form of applied art. None of the figures drawn or 
 studied should be those applied to the decoration 
 of a building, used in flat design, or in any way 
 conventionally treated or grouped. I would en- 
 courage no study of ornament of any style, period, 
 or nation. Our need is for a system of education 
 which will strengthen our inborn perception for 
 what constitutes real beauty. It is comparatively easy 
 to learn to distinguish a beautiful thing from an 
 ugly thing, but to know wherein the difference lies 
 is quite another matter. It is our education in art 
 that must strengthen our power to see what are 
 the essentially beautiful properties which the one 
 possesses and the other does not. We, whose work 
 it is to design, frequently find the client who has 
 best been able to appreciate the difference between 
 the good and bad design in the finished result, will, 
 when a design is being worked out for him, be 
 most emphatic in his instructions that one by one 
 every feature which has contributed to that differ- 
 ence shall be eliminated: and the bearing upon this 
 of what I have said, about educating those who 
 are not to practise the arts, but to appreciate, will 
 be easily seen. 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 45 
 
 He who has studied landscape earnestly and lov- 
 ingly, and learnt to see wherein its beauty lies, 
 when he comes to apply that landscape to an arch- 
 itectural or decorative purpose, such for instance 
 as the decoration of wall surfaces, stained glass, or 
 what not, will find his own characteristic way of 
 conventionalising it. His conventionalisation will 
 be such as is dictated to him clearly by the limita- 
 tions of the material in which his design is to be 
 produced, and by questions of fitness and suitabil- 
 ity. And his feeling for true beauty will enable him 
 to retain the essentials of the beauty in the landscape 
 he is applying, & to discard what is less necessary. 
 He will suggest the mood of Nature and convey 
 her influence upon the beholder. He will also, in 
 his freedom from the influence of long established 
 conventions, be able unconsciously to impart his 
 own personality and feeling, and so give real origi- 
 nality to his handiwork. 
 
 For him who would practise the art of the archi- 
 tect, a course of study directed primarily to the 
 strengthening of the power to see wherein lies the 
 secret of the beauty of one form over another, and 
 not merely that one form is more beautiful than 
 another, is perhaps more important than to him 
 who follows any other art appealing to the eye : for 
 this art is further removed from the influence of 
 Nature's own teaching. 
 
 I have been obliged to dismiss in a single sentence 
 the training by means of drawing and studying 
 plants, animals, & the human form, which I would 
 advocate ; and fear I may so have given a very 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 46 
 wrong impression as to the importance I attach to 
 this study. I must ask that this be not measured 
 by the time I have devoted to it ; for I hold it to 
 be all-important, and the work at it should be long 
 and thorough. In this work the student could be 
 carried much further in many of the separate 
 branches of his study I have indicated, than he 
 could be in landscape. The plants & animals would 
 demand of him a far greater perception of the sub- 
 tleties of form than did the landscape, and of course 
 his drawing would be carried very much further. 
 He would have to apply all he had learnt of light 
 & shade and reflected light under very much more 
 complex conditions. Much more subtle distinction 
 of the character of surfaces and textures would be 
 required of him ; and also greater nicety of percep- 
 tion in local tints. But composition or grouping 
 should not enter yet into his consideration. Before 
 he thought of these I should want him to specialise, 
 and decide in what field of artistic labour his feel- 
 ing & knowledge were to find expression. I should 
 then require that he get a complete mastery of the 
 technicalities of this, and of its methods, restric- 
 tions, and capabilities. If he elected to be an archi- 
 tect, I would have him acquire a comprehensive 
 knowledge of pure building construction, but no 
 architecture — in so far as it can be separated from 
 building construction. If possible, I would have 
 him learn one of the handicrafts for which he is 
 eventually to design, that he might show forth his 
 feeling for beauty of form modified by, and in due 
 and proper relation to, complete mastery over 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 47 
 methods of construction. If he were to be a sculp- 
 tor I would have him next master the technical side 
 of the art. If a glass painter he should be able to 
 make a window before he attempted to design one. 
 The embryo painter should master all the details 
 of the painter's art; the would-be textile designer 
 should work at a loom ; and the ceramic designer 
 with wheel, mould, glazes, & kiln. Then at length, 
 each should in his own line attempt to give ex- 
 pression to his own ideas, his own feeling, and his 
 own love of beauty, in something really to be used, 
 and for which there was a definite requirement 
 and a place in the world already assigned. 
 And this brings us to what I consider perhaps the 
 most vital point in the whole system I am advo- 
 cating. The student is now in a position to solve 
 the difficulties which will beset him on every hand. 
 In his own way he sets himself to create that which 
 will best fulfil certain definite conditions and re- 
 quirements, and to give it what he conceives to be 
 the best and most beautiful form in which it can 
 do this. At this stage, having first encountered the 
 difficulties, he may, with advantage to himself and 
 his work, look round and see how others before 
 him have met and overcome similar difficulties ; 
 and how, out of the way they have done this, cer- 
 tain historic styles, accepted forms, and recognised 
 conventions have resulted. As each difficulty pre- 
 sents itself it will help and stimulate him to study 
 how it has been overcome in old work, but if he 
 is saturated with knowledge of the forms and fin- 
 ished result of old work, without first having met 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 48 
 the problems which brought them into existence, 
 he will simply have his own instincts swamped by 
 them, and will blindly reproduce them without 
 any feeling for the spirit which prompted them. 
 Really vital design will be well-nigh impossible to 
 him. 
 
 That we substitute suggestion for development 
 is one great defect in our educational system to- 
 day in all things, but especially in those things 
 appertaining to the arts. Our schools of art begin 
 their training in design with an exhaustive study 
 of historic styles of ornament and applied form of 
 every kind. The course of study laid down by the 
 Institute of British Architects for its pupils, com- 
 mences with "Evidences of Study" of old Greek 
 and Gothic buildings ; in all cases suggestion is 
 substituted for development, and in consequence 
 we have turned out by the thousand men capable 
 of reproducing works in all styles, but with no 
 vital appreciation of the spirit and causes which 
 lead to the existence of any one of them, and not 
 one who can evolve a really vital work of art among 
 them. 
 
 If we look round among those who are the lead- 
 ing spirits in the really great forward movement 
 in art which is going on among us, how many of 
 them shall we find to be the product of our recog- 
 nised educational authorities in art ? How many 
 have got their art training on the lines laid down 
 by our schools of art, for instance ? If they come 
 out of government schools at all, we shall gener- 
 ally find they have acquired their grasp & mastery 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 49 
 
 in spite of that system, and owe it to influences 
 arising in some by-path, there, or outside its cur- 
 riculum altogether ; or to the fact that their own 
 individuality has been too big to be drowned or 
 stamped out by it. Still we cannot fail to be struck 
 by the very small percentage of these leading spirits 
 which it can be claimed are the outcome of any sys- 
 tem of training at present recognised. 
 The embryo architect is in a somewhat better posi- 
 tion than those intending to follow other arts, for 
 the old apprenticeship system still obtains in this 
 profession ; and in his master's office he is at any- 
 rate engaged upon work for a definite purpose 
 and designed to fulfil definite conditions. He has 
 opportunities to go some depth into the why and 
 wherefore of things, and must of necessity do so. 
 Very differently is he situated from one who is 
 patiently acquiring a knowledge of the outward 
 forms of things in a large technical school. The 
 advocates of this " Study from the beginning of the 
 best examples," talk of getting imbued with the 
 spirit of the old work. It is not for me to go now 
 into the many reasons why it is not possible for us 
 in these later times to enter fully into the spirit 
 which prompted the beautiful work of the past: 
 this one reason, that we have not first met with the 
 difficulties the overcoming of which brought it 
 into existence, is all that is within my province at 
 the moment. Get yourself saturated with know- 
 ledge of form, of beautiful form, presented for 
 your study by Nature on every hand, and apply 
 this in your own way to meeting requirements and 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 50 
 overcoming difficulties which you fully compre- 
 hend, which present themselves to you in the 
 work which you have to do. Be not swamped with 
 anothers' ways of fulfilling other (though perhaps 
 similar) conditions, meeting the requirements of 
 another age, or overcoming other difficulties which 
 you at best understand very imperfectly. 
 It would be very easy to give numberless illustra- 
 tions of the harm resulting from this very wide- 
 spread and far-reaching error in our conception 
 and teaching of the duties of the designer, of the 
 way he should go to work, and the methods he 
 should follow. 
 
 We do not now require to be told that to fasten 
 thin strips of wood to the face of a brick or stone 
 wall in imitation of half-timber work is bad ; but 
 I may just in passing point out, that it was this 
 same fault in our training and in our conception 
 of the whole question, which ever made this pos- 
 sible, and rendered us able to tolerate it. We saw 
 the beauty of old timber and plaster construction, 
 and not seeing also that that beauty resulted from 
 straightforwardly & honestly using the best form 
 of construction known for these materials, we 
 thought of the finished effect only, and imagined 
 we got it by imitating it in other construction, 
 where the conditions and requirements and the 
 difficulties to be met and overcome were different. 
 Nor do we need to think about these things much 
 before we can see that it is wrong to erect gable, 
 projection, cove, parapet, continuation of a bay 
 window, or what not, for no useful purpose but 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 51 
 solely for the display of even constructionally gen- 
 uine half-timber work, that it may, by its echo of 
 the beauties we have felt to exist in some true art 
 work in the past, lead us to suppose that it too 
 is beautiful. 
 
 But to avoid all possibility of becoming in the least 
 personal, I will not take my illustrations from re- 
 cent times, for it is easy to find them in abundance 
 without. The abominations of the Renaissance are 
 in themselves enough. These abominations were 
 simply the outcome of giving the study of the 
 finished result in the beautiful work of the past un- 
 due prominence in men's minds, and allowing this 
 study to smother the feeling for what had constituted 
 the beauty in that work. As all know, the Renais- 
 sance came from the revival of the study of old 
 Greek and Roman work in the 14th, 1 5th & 1 6th 
 centuries. Men then began again to see the beauty 
 that was in a Greek capital, shaft and base, but had 
 not first learned to see that that beauty was the re- 
 sult primarily of the simple and direct way in which 
 the pillar fulfilled its functions, in the form of con- 
 struction in which it was used ; and they began to 
 use it again, and tried to work it in just as it was, 
 and at the stage it had reached in the process of 
 its evolution. They began to introduce it in build- 
 ings of a different construction, and in places where 
 the conditions were very different from those under 
 which it was so great. It had been beautiful where 
 it supported a roof and cornice, and stood strong 
 and adequate under their dead crushing weight : 
 but it was now introduced in conjunction with the 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 52 
 dome, the thrust of which it was entirely unsuited 
 to sustain, therefore chains hidden in the masonry 
 (like those in our own St. Paul's Cathedral), were 
 requisitioned, and we got an apparently stone build- 
 ing so constructed that it would not stand up in 
 stone, just as we have to-day on every hand imita- 
 tion half-timber buildings which would not stand 
 up if of timber construction. It had been beautiful 
 in the sunny climes of Greece and Italy, where the 
 shade of the entablature it supported was needed, 
 and an attribute of beauty : but it was now placed 
 where the wall could not be set back from it, but 
 must be brought out to it, and must have windows 
 unshaded by cornice, frieze, £s? architrave. There- 
 fore the pillar stood in front of it, carrying nothing, 
 doing nothing, and a melancholy, painful thing to 
 all who beheld it rightly. 
 
 They studied the ornament of the Greeks, but fail- 
 ed to notice how it was in all cases subordinated to, 
 and explained and enhanced the general forms and 
 contours and emphasized the construction ; and 
 the result was the meaningless inanity and vapid 
 gracefulness of their compiled arabesques and 
 ornament on pilasters, their festoons, and all the 
 rest of the imitative and uninspired artificialities of 
 the style. 
 
 The work became lifeless 6? compiled. In a Gothic 
 cathedral, of the times before the Renaissance taint- 
 ed our northern work, one feels the mason hon- 
 estly developing the resources of his material, age 
 by age. Behind one of Wren's spires one always 
 sees the man with paper and drawing instruments, 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 53 
 hard mechanical lines laboriously measured off on 
 a drawing board, with mathematical calculations 
 of proportion figured all round the margin. 
 And apropos of all this, may I be allowed paren- 
 thetically to say, that there is a movement on foot 
 to make architecture a close profession. I do not 
 propose to enter here into this, or into the question 
 whether any true standard of qualification in arch- 
 itecture, or any other art, can possibly be secured 
 by examination ; but all I have been saying has a 
 very distinct bearing on the policy of those who 
 advocate that all who would enter the profession 
 of an architect, should go through the same course 
 of study as definitely laid down by them ; a course 
 which begins with the study of ancient work, and, 
 in so far as it includes at all those things which 
 constitute the true training, brings them forward 
 in the reverse order from the one indicated above. 
 But this is not the point I wish to show ; I wish 
 emphatically to say that to train all would-be arch- 
 itects in such a way that they can pass the same 
 examinations is bad enough ; but for all to go 
 through the same mill in preparation for these ex- 
 aminations, not allowing those who have other 
 ideas of what an architect's training should be a 
 free hand to act upon their own convictions, can 
 only have most disastrous results to architecture, 
 as it would to any other art. 
 It is well to think earnestly of our education in 
 art, and to fit ourselves for true appreciation ; but 
 when we have done this, if we come to actively 
 practise an art, to keep a watch upon our motives 
 
OUR EDUCATION IN ART. 54 
 is our only true guide. Everything depends on this. 
 If the motive is unworthy the art will be unworthy. 
 Unless we create any work of art, unless we write, 
 paint, design, or whatever it may be, first with a 
 desire to create an influence for good, to bring 
 home to others something of the true & beautiful 
 which might otherwise escape them, our art will 
 be unworthy. 
 
 The first thing that must go to the making of an 
 artist is not that he shall have the power to express 
 himself, but that he shall have that within him 
 which needs expression. The artist's duty is a very 
 grave and solemn one ; it is for him to rouse in 
 others the power of seeing truth and beauty, " The 
 best impart the gift of seeing to the rest." 
 BARRY PARKER. 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 55 
 
 "Ability to live without furniture, without imped- 
 imenta, with the least possible amount of neat cloth- 
 ing, shows more than the advantage held by this 
 Japanese race in the struggle of life; it shows also 
 the real character of some weaknesses in our civili- 
 zation. It forces reflection upon the useless multi- 
 plicity of our daily wants." Kokoro, Lafcadio Hearn. 
 
 OOKING over some colour 
 prints from Japan, I have been 
 much impressed by the ex- 
 treme simplicity which char- 
 acterizes the interiors of Jap- 
 anese houses as depicted in 
 them. Print after print shows 
 us a room almost bare, the 
 walls in some delicate brown or grey tint, with 
 the wood framing exposed : this latter consists of 
 bamboo cane or simple squared posts and beams, 
 with now and then a door head slightly arched. For 
 the elaborately ornamented screens and bric-a-brac 
 which are associated with Japan one searches these 
 prints in vain : the rooms are characterized by an 
 almost complete absence of mere ornament. There 
 is in one a single panel of the wall or screen adorn- 
 ed with a landscape very slightly suggested ; in 
 another a blind or hanging of some sort bears a 
 text or painted floral decoration ; or a vase standing 
 on a slightly raised dais, holds a carefully arranged 
 spray of flowers; or a jar on the centre of a wall 
 displays a single peony or chrysanthemum exquis- 
 itely poised ; but beyond this there is no ornamen- 
 tation. 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 56 
 
 There is considerable variety in the shape of the 
 rooms shown, none seemingly being just four- 
 square. A complete absence of furniture charac- 
 terizes them, and only such things as are actually 
 being used find a place there. Yet the whole sug- 
 gestion conveyed is one of refined and elegant life : 
 the lady arranging flowers does not have the sprays 
 from which she is to select on the floor by her, but 
 on a beautifully lacquered tray; while all the uten- 
 sils one sees represented, such as boxes, candle- 
 sticks, tea-cups, or platters, are elegant in shape and 
 colour and often much ornamented. They are quite 
 obviously in the room for use however, not for or- 
 nament. 
 
