The Art of Building a Home: A collection of lectures and illustrations

by Barry Parker; Sir Raymond Unwin

I think we must not now go far into the faults in actual draughtsmanship most common in our designs. But one thing is very striking: our designers, almost without exception, seem to be out of their depth directly anything in the way of foreshortening 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 turning 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 different 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 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 progress 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 capital 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 feeling 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 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 hundred 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 furnishing 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 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 deference, 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 purpose 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, & is ornamented, as most people would call it, with a sort of stucco-beading, which to me is distasteful. But it cost money, and therefore 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 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 rubbing 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 repose about such a room, which can never be got in a room in which the furniture &c. is not designed 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.