This book, written in 1952, examines the intrinsic design everyday household objects. It evaluates them, criticizes them, and investigates the difficulties encountered in producing them, marketing them, and advancing them. At the root of the author's mind is a conviction in the importance of effective design of these items despite methods of mass-production, which he believes should involve the same kind of devotion as has always inspired freelance craftsmen. Professor Pevsner, who initiated such a book in 1935, provides a foreword and a postscript of commentary about Mr Farr's book. The book is accompanied by a number of photographs of the products it discusses and will be of interest to designers of everyday objects and to those who use them.

For more than one reason Professor Pevsner, eleventh Slade Professor of Fine Art in the University of Cambridge, takes as the topic of his Inaugural Lecture Matthew Digby Wyatt, the Victorian architect and the first Slade Professor. He begins by inspecting some of Wyatt's major works - Addenbrooke's Hospital at Cambridge and the Paddington Station among them. Presently he allows himself to be diverted from his light architectural candour about Wyatt's buildings to an account of Wyatt's more general interests in design, and so to investigate the Victorian arena, with Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris, the conservative idealists, preaching one gospel, and Wyatt, Cole, and the Prince Consort preaching something different. The battle being fought was, as the Professor's 1950 text shows, deeply important; and its effects remain.

Originally published in 1940, this book charts the origins and evolution of academies of art from the sixteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Pevsner expertly explains the political, religious and mercantile forces affecting the education of artists in various countries in Western Europe, and the growing 'academisation' of artistic training that he saw is his own day. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the various historical schools of art instruction and the history of art more generally.

Originally published in 1937, this book was created to provide a survey of the conditions and artistic value of design in British industries. Through interviews with manufacturers, managers of department stores and shops, principals and teachers of art schools, commercial designers, artists, and architects, principally in the Midlands area, a composite portrait is developed. This portrait emphasises the interaction of seemingly disparate elements in the production of quality design, and shows the complexity of the process whilst remaining concise and accessible. The text is also well presented, containing a large number of illustrative examples. This is a fascinating volume that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of British design.

Exeter Cathedral is but the crowning glory of Devon's wealth of medieval churches, replete with sumptuous fittings and monuments. The county's peak of prosperity from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth-century is reflected too in its castles, its secluded manor houses, and its scores of sturdily built farmhouses. The delights of Devon's well loved seaside and country towns are explored from the distinctive merchants' houses of Totnes and Topsham to the elegant Regency crescents of Teignmouth and Sidmouth. The picture is completed by accounts of the creation of the docks at Plymouth, industrial relics, and the substantial but little known store of Devon's Victorian churches.

The newly revised Pevsner guide to the buildings of Oxford and South-East Oxfordshire This updated guide addresses half a century of change and development since the previous edition, including a wealth of ambitious new buildings for the University and its colleges. Familiar buildings such as the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera are reinterpreted, and the many renovations and extensions are described and assessed. Oxford’s commercial buildings, suburbs, and houses are also explored in depth, including much that is published here for the first time. The county area extends from the outskirts of Oxford to Henley-on-Thames, following the historic Thameside boundary of Oxfordshire and taking in the hills of the southern Chilterns. Here the new volume includes fresh accounts of major country houses such as Nuneham Courtenay and Thame Park, new assessments of church restorations, furnishings, and stained glass, more inclusive coverage of commercial buildings in the towns and a fuller selection of vernacular and rural buildings across the whole of this attractive and rewarding part of England.

This is the essential companion to the architecture of Cambridgeshire, fully revised for the first time in sixty years and featuring superb new photography. Half of the book is devoted to the famous university city, with its astonishingly rich and varied inheritance of college buildings including striking post-war additions. A combination of boldness and innovation may be found at Ely Cathedral, one of the greatest achievements of English medieval design. By comparison, the rest of the county remains surprisingly little known. Its largely unspoiled landscapes vary from the northern flat fen country to the rolling chalk uplands of the south and east; its architecture encompasses rewarding village churches, distinctive vernacular building in timber, stone, and brick, the former monastic sites at Denny and Anglesey, and the magnificent aristocratic seat of Wimpole Hall.

The latest revised volume in the Pevsner Architectural Guides, covering Birmingham and the towns and settlements of the Black Country This fully revised account of the buildings of the City of Birmingham, its suburbs and outskirts, and the adjacent Black Country explores an area rich in Victorian and Edwardian architecture. Even the small towns of the Black Country supported local architects with their own distinctive styles, such as C. W. D. Joynson in Darlaston and A. T. Butler in Cradley Heath. Much West Midlands industry was organized in small to medium-sized firms, resulting in a rich and diverse streetscape and canalscape. The Arts and Crafts tradition also established deep roots in the area, resulting in masterpieces such as Lethaby's Eagle Insurance in Birmingham and Wolverhampton's Wightwick Manor, as well as a host of fine villas and churches. Older buildings of national significance include the grand Jacobean mansion of Aston Hall, Thomas Archer's Birmingham Cathedral, and such unexpected delights as the neoclassical barn in Solihull by Sir John Soane. Featuring new color photography and numerous maps and text illustrations, this volume will transform understanding and enjoyment of the architecture of this key English region.