 Judging from these prints, the refinement of Japan 
 seems to result in no desire for beautiful ornaments 
 or elaborate decorations, but rather in the demand 
 that everything that is required for use shall be 
 elegant or even highly ornamental. Their aesthetic- 
 ism evidently does not bring a craving to be always 
 surrounded by innumerable articles of vertu, but 
 rather a demand that such things as must come to 
 their hands justified by their use, shall come also 
 graced by beauty. 
 
 In contrast with the extreme simplicity of the 
 rooms is a lavish display of bright colour and or- 
 nament on the dresses of the ladies, as they are 
 represented chatting or working ; this tells with 
 wonderful effect against the soft grey or brown, 
 or the pale green of the dried rush matting, which 
 are the prevailing colours shown on the walls and 
 floors. 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 57 
 Such rooms as these are obviously thought of 
 mainly as the back-ground to the people and their 
 life. There is evidently in the Japanese no lack of 
 love for the beauty of Nature and of ornament; 
 only there is a dignity which makes them demand 
 a suitable setting for their lives; and a very rare 
 refinement which teaches them to prefer the com- 
 plete realization and enjoyment of the beauty of a 
 few simple things, to the superficial appreciation of 
 many elaborately beautiful ones ; which leads them 
 to spend their thought rather in showing to the best 
 advantage the utmost beauty of one spray, than 
 in finding places for a basketful of rare flowers. 
 How different is the common estimate of art and 
 refinement here in the west. When we think of the 
 elaborately upholstered houses of our ' artistic cir- 
 cles/ the people of taste — crowded as they are 
 with costly decorations and ornaments ; when we 
 find that one of the most refined of our modern 
 painters is in danger of being remembered as much 
 for the gorgeous palace in which he lived as for the 
 works of art he painted ; what wonder if philoso- 
 phers and moralists tell us that art is the enemy of 
 simplicity, the fosterer of luxury ! 
 If the love of art did really result in making more 
 and more elaborate collections of beautiful things 
 necessary to us, then indeed it would be the enemy 
 not alone of simplicity but of liberty also. Then 
 would it be but an added burden, still more ter- 
 ribly dividing those who work from those who 
 enjoy, and further enslaving the one to the other; 
 but another millstone hung about the neck of 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 58 
 
 miserable man to keep him from rising above the 
 slough of mere material wants and entanglements, 
 in which he is already well-nigh engulfed. But the 
 accumulation of beautiful things from all the ends 
 of the earth is no sign that a deep love for art 
 exists, and the admiration of them in itself is no 
 sign of much refinement. Rather does this result 
 from our utter lack of true art, from our com- 
 plete inability to make the things we need beauti- 
 ful. It is a sign too of our entire want of refinement 
 that we are content to use such ugly things as we do 
 make, if only we may have a few of the beautiful 
 things that other people have made, to look at. 
 Fancy a Greek carrying water in a galvanized iron 
 pail, and thinking it artistic to put his pitcher on a 
 bracket in his hall ! The Greek required his pitch- 
 ers for water carrying, and made them for that 
 purpose, made them as comfortable and easy to 
 carry as possible; and that his work in the making 
 of them might be to him somewhat of an interest, 
 he made them as beautiful as he could in form, 
 and decorated them with suggestions of the things 
 his mind loved to dwell upon. And so was art to 
 him both a solace to labour and an expression of 
 his interest in his work. And to the one who used 
 the things made, what was it but a pure added joy 
 in his life; suggesting to him the pleasure of that 
 worker, and starting in his mind thoughts of gods 
 or heroes on which he also liked to dwell. This is 
 the origin of all true art, springing from some 
 joy in the maker and giving to all who use the 
 thing made some suggestion of this joy. Or it may 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 59 
 be, in the higher branches, springing from some 
 great thought demanding expression or great emo- 
 tion yearning for sympathy, & in the beholder ever 
 after stimulating something of that thought or 
 emotion. Instead of being an added burden to men 
 it may be an added joy; may gladden the hours 
 of toil to the maker ; and for the user may lift the 
 every-day affairs of life out of the commonplace, 
 satisfying his taste with the comeliness of all the 
 implements he uses and cheering him with the 
 beautiful suggestions of their ornament. 
 Art such as this must be in close touch with sim- 
 plicity ; for, under its influence, ornament that has 
 no message of suggestion, that conveys no memen- 
 to of a maker's pleasure, would not exist; and if 
 you come to think of it, why should it ? There is 
 no virtue in mere ornament: far otherwise. It is not 
 easy to create a decoration more beautiful than the 
 play of sunlight or firelight on a white-washed 
 wall ; and unless some one has j oy in doing it, or can 
 give us something more constantly pleasing or sug- 
 gestively helpful, why should it be attempted? 
 Certainly refinement does not demand it; for it is 
 refinement that teaches us to appreciate the subtle 
 colouring of the varying light and to be content 
 with it. 
 
 In other ways also the growth of the aesthetic fac- 
 ulty will lead to simplicity, & will help to produce 
 those changes in the conditions of life and work, 
 without which there is no hope for any great 
 revival of art on the lines just sketched. Until 
 recently the beautiful feathers of the heron, the 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 60 
 
 so-called ospreys or egrets, were a favourite dec- 
 oration for the head dress ; but since the cruelty 
 attendant on the obtaining of them has been gen- 
 erally known, they have vanished alike from the 
 plume of the soldier and the bonnet of the gentle 
 lady. Their beauty brings no more pleasure; it is 
 marred by the mental picture of the bleeding heron 
 and its starving young: none but the ignorant or 
 vain can wear them now. As our appreciation of 
 beauty becomes, if I may so use the term, inten- 
 sive as well as extensive, many similar changes will 
 be brought about. For one must not forget that the 
 appeal of beauty, of art, to us is not solely a matter 
 of the senses. A work of art does not cease to touch 
 us the moment it is out of our sight; nay, we may 
 even get more pleasure and help from it after than 
 when actually gazing at it. But if it is to continue 
 to please us, beauty must bear to be thought about. 
 If we cannot dwell with satisfaction on the origin 
 or production of the beautiful object, its beauty 
 ceases to please, we feel it to be superficial. 
 This desire for such a harmony in our life and 
 surroundings as will not alone delight the eye, but 
 will also satisfy and please the mind and heart, 
 springing as it does from a deeper appreciation of 
 beauty, will have far-reaching results in the direc- 
 tion of wedding art and simplicity together. There 
 are many who can no longer enjoy an artistic life 
 above stairs, undisturbed by the lack of what art 
 could add, in the life below stairs on which it rests; 
 for they feel that no beauty in the drawing room 
 can make up for the want of beauty in the lives of 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 61 
 
 those in the kitchen; no refinement in the study- 
 compensate for the utter lack of it in the workshop. 
 In fact we are coming to realize that although we 
 may have the right and the power to create for our- 
 selves a costly palace to dwell in, and to gather 
 around us all the luxuries and refinements we can 
 think of, and may moreover have plenty of ser- 
 vants to wait on us and plenty of labourers to help 
 us to support our costly life; yet art will not make 
 such a life beautiful, simply because of that want 
 of harmony between the life and all that goes to 
 support it. However right and just such a life may 
 be thought to be, it cannot be beautiful. 
 And so those to whom beauty really appeals are 
 seeking a simpler form of life, one which need not 
 cost so much of the labour of others to maintain, 
 or so much of their own to procure. And the more 
 they come to love & enjoy beauty, the greater must 
 this tendency to simplicity of life become, not from 
 any virtue or asceticism, but simply as a matter of 
 choice. Why should one having such tastes encum- 
 ber himself with an elaborate household, which but 
 offends his inner love of harmony, and takes his 
 time and energy from the enjoyment of so much 
 greater pleasure? He knows that the art in a pic- 
 ture belongs to all who can appreciate it, not solely 
 to the purchaser of it, who buys not the art but the 
 right to shut it up; and he realizes that the beauty 
 of a landscape is a pleasure open to all who can see 
 it, and that it cannot be conveyed in the title deed. 
 Such an one does not barter away his time and his 
 freedom to enjoy these solid pleasures, for the sake 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 62 
 of a fine house, fine society, or any other fictitious 
 refinements. He minds not how simple his sur- 
 roundings, if only he may be able to dwell in 
 thought on everything he handles or sees about 
 him without any painful suggestion of drudgery in 
 the making of them, or squalor in the maintaining 
 of them, marring his pleasure in their simple ele- 
 gance. The most humble house will content him, so 
 only he may have time and quiet to appreciate the 
 beauties of nature and art, and opportunity for 
 the sharing with others of like taste the enjoy- 
 ment of these things. For the love of beauty is not 
 selfish, it grows by sharing: we all love to make 
 others see the beauty that we enjoy. 
 It is true that such a man may be fastidious, that 
 he may hate all ugly or sordid things, and may de- 
 mand that everything he has shall be the best of 
 its kind. But this must not be confounded with a 
 desire for many things, or a dislike of simple ones. 
 The musician too, is hurt by harsh sounds and 
 requires his music to be of the best, but he does 
 not ask that an orchestral concert shall be for ever 
 going on. 
 
 This general dependence of beauty on simplicity, 
 at any rate in the private dwelling house, is of 
 special interest to those whose function it is to give 
 an artistic setting to the lives of clients by so de- 
 signing their homes that they shall be comfortable 
 for those who are to occupy them and comely for 
 all who shall behold them. The architect is as- 
 tonished to find how very conventional generally 
 are the reasons which dictate the size and arrange- 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 63 
 ment of the house. He is impressed by the great 
 difference that exists between what are considered 
 to be suitable houses for different classes of people: 
 and he begins to wonder whether there are not 
 discoverable some factors determining what is a 
 suitable size for a man's shell having more inti- 
 mate relation to his life than the depth of his pocket, 
 or some reason for its form and adornment less 
 conventional than those usually accepted. 
 For example, an architect receives a commission 
 to design some labourers' cottages. The cost is the 
 first stipulation: this must be low enough for the 
 cottages to yield a fair return on the outlay when 
 let at such rents as the labourers can afford to pay 
 out of their present wages. Probably the next stip- 
 ulation is that each house must have a parlour, 
 kitchen, and three bedrooms. The usual result of 
 such instructions is a design for a row of cottages, 
 all alike, each having a small parlour in front with 
 a front door into it, a kitchen behind — it is well 
 if this is not smaller still — with the stairs going up 
 between the two and a little larder under: the kit- 
 chen has a back door leading into the yard, a sink 
 under the only window, and a copper between that 
 and the fire. Here we have as the living-room for 
 a family a place twelve to fifteen feet square, con- 
 taining three doors, a sink, and a copper. True 
 there is a sitting-room ; but that is of little use. The 
 occupants will have neither money to find coal for 
 a second fire, nor energy to keep the fire going 
 and the room tidy for use, nor will there be any 
 inclination for the family to divide for the little 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 64 
 time they are all at home. But a false convention of 
 respectability demands this sitting-room; and the 
 stern limits of cost preclude the possibility of hav- 
 ing a scullery or washhouse in addition. 
 How an architect must wish he could attack this 
 commission from another standpoint. How he 
 must long to design a house to fit the habits of life 
 of those who are to occupy it. Then he would work 
 on quite different lines. Knowing that the family 
 will practically live in the kitchen, he would think 
 out the space needed to give room for doing work, 
 taking meals, and resting. He would consider what 
 of the work which must be done most tends to 
 make the living-room uncomfortable and dirty; 
 and he would banish that to a scullery or wash- 
 house. In the living-room he would plan so that 
 there might be warm seats round the fire in winter, 
 free from draughts, and seats for summer near the 
 window; a good dresser for work, well lighted and 
 supplied with cupboards, plate-rack, and perhaps 
 a small washing-up sink for the crockery. Then 
 he would allow space for a table for meals, and a 
 few shelves for books ; perhaps he might even find 
 a corner for a piano or desk, in case either should 
 be wanted. Instead of the sitting-room, he would 
 either build a little den for quiet reading or writ- 
 ing, if any member of the family desired to study, 
 or more probably so plan one of the bedrooms 
 that a portion of it could be made cosy for such a 
 purpose, about the only one for which a sitting- 
 room would be at all likely to be wanted. Remem- 
 bering too that cleanliness has been placed only 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 65 
 second among virtues, and that probably most of 
 the labourers would have dirty and arduous work, 
 he would contrive to give a bath; and if nothing 
 better could be done might put it in the scullery. 
 In this way he would have obtained a cottage as 
 nearly as possible fitted to the lives of the people. 
 It would take no more daily labour and expense 
 to keep up than the conventional one, and would 
 not cost such a great deal more to build — in fact, 
 omitting the bath, and keeping within the total 
 size, need cost no more. 
 
 Perhaps the next commission is for a country 
 house. It is stipulated that there shall be dining- 
 room, drawing-room, and library, a good entrance 
 hall and six bedrooms, together with kitchen, scul- 
 lery, two servants' bedrooms, butler's pantry, china 
 pantry, larder, laundry, a lavatory and cloak-room 
 on the ground floor, and a bathroom on each bed- 
 room floor. Such requirements have probably as 
 little real connection with the lives of the people 
 who are to live in the house, as the conventions 
 which dictated the two roomed cottage. The size 
 of the house has more to do with the social position 
 assumed by its owner, than with the number of his 
 household; and the library quite as likely is due 
 to the length of his purse, as to the number of his 
 books or his literary pursuits. 
 Somewhere between these two extremes must lie 
 the sort of house which the lover of art and beauty 
 would desire for himself. Somewhere, in each case, 
 must the two opposing tendencies of comfort 
 and simplicity meet. Up to a certain point it will 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 66 
 
 add to a man's real pleasure in life to enlarge 
 upon the bare shelter of the labourer's cottage; 
 but beyond that point any gain there may be will 
 be too dearly bought. This point is fixed for any 
 individual, but must of course vary widely with 
 the temperament and circumstances of each. It 
 is sufficient for our purpose to realize that there 
 is such a point, and that the development of a 
 man's love of beauty and art will in the long run 
 give more and more force to the tendencies which 
 make for simplicity. Those whose main desire is 
 for beauty in their lives, are coming to see that to 
 the rational cottage as sketched above, with its 
 ample living-room and the other absolute neces- 
 saries of a decently comfortable life, they must add 
 with great caution and reluctance, and only as 
 dictated by really pressing needs. Every extra 
 room is an added care, means further demands on 
 time and energy, and makes it harder to maintain 
 the home without introducing additional inhar- 
 monious elements in the way of service. It is 
 possible, though not easy, to introduce one helper 
 into the home life on equal terms, but very difficult 
 indeed to do this with two. The increase of the 
 house must be zealously resisted, if it is to be kept 
 within the limits of one helper doing a fair share 
 of work. And not only must the size be watched: 
 the furnishing and decorating likewise need to 
 be kept simple. It is a good rule in such a house 
 to add nothing until actually needed, and to think 
 well whether the pleasure and comfort it can give 
 will repay the care and dusting it will require. 
 
ART AND SIMPLICITY. 67 
 Working on these lines there will be a good chance 
 that our homes will grow beautiful, that they will 
 fit our lives and be really filled with life. When we 
 try how few things we can do with, we also begin 
 to try how beautiful those few may be made. When 
 we value our time, and the time of our helpers, by 
 the pleasure which may be had from a wise use of 
 it, we shall take care that any adornment we have, 
 shall at least give pleasure equal to any other use 
 we might have made of the time required to obtain 
 it. Therefore none but good decoration will tempt 
 us. We shall be content with our bare coloured 
 walls, until perhaps some artist friend comes along 
 and adorns them for us with some true ornament, 
 which will be an abiding satisfaction, not only in 
 the direct suggestion which it conveys, but also 
 in the memories it revives of a pleasant visit and 
 a guest happy in a congenial task. 
 RAYMOND UNWIN. 
 
OF FURNITURE. Part i. 69 
 A lecture given before a gathering of art workers. 
 
 UR instructions for to-night 
 are that we show you examples 
 of some of our work. But we 
 have found ourselves unable 
 to comply with the letter of 
 the instructions, to confine 
 the examples that we show 
 you to-night to furniture ; for, 
 of furniture which can be considered apart from 
 the building it furnishes, we have scarcely any to 
 show. Complying as nearly as we can, we will as 
 far as possible keep within what may be consider- 
 ed furnishing. 
 
