A man rarely mentioned

A man rarely thought of nowadays, except perhaps by design students in thesis research, Herman Muthesius, a German architect, author and diplomat, is best known outside Germany for three volumes published in 1904 and 1905 as Das englische Haus (The English House) and for promoting the tenets of the English Arts and Crafts movement in Germany after his return home after a sojourn in England – a championing that eventually influenced the founders of Modernism such as the Bauhaus.*

That's a pretty strong statement to make about a man – "a championing that eventually influenced the founders of Modernism" – even when one has known about him for years, but especially if all one has "known" is that he was German, that he wrote a book titled The English House that allegedly influenced the beginnings of Modernism, and that one has never read it. Such a statement could be considered the essence of foolishness, academically speaking. 

I had set off looking for inglenooks, still finding the photograph (above) from the modern house in Germany intriguing and, in my professorish way, thinking about tropes for shelter and retreat (yawn) when, in one of my books, I found a late nineteenth-century English house Muthesius had actually known and written about. Something new and much more fun than tropes, I thought.  

"Built in 1898-1900 as a holiday home for the Manchester brewer Sir Edward Holt, Blackwell is a masterpiece of great subtlety and artistic imagination by the Arts and Crafts architect H. M. Baillie Scott. Herman Muthesius described it in Das englische Haus (1905) as 'one of the most attractive creations that the new movement in house-building has produced,' and it is regarded as a pivotal work in the architect's career. There are references to C. F. A. Voysey in some of the vernacular detail; much of the internal decoration belongs to a late flowering of the Art Nouveau style, while the clean, unadorned lines of the exterior and the play with abstract space look forward to modernism."

"Blackwell signifies an important moment in European domestic building, when architects began to reconsider the way houses were used. The flowing open plan revolves around a large, double-height hall, a place where the family could congregate at the heart of the house, with an inglenook hearth and adjoining window seat representing warmth, solidity, and comfort. This emphasis on the hearth, with the inglenook fireplace as a theme running through the house, reflects the influence of Norman Shaw, as does the 'Old English'-style half-timbering on the wall of a small room above the inglenook. There is a certain complexity about the way the hall is compartmentalised, with areas of lower ceiling representing different functions within a single space. The billiard room occupies one end, doing away with the Victorian tradition of segregating the male domain. The dining room is a separate room beyond. Everywhere light, space, colour, and texture are carefully orchestrated to create a sense of drama. The climax comes in moving from the warm, oak-wainscoted hall into the brilliantly lit White Drawing Room, one of Baillie Scott's finest interiors and an intensely feminine room. Here, capitals, frieze, ceiling, and stained glass flow with naturalistic decoration in a delicate Art Nouveau style. The room has a great feeling of modernity and exemplifies Muthesius's claim that Baillie Scott was 'the first to have realised as an autonomous work of art.' "

Odd to think, at first glance, a house such as this, even remotely, having an influence on those who founded modernism, but some, reading the quotation, will recognize similarities with Lloyd Wright's work and would also certainly know that during those years, there was for the first time a two-way exchange of ideas about architecture, art and society, across the Atlantic, as America took its place in the world. 

Muthesius's books (plural) are, in fact, a survey of British nineteenth-century domestic architecture, predominantly by Arts and Crafts architects; H M Baillie Scott, C R Mackintosh, William Morris, Norman Shaw, C A Voysey, William Lethaby, and Philip Webb.** 

When he left England in 1903, Herman Muthesius continued to write about architecture and design and returned to his architectural career, concentrating on houses. For many, if not all, in the English Arts and Crafts movement, industry was rejected in favor of handcraft; in America, in the Craftsman movement, not so; and in Germany there was debate about the old way and the new (I am of necessity simplifying here, hard as it is to reduce a movement to a few words) – a debate of which Muthesius was part. During a lecture in Berlin in 1907 he extolled new construction methods and materials, things so commonplace to us nowadays – steel and reinforced concrete, the very the innards of modernism – that he was vilified by the Association for the Economic Interests of the Arts and Crafts for being perfidious about German products. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose you may well be thinking at this point – if you're still with me, that is. The fuss, also known as the "Muthesius Affair," led to Muthesius's supporters leaving the Association and founding the Deutscher Werkbund which led eventually to the creation of the Bauhaus and thence… but that's for another day. 

Most of us work in, and many of us live in (like it or not) a Modernist world. And yet, madmen that we are, many of us prefer to romanticize it, quietly ignoring the fact that mid-century "modern" is now, at 60 years and counting, as historicist as is decorating with Art Nouveau or Craftsman.

*Based on Wikipedia's entry on Herman Muthesius. 

** Wikipedia's entry on The English House is more extensive than I could ever cover but explains      the content of Muthesius's work very well.

Quotation from text of Chapter Blackwell of The English Country House: From the Archives of Country Life, by Mary Miers, Rizzoli, 2009. 

