CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK.Page.
Introduction[I-VI]
I.Of the Smaller Middle Class House[1]
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.[136]

INTRODUCTION.

The 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 astonishing: 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 considering 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 straightforward 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 influence. To each house is applied a certain amount of meaningless mechanical and superficial ornamentation according to some recognised standard. No use whatever is made of the decorative properties 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 rebate 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, leaving a clear field for the erection of the customary abominations in the form of cornices, imitation beams where no beams are wanted, & plaster brackets which could support, and do support, nothing. Even with the fire the chief aim seems to be to acknowledge as few of its properties and characteristics 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 uncongenial 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 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 revealing 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.