Studio: international art (79.1920)

CARVED, PAINTED, AND GILT EBONY
ROOD BEAM IN ST, JOSEPH’S CHURCH,
ALDERSHOT. BY J. H. BONNOR

JOHN HOUGHTON BONNOR: AN
APPRECIATION. BY A. ROMNEY
GREEN aaaaa

IT was only very shortly before his
death that the late Mr. John Houghton
Bonnor began to receive anything like the
recognition that his genius and achieve-
ments deserve. For this, besides the
usual apathy of the public, there were, as
I think, three principal reasons all highly
significant of his character as a man and a
craftsman. The first was his extra-
ordinary versatility, which he must often
have found a heavy handicap in an age of
such high specialization—and must we
also say of such low vitality i—that it is
too often taken for granted that the man is
merely a dabbler who practises more arts
than one. The second was a passionate
absorption in his work which led him often
to neglect, even when they stared him in
the face, the more usual and less laborious
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routes to success and reputation. Let
me illustrate these two traits, so delight-
fully typical of the man, before passing to
the third which was even more character-
istic of the craftsman. 000
An architect first, and then—having re-
belled, like other eminent craftsmen from
William Morris onwards, against the
modern conception of the architect as a
designer merely—a jeweller and metal-
worker on his own account, he added in
fairly rapid succession the crafts of the
worker in stained glass, the sculptor and
the wood-worker to that in which he had
first distinguished himself. Entirely with-
out other training in this art, he prepared
himself for the production of his first
beautiful window in Turnham Green
Church merely by the study of Mr.
Christopher Whall's well-known book on
the subject; and this window not only
won Mr. WhalPs high admiration, but he
generously admitted to Mrs. Bonnor that