From small timber-framed houses to sprawling manors, this comprehensive guide to west Suffolk presents an impressive range of buildings from across the centuries. At its center lies the town of Bury St. Edmunds, site of one of Norman England's most powerful abbeys, whose monolithic gates remain as a local landmark. Other towns boast impressive architecture as well, including Newmarket, where the racetrack and other unique structures support its role as a historic and international center for horse breeding and racing. Also attesting to the remarkable variation of west Suffolk's buildings are a number of impressively grand residences, such as the fine Elizabethan manors of Long Melford, Majarajah Duleep Singh's palace at Elveden, and the extraordinary circular mansion of Ickworth.

Cornwall was the first volume in the Buildings of England series, published in 1951. This extensively revised edition brings much new research to bear on the history of the county's buildings, beginning with its rich prehistoric remains and early Christian structures and monuments including numerous Celtic crosses and holy wells. The high towers of the village churches, manor houses such as Cotehele, and the distinctive white-walled cottages in the villages and fishing towns contribute to Cornwall's unique, picturesque landscape. Cornwall is home to major country houses, including the spectacular castle of St Michael's Mount, as well as the greatest English cathedral of the Victorian age at Truro. The architectural legacy of industry is also of considerable importance, from the net houses of the fishing industry to the tapering engine-house chimneys of the tin mines.

This fully revised survey is the essential companion to the architecture of one of England's most rewarding regions. The Georgian spa of Bath and the medieval cathedral city of Wells are deservedly famous, each the finest of its kind in the country. A separate section covers the port of Bristol, with its rich and confident buildings of every period and type. Other highlights include John Nash's picturesque masterpiece of Blaise Hamlet, a noble inheritance of Gothic Revival churches, and some of the greatest structures designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Covering the northern half of Yorkshire, this volume is full of contrasts, from urbanized Leeds to the tight-knit mill towns and villages pushing into the Pennines.

This second volume on Norfolk provides a comprehensive survey from prehistoric times to the present day. The 17th- and 18th-century treasures of King's Lynn are explored, as well as the market towns of Swaffham and Wymondham. Castle remains and medieval churches are also explored.

Su contenido que se inicia con las doctrinas de William Morris y sus seguidores es una apasionante analisis, pleno de anecdotas y referencias personales, que abarcan todas las etapas de la genesis del diseno del siglo XX y culminan con la obra del famoso arquitecto aleman Walter Gropius y el tambien famoso y polemico Bauhaus. El Profesor Pevsner nos propone una reflexion y al mismo tiempo una evaluacion del origen y generacion del diseno, ya sea industrial, grafico o arquitectonico, liberandolo de las contradicciones generadas por las artes aplicadas y la artesania.

The turn of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary flowering of invention in architecture and design, with two contrasting styles emerging--Art Nouveau and the International Style. Professor Pevsner brings a new clarity to an often confusing period, tracing--with the aid of nearly two hundred carefully chosen illustrations--the origins of twentieth-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts.

Without doubt, the standard work in the field. As reflected by its new title, The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture has now been expanded to include recent developments in the field of landscape architecture. Full account has been taken, too, of the huge range of building traditions around the world.

Fully revised, updated, and expanded, this book offers a fresh and comprehensive account of the buildings of Dorset, one of England's best-loved and most beautiful counties. With its wonderful variety of building stones, Dorset offers visual pleasures which few English counties can match. Its country houses are exceptionally rich and varied, from medieval Woodsford and Athelhampton to the late Victorian splendors of Norman Shaw's Bryanston. Highlights among the churches include the former abbeys of Sherborne, Wimborne, and Milton. Towns include the mid-Georgian showpiece of Blandford Forum, the seaside resort of Weymouth, and ports large and small, from busy Poole to charming Lyme Regis. Featuring all new color photography, this volume is the ideal guide to one of the most architecturally rewarding regions in England.

This authoritative guide, the companion to Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North, covers a vast area marked by tremendous diversity of both landscape and buildings. The territory is rich in medieval churches and castles, 17th-century houses and 18th-century mansions, yet it is also deservedly famous for its outstanding 19th- and 20th-century ecclesiastical, civic, commercial and industrial buildings. Major examples of every period of English architecture are represented, from Selby Abbey to the palatial country house of the Earls Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Woodhouse, and from Halifax Town Hall to Sheffield's Park Hill flats and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield. In the fine Pevsner tradition, this book situates the region's full array of buildings within geological, local, national, and international contexts.

Some of England's grandest country houses are to be found in this prosperous rural county. The Elizabethan Renaissance Kirby Hall, the Jacobean mansion at Apethorpe, the late 17th-century French-inspired Boughton, Hawksmoor's stately Baroque Easton Neston, and the interiors of Althorp provide a fascinating survey of changing taste through the centuries. Complementing them are smaller buildings of great character, supreme among them those of Sir Thomas Tresham: the eccentric and ingenious Triangular Lodge at Rushton and the evocative New Beild at Lyveden. Of no less interest are the fine churches, from Anglo-Saxon Brixworth to the noble Gothic of Warmington, Rushden and Finedon and from All Saints, Northampton, one of the grandest 17th-century churches outside London, to Comper's St. Mary's, Wellingborough. Chief among the towns, Northampton has not only distinguished Victorian and Edwardian public, commercial and industrial buildings but also the principal work in England by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.