 Before proceeding to the illustrations of our work, 
 I would like to point out what we claim you shall 
 find to be its leading characteristics: and among 
 these I will name first, absolute simplicity, direct- 
 ness, and straightforwardness. I feel that we are to- 
 day so completely smothered in lifeless and mean- 
 ingless fuss of pattern, moulding, knick-knack, 
 flourish and convention, and the machine-made 
 £s? mechanically produced substitute for ornament, 
 that it is well-nigh impossible for our artistic sen- 
 sibilities to exist at all unless liberated from them. 
 I would mention secondly complete unity and 
 absolute harmony between all the parts, such as 
 can only be obtained when a house, its decorations 
 and furniture, are all designed by one man — or at 
 least under the entire supervision of one man. 
 Now when I claim that if the result is to be 
 artistically satisfactory, nay also if it is to be 
 
OF FURNITURE. 70 
 
 satisfactory from the point of view of comfort and 
 practical utility, the house and everything in the 
 house must from the first be thought of and de- 
 signed as a whole, the objection most commonly 
 made is that a house should reflect somewhat the 
 character, habits, and taste of those who live in it; 
 and that if the architect is to make his influence 
 felt in every detail of its furnishing and decoration, 
 it will show bis feeling, taste, and character, not 
 his client's. 
 
 There seems at first glance to be some truth in this ; 
 but a very little thought will show, that instead of 
 the power of the members of a household to im- 
 press their own individuality upon their home 
 being lessened by this extension of the architect's 
 influence, it would be greatly increased. 
 The architect who is worth anything will always 
 design a house which will fit any particular client 
 much better than would any house he could 
 possibly find not designed for him: and of furni- 
 ture, fittings and decoration, and all else belonging 
 to a house, this is also true. The client wanting a 
 piece of furniture, can otherwise only select, from 
 those offered for sale in the shops, that which will 
 most nearly fill the place of something designed 
 specially to meet his requirements. His own taste 
 and individuality can have no influence upon it 
 whatever; no say in the form it shall take; this has 
 been decided for him by a designer to whom he 
 probably never gives a thought. But if his architect 
 designs something to fit him f^his house, the client 
 can make his own taste felt from the beginning; he 
 
OF FURNITURE. 71 
 
 can make known to his architect his own person- 
 ality, habits, and feeling; and have some chance of 
 getting what will accord with these and moreover 
 be in proper relation with the whole. It is not a 
 question whether he shall have things to his own 
 design or to that of another: this would be a differ- 
 ent matter altogether : the question is : Shall he 
 have things designed to fit in with him and his 
 requirements, or do the best he can with what 
 chance may offer him? 
 
 It has struck me as very wonderful how good a 
 result has in rare instances been attained by one of 
 true artistic feeling through long years of careful 
 watchfulness making the most of such opportun- 
 ities as came in his way of picking up £5? gathering 
 round him — often in a house which has not a 
 redeeming characteristic — furniture and decora- 
 tion which his own taste has told him are good 
 and reasonably congruous. But I have always felt : 
 What would not this man have made of it if he 
 had been able to have some influence upon the 
 design for the house and the things in it ! By 
 choosing an architect capable of sympathy with 
 his own artistic feeling, he could have done more at 
 the very outset towards procuring a fitting setting 
 for himself and his life, than he has been able to do 
 by all his care and thought in selection. 
 That they who lack taste will also stamp their own 
 individuality on the house they live in, no matter 
 how extended has been the architect's province, we 
 know to our cost to be only too true. 
 All here know that the only right way to go to 
 
OF FURNITURE. 72 
 
 work to design anything is to give it that form 
 which will best enable it to fulfil its functions, that 
 form which is best adapted to the methods by which 
 it is to be produced, at the same time giving it the 
 most beautiful form consistent with £5? explaining 
 these conditions of purpose and construction: and 
 I contend further that to gain artistic success the 
 position it is to occupy must also be taken into 
 consideration; it must be designed for its place; 
 and, to get the best result, its place must even be 
 designed for it. 
 
 Socially morally and artistically one of the most 
 necessary reforms to-day is that we should simpli- 
 fy our lives ; we should shake ourselves free from 
 all this hampering web of artificialities in which we 
 have become so degradingly entangled: and in our 
 homes we must make this possible for ourselves 
 by first sweeping away all these fussy substitutes 
 for ornament, all these supposed indications and 
 requirements of refinement. Then, when we have 
 done this, we must set ourselves to make those 
 things which are necessary and helpful to real life 
 and true refinement also beautiful. 
 But have you ever seen the ordinary room with 
 nothing but the bare necessaries of educated and 
 refined life in it ? I can assure you the effect is not 
 comfortable. And it is not to be wondered at that 
 people condemned to live in such rooms should 
 try to supplement their baldness by all sorts of add- 
 ed ornament and bric-a-brac. Some time ago a pic- 
 ture dealer was looking at some of our designs for 
 rooms, and he said : "Yes, but it cannot be expected 
 
OF FURNITURE. 73 
 that I should admire them. You, and those who 
 follow your teaching are the worst enemies I have. 
 I want people to have houses of the ordinary type, 
 that they may always be trying in vain to make 
 something of them, by patiently buying £sf buying 
 in the hope that by adding first this then that some 
 approach to a satisfactory result may be obtained. 
 Each of these rooms is in itself a complete and 
 satisfactory whole: there is no temptation to add 
 anything." 
 
 Lest the foregoing should give any the impression 
 that I do not find places for pictures, I will let this 
 bring me to what sooner or later this evening I 
 shall be called upon to justify myself in, namely, 
 the amount of realism I admit in a picture to which 
 I accord a place as an element of decoration. 1 hold 
 that the degree of conventionalisation justifiably 
 demanded in any decoration is only such as is ne- 
 cessitated by the following: The limitations of the 
 materials and the processes by which it is to be 
 produced; a just appreciation of the special beau- 
 ties of these materials and characteristics of these 
 processes; and a full recognition of its proper rela- 
 tions to all by which it will be surrounded, and 
 with which it is to be combined as a component 
 part of an architectural whole. There is no need for 
 adding any further artificial restrictions. But as a 
 legitimate reason for convention I would add a 
 perfectly frank acknowledgment of considera- 
 tions of economy. If you use one process in pre- 
 ference to another because it is less costly, there 
 is no occasion to disguise this. But, spite of the 
 
OF FURNITURE. 74 
 
 convention justified by this needful economy, 
 seek to retain something of the effect which the 
 motif that gave the inspiration had upon you. 
 The easel picture hung on the walls of our houses 
 is certainly unsatisfactory; that it is only more so 
 when hung on the walls of an exhibition all will 
 admit: but that all the advance we have made in 
 our power to represent nature in realistic portrait- 
 ure is in the wrong direction we cannot admit. 
 We may insist that our easel pictures shall be re- 
 garded as complete in themselves, and thought of 
 as detached £5? dissociated from all that surrounds 
 them; but this is demanding an impossibility: they 
 must form part of a whole. We find the easel pic- 
 ture is less unsatisfactory if we do nothing more 
 for it than consider its frame, the colour scheme 
 of its setting and surroundings with relation to it: 
 give it a definite place made for it, and it is better 
 still. But let us add to all its other dignity this too, 
 that it fulfils all the demands made upon it in its 
 capacity as an element of decoration, and it will be 
 by so much the greater. The imaginative picture, 
 or the picture giving a bit of nature with her mood, 
 and having something of the effect upon one the 
 real scene would have, only gains by being at the 
 same time also decorative. And it is equally true 
 that if decoration, by the suggestion of a beautiful 
 scene, can also have upon us something of the up- 
 lifting effect such a scene would have, as a decora- 
 tion it is finer. 
 
 Do not let us have convention pure and simple. 
 If we are to retain all that art has gained in the 
 
OF FURNITURE. 75 
 
 development of the easel picture, we must face the 
 problem fairly, not shirk it. Let us first have some- 
 thing which we feel to be really beautiful, and then 
 let us suffer it to undergo only such conventional- 
 isation as is dictated naturally by the conditions 
 and processes of its production, the limitations of 
 the materials from which it is to be created, and a 
 true feeling for fitness; never losing sight of the 
 essential elements of the beauty of our motif and 
 the factors in creating that beauty, and sacrificing 
 nothing we can help of its meaning and charm. 
 BARRY PARKER. 
 
OF FURNITURE. Part 2. 77 
 HERE is one point touched 
 upon by Mr. Parker in his 
 paper, about which I should 
 like to say a few words: I re- 
 fer to the question of simpli- 
 city in furnishing. I feel that 
 in showing to an assembly of 
 art workers many of the illus- 
 trations which we wish to show, some further ex- 
 planation on this point is due. 
 There may be rooms required for state purposes 
 in the palaces of kings or the mansions of the great, 
 which call for elaborate £«? very ornate furnishing : 
 such I do not propose now to consider. I would 
 refer rather to the homes of average middle-class 
 people, where this style of furnishing would be out 
 of place. 
 
 Such people have usually thought it necessary for 
 their houses to contain several sitting-rooms, call- 
 ing them dining-room, drawing-room, and break- 
 fast-room, although the means at the disposal of 
 the great majority would not allow three decent 
 rooms; and the desired number could only be 
 obtained by reducing them all to tiny box-like 
 chambers, not one of them large enough to make 
 a comfortable living apartment. From this sup- 
 posed necessity has sprung the typical modern 
 suburban residence, which consists of a series of 
 these small box-like chambers more or less cleverly 
 fitted together; while to meet the demand thus 
 caused, we find the warehouses filled with ready- 
 made furniture, supposed to be suitable to these 
 
OF FURNITURE. 78 
 
 rooms, inscribed "drawing-room suite," "dining- 
 room suite," and so on. These also I will not con- 
 sider; they have no interest, no actual touch on life. 
 Such houses and the furniture which is made for 
 them are no more fitted to the lives of nine out of 
 ten middle-class families than would be the old hall 
 and solar of the middle ages with their rude fittings. 
 My contention is that the great majority of middle- 
 class families live in one sitting-room. It is even 
 pathetic to watch their attempts to do this in houses 
 which seem specially designed to make it as difficult 
 as possible. Many make the dining-room serve 
 them for a living-room, wasting the best room in 
 the house by keeping it vacant, except on more or 
 less state occasions; others live in the drawing- 
 room, taking their meals only in the dining-room. 
 But whatever the arrangement, they all alike seem 
 to be hampered for want of a good comfortable 
 living-room designed and furnished as such. 
 I want specially to speak of rooms of this class, in 
 the designing and furnishing of which we are at 
 once brought into touch with the daily life of the 
 household, and have scope to consider and meet 
 their actual requirements. In such a room, if they 
 possessed it, most families would take some at any 
 rate of their meals; suitable table and seats must 
 therefore be provided, with something of the nature 
 of a sideboard or dresser to hold the many acces- 
 sories which are most conveniently kept in the 
 room. The ladies would do their work here and 
 should have cupboards or other provision for their 
 numerous apparatus. A piano and place to keep 
 
OF FURNITURE. 79 
 music will generally need providing; while book 
 shelves, cupboards or drawers for newspapers and 
 magazines, will be required ; and some kind of 
 writing table or bureau properly fitted to contain 
 the household stationery £s? business papers would 
 mostly be a great boon. The room too should have 
 cosy seats, and something in the way of a sofa or 
 settle as the family will sit and rest here; and these 
 must be comfortably placed in relation to the fire, 
 door, and windows. A place would not uncommon- 
 ly have to be found for children to spend at any 
 rate part of the day, which implies a toy drawer 
 and some space for play. 
 
 It is of course only in the smaller middle-class 
 house — which by the way is numerically far the 
 most important — that the whole of the family life 
 is carried on in one sitting-room: but the need of 
 a good living-room is none the less felt in many a 
 larger house where the means of the occupants 
 will allow of their having more rooms than one in 
 regular use. In such houses some of the functions 
 of the living room will no doubt be provided for 
 separately. There will be a nursery or play-room 
 for the bairns in one house ; a special room for 
 meals in another: in one, afternoon callers will be 
 received in a boudoir; in another, a study or libra- 
 ry will be set apart for more studious pursuits; 
 while the tastes of some families may demand a 
 room set apart for music. But whatever rooms may 
 be added, still, in the great majority of cases, there 
 will be needed one to serve as a general living-room. 
 Just as in the middle ages the great hall was the 
 
OF FURNITURE. 80 
 centre of the house, all the other chambers clus- 
 tering round and being subordinate to it; so in the 
 modern middle class house a good living room is 
 the first essential, and all the other rooms should 
 be considered in relation to it. 
 This living room requires furniture and fittings 
 specially suited to its various functions, and its 
 requirements can no more be met by a suite of 
 dining-room or drawing-room furniture than they 
 could by a set of kitchen things. If we remember 
 that large numbers of such houses as we are speak- 
 ing of are worked with one servant, and the ma- 
 jority with not more than two; it will be obvious 
 that this room, which in so many cases will be used 
 for an early breakfast, must be so arranged that it 
 can be easily and quickly cleaned. If we consider 
 further the great number of articles that must be 
 kept handy in such a room, to say nothing of the 
 people themselves who are to occupy it — for whom 
 after all the room exists, and as a back-ground for 
 whose life it alone has any reason for being — it 
 will be evident that the furniture cannot well be 
 too simple. 
 
 If the result is not to become a crowded jumble, 
 ample allowance must be made, in considering the 
 decorations and furnishing, for the life that is to 
 come into the room, and for the hundred and one 
 articles which we may call the implements of such 
 life. These of themselves must form a large ele- 
 ment, good or bad, in the decoration of a room ; 
 and could they all be obtained graceful and beau- 
 tiful, there would be a liberal supply of ornament. 
 
OF FURNITURE. 81 
 
 But this is one of the greatest difficulties ; for, while 
 it is possible to find beautiful plaster- work, carving, 
 gesso panels, and so forth, it is almost impossible 
 to obtain the necessary implements of life even 
 tolerably elegant. 
 
 In vain do we seek to make a room look beautiful 
 by the elaboration of its decoration and furniture, 
 irrespective of all that goes to make up the life that 
 will be lived in it. The successful room is the one 
 which looks well with all the life in it, not the one 
 which looks its best before it is occupied. It is only 
 by making proper allowance for this life that a 
 living room can be made to look well. Great sim- 
 plicity is needed in the treatment of a room which 
 may so soon become crowded and restless; but 
 which may also, if properly treated, be more charm- 
 ing and homelike than any other, just because it is 
 so full of life and the evidences of life — a decora- 
 tion after all by no means to be despised. 
 RAYMOND UNWIN. 
 
BUILDING G? NATURAL BEAUTY. 83 
 ROUND the cottage I live 
 in there is a large rookery, 
 spreading over many trees 
 which form a small wood on 
 the hillside. Last year a pair 
 of rooks began to build a nest 
 in a beech-tree that stands by 
 the cottage: they chose a large 
 bough over-hanging the road, quite away from the 
 general colony, and in a very prominent position. 
 This was evidently the cause of great annoyance 
 to the black-coated community, who again and 
 again destroyed the half-built nest. The enterpris- 
 ing pair maintained their position however; and 
 after some weeks of contention got the nest com- 
 pleted, by working in turns, one mounting guard 
 while the other fetched the twigs. They reared 
 their family without further molestation, so far as 
 I could observe; but this spring the first thing the 
 rooks did was to destroy the last remnants of the 
 nest left by the winter storms. 
 This interesting little episode of rook life set me 
 musing as to why the community should object 
 to this nest. I could only suppose that its isolated 
 and prominent position offended their sense of the 
 general fitness of things, and that they wished to 
 guard against the first beginnings of " Suburban 
 Villadom." If so, we must I think commend alike 
 their good sense and their good taste. For there 
 is nothing which it seems more hopeless to har- 
 monize with natural scenery than the modern 
 town suburb. We find plenty of cities, towns, and 
 
BUILDING fc? NATURAL BEAUTY. 84 
 villages, castles, mansions, and cottages, which are 
 a joy in the landscape; but when a modern town 
 begins to sprawl its squalor or its suburban gen- 
 tility out into the fields, what desecration of scen- 
 ery follows ! Most people feel this without real- 
 ising the cause very fully. But if we look for it, 
 we shall find that modern suburbs specially offend 
 in coming between the town and the country; so 
 that, however the city may be fitted to beautify 
 the landscape, we cannot see it from the fields; 
 nor can we catch a refreshing glimpse of the cool 
 green hillside from amidst our busy streets. For 
 between lie miles of jerry cottages built in rows, 
 or acres of ill-assorted villas, each set in a scrap of 
 so-called landscape garden. 
 
