195 JOHN RUSKIN

from ‘‘The Nature of Gothic’’ (1851–3)

The Stones of Venice – whatever one’s view of Ruskin’s ideas – is without question one of the few great
books in all of architectural literature. After completing the Seven Lamps in 1849, Ruskin traveled to
Venice, a city that had just experienced a 16-month siege by Austrian forces. Martial law was in effect,
cholera and starvation were prevalent. Ruskin arrived oblivious to the dangers and on a mission to
record every detail of every Byzantine and Gothic building of the threatened city. Here he would pass
from being an architectural amateur to becoming an authority on Venetian architecture.

The book consists of several relatively independent essays, the most important of which is his
literary masterpiece ‘‘The Nature of Gothic.’’ Its arguments derive from his earlier book, but Ruskin now
vividly spotlights the gist of his reasoning. Gothic architecture for him is not an arbitrary stylistic choice
but rather an ethical way of life: a humble recognition of human imperfection and of human striving for
salvation. Other styles, such as the classical, enslave human nature by demanding strict geometric
(‘‘servile’’) perfection in their ornamental details. The Gothic style acknowledges human limitations and
respects them by allowing free inventions in design and execution; it demands not formal perfection but
only the evidence of the workers’ happiness. Hence Gothic architecture is more moral than any other
style; it espouses such ‘‘picturesque’’ attributes as savageness, changefulness, naturalism,
grotesqueness. Once again Ruskin’s conception of architecture is essentially ornamental.

In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXI. of the first volume of this work, it was noticed that the
systems of architectural ornament, properly so called, might be divided into three: – 1. Servile
ornament, in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely subjected to the intellect
of the higher: – 2. Constitutional ornament, in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point,
emancipated and independent, having awill of its own, yet confessing its inferiority and rendering
obedience to higher powers;–and 3. Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is
admitted at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat greater length.

Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and Egyptian; but their
servility is of different kinds. The Greek master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power
above the Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could endure the appearance
of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath
him was composed of mere geometrical forms, – balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical foliage, – which
could be executed with absolute precision by line and rule, and were as perfect in their way when
completed, as his own figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less cognizant of
accurate form in anything, were content to allow their figure sculpture to be executed by inferior
workmen, but lowered the method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach,
and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance of his falling beneath the standard
appointed. The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The
Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for his
imperfection. The workman was, in both systems, a slave.1

§ X. But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery is done away
with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of
every soul. But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestowing dignity
upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the
Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian
makes daily and hourly, contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God’s greater
glory. Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her exhortation is: Do what
you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of
failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of
the Gothic schools of architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labor of inferior minds; and
out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise
up a stately and unaccusable whole.

§ XI. But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the Greek, that it
intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is
a noble character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the relative dignities
of the nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher;
not considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be preferable to man,
because more perfect in their functions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the
works of man, those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those which are, in their
nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show
through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be seldomest seen in
their best form. The wild grass grows well and strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is,
according to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And therefore, while in all
things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set
the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to
esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honorable defeat;
not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But,
above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check, by severe
requirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, still more, how
we withhold our admiration from great excellences, because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in
the make and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labor, there
are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps
of thought, there are, even at the worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or
torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take them in their feebleness, and
unless we prize and honor them in their imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And
this is what we have to do with all our laborers; to look for the thoughtful part of them, and get that out
of them, whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best
that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. Understand this clearly: You can
teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy
and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find
his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot
find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he
thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being.
But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.

§ XII. And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the
creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of
tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make
their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must
unhumanize them.

NOTE

1 The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which the inferior detail becomes
principal, the executor of every minor portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as
great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and in the endeavor to endow him with
this skill and knowledge, his own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a
wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully inquire into the nature of this form of
error, when we arrive at the examination of the Renaissance schools.
 196 MATTHEW DIGBY WYATT

from The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century (1851)

