HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

William Butterfield: Victorian Architect

by Paul Thompson

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
14None1,433,251NoneNone
William Butterfield has taken a central place in every history of nineteenth-century architecture; and rightly, for he was the pioneer of the original High Victorian phase of the Gothic Revival, and the first Victorian architect to experiment with constructional color. This is the first biography of Butterfield and thus meets a major need. It seeks, through a combined discussion of Butterfield's personality, his style, and the social situation in which he worked, to reach a new understanding not merely of Butterfield but of the whole significance of High Victorian architecture. The author defines his approach as follows: "I have...relegated the descriptive chronological surveys which normally form the core of such a book to the second part, for two reasons. The first is that Butterfield's purpose and style in design are fundamentally contentious, so that survey before analysis would be meaningless. The second is that I wish not merely to describe Butterfield's work, but to interpret it: to discover the forces which shaped it, and the meaning which he and his patrons and contemporaries found in it. "I have tried to do this on a series of levels—personality, patronage, technology, religious, social and aesthetic conventions and values—which are all potentiallyrelevant to other situations; but I do not wish to suggest that explanations of Butterfield's work necessarily apply to other men or other periods. Factors such as religion or individual personality can be dominant in some situations and irrelevant in others... Equally I do not accept the crude technological determinism so common in modern and architectural history. Building is, of course, a material art, and some technological and economic influences upon its form are inevitable, in a certain sense primary; but they are by no means always dominant, and indeed have very often been merely passive limitations. In this book I have tried to indicate the contribution made by each level of interpretation, but not to impose any universal hierarchy of importance upon them; for ultimately this is an issue which depends not upon fact, but upon one's concept of man." This book is richly illustrated with photographs in black and white and in color.… (more)
None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

No reviews
no reviews | add a review
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (4)

William Butterfield has taken a central place in every history of nineteenth-century architecture; and rightly, for he was the pioneer of the original High Victorian phase of the Gothic Revival, and the first Victorian architect to experiment with constructional color. This is the first biography of Butterfield and thus meets a major need. It seeks, through a combined discussion of Butterfield's personality, his style, and the social situation in which he worked, to reach a new understanding not merely of Butterfield but of the whole significance of High Victorian architecture. The author defines his approach as follows: "I have...relegated the descriptive chronological surveys which normally form the core of such a book to the second part, for two reasons. The first is that Butterfield's purpose and style in design are fundamentally contentious, so that survey before analysis would be meaningless. The second is that I wish not merely to describe Butterfield's work, but to interpret it: to discover the forces which shaped it, and the meaning which he and his patrons and contemporaries found in it. "I have tried to do this on a series of levels—personality, patronage, technology, religious, social and aesthetic conventions and values—which are all potentiallyrelevant to other situations; but I do not wish to suggest that explanations of Butterfield's work necessarily apply to other men or other periods. Factors such as religion or individual personality can be dominant in some situations and irrelevant in others... Equally I do not accept the crude technological determinism so common in modern and architectural history. Building is, of course, a material art, and some technological and economic influences upon its form are inevitable, in a certain sense primary; but they are by no means always dominant, and indeed have very often been merely passive limitations. In this book I have tried to indicate the contribution made by each level of interpretation, but not to impose any universal hierarchy of importance upon them; for ultimately this is an issue which depends not upon fact, but upon one's concept of man." This book is richly illustrated with photographs in black and white and in color.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: No ratings.

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,209,109 books! | Top bar: Always visible