 In the old towns which we admire when we chance 
 to come on them, we notice that the country comes 
 up clean and fresh right to the point where the 
 town proper begins : and it does begin indeed : 
 honest town, confessed, which does not seek to 
 look half-countrified. In the oldest cities we some- 
 times find a wall with the country coming right 
 up to the gates, which adds to this effect. In old 
 times all the townspeople lived in the town, and 
 tried to make it comely as a town; and when this 
 was done it generally looked pleasing in the land- 
 scape. It was possible to get most charming peeps 
 of country from its streets — framed in perhaps 
 with an old gateway, or with some decent town 
 buildings. Of our modern citizens, all who can 
 afford it live outside the town, removed from those 
 who work to make them wealthy. Hence they lose 
 
BUILDING fc? NATURAL BEAUTY. 85 
 interest in the town as a dwelling-place, and we 
 get a great central business quarter, surrounded by 
 the residential suburbs containing only poor town 
 buildings or nondescript half-country dwellings. 
 It is not however with suburbs only that we spoil 
 scenery; in isolated buildings, or groups of build- 
 ings, we very often put up what is offensive to the 
 lover of country; and it will I think be both in- 
 teresting and useful to enquire a little further why 
 the buildings which our forefathers put up mostly 
 adorn a landscape, while our own erections so fre- 
 quently spoil it. 
 
 Much of the charm of old buildings is no doubt 
 due to the kindly hand of Time, which not only 
 heals the scars that man makes on the earth, but 
 tones down the raw surfaces, and softens the hard 
 lines and colours of anything he may build. But 
 not to Father Time can we give all the credit. It 
 will be more than he can do, I think, to make our 
 modern suburbs look as beautiful, as fitting in the 
 scenery, as many an old city or country town does. 
 Apart from the question of beauty in the style of 
 building, which of course is an obvious factor of 
 great influence, there are a few more easily under- 
 stood reasons for the difference between old and 
 new. If we take for example their position : do not 
 old houses and villages generally seem to nestle 
 in a valley, under a hill, or by the edge of a wood 
 or copse, and both by their placing and style con- 
 vey the idea of shelter and retreat ? Sometimes this 
 characteristic was carried so far, that we find houses 
 placed so as to get little or no view. But they were 
 
BUILDING & NATURAL BEAUTY. 86 
 built for busy people who lived mainly out of doors, 
 and returned to their shelter at night as the rooks 
 come home to roost. Too often now we place a 
 building so as to strike a note of defiance with 
 surrounding nature. The thing stands out hard 
 and prominent in the landscape ; shouts at you 
 across the valley; and through not co-operating 
 with the scene, fails to convey anything of that 
 sense of nestling in a fitting nook, or on an appro- 
 priate ledge — that sheltering under Nature's wing 
 as it were — which makes a building look really at 
 home. 
 
 Then, too, does not the old building seem almost to 
 grow out of the ground on which it stands ? Built 
 of the local stone; roofed with material common 
 to the district — thatch, stone shingles, or grey 
 slates, perhaps ; harmonizing in colour with the 
 rocks and soil; it is as appropriate to the earth on 
 which it rests, as the twig built nest of the rook 
 is to the tree top on which it sways so lightly and 
 yet so securely. 
 
 As we pass from county to county, rejoicing in the 
 unspoilt bits of old villages and towns, we can- 
 not but notice how much of the restful quiet 
 beauty is due to the general harmony. We see the 
 grey stone-roofed village of Yorkshire and Derby- 
 shire, so quietly fitting to the country of rocks and 
 stone walls; the green slate of Cumberland and 
 Westmoreland, that country of bright colouring ; 
 the thatch of Shropshire or Somerset, always cosy 
 and homely looking, whether on the timber-framed 
 building or on the whitewashed cottage; or again, 
 
BUILDING 6? NATURAL BEAUTY. 87 
 the purple slates of North Wales, unobtrusive 
 among the dark blue shadows of her towering 
 peaks, and fitly covering in the cottage whose walls 
 are of rough slabs of the same slate. The red tile, 
 too, coloured with the iron which tints the soil, 
 more widely distributed and in greater variety than 
 any of the roof coverings, though not exactly a 
 natural product only needs to be clothed with the 
 golden green of the lichen to look as much at home 
 as any of the rest: we know it well in Staffordshire, 
 and to think of Whitby without its red roofs is to 
 realise at once what beauty it can give to a scene. 
 Each of these roof coverings has a special beauty of 
 its own; some look well almost anywhere; but we 
 do not always realise how much of roofs we see in 
 a landscape, or to what extent the restful charm of 
 old places springs from their harmony with sur- 
 roundings and the general prevalence of one ma- 
 terial in the district. 
 
 Our fathers were not tempted as we are in this. 
 They had to use the local material and to stick to 
 it. There were no railways in their time carrying 
 blue slates to Whitby, or red tiles to North Wales. 
 Now all these materials are brought to our doors, 
 and the builder chooses each according to his own 
 fad; and so we get all sorts of materials and colours 
 hopelessly jumbled up together, with no thought 
 of general harmony. 
 
 Our manufactured materials too are less beautiful. 
 Our tiles by perfect machinery are made so true 
 and flat that a modern tile roof looks as though 
 it had been ironed with a polishing iron, like a shirt 
 
BUILDING y NATURAL BEAUTY. 88 
 front. And both our tiles and bricks tend to become 
 so hard and forbidding that no kindly lichen will 
 clothe them, no wind and rain soften and tone them. 
 It gives one something of a shock to see the deli- 
 cate clematis and the clinging ivy struggling with 
 a wall which, after twenty or thirty years, still looks 
 as hard and new as the day it was built. The old 
 tiles were a little curled in burning, and had a sur- 
 face rough enough to afford lodgment for moss 
 and lichen ; and so the lines were less hard, and 
 the newness of surface and colour soon mellowed 
 into all sorts of lovely shades. 
 Many an old building that has little pretension to 
 fine architecture, yet adorns a scene of natural 
 beauty by its simple fitness of design, where a 
 modern one would probably spoil it. Such design 
 was the outcome of a natural effort to get the most 
 use and convenience out of materials thoroughly 
 known. Hence a general suitability is found be- 
 tween design and material, and an obvious con- 
 nection between quaint features and the want that 
 has called them into being. Look at the plainest 
 old four-square thatched cottage, and there will 
 nearly always be some interest in the way the thatch 
 has been coaxed up over a window, or a ridge 
 worked to avoid a chimney gutter, which redeems 
 it from baldness. The same skilful handling of tiles 
 is found in all real tile districts ; and so we find 
 many picturesque gables, which we should miss 
 in a country of slates or stone shingles. 
 There is on all hands evidence of a willingness to 
 give labour without stint; to do a job well and a 
 
BUILDING fcf NATURAL BEAUTY. 89 
 bit more ; to linger over it, and see if a little more 
 work here and there would not improve the look. 
 In fact, we read in these old buildings, as in an 
 open book, of a simple workman who was some- 
 thing of an artist, one who could take pleasure in 
 his work, finding joy in the perfection of what he 
 created, and delight in its comeliness. 
 Whenever we again raise up such an army of build- 
 ers, working at their trades with the pleasure of 
 artists, then will all buildings become as beautiful 
 as of old ; then will it be possible for such workmen, 
 co-operating with a true architect or master builder, 
 to raise fine architecture, like our old cathedrals 
 and abbeys. No effort of office-trained architects, 
 with workmen whose chief interest on the job is 
 to find 'knocking-off time/ can ever take the place 
 of the co-operation between real craftsmen under 
 the leadership of the most able among them: for it 
 is to this that we owe most of the building that 
 we can truly say adorns our country. 
 RAYMOND UNWIN. 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 91 
 
 S beautiful as an old English 
 village. " The phrase arrests 
 our attention and calls up 
 many a pleasant picture stored 
 in our minds ; but with the 
 remembered beauty there 
 comes too the associated sad- 
 ness of something loved that 
 is fast passing away. The picture we recall may be 
 the view down some long wide village street 
 bordered with clusters of cottages, some opening 
 direct on to the roadside, some with their bright 
 bits of flower border in front; here and there a 
 break in the buildings is marked with the dark fol- 
 iage of trees in a larger garden; a dignified fore- 
 court with its iron railings reveals an old manor 
 house, or a gate-way in a high wall overhung by 
 elms leads to the vicarage; while at the street end 
 where the road turns away is the lich-gate, leading 
 to the church whose parapetted roof and slender 
 spire rising far above all the surrounding buildings 
 complete the whole group. Or maybe we picture 
 to ourselves rather some village green, with the 
 rows of sunny whitewashed houses, the barns and 
 haystacks of an occasional farmyard, the end of an 
 orchard, and the village school, that are gathered 
 round it. 
 
 In such views as these there are houses and build- 
 ings of all sizes : the hut in which the old road- 
 mender lives by himself, the inn with its ancient 
 sign, the prosperous yeoman's homestead, the 
 blacksmith's house and forge, the squire's hall, the 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 92 
 
 vicarage, and the doctor's house, are all seemingly 
 jumbled together; and mingled with them are 
 barns and village shops, wood-yards and wheel- 
 wrights' sheds. Yet there is no sense of confusion ; 
 on the contrary the scene gives us that peaceful 
 feeling which comes from the perception of orderly 
 arrangement. This is the more surprising because 
 the order is rather intuitively felt than seen or 
 consciously realised by the beholder. It is due very 
 largely to the beautiful grouping of buildings and 
 roofs, a grouping which has come so inevitably 
 that it seems as if it would be somewhat difficult 
 to avoid it, or to utterly spoil it. Certainly where 
 many buildings of various characters and sizes are 
 gathered together, as in a village, a picturesque- 
 ness of grouping is rarely absent even when the 
 individual buildings have in themselves no special 
 beauty; and very often the introduction of one or 
 two really ugly modern buildings detracts little 
 from this particular charm. 
 
 The village was the expression of a small corporate 
 life in which all the different units were personally 
 in touch with each other, conscious of and frankly 
 accepting their relations, and on the whole con- 
 tent with them. This relationship reveals itself in 
 the feeling of order which the view induces. Every 
 building honestly confesses just what it is, and so 
 falls into its place. The smallest cottage has its 
 share of the village street on to which the manor 
 house also fronts. It is content with that share and 
 with its condition, and does not try to look like a 
 villa. It is this crystallisation of the elements of 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 93 
 the village in accordance with a definitely organ- 
 ized life of mutual relations, respect or service, 
 which gives the appearance of being an organic 
 whole, the home of a community, to what would 
 otherwise be a mere conglomeration of buildings. 
 This effect is greatly enhanced where the central 
 feature around which the village has clustered, the 
 church, castle, or manor house, is of sufficient size 
 and architectural interest to challenge comparison 
 with the whole village rather than with the indi- 
 vidual houses. The impressive pile of the old 
 Priory as seen across the valley towering above all 
 the other grey roofed buildings of the little town 
 of Cartmel, is a fine example of this. The sense of 
 unity is further increased in most old villages by 
 a general harmony in colour and style of the build- 
 ings themselves, due to the prevalent use of cer- 
 tain materials, which are usually those found in 
 the district. 
 
 In the modern building-estate all these elements 
 of beauty are entirely wanting. The land is cut up 
 into little plots all about the same size; these are 
 sold to a chance collection of people who erect on 
 them houses of any conceivable style, or lack of 
 style; each deals with his own plot quite regardless 
 of the others; and every house seems to be wishing 
 to dissociate itself as much as possible from its 
 neighbours, to look as distinct and imposing as it 
 can. Ground enough not being allowed for each 
 house to stand comfortably within its plot, such 
 separation as exists only makes it possible for every 
 house to block the view from some other, and easy 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 94 
 
 for the occupants to over-look their neighbours 
 and realise their near presence all round to a max- 
 imum extent. No grouping of buildings is thought 
 of nor any organized arrangement, beyond occa- 
 sionally some feeble attempt at laying out streets; 
 and it is rarely indeed that we seem able to erect a 
 public building of any sort at all in scale with the 
 extent of the surrounding houses. 
 To compensate for the loss of the interest spring- 
 ing from variety of grouping, a loss specially evid- 
 ent in the old-fashioned four-square suburban villa, 
 an attempt is now mostly made to introduce some 
 special features into each individual house, and so 
 to create an artificial picturesqueness. This is not 
 uncommonly done by needlessly cutting up the 
 roof with turrets from which there is no outlook, 
 or gables which serve no purpose except to pro- 
 vide an excuse for a little black and white half- 
 timber work. A street of such houses is however 
 even less satisfactory than one of the old square 
 box houses, in that it is more artificial, and lacks 
 a certain element of dignity which its predecessor 
 often acquired from its very simplicity. In short, 
 around all our towns are spread patches of villa- 
 dom of the beauty of which no one can cherish 
 any memories, but the ugliness of which causes 
 them to be regarded by many with a cordial hatred ; 
 so much so that to the lover of natural scenery the 
 commencement of a new house is regarded as a. 
 sure sign of the coming destruction of the old 
 beauty. 
 
 Modern conditions of life and work are not con- 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 95 
 
 ducive to the production of great architecture, and 
 it seems probable that we shall have to await some 
 change in these conditions before much that is 
 really fine in building will be accomplished. But in 
 the simpler buildings required for domestic pur- 
 poses there are marked signs of improvement. 
 Already a few architects are meeting our wants 
 without affectation or pedantry, but with simple 
 directness and honesty of construction, and are 
 producing individual buildings of great beauty; 
 but so long as these remain isolated examples, mere 
 units in a chance collection, they can do little to 
 help the whole effect. The various buildings must 
 be brought into harmonious relations one with 
 another ; the suburb or settlement must be con- 
 ceived in some broader spirit and developed in 
 relation to a definite idea of the whole, if any im- 
 provement is to be effected. 
 We cannot of course put back the hands of time, 
 nor can we re-create the spirit which built the old 
 churches that crown so many villages. The rela- 
 tionships of feudalism have gone, and democracy 
 has yet to evolve some definite relationships of its 
 own, which when they come will doubtless be as 
 picturesque as the old forms. But allowing full 
 force to these disadvantages, we could, if we really 
 desired it, even now so arrange a new building site 
 that it should not be an actual eye-sore, and might 
 manage that it should have some little of the charm 
 of the old village. 
 
 Thanks to the growth of taste among all classes 
 of people there is springing up a demand for 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 96 
 something of the kind. In all the large towns are 
 numbers of people who hate the ugly & dreary life 
 that they are condemned to live in them, who love 
 the country and country life, and who will travel 
 long distances to and from their work that they 
 may be able to enjoy them. These people do not 
 want to live in isolated houses, out of sight of their 
 neighbours; they are townspeople of sociable in- 
 stincts: but neither do they desire to live in a mere 
 extension of the fringe of the town. What they 
 really want are country villages, little centres of life 
 large enough and varied enough to give them 
 interesting human society and a few of the more 
 necessary comforts of modern life, such as a post 
 office, a railway station, efficient drainage and water 
 supply. These people have many common inter- 
 ests, much that all would wish to preserve in a new 
 home, as, for example, fresh air, and an open view 
 of country that cannot readily be spoilt. Just such 
 an amount of associated action as would ensure 
 these advantages for them all, would suffice to give 
 the sense of cohesion to the whole settlement 
 which is so lamentably wanting when each strug- 
 gles ineffectually to secure as much as he can of 
 them for himself alone. With some co-operation 
 the maximum of these advantages could be obtain- 
 ed for every individual house, be it large or small; 
 without it none but those rich enough to purchase 
 a large tract of country for themselves can be secure 
 of even a limited share of them. 
 Within easy reach of large towns, estates & farms 
 are constantly changing hands at prices little above 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 97 
 their value as agricultural land. Frequently we find 
 the enterprising purchaser takes advantage of the 
 demand for country homes: he spends a few hun- 
 dred pounds in developing his purchase as a build- 
 ing estate, by making roads and laying drains; 
 then he cuts it up into small plots and sells it at 
 three, five, or even ten times the rate at which he 
 bought it. If a few of those who wish to secure a 
 country home were to purchase such an estate or 
 farm among them, they could get all the advantage 
 of cheap land themselves. If they were then to 
 develop the site on co-operative lines, they could 
 obtain many other equally solid advantages. The 
 houses could be grouped together and so arranged 
 that each would obtain a sunny aspect and an open 
 outlook; and portions of the land could be reserv- 
 ed for ever from being built upon to secure these 
 views. 
 