As the style debate was unfolding along the professional front, another major venue for spirited
discussion was prompted by the Great London Exhibition of 1851. The event was the brainchild of Henry
Cole, who in the 1840s had authored a series of children’s books called the Summerly Home Treasury
series. The books were notable in that Cole commissioned a number of respected artists – among them
Richard Redgrave – to do the illustrations. Out of this venture, Cole created Summerly Art Manufactures,
an alliance of artists whose talents and designs Cole attempted to sell to manufacturing firms. On their
joint behalf, Cole put together annual exhibitions that were intended to display the fruits of British
industrial art; the increasing success of these exhibitions between 1846 and 1849 led to the decision by
Prince Albert to host an international exhibition in 1851. Cole by this date was working closely with
three other talented people – Matthew Digby Wyatt, Richard Redgrave, and Owen Jones – who
collectively controlled the decisions regarding the Great Exhibition. Cole was the superintendent in
charge of the affair, while the architect Wyatt was secretary to the Executive Committee and supervised
the construction of Joseph Paxton’s building. Redgrave was in charge of laying out the goods on display
and he chaired the head jury on design, while Jones wrote extensively on the event and devised the
decorative paint scheme for the iron structure. All also worked with Cole in 1849 in starting the Journal
of Design and Manufactures – a strident voice in demanding reform in the industrial arts and education.

Wyatt was descended from a long line of distinguished architects, going back to the neoclassicist
James Wyatt – whom Hope had dethroned. On his grand tour in the mid-1840s he focused on mosaics in
Germany, France, Italy, and Sicily, and in 1848 he produced a respectable folio study on the topic. He
was a regular contributor to the Journal of Design and it was probably he who, in an anonymous review
of Ruskin’s Seven Lamps in 1849, roundly condemned Ruskin’s backward leanings and ‘‘lopsided view of
railway architecture’’ – leading Ruskin forever to hold Cole personally in contempt. Wyatt and Ruskin
also differed in one other important respect: the former warmly embraced industrial progress and
advancing technology. In the Preface to his illustrated survey of the Great Exhibition, Wyatt
characterized the pace of industrial change as ‘‘double speed’’ and the Great Exhibition itself as a
beacon to the industrial age, just as the Olympic Games had been to Greece. This excerpt stresses the
influence of industrialization on art.

The almost incessant wars which so long devastated Europe, and which only terminated in 1815,
impeded the culture of those arts which have been emphaticallydesignated the ‘‘Arts of Peace.’’ Those
wars, however, had no sooner terminated than an extraordinary activity was manifested, more
especially in this country; and on looking back over the last six-and-thirty years, elements of change
must be found to have been introduced, calculated to derange the whole previous system of fabrication
and demand. The extension of the application of steam, gas, &c. to the thousand purposes upon which
they are now brought to bear, have scarcely less affected National Industry by changing the conditions
of supply, than has the spread of popular education by entirely altering the nature and peculiarities of
demand. The most remarkable feature of the movement to which we are alluding – that, namely, which
has taken place in this country during the last six-and-thirty years – is the universality of development
attained by combining the division of labour in manufacture with the aggregation of its results in
commerce. Sympathising, on the one hand, with the highest excellence both of art and manufacture,
modern English production has, on the other, effected a concurrent and unprecedented reduction in
price. An amount of thought and ingenuity equal to the origination of many of the monster engineering
works which form the pride, the boast, and the glory of the present day, has been bestowed upon an
attempt to reduce the cost of a common cotton print the fraction of a farthing per yard. Other nations
have not been idle while England has worked, and it is, therefore, little wonderful that, under the action
of a progress worthy to have enlisted the pens of men such as Babbage, Brougham, Macculloch, Porter,
&c. to record, the great festival, in which that progress finds its tangible embodiment, should speak
eloquently, chronicling the race which has been run by all nations for pre-eminence in a glorious, though
peaceful, competition.

Were it but possible now to procure some pictures vivid enough to recall a series of the principal
elements and objects which adorned those triumphs of industry of past ages to which allusion has been
made, how interesting and improving would the examination of such collections be: as it is, years of
study must now be given to realise in any degree the tangibilities of history, of which, unfortunately, too
few indications have survived to our day. That it is incumbent on every age to leave to its successor the
best possible data as to the fruits of its labours and experiences, few will feel disposed to deny; nor will
they, probably, be less likely to admit, that if ever an occasion existed, worthy of the best record the art
of the nineteenth century could create, that occasion most assuredly is to be met with in the Great
Exhibition of Works of Industry of 1851.