Photographs are from the book and are by Country Life photographers. 

Mr Baldwin's scrapbook

"... The enormous doors of the house were open, and I stepped into something that I simply couldn't believe. Althorp indeed! Althorp was the house from Country Life that I pasted in my scrapbook many long years before, and the room I was standing in was an immense entrance hall in which there were five life-size paintings of horses by John Wootton.

"I said, 'I cannot believe it.' And as I uttered those words I was presented to the earl, who was absolutely beaming with pleasure and looking great in a marvelous tweed suit. I said, 'I must tell you that I saw this in Country Life in 1921 and put it in my scrapbook. It is one of my favorite places in the world, but I had forgotten the association of it with its name, Althorp. However, I remember the photographs so well that I can tell you about that chair which is sitting in front of that wall.' The earl seemed terribly pleased, but the overwhelming thing to me was the scale of the huge stallions.

"We were taken almost at once into a long, long library, which was a huge white room with huge fireplaces with beautiful windows opposite them and it seemed as though the room was composed of books on one side and glass on the other. The style of the room cannot even be imagined and the scale was colossal because the room was. Around each of the fireplaces were big groups of very comfortable furniture, and in front of them were a few young people. They were the earl's children by his first wife."

One of the real pleasures of having a library is that I can browse, dabble here and there, do a little research - if something so pleasurable can be called research. I wish I could say at this point that the satisfaction I'm expressing prevented me from buying more books, but it doesn't. 

I mentioned a while back that friends who were moving house had given me their extensive collection of magazines, some of which were back issues of Veranda, and whilst that has never been one of my favorites, it was always a good and comprehensive source of interior decoration south of the Mason-Dixon Line, at least before it had to broaden its scope. Now no longer a Southern magazine by any definition, since the Atlanta offices have been closed and the whole shebang –whatever that means after the job-losses that ensued – has moved into the New York offices of the publisher.

Part of Veranda's geographical reach-broadening was to include work done outside the South and, though this might have happened earlier than I think, to include articles about houses such as Althorp. Southern or national, it was a handsome magazine, one that looked well in the salons of Atlanta, be it nail, hair or grand drawing room. On leafing through the pile of back issues it became clear to me that Veranda really did have its own local flavor – a regional style that one sees only if one motors the country roads not yet subsumed in suburbia, walks the country towns rich with architecture as ramshackle as their history, and enters some of the older houses in this city. Veranda was local – if such a vast region that stretches from Texas to the Florida Panhandle can be called local – and had a style that was beloved by many. How it will fare as a national book remains to be seen.

However, I have digressed a mazy way from the hall and library of Althorp to the salons of the South and the country towns of middle Georgia. 

Photos of the family seat of the Earls Spencer, in Veranda reminded me that I'd read in Billy Baldwin's autobiography how he and Arthur Smith had been driven to lunch to Althorp by Hardy Amies. I reread the passage today and wondered if somewhere in my library I might find the photograph he mentions as having pasted in his scrapbook. I think I might have.

Ah, the pleasures of the library, indeed!

Quotation from Billy Baldwin: An Autobiography with Michael Gardine, Little, Brown and Company, 1985.

Black and white photographs (unattributed as far as I can ascertain) from English Country Houses, Mid Georgian, 1760 -1800, Christopher Hussey, Antique Collectors' Club, 1986. (An unnumbered edition of 500 copies principally for sale overseas.) First published by Country Life Ltd., 1955.

Other photographs by Fritz von der Schulenberg to accompany text by Charles Spencer for Veranda, March 2008.

'ateful and 'ideous

"One of the imbalances, indeed injustices, of Country Life is that while authors on the staff have had their names at the top of country house articles since 1942, the staff photographers only started to receive acknowledgement at the end of the articles in 1970. As a result of this far too little is known about them. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of Charles Latham, who, as founder of the Country Life tradition of architectural photography, had an extraordinary wide influence on the way people in England were to look at buildings....

"Latham was a brilliant photographer, and took many of the photographs of City churches, country house and gardens for Country Life and for us. His talent went with a red beard and an entire absence of the letter H. Once he went to take photographs of a fine house which had been ruined inside by Victorian meddling. Latham hobbled into the room, stared around and said to the owner, " 'ateful and 'ideous. I'm glad I kept my cab." Then he stumped out."

It was the phrase "Victorian meddling" that first caught my eye in John Cornforth's marvelous The Search for a Style: Country Life and Architecture, 1897 - 1935. I'm still in the grip of a mini Lutyens enthusiasm, and it was that phrase that got me thinking about my ambivalence about the liming of the Deanery Garden woodwork: I know I like the effect, would not have had the courage to order it done. Where, I wonder, is the line between improvement and meddling?