 The arrangement that should be adopted to obtain 
 the best result, would depend entirely on the na- 
 ture of the site. If it were on the ridge of some 
 rising ground, probably the best plan would be 
 to group the houses at each side of a good broad 
 roadway, taking the wide village street as the sug- 
 gestion ; while on a good southern slope, the most 
 successful plan might be to gather the houses and 
 other buildings on three sides of an open space, 
 adopting the village green as the model. Where See pi 
 the site was large enough, and the slope sufficient, 11,3 
 a second green with its houses could be arranged, and ^ 
 low enough not to obstruct the view from the 
 upper one; or where two sides of a valley were 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 98 
 
 included, villages might be placed on each of the 
 slopes, leaving the valley below for ever free to 
 afford a pleasant prospect for each village. The 
 particular arrangement to be adopted would be a 
 matter for most careful thought, and no building 
 should be commenced until some definite concep- 
 tion of what the completed village was to be like 
 had been worked out. The sites for prospective 
 schools, church, or other public buildings, should 
 be reserved from the first, in accordance with the 
 size to which the available land would allow the 
 community to grow. The houses should be clus- 
 tered together as much as possible, not set villa- 
 wise each in the centre of a little plot. Some few 
 houses of wealthier members could stand back in 
 larger grounds, taking advantage of outlying 
 positions or sharing in the common outlook as 
 seemed best: their gardens and entrances would 
 make pleasant openings in the buildings. But the 
 majority of the houses should be gathered into 
 groups, which would inevitably acquire pictur- 
 esqueness from the variety both in size and form 
 of the buildings. 
 
 A good number of the houses too might be open 
 to the road or green. The unfenced common com- 
 ing right up to one's doorstep, always gives a 
 charming sense of openness whether viewed from 
 within or from without ; a sense in no way dimin- 
 ished by the contrast that occasional fenced gardens 
 or forecourts offer where the houses are set back 
 somewhat. All sorts of individual tastes and needs 
 would afford opportunity for obtaining variety: 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 99 
 
 the one thing to be avoided at all costs would be 
 the producing of anything like a street of detached 
 villas. 
 
 The common insatiable desire for detachment is 
 very remarkable; it appears to arise mainly from 
 a resigned acceptance of the jerry builder's party 
 wall as the inevitable one. Everyone suspects a 
 party wall, looks to hear through it his neighbour's 
 child in the dead of night, or his piano on a Sun- 
 day afternoon. Guarantee a sound-proof party wall, 
 and few will be able to give any valid reason why 
 there should be from ten to fifty feet of useless 
 ground between every two houses. In a properly 
 built house, one is really much less conscious of 
 one's neighbour, and much less over-looked by 
 him, if his house is attached, than if it is a few yards 
 away. Where it is desired, however, many minor 
 devices, such as a highly walled garden or a cov- 
 ered-in yard, may be used with effect to increase 
 the number of separate houses without destroying 
 the grouping. 
 
 Artistically, the success of the plan would depend 
 largely on the clustering of the buildings, the 
 avoidance of mere rows on the one hand and of 
 detached villas on the other. But, in addition, some 
 controlling influence must maintain a certain de- 
 gree of harmony. The use of local materials as far 
 as possible should be encouraged, and the intro- 
 duction of discordant colours or styles of building 
 be prevented. The extremest degree of simplicity 
 should be allowed, but anything pretentious, 
 showy, or false, be rigidly excluded. Probably this 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 100 
 
 general control could be best secured by giving to 
 some architect in full sympathy with the scheme 
 powers similar to those usually possessed by the 
 agent of a large ground landlord, though exercised 
 in the latter case more often to maintain the value 
 of the property than its beauty. 
 The question of design in the individual building 
 is one that cannot be touched on here, though ob- 
 viously a matter of vital importance to the degree 
 of beauty attainable ; rather I seek to emphasize the 
 great advance which is possible to us by a right 
 use of such taste and designing ability as may be 
 readily commanded to-day. So soon as the desire 
 for some collective beauty in our buildings has been 
 stimulated, the chief difficulty will have been over- 
 come. If by some little co-operation we can arouse 
 interest and pride in the matter, time will develop 
 that collective appreciation of what is fitting, to 
 which we must look for final success. 
 Association for mutual help in various ways is un- 
 doubtedly the growing influence which is destined 
 to bring to communities that crystalline structure 
 which was so marked a feature of feudal society, 
 and the lack of which is so characteristic of our 
 own. When our new settlements begin to feel this 
 influence they will again take on some of the unity 
 which comes from organic growth. And as this in- 
 fluence increases in force, and interest and thought 
 become more and more centred in the communal 
 institutions and buildings, so will these begin to 
 grow in beauty; for the people will wish to adorn 
 them. The beauty of the village and its public 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 101 
 buildings will then become a first consideration, 
 and the pride of the inhabitants will be displayed 
 in these, not in the aggressive elaboration of their 
 own houses. 
 
 There is the more hope of this because the prac- 
 tical advantages to be derived from such co-opera- 
 tion as suggested, are so great and obvious as to 
 form just such a reliable basis of utility as is re- 
 quired for the healthy growth of art. Without going 
 fully into this side of the question, a few of the 
 more obvious directions in which co-operation 
 could help people of limited means, after they had 
 associated for the purpose of purchasing and de- 
 veloping their settlement, may be referred to. 
 The improvement and use of the land not required 
 for building purposes, by draining, planting of fruit 
 trees, or the erection of a suitable dairy, would be 
 one of the first and most important of these; this 
 would secure a good supply of pure milk and fresh 
 farm produce, and at the same time allow the open 
 ground to be enjoyed to the full for recreative pur- 
 poses. A laundry would be another enterprise 
 specially easy to organize on co-operative lines, and 
 even in a village too small to support a fully staffed 
 laundry, it would make all the difference if every- 
 one could have the advantage of a well appointed 
 wash-house instead of having to use the ordinary 
 inconvenient cramped scullery with no proper ap- 
 pliances. In a community where several business 
 men daily journeyed to the town, a co-operative 
 conveyance to and from the station could be ar- 
 ranged in connection with the farm, as could also 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 102 
 
 the general carriage and cartage requirements. In 
 See plates providing education for the young and recreation 
 36 and 38. for all, association would be invaluable; while it 
 could easily be used as a means of buying, on 
 advantageous terms, in large quantities, commodi- 
 ties which cannot economically be obtained in the 
 country in small quantities, and of securing many 
 valuable services for all which would be out of the 
 reach of individuals. 
 
 It is of course not necessary that the first steps 
 towards the development of such a building scheme 
 should be taken by the prospective tenants. Aland- 
 owner might well work on this line; he would find 
 in it a means of adding greatly to the value of es- 
 tates which might not be available for an ordinary 
 building scheme. If he would lay out a plot of land 
 and offer to all comers a site of such size as they 
 wanted with sufficient open land between them 
 and any future buildings that might block their 
 view secured by perpetual guarantee, he would get 
 plenty of applications even in positions that are 
 not the most favourable. He could also, by build- 
 ing some houses of various sizes and carefully 
 grouping them, give an example of the sort of 
 building he would encourage, which would soon 
 be followed. By retaining some control of plans for 
 buildings to be carried out by others on his land, 
 he would be able to secure a general harmony and 
 a consistent development. He could too enlist the 
 interest of his tenants or purchasers in the growth 
 of the colony, and foster among them co-operative 
 effort in that direction. 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 103 
 
 On the same lines, also, the state or municipal land- 
 lord might relieve the over-crowding in towns by- 
 developing hamlets and villages in the out-lying 
 districts wherever they had, or could get, suitable 
 land. And even in the towns and immediately sur- 
 rounding suburbs, much might be done to remove 
 the dreary ugliness of the streets by the use of co- 
 operation in building, and by the fostering of it in 
 the occupants of the houses. The arrangement 
 would need to be different for a town or suburb, 
 where land would be costly, from that suggested 
 for a village. For just as the price of land in the 
 centre of cities regulates to a large extent the height 
 to which it is profitable to carry up the buildings, 
 so on the outskirts it must determine the area of 
 land that can be allowed to each house. By co- 
 operation it may be secured, however, that all the 
 land which can be afforded shall be available to give 
 air and outlook to all alike, while its actual occu- 
 pation can be reserved for those who really want 
 a garden. 
 
 In the country we have seen how co-operation 
 could give back to us some of the picturesqueness 
 of old villages. In the same way it would add char- 
 acter and dignity to our towns, even to rows of 
 cottages. What more satisfactory town buildings 
 could one desire than some of the old colleges ? 
 Yet these consist primarily of rows of small tene- 
 ments grouped round quadrangles or gardens with 
 certain common rooms attached. The hall, the cha- 
 pel, and the gatehouse, are prominent features; 
 while the cloisters, where such exist, affording 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 104 
 
 covered ways from the tenements to the common 
 rooms, help to give a sense of unity to the whole. 
 Why should not cottages be grouped into quad- 
 rangles, having all the available land in a square 
 in the centre ? Some of the space so often wasted in 
 a useless front parlour in each cottage, could be 
 used to form instead a Common Room, in which a 
 fire might always be burning in an evening, where 
 comfort for social intercourse, for reading, or writ- 
 ing, could always be found. Such a room could be 
 used also for music £s? general recreation,and might 
 add much colour to the lives of all those who fre- 
 See plates quented it. To this Common Room could be ad- 
 6 to 10, also ded a laundry and drying-room fitted with a few 
 ^and 35. modern appliances which would not only reduce 
 by half the labour and time occupied in the weekly 
 wash, but would take the bulky copper and mangle 
 out of each cottage, and relieve them all of the un- 
 pleasantness of the steam and the encumbrance of 
 the drying clothes. In connection with this a bath- 
 room could be arranged for groups of the smallest 
 cottages, while the growth of co-operation would 
 soon bring the common bakehouse and kitchen. 
 From this to the preparation of meals and the serv- 
 ing of them in the Common Room would be only a 
 matter of time ; for the advantage of it is obvious. 
 Instead of thirty or forty housewives preparing 
 thirty or forty little scrap dinners, heating a like 
 number of ovens, boiling thrice the number of pans 
 &? cleaning them all up again, two or three of them 
 retained as cooks by the little settlement would 
 do the whole, and could give better and cheaper 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 105 
 meals into the bargain. 
 
 It is not only to those who live in cottages that co- 
 operation offers advantages. From another class we 
 hear much of the great servant difficulty. Hotels, 
 boarding houses, and hydropathics, are springing 
 up in every direction to accommodate those who 
 are seeking to escape from the worry of servants, the 
 trouble and expense of jerry-built houses, and the 
 endless small anxieties that go to the running of 
 a separate establishment. But hotels and boarding 
 houses do not really meet the wants of this class. 
 What they need is some arrangement by which 
 they could retain the privacy and individuality of 
 a separate house, while gaining the advantage, 
 which they have in a boarding house, of properly 
 organized service and skilled cooking. These needs 
 would be admirably met by groups of houses ar- 
 ranged to give ready access to a communal estab- 
 lishment, where meals would be supplied, laid 
 either in the common dining room or in the pri- 
 vate house as desired ; where the occasional use 
 of commodious rooms could be obtained for en- 
 tertaining purposes ; and from whence properly 
 trained effective helps could be sent out daily, for 
 as long or as short a time as might be required, 
 to do all the domestic work of the separate houses, 
 or such part of it as the occupants might prefer 
 not to do themselves. Such an establishment could 
 readily be built and worked on co-operative lines, 
 giving many of the advantages of hotel life with- 
 out entailing its disadvantages or its costliness. 
 The planning of the Common Rooms would 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 106 
 
 require much thought and care. On this would de- 
 pend greatly the success of the co-operative effort. 
 The usual small meeting-room, high, four-square, 
 having a great deal of tawdry decoration, but lack- 
 ing anything whatever to give a sense of comfort or 
 to add a bit of interest, would be fatal. High the 
 rooms should be,in parts, sufficient to give air space 
 and promote easy ventilation. But there should be 
 deep recesses or ingles with low ceilings, places 
 which by the contrast of their special cosiness 
 should attract people to sit there. If there could be 
 a little gallery for the musicians, a deep balcony 
 overlooking the street or the gardens for the smok- 
 ers, these would prove great attractions for which 
 everyone would gladly dispense with the adorn- 
 ments usually thought necessary for public rooms: 
 though adornments of a more interesting charac- 
 ter there well might be, and undoubtedly would be, 
 when people came to appreciate their Common 
 Rooms. As such co-operative quadrangles multi- 
 plied, the necessary variety to suit different habits 
 of life would arise; for even those composed of 
 houses of similar size would become differentiated, 
 somewhat as different colleges in a university ac- 
 quire a character for hard reading, for athletics, or 
 for sport, and each could choose according to his 
 tastes. The essential thing from the aesthetic point 
 -of view is that there shall be enough co-operation 
 to secure some grouping of buildings, some cen- 
 tralising influence on them. 
 
 How different our streets would look if instead 
 of the rows upon rows of dreary uninteresting 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 107 
 
 cottages and hardly less dreary terraces of larger 
 houses, we could have blocks such as suggested. 
 Some might be adorned with a colonnade facing 
 the street, and leading to the common rooms at the 
 corner ; some might have a comely arched gateway 
 into the court as a special feature, through which, 
 as one passed, a peep at the quadrangle, tennis 
 ground, or garden, would be obtained. There need 
 be nothing elaborate about such buildings. Quite 
 simple cottages or houses, with some variety of 
 size to suit large and small families, a little taste 
 in proportioning doors, windows, and other details, 
 a little imagination in welding them into a com- 
 plete whole — these would suffice to change our 
 dreary streets into something, the beauty and in- 
 terest of which would be a constant source of 
 pleasure. 
 
 Architecture has always reflected the condition of 
 the society in which it flourished, being great in 
 times of organisation, and deteriorating in times 
 of disintegration. Recently it has very clearly re- 
 presented the inordinate desire for individual in- 
 dependence. One sees terraces of houses, each 
 painted a different colour to try and emphasize 
 their independence. Or one may find the gable end 
 of a porch which is common to two villas, painted 
 half a bright green to match one house, half a 
 chocolate red to accord with the other. These may 
 be extreme instances, but they are very typical of 
 the length to which independence has been carried. 
 Society is, however, now realising very fast that 
 this independence is no end in itself, and is only 
 
CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING. 108 
 good in that it sets free the individuals to form 
 new relationships based on mutual association. 
 This is already having its effect on architecture, 
 in that it is now not uncommon for the individual 
 to make some effort to have his buildings made 
 beautiful for the public to look at, as well as con- 
 venient for himself : the interest of the commu- 
 nity in the matter is so far acknowledged. Very 
 soon it will seem equally obvious that the rela- 
 tions of the separate buildings to each other should 
 be considered, and concerted effort be directed to 
 the creation of streets with at least some unity and 
 dignity of effect, and settlements that, if they may 
 not have all the charm of the old English village, 
 shall at any rate look at home in their country 
 surroundings. 
 RAYMOND UNWIN. 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 109 
 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES. 
 
 By Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. 
 
 A paper read by Mr. Unwin before an audience of 
 
 Architects in January, 1901. 
 
