head, though no appreciative client materialized to employ me.
Charlecote Hall ([Plate LXXIII]) dwells in a unique borderland of the Elizabethan style. What a gracious subject this beautiful edifice supplies for adaptation to date. Any progressive American architect should be able to do it—in fact, he should be expected to improve somewhat upon the original with all the modern science there is at his command. It is true that metal window frames and sashes are not manufactured ordinarily in this country, but it is high time they were, and their appearance in the catalogues of what they would call in England our “ironmongers” cannot be delayed for long, if indications count for anything.
The open-timbered work of Elizabethan houses in America has become very common, and I do not know that I may add any observations of importance concerning this treatment. In the House Beautiful for March, 1901, will be found an article upon the subject, mostly in reference, however, to a cottage named “Canterbury Keys,” illustration of which herein appears ([Plate LXVIII]). Open-timbered work is also common to France, Holland and Germany, and, notwithstanding an occasional inimical critic upon the way we construct it in America, is thoroughly good architectural development, and will continue to live in the history of the future because it has history of the past to tell—delicious reminiscences of snug old Anglo-Saxon homes. Moreover, Elizabethan architecture instances a scientific focus of the Gothic and Renaissance spirits, habitually unfriendly, where under the hand of the master these spirits are made to coalesce in love and tranquillity delightful to see.
Mr. Gotch in his “Early Renaissance of England” calls all three schools of design—Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean—uniformly Renaissance development because all were influenced by the architecture of Italy, though the Tudor style, hardly perceptibly; but the real English Renaissance, classified for the better understanding of the term, belongs to the later development under the Georges. And it was to this subdivision of the mighty subject that American Renaissance served its apprenticeship, although the articles of indenture, I contend, were legally canceled by the
HAMPTON COURT—WOLSEY PALACE.
HAMPTON COURT—SOUTH PALACE.