Category Archives: Arts and Crafts Movement

New Traditional Architecture 3: On Vernacular Architecture

Posted on April 23, 2022 by Montacute Pavilion

In one posting on the New Traditional Architecture Facebook page is illustrated the ‘Villa Tällberg’, completed in 2019 in the Swedish vernacular manner. It is by a Swedish architectural firm Byggnadswerk, led by Tommy Janssen, who does some rather beautiful … Continue reading →

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Pavilions, Fabriques, and the Reverential Copy

Posted on August 14, 2018 by Montacute Pavilion

[This paper discusses a category of building that is related to, and sometimes overlaps with, the pavilion: the fabrique. The fabrique is not to be confused with the folly, although both are found in parks and gardens and the terms … Continue reading →

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Portmeirion 3. How Serious is Portmeirion?

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

The trauma of the First World War seems to have manifested itself in the ‘silly ass’ artistic culture of the 1920s. Novelists like Margery Allingham, and even Dorothy L. Sayers, created their detective heroes as upper class twits who took … Continue reading →

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On Gentlemen and William Morris

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

Some of William Morris’s bon mots have not worn well. In the local gift shop they have chalked up the phrase ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. But … Continue reading →

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The Monkey Puzzle Parterre at Biddulph Grange

Posted on November 13, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

At the National Trust’s Biddulph Grange garden in England they have a little terraced gardens in the section called ‘Italy’ which has four small monkey puzzle trees in a little box-edged parterre centred on a stone vase (Figs 1–3). This … Continue reading →

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Portmeirion 2. Portmeirion and the Picturesque

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

The most useful way of approaching Portmeirion is through the concept of the picturesque. Williams-Ellis (or, as everyone calls him, Clough) explains how he liked sailing around the Mediterranean and enjoyed the view of coastal towns from the sea. He … Continue reading →

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Portmeirion 1. Introduction

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

People don’t always get Portmeirion (Fig. 1). For example, it has been argued that it is a proto-Post-Modernist work, created by an architect trying to subvert the modernist norm long before Venturi and Scott-Brown came on the scene. But this … Continue reading →

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Goddard’s in York: An Arts and Crafts House Made with Chocolate

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

Goddard’s is an interesting house and garden in the suburbs of York (Fig. 1). It was designed by Walter Brierly, the Lutyens of York, and has many Lutyenesque moments. (It is not to be confused with Lutyens’ building with the … Continue reading →

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On Water-spouts. Chastleton House

Posted on October 9, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

At Chastleton House there is a dovecote in the field over the road that is all that remains of another house there (Fig. 1). It dates from 1762. It is square in plan, with four arches on the ground floor … Continue reading →

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Heemskerck Dovetail

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Montacute Pavilion

Irrelevant analogy of the week. In this detail of Marten van Heemskerck’s Momus Criticising the Works of the Gods in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, there is a butterfly dovetail joining two panels. It seems that C. F. A. Voysey liked to put … Continue reading →

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