In association with
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ARTS AND CRAFTS ARCHITECTURE This book was originally published in 1980 and was the first to cover the architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement in a balanced way. It is surprising now to consider that Pevsner, who saw the Arts and Crafts as a stepping-stone to the Modern Movement, and Gillian Naylor, who scarcely mentioned architects in favour of craft and pattern-making, both hardly touched upon one of the greatest periods of our national architecture. Davey’s book pitched the emphasis in the right way with major chapters on Morris, Webb, Lethaby, Prior, Voysey and Ashbee, balancing theory with built work. It has now been re-issued in a larger format and has been enormously improved. Its presentation has quite simply transformed our appreciation of the buildings with a series of brilliant photographs by Martin Charles, which with their attention to materials and naturalness immediately convey the qualities of Webb and Lethaby’s work, for example, qualities that were so appreciated in their own day but which were never really apparent in black and white photographs. Davey has also added a lot of extra information to the text with a new chapter on gardens as well as updating the bibliography and notes. I wish he had dropped the chapters on the craft movements in the
US and on the Continent. Of course, there were cross-influences
but English Arts and Crafts has its own regional character which
should stand alone as the subject of the book. But that apart,
this new edition is extremely welcome and remains the most useful
and inspiring work on the subject. |