File:Lutyens houses and gardens (1921) (14740840926).jpg

Identifier: lutyenshousesga00weav (find matches)
Title: Lutyens houses and gardens
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Weaver, Lawrence, 1876-1930
Subjects: Lutyens, Edwin Landseer, Sir, 1869-1944 Architecture, Domestic Gardens
Publisher: London, Offices of "Country life", ltd. (etc.) New York, C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

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Text Appearing Before Image:
and good in its own right. Our quarrel with the retorers
is that in most cases they replaced authentic work by
mean and lifeless copies, in what they conceived to be more
reputable, because earlier, styles. That these clumsy
forgers made our national monuments ugly was an error in
taste : that in the process they destroyed the evidences of
national art was a crime. Sir Edwin(s record in this matter
is clean. His devotion to all authentic traditions of building
is so sincere and knowledgeable that any works of simplere
pair are done with the smallest renewals consistent with

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20 Repair of Old Houses
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stability and always with materials that accord with the
old work. His policy with regard to alterations and
additions to old buildings seems to me wholly right, though
it is by no means universally accepted. When he has built
a new wing to an old house, he has not sought to copy the
original exactly. While the addition has been in perfect
harmony with the early work, it has revealed to the expert
eye, though not necessarily to the casual observer, the fact
Text Appearing After Image:

8.—Porch, 7 St. James's Square.

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The Greek Spirit 21
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that it is of the twentieth century. Because he exerts
a sedulous care in the choice of materials that conform in
texture and colour with old standards, and because he has
established in his building a quality of craftsmanship that
recalls ancient methods, the juxtaposition of new and old
achieves a real unity. Chapters X to XII and XVI deal
mainly with houses in which the right relation of new to
old has been the testing factor of success.
When considering the later development of Sir Edwin's
work, seen in such houses as Great Maytham and The Saluta-
tion (Chapter XV) it is to be noted that, austere though it
be, it shows no sign of being influenced by that Greek revival
which we associate with such names asElmes and Cockerell.

The Greek spirit is an affair of ideals rather than of mould-
ings. Walter Pater, with his usual delicacy of insight, put
the case with a fine appreciation of underlying facts when he
said : " Breadth, centrality, with blitheness and response are

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