In the choice of the subjects for illustration the Author will not, it is hoped, expose himself to the
charge of having made in any way an invidious selection, or be supposed to pledge himself to an
expression of opinion on relative merits. His aim has been to engrave such specimens as he believed
would be likely to be practically useful in naturalising among us improvements in purity of form or
colour; in placing in juxtaposition the excellencies of various nations; in furnishing models for
manufacturers to study and surpass; and by means of which the Public may be enabled hereafter to test
the future progress of Industrial Art in this and other countries.
 197 RICHARD REDGRAVE

from ‘‘Supplementary Report on Design’’ (1852)

Richard Redgrave was not an architect, but a painter and royal academician, who for several years had
been allied with Cole in the matter of reforming industrial-art education. His particular expertise was
design, however, and in his official capacity as head juror for the Great Exhibition he distributed prizes
and published the formal exhibition report, which was quite critical of many of the artistic wares
displayed. Influential in Redgrave’s thinking were the design principles of Pugin, who was not at all
inimical to the efforts of the Cole Circle. But, as with Ruskin, there was also a crucial difference in their
thinking. Pugin was a gothicist, while those within the Cole circle firmly rejected the use of any past style
in the present, the Gothic style in particular.

We have spoken of design and of ornamental decoration. These are two essentially different
things, and it is highly necessary that they should, from the first, be considered as separate and distinct.
‘‘Design’’ has reference to the construction of any work both for use and beauty, and therefore includes
its ornamentation also. ‘‘Ornament’’ is merely the decoration of a thing constructed.

Ornament is thus necessarily limited, for, so defined, it cannot be other than secondary, and
must not usurp a principal place; if it do so, the object is no longer a work ornamented, but is degraded
into a mere ornament. Now the great tendency of the present time is to reverse this rule; indeed it is
impossible to examine the works of the Great Exhibition, without seeing how often utility and
construction are made secondary to decoration. In fact, when commencing a design, designers are too
apt to think of ornament before construction, and, as has been said in connexion with the nobler art of
architecture, rather to construct ornament than to ornament construction. This, on the slightest
examination, will be found to be the leading error in the Exhibition, an error more or less apparent in
every department of manufacture connected with ornament, which is apt to sicken us of decoration,
and leads us to admire those objects of absolute utility (the machines and utensils of various kinds),
where use is so paramount that ornament is repudiated, and, fitness of purpose being the end sought, a
noble simplicity is the result.

The primary consideration of construction is so necessary to pure design, that it almost follows
that, whenever style and ornament are debased, construction will be found to have been first
disregarded; and that those styles which are considered the purest, and the best periods of those styles,
are just those wherein constructive utility has been rightly understood and most thoroughly attended
to. A dissertation upon difference of styles would be out of place in this Report, as well as an expressed
preference for any particular one, since each, doubtless, contains some qualities of beauty or excellence
which will justify its use when restrained and regulated by fixed principles. It may not, however, be
improper to illustrate by a few remarks the opinion expressed above, since it involves important
principles connected with a proper consideration of works coming within the scope of the Report.
 ***

The objects in the Great Exhibition which range under the two first heads of this section belong to
almost every known style of ornament, and are so various in their character and uses that it is hardly
possible so to arrange them as to bring them under general criticism, or to define any principles which
would be universally applicable to their design. They consist, 1st, Of decorative treatments exhibited as
efforts of skill. 2ndly, Of restorations of parts of buildings, and of ornamental constructive parts. And,
3rdly, Of works intended to form integral parts of a building, but which are manufactured so as to be
adventitiously applied. Properly speaking, the design for the decoration of any building, both externally
and internally, is the province of its architect, since in this case decoration is essentially a part of
architecture. If the principle insisted upon in the prefatory remarks to this Report, that ornament is the
decoration of construction, be just, it will be apparent that it is hardly possible to judge of the one
without the other. In works wherein the decorator makes his own sham construction in order to
ornament it, as well as in those multiplied manufactured ‘‘parts’’ which form the staple ornament of a
large class of workmen in this line, we may admire the skill of the execution the cleverness of the details,
the excellence of the manufacture, or the imitation of early works of acknowledged merit; but to
appreciate ‘‘decoration’’ we must view it as awhole in the place for which it was specially designed, and
in harmony with the building whose construction it ornaments. Moreover, it must mainly originate in
local circumstances, and ought to have an individual significance. Here, however, the moment we enter
upon the varied inspection we become sensible how impracticable it is to lay down any general canon
for works which differ almost as widely as the beginning and end of time. In other ages of the world,
nations have been fortunate in so adapting design to prevailing wants, and in sympathy with existing
feelings, as to produce a national style. But in the present day men no longer attend to such
considerations; they are wholly without such guiding principles, and consequently are totally without a
characteristic style. They are satisfied with the indiscriminate reproduction of the architecture of Egypt,
Greece, and Rome, or of Christendom in any, or all, its marked periods. Originality they have none. One
man delights in a Gothic villa; another prefers the style of Italy: even India and China have their
advocates, who never consider that climate and use should rule the choice, rather than fantasy and
whim, and that there must be conditions arising from the present state of society, from fiscal
regulations, modern habits, &c., which, duly attended to, would, in addition to utility, be likely to result
in novelty and beauty.