 N the domestic branch of 
 architecture,each commission 
 presents to us a fresh problem, 
 full of human interest, the 
 right solution of which de- 
 mands that we shall consider 
 it from many points of view. 
 We must look upon the task 
 primarily as the providing of a suitable setting for 
 the life of our client and his family. In this con- 
 nection, not only his actual wants but his ideals of 
 life have to be taken thought of ; nor must we 
 overlook our possible influence upon him through 
 his house. 
 
 Again, each house appeals to us as a new creation 
 of our art. We are in much the same position as 
 the portrait painter : the likeness, truly, is that of 
 the sitter, but the interpretation of it, the setting, 
 and the colour — in short, the art of the picture — 
 belong to the painter. So, too, the house as a habi- 
 tation belongs to and must satisfy the client, while 
 as a work of art it belongs to and must satisfy its 
 designer. In this matter we stand as guardians, alike 
 of our reputation and of the general interest of the 
 public as beholders of the building. The right of 
 the public to be considered is much clearer than 
 many seem to realize. No one who might add to 
 the joy of life by building something comely 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 10 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 should add to its gloom by building what is ill- 
 looking. 
 
 I do not anticipate that these considerations, or 
 those to which we shall presently come, are new to 
 you. But it is probable that they would appeal to 
 each one in a different order of relative importance, 
 so that in no two of us would our attitude towards 
 the problem be exactly alike. In no house can every 
 advantage be obtained; each must be somewhat of 
 a compromise; in each there must be a sacrificing 
 of what we deem less important to secure what we 
 esteem of greater value. It follows that the variety 
 of our attitude must produce individuality in the 
 result. When, therefore, you did me the honour 
 to suggest that I should bring this subject before 
 you, I felt that the best response I could make 
 would be to try to give you, as from one fellow- 
 workman to another, some account of the way in 
 which we approach our domestic work, hoping, 
 that in comparing this, and the results which we 
 shall show, with other methods and results, you 
 might find some little interest. 
 Suppose then that we have received a commission 
 for a dwelling house; that we have made ourselves 
 sufficiently acquainted with our new client's wishes, 
 his mode of life, and habits, by getting him to write 
 to us very fully of everything he would like to be 
 specially considered, discussing points with him, 
 or visiting his home, as circumstances may suggest; 
 and further, that we have made full notes of all the 
 instructions and information thus gathered for our 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 1 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 own use; the first thing is to visit the site and de- 
 vote some time to thinking out the problem on the 
 spot. 
 
 The site is the most important factor to be con- 
 sidered, for it usually suggests both the internal 
 arrangement and the external treatment. If the 
 site is a large one the position of the house upon 
 it must first be determined. In past times the 
 house was regarded mainly as a shelter, and this 
 greatly influenced the choice of its position. But 
 we do not to-day so much build shelters for people 
 who live out of doors, as dwellings whence they 
 may occasionally go forth. A primary considera- 
 tion then must be, to so place the house as to afford 
 its occupants the greatest possible enjoyment of 
 such beauty of adjacent country or grandeur of 
 distant view as the site can command. While doing 
 this, however, we must place and design the house 
 in such a way that it shall not stand out as a dis- 
 turbing excrescence, but shall look at home in its 
 site, in harmony with its surroundings. 
 This consideration of the house as a detail in a 
 larger picture will bring us to a determination of 
 its general form, its treatment and its colouring. 
 Some positions demand a lofty building, while 
 others seem to suggest that it be kept as low as 
 possible. And in the country, certainly, the low 
 house is more successful, more in harmony with 
 the scenery; perhaps because it is suggestive more 
 of man's dependence upon Nature, less of his de- 
 fiance of her powers. In the choice of materials 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 2 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 and colouring, harmony rather than strong con- 
 trast should be sought. There is only one sure way 
 of obtaining this at all generally, which is, of course, 
 to keep to local materials and local ways of using 
 them. At any rate I think we may lay it down that 
 strong reasons of use or economy are needed to 
 justify a departure from these. Where a departure 
 is made, let the contrast with what is usual in the 
 district be as slight as may be. We do not enough 
 consider when we introduce for the first time into 
 some valley a bright red roof, how it will haunt the 
 eye from every point of view, and may go far to- 
 wards marring the beauty of the whole scene by 
 destroying its restfulness. We should let the sur- 
 roundings which are to constitute the picture 
 suggest the colouring as well as the form of the 
 new object we are about to introduce. Some de- 
 finite scheme suitable to the position should be 
 adopted, and colours of paint and any enrichments 
 made to contribute to it. 
 
 Greatly as must the site influence the external 
 treatment of the house, its internal arrangement 
 will be even more definitely dictated by it. The 
 position of each room in relation to the points of 
 the compass £5? the outlook should be determined 
 on the spot. It is now pretty generally realised that 
 no sacrifice is too great which is necessary to en- 
 able us to bring plenty of sunshine into all the 
 main living rooms. In the South of England per- 
 haps some moderation must be observed in ap- 
 plying this rule, there being no inconsiderable 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 113 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 number of days on which a too sunny room may 
 become unbearably hot; and, where the size of the 
 house will allow of it, to have an east and west 
 room is often a great boon. But over the greater 
 part of our country, certainly in the Midlands and 
 the North, the importance of arranging for the 
 few days when the sun is oppressive is small in- 
 deed compared with that of planning to suit the 
 many days when every hour of sunshine is of the 
 utmost value. The general rule, then, would seem 
 to be, so to contrive as to get the sunshine into a 
 room at the time when it is most likely to be 
 occupied. Let a study or breakfast-room be east 
 or south-east, a general living-room or drawing- 
 room south and south-west. A good western win- 
 dow in the room we most occupy during the latter 
 part of the day, gives us many an extra hour of 
 daylight; while the opportunity it affords us of 
 habitually seeing the bright colour of sunset is a 
 privilege which is worth some effort to obtain. A 
 kitchen is best north-east or east, for the first 
 coming down into the fireless house may well have 
 its cheerlessness reduced for the servants by what 
 sunshine is to be had at an early hour; later in the 
 day, when the kitchen is hot with cooking, the heat 
 of the sun should not be added. A bath-room and 
 bedrooms, too, are pleasant with an eastern aspect, 
 though some cannot sleep in a room into which 
 early sunshine can come. 
 
 Next only in importance to such considerations of 
 aspect, and certainly important enough to modify 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 14 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 them somewhat, is the question of prospect; for 
 a pleasant outlook is a boon only less great than a 
 sunny aspect. We must not ignore a fine view even 
 when it can only be had to the north, and much 
 less must we allow any trivial conventions, like 
 the old commonly accepted idea that the front of 
 the house should be to the road, to betray us into 
 sacrificing such solid advantages as sunshine and 
 a pleasant view. In fact, to produce a good plan, 
 one should go to the site without any preconceived 
 conventions, but with a quite open mind, prepared 
 to think out each fresh problem on the spot from 
 the beginning, and to receive all the suggestions 
 the site can offer. I hope you will pardon me if I 
 seem to insist unduly on the importance of so ele- 
 mentary a principle as that of building to suit each 
 site. But one sees the principle so commonly dis- 
 regarded that it is needful to emphasize it. Not 
 only do we find houses perched uncomfortably on 
 the shoulder of a hill, or thrust into prominence 
 one way or another regardless of their effect on 
 their surroundings; but, in arrangement, the 
 disregard of the site is carried so far that semi- 
 detached houses are even built with their plans 
 just reversed, so that a plan designed for the north 
 end is made to serve for the south, or one arranged 
 to suit the east side allowed to pass for the west. 
 Before leaving the site one should be able to carry 
 away not only detailed notes of drainage, water 
 supply, levels, fine trees, views and aspects, but 
 also a general idea as to the best arrangement of 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 5 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 the rooms of the new house, an ideal plan to be 
 aimed at, and a sort of mental sketch in block of 
 the. general form the new creation should take ex- 
 ternally. 
 
 It would be only tedious to you if I were to go 
 through all the items of a house, trying to deal 
 with them in a general way. I will therefore now 
 take one or two definite examples, and explain how 
 and why we worked them out as we did, trusting 
 that the interest which attaches to any actual prob- 
 lem solved may come to my aid and redeem the 
 details from tediousness. 
 
 We have chosen for the first example a country 
 house designed for a site in North Staffordshire, 
 partly because this site is not one to very ob- 
 viously suggest or very imperatively demand a 
 special treatment. The plot of land consists of a 
 small field, long, and rather narrow; it is much the 
 shape of a suburban building plot, though situated 
 right in the country. The main road runs along 
 the north-east end, and the ground rises on the 
 far side of this road, cutting off all view in that 
 direction. The ground falls from the road towards 
 the south-west: the slope being very slight at the 
 top, suggests a level terrace on which to place the 
 house. The land continues to fall away to a stream ; 
 across this there is a very pleasant view, which be- 
 comes finest to the south of the plot. 
 The client required the house to have a good com- 
 fortable living-room for the general family life; 
 another good room for entertaining guests and 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 6 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 callers ; a small den for his own use, with desk, safe, 
 and sample cupboards ; four bedrooms, one to be 
 a bed-sitting-room for an only son ; and a kitchen 
 with the usual offices. The house was to be arrang- 
 ed to give as much open-air life within as possible. 
 As. the site is exposed to the prevailing winds, and 
 the best prospect is in the direction whence they 
 blow, some form of court upon which the rooms 
 might open, suggests itself as a means of obtaining 
 the needful shelter. The stableyard not being very 
 See plate i suitable for the purpose, the house is grouped 
 about a very small central court, round which a 
 corridor is planned fitted with sliding windows, 
 so that it can be converted at will into a sort of 
 small open air cloister by sliding the sashes down 
 below the sill. This is roofed over at as low a level 
 as possible, to avoid anything of the feeling of a 
 well, which a court, as small as this needs must be, 
 might soon produce. The main roof also is made 
 to slope away from the court in all directions, so 
 that a good deal of sunlight may find its way in. 
 Upon this corridor the main rooms open with 
 wide double doors, and the court being protected 
 against wind on all sides, it is possible, except when 
 extremely cold, to have the living rooms much 
 more open to the fresh air than is usual. A ventila- 
 ting stove prevents cold draughts in winter. The 
 kitchen, butler's pantry, front and side entrances, 
 and stairs all communicate with the corridor, but 
 so as not to destroy the privacy of the living rooms 
 by obliging anyone to pass the doors when going 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 7 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 from one to the other. Pleasing vistas are obtained 
 from the rooms across the court, and from the 
 corridor into the rooms, such as it is not often pos- 
 sible to contrive in so small a house. This charm of 
 vista should always be thought of when planning. 
 The living-room, as the most generally occupied, 
 and therefore most important room, is placed at 
 the south corner, having the double outlook to 
 south-east & south-west, and getting all available 
 sunlight and the best of the prospect. It is not 
 enough to give a room windows in the right direc- 
 tion, however; the room must be so arranged that 
 it shall, so to speak, turn its face right; and the 
 windows be so placed that one would naturally 
 look out of them from the most usually occupied 
 parts of the room. For this reason an angle win- 
 dow commanding the pick of the view is thrown 
 out on the south-east side. This brings the sun 
 well into the room, and at the same time provides 
 a good well-lighted position for the piano, from 
 whence anyone can easily face to the whole room 
 while singing. For the same reason the fire is put 
 on the north-east wall; and, that a thorough sense 
 of cosiness may always be obtainable, it is placed 
 in a deep recess or ingle. 
 
 Now an ingle affords a very good instance of how 
 easy it is to misuse the old examples which we 
 study, and that in two manners. For while some 
 neglect altogether the suggestions which they 
 offer, others copy the old forms without troubling 
 to understand them. To make use of old features 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 8 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 legitimately, of course, one must first understand 
 the reasons which called them into being, the diffi- 
 culties which they were designed to meet: and 
 when similar reasons or difficulties present them- 
 selves to us we may then avail ourselves of the 
 solution which they indicate, not copying slavishly 
 the details, but taking the principle and working 
 it out to suit our own particular circumstances. 
 The ingle had two main uses : the first was to 
 protect a wide open fire from the cross draughts 
 arising from badly fitting or open doors, shutters 
 and windows ; the second was to afford sheltered 
 seats near the fire, where the aged and feeble could 
 rest and anyone could keep warm in cold or rough 
 weather. Incidentally, no doubt, our forefathers 
 appreciated the value of contrast, the charm of the 
 ruddy fire-lit space glowing red in the grey ill- 
 lighted building, and the cosiness of the sheltered 
 low recess in the wide and lofty hall. To obtain 
 this charm, as is often done, by forming an ingle 
 so small that one cannot sit in it comfortably, is 
 merely to remove the fire further from the room ; 
 while on the other hand, to arrange a large ingle, 
 as is also sometimes done, with a modern tiled 
 register stove set in a chimney breast, is to lose 
 the feeling of sitting on the hearth, and the charm 
 that springs from the fire being able to cast its 
 glow all over the recess and be seen from every 
 part where one can sit. The ingle adapted* to 
 modern use, and justifying the space it occupies 
 in rooms of moderate size, must be large enough 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 1 9 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 to be comfortable for one to sit in regularly, a place 
 where one can live, not merely sit to be roasted. 
 The fire must be so designed as to have something 
 of the feeling of the old fire on the hearth, and 
 must not be cut off from the recess or in any way 
 allowed to grow into a fireplace within a fireplace. 
 It is generally well to make the whole recess into 
 the hearth, and we often arrange for the fire to 
 burn in a suitably shaped fire-brick hollow, which 
 answers all purposes excellently. The ingle must 
 be protected from cross draughts, otherwise the 
 fire cannot be sufficiently exposed. Fenders are 
 best avoided, and anything like a loose coal-box is 
 a disadvantage. A coal-box can often be contrived 
 in the thickness of the wall. When properly ar- 
 ranged, and fitted with comfortable low seats, the 
 ingle always proves to be a favourite part of the 
 room ; the place where people naturallly go to sit 
 and rest. 
 
 But I am digressing from the plan, and must re- 
 turn to the living-room which we are designing. 
 There the ingle is of somewhat special construc- 
 tion, having several small windows to afford peeps 
 out towards the court and the view, and to give 
 light conveniently placed for reading; and also 
 having cupboards for the display of oriental pot- 
 tery. The seats are made long enough to recline 
 on. 
 
 A large sunny bay facing the fire is arranged to See also 
 be used as a dining recess, except in very cold wea- plates 25 
 ther. Such a recess relieves a living room from and 50. 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 120 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 being uncomfortably blocked up with a meal-table. 
 The bay also gives us a west window through 
 which the evening light will come. 
 In all rooms there is a part by the door where no 
 one willingly sits, because of a certain lack of com- 
 fort; it is well to keep such part of the room as 
 small as possible. Very often a room may be actu- 
 ally improved by being reduced in width just 
 where the door opens, while the space cut off may 
 be put to valuable use. In this case the sheltered 
 south-west balcony, which is obtained by narrow- 
 ing the two rooms opposite the doors, adds greatly 
 to the amount of open air life it is possible to 
 enjoy, and makes it easy to have the pleasure of 
 frequently taking meals in the open : the little win- 
 dow by the sideboard is convenient to hand things 
 through for this purpose. A recessed balcony is, in 
 our climate, much more useful than any projecting 
 verandah. It is possible, owing to the extra shelter, 
 to sit in such a balcony two or three times as often 
 as in the verandah with open ends. 
 In this room, a sideboard, a large cabinet and the 
 other important furniture,form part of the scheme : 
 they are thought out and designed with the build- 
 ing. In the treatment of the room advantage is 
 taken of the beams and lintels required for the re- 
 cesses, and where these are lacking a deep picture 
 rail carrying line with them is adopted, under 
 which the sideboard, cabinet, and most of the win- 
 dows are arranged to finish, leaving an unbroken 
 rieze above, and giving a sense of order and unity 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 121 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES. 
 
 to the whole. This frieze is decorated with a paint- See plate 
 ed suggestion of landscape; but in simpler treat- 32. 
 ment, if whitewashed, or coloured with the ceiling, 
 it would be light £s? satisfactory. The lower portion 
 of the walls, under the decorated frieze, is finished 
 in plaster tinted to the required shade by mixing 
 colouring matter with the skimming coat; this 
 forms a good, plain, solid-looking background for 
 either pictures, furniture, or the people who in- 
 habit the room. 
 