I have no ambivalence about the alterations Lutyens made to the rooms you see here: a drawing room and bedroom belonging to Edward Hudson, the founder of Country Life, at 15 Queen Anne's Gate, an eighteenth-century house in London. Lutyens can be a bit grand and austere, though never forbidding, and in these understated rooms he is at his most intimate.

There is no way of knowing what the drawing room was like before the alterations: the original replaced by a convincing and aesthetically pleasing version of the eighteenth century, so perhaps it is this circumstance together with the fact they are Lutyens' amendments that prevents offence.

It seems that Lutyens based the design of the bed on that in Carpaccio's Dream of St. Ursula.

Photos of drawing room and bedroom from London Interiors: From the Archive of Country Life, John Cornforth, Aurum Press 2000, and The Search for a Style: Country Life and Architecture, John Cornforth, W. W. Norton and Company, 1988.

Quotation from The Search for a Style: Country Life and Architecture, John Cornforth, W. W. Norton and Company, 1988.

Photographers unknown.

And the world was a song and the song was exciting

Plumpton Place was the last of the country houses Edwin Lutyens built for Edward Hudson.

It could be that I'm susceptible to romance and sentimentality tonight having seen A Single Man yesterday and The Young Victoria earlier today but I find these photos so beautiful its almost heartbreaking.

A Single Man has stayed with me, nibbling at the edges of my mood all day today and well into this evening. It's a superb film, beautiful to look at, very moving and if you haven't seen it, please do. Colin Firth, Julianne Moore (Moores' English accent is so convincing I had to Google where she was born - she was not born or raised in England) and Matthew Goode inhabit their roles but it's Colin Firth who rips the heart out you.

Photos from Edwin Lutyens Country Houses: from the Archives of Country Life, Gavin Stamp, Aurum Press 2001.

... that is the question

This week has been dominated by beams - The Corinthian Column posted about them and I for reasons other have chosen photos in which beams are very prominent. Today's serving has nothing, despite what you might initially think, to do with beams but is more concerned with the changes made to the architect's original intention.

I don't want to get into a discussion about original intent but let me say that I do not feel that changes should not be made to what was originally intended. What, you might ask, would you put chintz on a Barcelona chair? Actually, why not? Its only a chair and not a holy icon to be approached with diffidence and reverence.

Some jurisdictions demand that changes must be approved before any work is begun so that which remains is preserved for following generations. There are two sides to the argument, for argument it remains, and having seen what was lost in the destruction of Pennsylvania Station in New York, I am a preservationist. However, time moves on, tastes and standards alter, and adaptations are felt to be essential.

The photos here are a case in point: a Lutyens house, one of his most famous and designed for the founder of Country Life to whom he'd been introduced by Gertrude Jekyll. I'm still trawling, by the way, through copies of 1980s magazines and came across these photos showing the changes made to the interior woodwork of Deanery Garden - changes quite drastic and probably irreversible, in terms of cost at least.

No doubt Lutyens intended that natural plaster, unstained oak, light brick and unfinished plank floors reflect and amplify as much light as got through the large but small-pained windows. Undoubtedly, he was aware that over time materials such as these darken and reflectivity decreases but perhaps that was part of what he thought of as the natural evolution of his creation.

In the 80 years since the house was built attitudes and standards had changed and what 20 years ago could have been seen as a desecration now looks completely right to my eyes. The house is lighter, less self-consciously medieval in atmosphere, and at this remove completely contemporary. Suffused with light, there is a jollity about the house, revelry almost, that is most attractive.

Liming, for those of you unsure as to the meaning, is a paint finish that mimics the effect lime-washing has on wood. It can be achieved on furniture with liming-wax or with white latex paint on larger surfaces, but the latter is not strictly to be recommended.

At its simplest liming is a rub-on, rub-off technique - paint is wiped on and rubbed off leaving residue in the grain and a glow of white over all the whole surface. Can be attractive but is rarely heard of nowadays, though it was terribly popular during the 1980s as were all paint finishes (what we now call faux finishes) and many a good piece of wood was limed to within an inch of its life.

As a remembrance of the Indian Summer of the British Empire, those years beginning the 20th century and leading up to the Great War, when Deanery Garden was built, it would seem fitting to give a suitable cocktail recipe, a Pimm's Cup perhaps, but given that the temperature in on-the-edge-of-the-semi-tropics Atlanta has finally reached 21 degrees at mid-day, I feel the need of something more warming.

I've chosen the Rusty Nail for its promise of warmth and also as a reminder of the effect water-based liming might have on metal.

The Rusty Nail

In an old-fashioned glass pour 1 1/2 oz Scotch and 3/4 Drambuie over ice and garnish with a lemon twist. In fact it sounds so warming, I might have one for lunch.

Photography by James Mortimer from November 1987 article written by Hugh Casson for World of Interiors.

Black and white photography from Edward Lutyens Country Houses: from the Archives of Country Life, by Gavin Stamp, Aurum Press, 2001.