It is this merely imitative character of architecture which has so largely contributed to

decorative shams, to the age of putty, papier mache ´, and gutta percha. These react upon architecture;
and, from the cheapness with which such ornament can be applied and its apparent excellence, the
florid and the gaudy take the place of the simple and the true. A popular writer describes the wearer of
cheap finery as having his jewellery ‘‘a size larger than anybody else;’’ and so it is with the cheap finery
of imitative ornament: it is always ‘‘a size larger’’ than it should be – bolder, coarser, and more
impudent than the true thing; it excites our contempt by its flashy tawdriness, so incongruous with the
meanness and vulgarity it is intended to adorn.

From this manufacture of ornament arises all that mixture of styles, and that incongruity of
parts, which, perhaps, is itself ‘‘the style’’ of this characterless age. Through it, also, the plasterer and
the paper-hanger too often usurp the place of the architect, to the certain dismissal of the mason and
the wood-carver; and ornament, perchance in itself unobjectionable, is sure in such hands to be grossly
misapplied.

198 OWEN JONES

from The Grammar of Ornament (1856)

The fourth member of the Cole Circle was the Welshman Owen Jones. On his extensive tour of southern
Europe in the early 1830s, he had been attracted to the polychromy of the Alhambra in Spain, for which
he prepared a lavish chromolithographic folio between 1836 and 1845. By the latter date he was also
practicing architecture in London, experimenting with a ‘‘Saracenic’’ or ‘‘Moorish’’ style, although this
enthusiasm would not be lasting. For the Journal of Design in 1851, Jones wrote a regular column,
‘‘Gleanings from the Exhibition of 1851,’’ in which he repeatedly applauded the high quality (especially
with regard to design and color) of the artistic goods on display from India, Tunis, Egypt, and Turkey. This
praise came with the condemnation of almost everything produced in Europe. In these ‘‘Gleanings’’
Jones also began to enunciate a series of principles or design propositions (later used by Cole as a
catechism at the School of Design), which would ultimately number 37 and stand at the head of his
Grammar of Ornament. His most important comments on the creation of a new architectural style,
however, appear in the final chapter of the book, in which he discusses the ornamental design of
‘‘Leaves and Flowers from Nature.’’ His thesis that a new style would arise in architecture out of a
naturalistic ornamental grammar – and conversely his rejection of the materialist premise of Garbett –
was quite unique at this time.

Although ornament is most properly only an accessory to architecture, and should never be allowed to
usurp the place of structural features, or to overload or to disguise them, it is in all cases the very soul of
an architectural monument.

By the ornament of a building we can judge more truly of the creative power which the artist
has brought to bear upon the work. The general proportions of the building may be good, the mouldings
may be more or less accuratelycopied from the most approved models; but the very instant that
ornament is attempted, we see how far the architect is at the same time the artist. It is the best
measure of the care and refinement bestowed upon the work. To put ornament in the right place is not
easy; to render that ornament at the same time a superadded beauty and an expression of the intention
of the whole work, is still more difficult.

Unfortunately, it has been too much the practice in our time to abandon to hands most unfitted
for the task the adornment of the structural features of buildings, and more especially their interior
decorations.

