Studio: international art (16.1899)

Country and Suburban Houses

lofty room a low room, he avers, needs much less
window space. It is not the mere cubic contents
which have to be taken into account; the real
essential is the amount of reflecting surface in the
room itself. In a low room the entire ceiling acts
as a reflector, and throws the light downwards into
every corner of the interior. This, again, is, as a
rule, supplemented by Mr. Voysey through the
employment of a deep whitewashed, or otherwise
light-tinted, frieze as a feature in his decoration of
the wall space. I may say in passing, as might be
gathered from the above remarks, that Mr. Voysey
is not only an advocate for light, but also for
low rooms. They are pleasanter to live in, accord-
ing to him, they are cheaper, they lend themselves
more easily to the securing of pleasing proportion
in design, and they are, contrary to general opinion,
quite as easily ventilated as lofty ones. One of
Mr. Voysey's rare outbursts of temper was directed,
while I talked to him recently, against those incon-
siderate clients who endeavoured to insist upon his
adding a foot or two to the height of a second
storey, regardless of the fact that by doing this the
entire proportion, that is to say, the main beauty,
of their house must be sacrificed. It led the de-
signer to digress into an interesting consideration
of the relations which ought to exist between client
and architect. According to Mr. Voysey—and
there are few architects who will not agree with
him—the client's wishes as regards accommodation,
including general scheme of plan, and essentially as

regards expense, should be a law to the architect,
but the latter should be supreme touching artistic
design and proportion.

Mr. Voysey's Surrey house is that at Oxshott,
for C. S. Loch, Esq. (page 161). It lacks, perhaps,
the charm of the long, low, rather straggling
character of Mr. Newbold's, but it is a design of
singular unity, with sufficient diversity to render it
very interesting. Its principal interior feature is the
ingeniously arranged octagonal dining-room, one of
its angles being due to the necessity for gaining
easy access to the drawing-room from the hall, the
window forming another, while wine-cupboards and
such-like utilitarian features form the two others.
Though not giving one the idea of a large house, it
is so planned as to be exceedingly commodious,
two servants' and a child's room being arranged
for in the attic.

I have thus run through with somewhat casual
comment the little group of houses which The
Studio is fortunate enough to be able to illustrate.
They will at all events serve the purpose in them-
selves of reintroducing Mr. Voysey to Studio
readers in the character of a designer of houses.
It will be observed that these buildings all
belong to the one class—the more or less simple
and economical country house. It is, however,
in this direction that Mr. Voysey's talents as an
architect have down to the present been con-
spicuously displayed. It is, indeed, a very charac-
teristic side of the general architecture of our own