 Where economy is any consideration we may keep 
 rooms as low as possible, giving additional space 
 outwards, which is as valuable as space upwards 
 for use as an air reservoir, and for all other pur- 
 poses so much more valuable. This house is nine 
 feet from floor to floor. 
 
 The hall, or entertaining room, being intended for 
 
 less constant as well as more formal use, takes a 
 
 somewhat simpler shape. Placed at the west corner 
 
 with windows south-west and north-west it gets 
 
 all the sunshine during the afternoon and evening, 
 
 when most occupied. It is immediately accessible 
 
 from the entrance, and opens upon the balcony 
 
 and garden through a double window. The fire is 
 
 placed in an ingle contrived under the stairs and 
 
 half landing, an arch being used in this case to carry 
 
 the chimney stack and form the recess. The flue See plate 
 
 from the fire is brought over on to the arch by 33. 
 
 means of a copper hood. A little bay, partly in the 
 
 porch, lights this ingle. The messenger's seat in 
 
 the porch, a cupboard, and a coal box complete the 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 22 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 utilization of the space under the stairs, which is 
 thus not only made to add to the convenience, but 
 also to contribute something to the interest of 
 both the room and the porch. 
 Adjacent to the entrance is the small sanctum. 
 Here, again, something is taken off the square 
 room, which, while improving it rather than other- 
 wise by giving a recess for desk and pigeon holes, 
 enables us to have a small vestibule with cupboard 
 for visitors' hats and cloaks. A comfortable corner 
 between fire and window is left clear for easy chair 
 and reading stand. 
 
 Behind the living-room, with its fireplace at the 
 back of the living-room fireplace, is placed the 
 kitchen. It occupies the east corner of the house, 
 and has its main window to the north-east, the 
 right aspect for a kitchen. There is a small window 
 to the south-east, to light the range and make a 
 comfortable place for sewing or reading. One cor- 
 ner between fire and window should always be 
 kept free from doors in a kitchen, so that there 
 may be a place to sit in ; and a still more comfort- 
 able kitchen results, when it is possible to collect 
 all the doors on one side. 
 
 The larder has its window in the back porch, to 
 get a north aspect; while thorough ventilation is 
 secured by an opening on the south-east under the 
 eaves where the sun cannot reach it. The cellar was 
 added after the preliminary plans were made, the 
 scullery being re-arranged to allow of it. This lat- 
 ter is shaped to obstruct as little as possible the 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 123 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 squint window in the living-room ingle, and at the 
 same time faces south, which, as there is no fire- 
 place, is a good aspect for it. 
 The staircase rises from the corridor, and as it is 
 accessible from all parts without passing the doors 
 of the reception rooms, a back staircase is not 
 needed. Where economy is a consideration the 
 back staircase is one of the first things which may 
 be dispensed with, for it adds so little real comfort 
 in proportion to its cost. 
 
 The bedroom plan follows pretty closely the 
 ground plan, the bedrooms also leading off a cor- 
 ridor round the inner court. All four bedrooms are 
 arranged so that in addition to being convenient See plate 2. 
 as bedrooms, they have at least a corner near the 
 fire comfortable to sit in. In small houses to regard 
 a bedroom as a sleeping room only is a mistake. 
 The accommodation is greatly increased when 
 each member of the household can use his or her 
 bedroom as a private den also. The balcony is re- 
 peated on the first floor — the bedrooms being as 
 serviceable without the space it occupies — and by 
 reason of the parapet and overhanging eaves, it is 
 even more sheltered than that on the ground floor; 
 and it is thus possible in two bedrooms to sleep 
 practically in the open air in almost all weathers. 
 It has special value, too, as an addition to the west 
 room, which is designed for the boy's bedroom 
 and study. Here the bed fits in a deep recess out 
 of the way; a washstand is contrived in the sill of 
 the window of the same recess, which is slightly 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 124 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 bayed to give the needful room ; and a curtain may- 
 be drawn across, cutting off all the special bedroom 
 appliances ; so leaving a good comfortable study. 
 A window is put to bring the south-east sun into 
 bedroom No. 3, the wide sill of which in the rather 
 narrow room may be used for a dressing table. In 
 bedroom No. 4 an over-hanging window recess is 
 carried out on the joists, to avoid the want of com- 
 fort which one always feels on the window side of 
 a room when the door opens right in the corner, 
 as here. This room has also a little window towards 
 the court to bring in morning sun ; and thus all the 
 bedrooms get through ventilation and plenty of 
 sunshine. 
 
 Of the treatment of the rooms little need be said. 
 The recesses by the chimney breasts are fitted 
 with cupboards and bookshelves, which are de- 
 signed to include simple framings or mantels for 
 the fireplaces, and the cornices of which are ar- 
 ranged to match the cornice over doors and win- 
 dows and to carry line with a picture rail running 
 round the room. Wall papers or other decorations 
 stop at this rail, all above being taken in with the 
 ceiling. This arrangement enables the ceiling to be 
 broken up by the slopes of the low roofs without 
 giving- the ugly odds and ends of papered wall, 
 which really are the only unpleasing feature about 
 a ceiling broken up in that way. 
 During the whole of the planning the elevations 
 are of course kept in view, and the block design 
 carried away in the mind from the site constantly 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 125 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 exerts a modifying influence. The difficulty usually 
 is to maintain sufficient simplicity; so many fea- 
 tures are suggested by little conveniences of plan- 
 ning that one has continually to cut them out, 
 never to seek for them merely for the sake of 
 effect. 
 
 This plan which we have just considered, repre- 
 senting, perhaps, rather a large house to be classed 
 as "small," does not quite illustrate one point to 
 which we attach very great importance in the de- 
 signing of small houses. The second plan shown 
 gives me an opportunity of referring to this. Here 
 a special effort was made to obtain one room giving 
 some sense of space in a house not large enough 
 to contain several large rooms. In all small houses 
 much must be sacrificed, but it seems to us to be 
 infinitely less of a sacrifice to reduce the number 
 of rooms, than to reduce the size of them all. In 
 every small house it shou d be a first considera- 
 tion to secure one room large enough to allow of 
 some interest being worked into the room itself, 
 and to afford some comfort and dignity of life to 
 its occupants. 
 
 In the plan now before us the hall was made into See plates 
 the chief living room; it is carried up two stories 3, 64, and 
 to provide for an organ gallery. The gallery lead- 65. 
 ing to the balcony, the landing, and the staircase, 
 are all thrown into this hall ; the stairs are so ar- 
 ranged as to afford a screen to the fire, and form 
 a sort of deep ingle with low ceiling under the 
 landing. The low ceiling continues under the 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 126 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 organ gallery and the balcony, the central part of 
 the hall being open to the full height. The sense of 
 cosiness in this ingle is greatly enhanced by con- 
 trast with the lofty open space outside ; while the 
 variety in lighting, whether when the morning sun 
 streams in at the great east window, or when the 
 ingle glows red in the gathering dusk, adds a per- 
 petual charm. In the gallery is a second fire, with 
 a lounge seat by the organ, under a kind of canopy 
 formed by the half-landing of the second floor 
 stairs. 
 
 To obtain this spacious hall the remainder of the 
 house has been reduced as much as possible. Only 
 one other small room, for den or meal-room, is 
 provided, with kitchens, offices, and four bed- 
 rooms, two of which are on the second floor. 
 Lest you should be inclined to think that only for 
 See plate 4. people living a very exceptional life would it be 
 advantageous to throw so much space into one 
 room, I will next refer to a design drawn for a 
 London literary man, who, though not able to 
 afford a large house, still by reason of his position 
 required occasionally to be able to entertain a good 
 many people. Here the first consideration has been 
 to obtain a hall which would be at once a com- 
 fortable living-room and a dignified entertaining 
 room. The meal-room has been kept as small as 
 would just allow of a little dinner-party being 
 given in it. The fire is placed in one corner, the 
 sideboard in another; had it been possible to put 
 the door also in a corner it would have been still 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 127 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 more convenient, for in a small dining-room it is 
 in the corners that there is a little space to spare. 
 The narrow Hampstead building plot, having a 
 south-west aspect, and the best prospect to the 
 south, dictated the general arrangement of the 
 house and the placing of the best room at the 
 south corner. This room is spanned by two arches 
 to carry the wall of the study over; within one of 
 them is placed the fire recess with seats and fit- 
 ment, thus using up all the space under the stairs 
 to add to the size and character of the room; 
 while the stairs themselves, which are shut off from 
 the vestibule by a door, are also open to the room, 
 the quarter-landing forming a small gallery over- 
 looking it. 
 
 The staircase is such an essentially interesting and 
 decorative feature in a house, and the space un- 
 der and around it may be made to add so much 
 to a room both in size and individuality, that it 
 always seems a pity to shut it off in a mere pas- 
 sage. In old houses the charm of some departure 
 from the plain room is well recognised, for the 
 favourite view, alike for the artist and the photo- 
 grapher, is always that which contains some peep 
 of stairs from the hall, some gallery, balcony, ingle, 
 or deep window recess. When the most is made 
 of such advantages as can be claimed for the bare 
 square room, they seem but a poor compensation 
 for the loss of character and charm. 
 Over the hall in this house are placed the client's 
 study and bedroom, the two being combined that 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 128 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 both may have the benefit of the whole air space : 
 book eases and curtains screen off the bedroom 
 portion. Double doors and double windows are 
 fitted to this room, for perfect quiet both by day 
 and by night is essential; and further to secure this, 
 ventilation is obtained independently of the win- 
 dows by means of two fireplaces and an air shaft 
 built in one of the stacks. The client's wife, son 
 and daughter all proposed to make considerable 
 use of their bedrooms in the day time. 
 But I must pass on now to cottages,the second part 
 of our subject. The distinction between a small 
 house and a cottage, never a very clear one, has 
 been further obscured by a common affectation 
 of simplicity. The word certainly suggests a simple 
 shelter for a simple form of life, and for our pur- 
 poses I propose to regard as a cottage any house 
 in which separate accommodation is not provided 
 for servants. Provision for domestic help there 
 may be, but it must be "as one of the family," not 
 constituting a separate class to be separately pro- 
 vided for. 
 
 To cottages, what has been said about the advan- 
 tage of securing a good living-room, even at great 
 sacrifice of other conveniences, applies with addi- 
 tional force. For not only is the total space at our 
 command usually less, but the number of func- 
 tions which the living-room has to provide for is 
 greater, many of the functions of a kitchen being 
 added to it. To combine the comfort of a living- 
 room with the convenience for work of a kitchen 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 129 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 will tax our skill in planning, and as the space we 
 can give becomes less, our care in the disposal of 
 it must become greater. 
 
 Let us again proceed by way of example, taking 
 a largish cottage designed for a client who wished 
 to live a quiet simple life, yet on a scale that 
 would allow of his enjoying the more necessary 
 comforts and refinements. The site is near a small See plates 
 Derbyshire town, and consists of a mound caused 5 37- 
 by the out-crop of some shale grit. On the north 
 runs a stream, to which the ground falls precipi- 
 tously ; the road is to the west, and there is a steep 
 fall here also; to the east the fall is slight, while 
 to the south the ground rises gently. There are 
 fine views in all directions, most interesting to the 
 north, least so to the south. The client, however, 
 desired the main windows of the living-room to 
 be to the west, having a special liking for the even- 
 ing light. The site seemed to demand a simple 
 oblong house with plain span-roof kept as low as 
 possible, forming a sort of crest on the steep-sided 
 mound. 
 
 The western end of the building becomes the 
 living-room, having windows with the desired 
 out-look. There is a window to the north to com- 
 mand the best of the view; another on the south 
 side admits plenty of sun; and in addition on this 
 side there is the outer door, placed there that it 
 may be possible to enjoy the charm which a door 
 opening direct from a room upon a sunny garden 
 always gives. Such a door must, however, be so 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 130 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 placed that while the peep out is obtained the com- 
 fort of the room is not destroyed. Here we have 
 gathered the two doors and the stair foot together 
 in a narrow part of the room out of the way, leav- 
 ing all the rest of the space comfortable to occupy. 
 The fire is placed on the north wall, in a deep 
 recess ; one side of which is devoted to rest, the 
 other to work. The former is occupied by a com- 
 fortable low seat; in the latter is fixed a plate-rack, 
 and a working dresser fitted with a small fixed 
 bowl for washing up glass and china. All the 
 kitchen work done in the living-room is thus con- 
 fined to the one corner handy to the fire for cook- 
 ing, and well lighted by the north window. The 
 fire-place is designed to be used as a closed cooking 
 stove or as an open fire to sit round. The floor 
 of the recess is tiled, which enhances a little the 
 feeling of sitting on the hearth, and at the same 
 time affords the most easily cleaned surface for the 
 working corner. The arrangement, though pro- 
 ducing a little the effect of a room within a room, 
 secures at anyrate some of the cosiness of an ingle. 
 We are enabled to get a sheltered garden-seat by 
 reducing the width of the recess to a more com- 
 fortable dimension. The ingle is further defined 
 by an archway, on one side of which is fitted a 
 writing desk, and on the other the piano is de- 
 signed to stand, occupying part of the space under 
 the rising stairs, the remaining portion being taken 
 up with a store cupboard opening into the kitchen. 
 A second resting place is provided by a wide low 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 1 3 1 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES, 
 window seat in the main window. Fixed seats are 
 arranged for two sides of the meal table, one hav- 
 ing a high back to screen it from any draught 
 coming through the outer door. 
 To this one good room is added a kitchen for the 
 more dirty work, fitted with a small range ; a good 
 cupboard for coats and hats by the entrance ; a 
 coal-place and larder. Upstairs are four bedrooms, 
 necessarily rather small; one has a bed-recess taken 
 off the largest room to help it, and as it is over 
 the low ceiling of the ingle, it gets the advantage 
 of extra height under the sloping roof; and thus 
 the low ceiling, which adds so much to the feeling 
 of cosiness in an ingle, is made to benefit the bed- 
 room over. Where some such arrangement as this 
 is not possible, we sometimes utilize the space be- 
 tween the low ceiling and the floor above as a 
 storage cupboard, and we often take advantage of 
 it for ventilating purposes, by bringing fresh air 
 into the room, slightly warmed by passing behind 
 the fire, and delivering it over the opening to the 
 recess, where it is distributed with the least pos- 
 sible draught. Where an outlet into a flue is de- 
 sirable to supplement the exhaust due to the fire, 
 we find this a very good place to arrange it. In a 
 room with close-fitting iron casements, sufficiently 
 well built not to leak excessively through floors, 
 skirting, and door, the most frequent cause of a 
 smoky chimney is the want of sufficient air supply, 
 and some form of inlet is an absolute necessity. 
 For bedrooms this may be successfully arranged 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 132 
 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES. 
 
 in some cases through a hollow fender kerb. 
 
 All the bedrooms in this cottage are so arranged- 
 
 as to have a fairly comfortable corner between the 
 
 fire and a window, where one can sit to read or 
 
 write. An east aspect is obtained for the bath-room, 
 
 and a linen cupboard warmed by the cylinder is 
 
 provided. 
 
 Of the elevations I need only say that local ran- 
 dom range stone is used for the ground story, 
 while for the upper portion the need for obtaining 
 four bedrooms over a house so narrow requires 
 the use of nine inch brick walls which are rough- 
 cast in cement. The roof is covered with local 
 stone slate. 
 
 It is obvious that the living-room of this cottage 
 could with much less trouble have been made a 
 four-square room with a fire at one end and a door 
 at the other ; and might have been furnished with 
 a mixture of kitchen and parlour furniture. But 
 I shall have sadly missed the purpose of this paper 
 should you not now feel, as we do, that life would 
 be immensely more comfortable and more digni- 
 fied in a room such as I have been describing, 
 where each requirement has been considered and 
 provided for, and which has had just the shape and 
 arrangement given to it that seemed best to meet 
 those requirements; where, moreover, all the fur- 
 niture has been designed in keeping with its place 
 and its purpose, so that there is no incongruity be- 
 tween the desk and the dresser, the piano and the 
 plate-rack. 
 
