THE burden of designing the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand was too much for the architect George Edmund Street: according to his son, Arthur Edmund Street, he died from overwork. However, at least he is remembered in the cavernous great hall of that building. A committee to erect a memorial to him met the year after his death, adopting a motion by the Prince of Wales that it should take the form of a statue. Made by H. H. Armstead and occupying a bay of the hall, it is one of the greatest of Victorian monuments (Fig 3). Street appears as he was in life, bearded, dynamic, stern, with a pair of dividers in one hand and a drawing spread, rather impractically, across his knees-a drawing board would have been helpful. Beneath his figure runs a frieze, in the manner of the one Armstead had already designed for the Albert Memorial, showing artists from the past directing craftsmen from the present.
This would have appealed to the coming men of the next generation, several of whom -William Morris, Philip Webb, John Dando Sedding-had been through Street's office. Morris and Webb had founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) in 1877, which would be followed in 1884 by the Art Workers Guild. They were the seminal organisations of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement, which believed that the inspiration of the medieval past should unite architects, sculptors, artists and craftsmen in the great endeavour of building. This was not exactly how Street saw his role in the profession, however. Rather than allowing craftsmen freedom of expression, he personally designed every detail of the buildings made by his office, which included 150 churches and numerous restorations.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 15, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 15, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
