DOI Heft:
No. 56 (November, 1897)
DOI Artikel:White, Gleeson: An epoch-making house
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18390#0131
An Epoch-Making House
DRAWING-ROOM NO. I HOLLAND PARK
the home of Mr. A. A. Ionides, may be regarded for consistent innovation and less reliance upon
as historic already. For, some twenty-five years pedantic adherence to precedent than would have
ago, he maintained consistently the ideal which we been judicious in the earlier stages of the move-
all affect to champion to-day. The esoteric creed ment. Now, we are more sure of our ground, and
of a few has become the gospel preached from the have greater faith in the power of living men to
housetops. To this end many influences have challenge comparison with dead masters. Yet this
worked : first the firm of Morris and Co.—that house is more nearly the forerunner of the newer
famous movement wherein Ford Madox Brown, experiments than is the last word of academic
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, tradition. For in it Mr. Philip Webb, Mr. Walter
and others played no small part directly or indirectly; Crane and Mr. William Morris found their own
then the Century Guild, with its Hobby-Horse, modes of expression, and initiated many things
and still later, the Arts and Crafts Society, with which have become almost hackneyed to-day.
its exhibitions and lectures. Add to these the per- Daily the fact is forced more and more upon
sonal example of a large number of architects, those who study the matter that Morris, who was
painters, and sculptors, who made their own houses in many respects the slave of tradition, who
comely, reinforced with the pens of many able preached the futility of attempting to do more than
writers—and you find the primary causes that have revive the best things of past centuries, was himself
diffused the lesson which this house embodies. To at times too full of vitality to limit himself within
say as much is but bare justice; nor does it infer his own self-set bounds. It is no less certain that
that, were the whole abode to be planned anew, its he succeeded in inspiring to experiment and enter-
owner and those who worked with him would treat it prise others who have long since set their ideals
exactly in the same fashion. Sentiment has changed far ahead and ceased to look behind. The lore
rapidly, but chiefly in the direction of appreciation of the past has become a clause of their artistic
DRAWING-ROOM NO. I HOLLAND PARK
the home of Mr. A. A. Ionides, may be regarded for consistent innovation and less reliance upon
as historic already. For, some twenty-five years pedantic adherence to precedent than would have
ago, he maintained consistently the ideal which we been judicious in the earlier stages of the move-
all affect to champion to-day. The esoteric creed ment. Now, we are more sure of our ground, and
of a few has become the gospel preached from the have greater faith in the power of living men to
housetops. To this end many influences have challenge comparison with dead masters. Yet this
worked : first the firm of Morris and Co.—that house is more nearly the forerunner of the newer
famous movement wherein Ford Madox Brown, experiments than is the last word of academic
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, tradition. For in it Mr. Philip Webb, Mr. Walter
and others played no small part directly or indirectly; Crane and Mr. William Morris found their own
then the Century Guild, with its Hobby-Horse, modes of expression, and initiated many things
and still later, the Arts and Crafts Society, with which have become almost hackneyed to-day.
its exhibitions and lectures. Add to these the per- Daily the fact is forced more and more upon
sonal example of a large number of architects, those who study the matter that Morris, who was
painters, and sculptors, who made their own houses in many respects the slave of tradition, who
comely, reinforced with the pens of many able preached the futility of attempting to do more than
writers—and you find the primary causes that have revive the best things of past centuries, was himself
diffused the lesson which this house embodies. To at times too full of vitality to limit himself within
say as much is but bare justice; nor does it infer his own self-set bounds. It is no less certain that
that, were the whole abode to be planned anew, its he succeeded in inspiring to experiment and enter-
owner and those who worked with him would treat it prise others who have long since set their ideals
exactly in the same fashion. Sentiment has changed far ahead and ceased to look behind. The lore
rapidly, but chiefly in the direction of appreciation of the past has become a clause of their artistic