THE ART OF DESIGNING SMALL 133 
 HOUSES AND COTTAGES. 
 Time will not permit me to refer in detail to any- 
 smaller cottage plans. But enough has, I hope, 
 been said to make it quite clear, that, whatever the 
 size of the house, we think it should grow, both 
 as a utilitarian plan and as an artistic creation, out 
 of the real needs of the occupants ; and that the 
 art of designing small houses and cottages con- 
 sists, not in following any accepted code of con- 
 ventions, however useful these may be in their 
 place, but in working out such a convenient and 
 comely setting for the special life that shall be 
 lived in them as shall enable that life to expand 
 itself to the fullest extent, not merely unhampered 
 by the building in which it is clothed, but actually 
 stimulated by a congenial surrounding. 
 
LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 PLANS. Plate 
 House at Northwood, ground floor plan - i 
 „ „ first floor plan- - 2 
 
 House at Marple, Cheshire, plans - 3 
 House designed for a Hampstead site, plans 4 
 Cottage designed for a Derbyshire site, plans 5 
 Co-operative Dwellings, Cottage plans - 6 
 Co-operative Dwellings, plan of Common 
 Rooms ______ j 
 
 Co-operative Dwellings, block plan of 
 quadrangle ------ 8 
 
 Co-operative Dwellings, plans for larger 
 
 houses -------9 
 
 Co-operative Dwellings, plans of larger 
 Common Rooms - - - - 10 
 
 Plan for a hamlet - - - - -11 
 
 LINE DRAWINGS. (Barry Parker, delt.) 
 
 An Artizan's Living-room - - -12 
 
 A Living-room - - - - - 1 3 
 
 A Living-room - - - - -14 
 
 Sketch for a Hall, near Derby - - - 1 5 
 
 Sketch for a corner in a Hall, near Derby - 16 
 
 A Library - - - - - -17 
 
 A Living-room - - - - - 1 8 
 
 A Study in the roof - - - - 1 9 
 
 A Hall in Buxton - - - - - 20 
 
 A Living-room in Buxton - - -21 
 
 Sketch for a Hall in Buxton - - - 22 
 
 Sketch for a Hall in Marple, Cheshire - 23 
 
 Corner in a Hall, Church Stretton - - 24 
 
 A Living-room, Church Stretton - - 2 5 
 
Plate 
 
 Sketch for a Billiard-room, Carrigbyrne, 
 
 Co. Wexford - - - - -26 
 
 Room to be built on to "The Old Cottage," 
 
 Tintagel - - - - - -27 
 
 Sketch for a Fireplace, Westmoreland - 28 
 
 Sketch for a Hall, Westmoreland - - 29 
 
 A Hall, Montreal, Canada - - - 30 
 
 A Living-room - - - - - 31 
 
 WASH DRAWINGS. (Barry Parker, delt.) 
 
 A Living-room, Northwood - - -32 
 
 A Hall, Northwood - - - 33 
 
 Design for Co-operative Dwellings - - 34 
 
 Common room in Co-operative Dwellings - 35 
 
 Village Common Room - - - - 36 
 
 A Cottage interior - - - - "37 
 
 Design for a hamlet - - - - 38 
 
 A Village corner - - - - - 39 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHS. 
 
 Corner in Dining-room - - - - 40 
 Living-room in Bridgwater, The Garden Bay 41 
 
 A Hall in Buxton, view 1 - - - 42 
 
 » » » 2 " " "43 
 
 » » » 3 " " ~ 44 
 
 A Living-room in Buxton - - - 45 
 
 A Hall in Buxton - - - - - 46 
 
 A House in Church Stretton, the Hall, view 1 47 
 
 „ „ ^ „ view 2 48 
 
 „ „ The Living-room ingle 49 
 
 A House in Church Stretton, Dining recess 
 
 in Living-room - - - - - 50 
 A House in Church Stretton, a Bedroom, 
 
 view 1 5 1 
 
Plate 
 
 A House in Church Stretton, a Bedroom, 
 
 view 2 52 
 
 A House in Bradford, the Hall - - 53 
 
 A House in Bradford, the Consulting-room 54 
 
 „ „ the Sitting-room, view 1 55 
 
 „ „ „ „ view 2 56 
 
 A House in Buxton, the Living-room - 57 
 
 „ ,, the Drawing-room - 58 
 
 „ „ the Balcony - - 59 
 
 A Farmhouse Sitting-room, Derbyshire - 60 
 
 A Living-room in Buxton - - - 61 
 
 A Living-room in Croydon - - - 62 
 
 A Living-room in Buxton - - - 63 
 
 A Hall in Marple, view 1 - 64 
 
 view 2 - - 65 
 
 A Hall in Montreal, Canada, view 1 - - 66 
 
 „ „ view 2 - - 67 
 
 view 3 - - 68 
 
PLATE 1. 
 
 A HOUSE AT NORTHWOOD, 
 STAFFORDSHIRE, PLAN 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VIII. SEE PLATES, 32 AND 33. 
 
PLATE 2. 
 
 A HOUSE AT NORTH WOOD, 
 STAFFORDSHIRE, PLAN 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VIII. 
 
FIRST FLOOR PLAN 
 
 3 IO IIS MO 
 
 acnvL t— i ii i ! OT FtlT 
 
PLATE 3. 
 
 A HOUSE IN MARPLE, 
 CHESHIRE, PLANS ILLUS- 
 TRATING LECTURE VIII. 
 SEE PLATES 23, 64 AND 65. 
 
PLATE 4. 
 
 A HOUSE DESIGNED FOR A 
 HAMPSTEAD SITE, PLANS 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VIII. 
 
PLATE 5. 
 
 A COTTAGE DESIGNED FOR 
 A DERBYSHIRE SITE, PLANS 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VIII. SEE PLATE 37. 
 
PLATE 6. 
 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VII. SEE PLATES 8 AND 34. 
 
N?2 N«J. 
 SECOND FLCOP. PLAN. 
 
 bath f 1 BED T\OOM 
 
 a. 
 
 1 
 
 bed v\pon 
 
 \ I BATH 
 
 Uwc. 
 
 BED r\OOH 
 
 L 3 
 
 BED I\00r\ 
 
 bed noon 
 
 _ 3ATH 
 
 I 
 
 is 
 
 BED r\oon 
 
 BED 
 
 N? 2 N<? J 
 
 FH\ST FLOOr\ PLAN 
 
 NO 2 N03 
 GROUND FLOOT\ PLAN uJ » ■ g 
 
 SCALE OF FECT. 
 
 DESIGN FO^ PR0P05F.0 CC/OPEPJIYTIVE. DWELLINGS 1M R YORKSHIRE. TOWN ;©» 
 SUGGESTED PLRNS FOR THREE. Of THE C0TTr\CE5. <F&sSO&!^£B <Sv*a 
 
PLATE 7. 
 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VII. SEE PLATES 34 AND 35. 
 
PLATE 8. 
 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VII. SEE PLATES 6 AND 9. 
 
DESIGN FOR PROPOSED COOPE.RRTWE. DWE.LLINC?) IN R YORKSHIRE. TOWN 
 
PLATE 9 
 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VII. SEE PLATE 8. 
 
N?l SECOND FLOOI^PLAN N«?2. 
 
 DESIGN FOR PROPOSED COOPERATIVE DWELLINGS IN R YORKSHIRE TOWN -, QURDRRttGLE OF 
 LRRGER HOUSES FIND COMMON ROOMS. 5UCGF.STED PLRN3 FOR TWO OF THE C0TTRCE5 
 
PLATE 10. 
 
 ILLUSTRATING 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
PLATE 11. 
 
 PLAN FOR A HAMLET, 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VII. SEE PLATE 38. 
 
PLATE 12. 
 
 AN ARTIZAN'S 
 LIVING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 13. 
 
 DESIGN FOR THE LIVING-ROOM 
 IN A HOUSE CONTAINING THIS 
 ROOM, SANCTUM, SCULLERY, 
 PANTRY & BEDROOMS ONLY. 
 
PLATE 14. 
 
 DESIGN FOR THE LIVING-ROOM 
 IN A HOUSE TO HAVE THIS 
 ROOM, SANCTUM, KITCHENS, 
 OFFICES & BEDROOM ACCOM- 
 MODATION ONLY. 
 
PLATE 15. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH 
 FOR A HALL NEAR DERBY. 
 
PLATE 16. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH 
 FOR A CORNER IN A 
 HALL NEAR DERBY. 
 
PLATE 17. 
 
 A LIBRARY. 
 
PLATE 18. 
 
 A LIVING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 19. 
 
 A STUDY IN THE ROOF. 
 
PLATE 20. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH 
 FOR A H ALL IN BUXTON, 
 DERBYSHIRE. 
 
PLATE 21. 
 
 DESIGN FOR A LIVING-ROOM 
 IN BUXTON, DERBYSHIRE. 
 SEE PLATE 45. 
 
PLATE 22. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH 
 FOR A HALE IN BUXTON, 
 DERBYSHIRE. 
 
PLATE 23. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH 
 FOR THE HALL IN A HOUSE 
 AT M ARPLE, CHESHIRE. SEE 
 PLATES 3, 64 AND 65. 
 
PLATE 24. 
 
 DESIGN FOR A CORNER IN 
 A HALE, CHURCH STRET- 
 TON, SHROPSHIRE. SEE 
 PLATES 47 AND 48. 
 
PLATE 25. 
 
 DESIGN FOR A LIVING-ROOM, 
 CHURCH STRETTON, SHROP- 
 SHIRE. SEE PLATES 49 AND 50. 
 
PLATE 26 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR 
 A BILLIARD-ROOM, CARRIG- 
 BRYNE, CO. WEXFORD. 
 
PLATE 27. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF 
 A ROOM TO BE BUILT ON TO 
 "THE OLD COTTAGE, - ' TIN- 
 TAGEL, CORNWALL. 
 
PLATE 28. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR A 
 FIREPLACE, WESTMORELAND. 
 
PLATE 29. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR 
 A HALL, WESTMORELAND. 
 
PLATE 30. Mmi ; 
 
 A HALL, MONTREAL, CANADA. 
 SEE PLATES 66, 67 AND 68. 
 
PLATE 31 
 
 DESIGN FOR THE LIVING- 
 ROOM IN A HOUSE HAVING 
 IN ADDITION TO THIS ROOM 
 A SMALL HALL, KITCHEN, 
 BEDROOMS, AND OFFICES. 
 
PLATE 32. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR 
 A LIVING-ROOM AT NORTH- 
 WOOD, STAFFORDSHIRE. 
 SEE PLATE i. 
 
PLATE 33. 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH 
 FOR A HALL AT NORTH- 
 WOOD, STAFFORDSHIRE. 
 SEE PLATE i. 
 
 NOTE : THE CHIMNEY- 
 STACK STANDS ON THE 
 ARCH, AND THE FLUE IS 
 BROUGHT OVER TO IT 
 WITHIN THE COPPER 
 HOOD. 
 
PLATE 34. 
 
 DESIGN FOR PROPOSED CO- 
 OPERATIVE DWELLINGS IN 
 A YORKSHIRE TOWN. TO 
 ILLUSTRATE LECTURE VII. 
 SEE PLATES 6, 7, AND 8. 
 
PLATE 35. 
 
 INTERIOR OF COMMON ROOM 
 IN PROPOSED CO-OPERATIVE 
 DWELLINGS IN A YORKSHIRE 
 TOWN. TO ILLUSTRATE LEC- 
 TURE VII. SEE PLATE 7. 
 
PLATE 36 
 
 DESIGN FOR PROPOSED 
 VILLAGE COMMON ROOM 
 NEAR LEEDS. TO ILLUS- 
 TRATE LECTURE VII. 
 
 NOTE: THE BILLIARD 
 TABLE HAS BEEN OMITTED 
 FROM SKETCH TO SHOW 
 THE RAISED SEATS WHICH 
 OVERLOOK IT, & THE INGLE. 
 
PLATE 37. 
 
 DESIGN FOR A COTTAGE 
 INTERIOR. SEE PLATE 5. 
 
PLATE 38. 
 
 DESIGN FOR A HAMLET, 
 ILLUSTRATING LECTURE 
 VII. SEE PLATE u. 
 
PLATE 39. 
 
 SKETCH FOR A VILLAGE 
 CORNER, ILLUSTRATING 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
PLATE 40. 
 
 DINING-ROOM IN EAST 
 DERBYSHIRE. THE SIDE- 
 BOARD CORNER. 
 
PLATE 41. 
 
 A LIVING-ROOM IN BRIDGE- 
 WATER, SOMERSETSHIRE. 
 THE GARDEN BAY. 
 
PLATE 42. 
 
 A HALL IN BUXTON, 
 VIEW i. 
 
PLATE 43. 
 
 A HALL IN BUXTON, 
 VIEW 2. 
 
PLATE 44. 
 
 A HALL IX BUXTON, 
 VIEW 3. 
 
PLATE 45. 
 
 A LIVING-ROOM IN BUX- 
 TON. FOR DESIGN SEE 
 PLATE 2 1. 
 
PLATE 46. 
 
 A HALL IN BUXTON. 
 
PLATE 47. 
 
 A HOUSE IN CHURCH 
 STRETTON. THE HALL, 
 VIEW i. 
 
PLATE 48. 
 
 A HOUSE IN CHURCH 
 STRETTON. THE HALL, 
 VIEW 2. SEE PLATE 24. 
 
PLATE 49. 
 
 A HOUSE IN CHURCH STRET- 
 TON. THE LIVING-ROOM. VIEW 
 i. SHOWING INGLE. SEE PLATE 
 
 25- 
 
PLATE 50, 
 
 A HOUSE IN CHURCH STRET- 
 TON. THE LIVING-ROOM, VIEW 
 2, SHOWING DINING RECESS. 
 SEE PLATE 25. 
 
PLATE 51. 
 
 A HOUSE IN CHURCH STRET- 
 TON, A BEDROOM, VIEW i. 
 
PLATE 52. 
 
 A HOUSE IN CHURCH STRET- 
 TON, A BEDROOM, VIEW 2. 
 
PLATE 53. 
 
 A DOCTOR'S HOUSE IN 
 BRADFORD. THE HALL. 
 
PLATE 54. 
 
 A DOCTOR'S HOUSE 
 IN BRADFORD. THE 
 CONSULTING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 55. 
 
 A DOCTOR'S HOUSE IN 
 BRADFORD. THE 
 SITTING-ROOM, VIEW i. 
 
PLATE 56. 
 
 A DOCTOR'S HOUSE IN 
 BRADFORD. THE 
 SITTING-ROOM, VIEW 2. 
 
PLATE 57. 
 
 A HOUSE IN BUXTON. 
 THE LIVING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 58. 
 
 A HOUSE IN BUXTON. 
 THE DRAWING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 59. 
 
 A HOUSE IN BUXTON. 
 THE BALCONY. 
 
PLATE 60. 
 
 A DERBYSHIRE FARMHOUSE. 
 THE SITTING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 61. 
 
 A LIVING-ROOM 
 IN BUXTON. 
 
PLATE 62. 
 
 A HOUSE IN CROYDON 
 THE LIVING-ROOM. 
 
PLATE 63. 
 
 A LIVING-ROOM 
 IN BUXTON. 
 
PLATE 64. 
 
 A HALL AT MARPLE, 
 VIEW T. SEE PRE- 
 LIMINARY SKETCH, 
 PLATE 23. 
 
PLATE 65. 
 
 A HALL AT MARPLE, 
 VIEW 2. FOR PLANS, 
 SEE PLATE 3. 
 
PLATE 66. 
 
 A HALL IN MONTREAL, 
 CANADA, VIEW I. SEE 
 PLATE 30. 
 
PLATE 67. 
 
 A HALL IN MONTREAL, 
 CANADA, VIEW 2. SEE 
 PLATE 30. 
 
PLATE 68. 
 
 A HALL IN MONTREAL, 
 CANADA, VIEW 3. SEE 
 PLATE 30.