XII.
COLOUR IN STREET ARCHITECTURE.
The question is always being asked why cannot we have more colour in our town buildings, and the makers of glazed tiles and terra-cotta are always replying than we can if only we would. The people, however, who seem most ready to accept definitely the invitation are the owners of kinemas and public-houses. Here, then, is a mystery; on the one hand a sincere desire for a brighter and richer architecture, and on the other the chief response from those whose business it is to satisfy only the very simplest desires and emotions.
The first question to answer is, What do we mean and hope by the word “colour”? Do we mean by it masses of elementary reds, greens, blues, and yellows, or do we mean the rich and varied tones of broken colour? If we mean the latter, and some would find in it more “colour” than in the former, the broken surface of old brickwork, the pearly greys, the rich browns and yellows of stone provide it in abundance. But if by colour we mean large solid surfaces of strong primary colours, we ought at once to pay tribute to the efforts of the publicans who, wittingly or otherwise, have in this matter been pioneers, unsung if not entirely unrewarded.
Before we proceed, however, to spread, as with a palette knife, stretches of primary colours on our street fronts, let us look at the whole canvas before us. A good third of the surface in any street scene, and more at the intersections of streets, must be given up to sky. What is its tone? Three days out of four a dull grey, and on the fourth at most a pale blue. Our masses of solid colour have, then, to be seen against a low-toned background. That is the really important factor. It is in this that our street scene differs from one in Monte Carlo, ancient Athens, or Thebes. In the brightness of the Mediterranean sun a white building, even a stone or marble one, dazzles the eye so that its form cannot be read. Colour is, therefore, necessary and agreeable, and, as everyone knows, it was used in classical times in all its primary strength. The famous frieze of low relief carving of the Parthenon was not only coloured but placed under the shadow of the deep peristyle behind a row of columns so that it might be read by light reflected from the ground. This was the only way in which its full value could be appreciated. Hence, too, the enrichment of the underside of cornices rather than of their face. When a Liverpool or Manchester sky throws down so little direct light, how much rises from a Liverpool or Manchester street? The problem, therefore, in our northern greyer latitude, of what is the happy tone of colour for our buildings (apart from the aggravation of dirt and smoke, as the country town witnesses) is altogether different. Masses of solid colour, which under a bright sky look gay and happy, with us become heavy and crude. One has only to recall the dismal entrances to the Tube railway stations in London to see that solid colours, far from having a refreshing effect, have with us just the reverse. It may be argued that the crudity would go, or at any rate be less, if the whole street were in bright primary hues. At present, among ordinary stone and brick buildings, the brightly glazed coloured building is like an enamelled iron sign on an old wall. If the whole wall were enamelled, however, there would still be the contrast with the surface of the street, unless that were enamelled too, and with the sky, which no form of sky-writing has yet been able to turn into Prussian blue and vermilion.
The quality of the colour which the ancients used on their buildings, when it was applied colour and not that of the natural material, marble, brick, or stone, was not the quality we are invited to use to-day. As far as can be judged from fragments, the quality of the colour on a Greek building was more like that of thin water-colour than thick oil colour, whereas the glazed materials of to-day are far more treacly than oil paint. Look at the glazed portions of the Midland Hotel, Manchester. They have a solid glueyness, a thick, uniform viscosity which is the very negation of life and colour. Natural materials, though they may very quickly become darker and duller in Manchester air, never become so dead as these artificial ones. The latter may indeed be washed—unwashed they hold the dirt in streaks and patches in a much less pleasant way than natural ones,—but they cannot be brought back to life, for they have never really lived. They were cast in moulds from the start, and were repeated endlessly. In the baking, too, they twisted not a little, so that there is always an uneven puffiness of surface and line. They have not the clean-cut look of stone from the chisel, or even of brickwork truly laid. It is a case of cast material in place of wrought, and of a cast material which does not cast well. This, of course, only applies to glazed and unglazed terra-cotta when used structurally to take the place of brick or stone. It is quite another thing when it is used decoratively, as the Delia Robbias used it, inset in brick, stone, or plaster. Its very irregularities then increase its decorative value. These objections, too, would not, in my mind, apply with quite the same force to a purely surface material like tiles or mosaic. The difficulty of the bright colouring against the dull sky would, of course, be there, but from the multiplicity of joints and surfaces the colour would be less solid, more broken in fact. In Portugal there are houses faced with coloured tiles which give a pleasant effect, but there again the latitude and atmosphere are different. We have yet to see a satisfactory external use of glazed materials in this country. When it does come, about which I am very doubtful, it must for good neighbourly reasons be applied to a whole street or district at once. Isolated patches like public-house fronts and Tube railway stations do the same sort of violence to adjacent buildings in natural materials that an enamelled iron sign does to a country lane when set up in a field alongside.
XIII.
EVERYDAY ARCHITECTURE.
If we were all fortunate enough to live in the few unspoilt English villages or country towns that are left, or if we occupied an apartment in Park-avenue or Fifth avenue, New York, or in the central part of Paris, not to mention rooms in a palace in one of the hill towns of Italy, we would understand without more ado that architecture is an everyday affair. As it is, living in Liverpool or Manchester or in a London suburb, we think of architecture, if we think of it at all, as an affair of big buildings, town halls and cathedrals, and probably now and then of banks and insurance offices. Even so, it is a mystery which a few highbrow people know all about and no one else can understand. This, of course, does not prevent us from enjoying the old villages and towns we motor through. We have long learnt, indeed, that they provide the chief interest in motoring. But that they are architecture, and that each of the little buildings we see nestling together has been consciously designed by someone, even if that someone did not call himself an architect, never occurs to us. And perhaps rightly. We are so accustomed to connect the word architecture and the man architect with our ugly over-emphasised town buildings that these modest little country ones are obviously something else. We assume that, like the trees or like Topsy, they just grew.
Herein lies a complete fallacy, which is nothing less than a tragedy. The cottages and little shops we have liked so much in our country visits, without quite knowing why, have all been the cousins, once or twice removed, of the squire’s mansion. The little village church has borne the same relationship to the cathedral in the neighbouring town. Now we know that the cathedral and the mansion house are architecture. I am afraid, therefore, that we must admit that the others are architecture too. If so, we shall come to this strange conclusion, that in the days when things were beautiful they were all architecture. Architecture indeed was an everyday thing. We might even go further and say when it ceased to be an everyday thing, when it was reserved for some theatrical make-believe, and became thereby divorced from life, it ceased to be architecture. That is why the architect should be one of the most important persons in the State, why he should be trained as for a priesthood, and when trained why he should be trusted, why indeed the whole external form of the material side of our civilisation should be moulded by him. He, and he alone, if he is properly endowed and properly trusted, has the means to make our towns beautiful again.