The fatal facility of manufacturing ornament which the revived use of the acanthus leaf has
given, has tended very much to this result, and deadened the creative instinct in artists’ minds. What
could so readily be done by another, they have left that other to do; and so far have abdicated their high
position of the architect, the head and chief.
 How, then, is this universal desire for progress to be satisfied – how is any new style of
ornament to be invented or developed? Some will probably say, A new style of architecture must first be
found, and we should be beginning at the wrong end to commence with ornament.

We do not think so. We have already shown that the desire for works of ornament is coexistent
with the earliest attempts of civilisation of every people; and that architecture adopts ornament, does
not create it.

The Corinthian order of architecture is said to have been suggested by an acanthus leaf found
growing round an earthen pot; but the acanthus leaf existed as an ornament long before, or, at all
events, the principle of its growth was observed in the conventional ornaments. It was the peculiar
application of this leaf to the formation of the capital of a column which was the sudden invention that
created the Corinthian order.

The principle of the foliation, and even the general form of the leaves, which predominate in the
architecture of the thirteenth century, existed long before in the illuminated MSS.; and derived as they
were, most probably, from the East, have given an almost Eastern character to early English ornament.
The architects of the thirteenth century were, therefore, very familiar with this system of
ornamentation; and we cannot doubt, that one cause of the adoption so universally of this style during
the thirteenth century arose from the great familiarity with its leading forms which already existed.

The floral style, in direct imitation of nature, which succeeded, was also preceded by the same
style in works of ornament. The facility of painting flowers in direct imitation of nature in the pages of a
missal, induced an attempt to rival them in stone in the buildings of the time.

The architectural ornament of the Elizabethan period is mostly a reproduction of the works of
the loom, the painter, and the engraver. In any borrowed style, more especially, this would be so. The
artists in the Elizabethan period were necessarily much more familiar with the paintings, hangings,
furniture, metal-work, and other articles of luxury, which England received from the Continent, than
they would be with the architectural monuments; and it is this familiarity with the ornamentation of the
period, but imperfect knowledge of the architecture, which led to the development of those
peculiarities which distinguish Elizabethan architecture from the purer architecture of the Revival.

We therefore think we are justified in the belief, that a new style of ornament may be produced
independently of a new style of architecture; and, moreover, that it would be one of the readiest means
of arriving at a new style: for instance, if we could only arrive at the invention of a new termination to a
means of support, one of the most difficult points would be accomplished.
 199 JOHN RUSKIN

from ‘‘The Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art over Nations’’ (1859)

If the Gothic Revival can be said to have had its last word in the nineteenth century, it would be this
single paragraph from the pen of Ruskin. Whereas ‘‘The Nature of Gothic’’ has long been regarded as
the definitive statement of Ruskin’s ornamental theory of architecture, the following remark (curiously,
given in a lecture at Cole’s Kensington Museum in January 1858) reaches to the heart of Ruskin’s
picturesque conception. The muchin-demand speaker is here discussing the unusually thin statuary on
the west front of Chartres, which he was displaying for his audience with a large drawing. Little needs to
be added to this statement, except to say that for Ruskin all great architecture was, or should be, a
transcendental experience. In Ruskin’s view the purpose of architecture is to draw the imperfect human
spirit into the sublime reaches of the divine.

These statues have been long, and justly, considered as representative of the highest skill of the twelfth
or earliest part of the thirteenth century in France; and they indeed possess a dignity and delicate
charm, which are for the most part wanting in later works. It is owing partly to real nobleness of feature,
but chiefly to the grace, mingled with severity, of the falling lines of excessively thin drapery; as well as
to a most studied finish in composition, every part of the ornamentation tenderly harmonizing with the
rest. So far as their power over certain tones of religious mind is owing to a palpable degree of
non-naturalism in them, I do not praise it – the exaggerated thinness of body and stiffness of attitude
are faults; but they are noble faults, and give the statues a strange look of forming part of the very
building itself, and sustaining it – not like the Greek caryatid, without effort – nor like the Renaissance
caryatid, by painful or impossible effort – but as if all that was silent, and stern, and withdrawn apart,
and stiffened in chill of heart against the terror of earth, had passed into a shape of eternal marble; and
thus the Ghost had given, to bear up the pillars of the church on earth, all the patient and expectant
nature that it needed no more in heaven. This is the transcendental view of the meaning of those
sculptures.