George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
in order to display all the resources which were at their command.
Now this is very poor architecture, very vile art; and it requires no
argument to prove that it is only the natural and certain result of
the attempt to use materials out of their proper place, and in a way
in which it was never intended they should be used. Far worse would
be an attempt to mould clay, so that it should counterfeit the work
of nature; and so, in addition to the destruction of all art by its
endless repetitions, insult God’s handiwork by counterfeiting stone
quarried from the bowels of the earth.
The Lübeck churches show us, however, in other respects, what great
things may really be done, and done well and naturally, in brick. You
may form mouldings to any extent, because each moulded brick tells its
own tale, does its own work; and mouldings, so far from not bearing
repetition, gain by it. All the windows in a noble church require
varied traceries, but it were as well that no two of them should vary
in their mouldings. Here, therefore, the reproductive power of the
moulder is most valuable; so, too, is it in all forms of ornament
(as, e.g., the billet, chevron, and the like) which become ornamental
only by repetition, and not in any way by reason of art or skill in
the man who works them. These are absolutely better in brick than in
stone, because, as no thought and no taste are necessary in the man who
carves them, it were better the human intellect should be as little as
possible deadened by working upon them. The windows of S. Katharine,
Lübeck, show how these moulded bricks may be used in conjunction with
stone traceries, and with admirable effect, when compared with the
attempts at tracery in brick which this and other churches here exhibit.
But one of the most important facts which we can learn here is, that
brick is not only good outside, but just as much inside a church. All
the Lübeck churches are built, inside and out, with red brick; most
unfortunately, this has all been whitewashed, but I think we may have
faith enough in the men who built them to be sure that they would not
have been built with brick had not the effect been good. For myself,
I am persuaded that they were right in so doing; because I have seen
in Italy the wonderfully solemn effect produced in this way, and have
since tested it myself. In truth, no red brick building should ever be
plastered inside, save where it is intended to introduce paintings of
some kind more brilliant than the colour of the bricks.
On the whole, therefore, though the brick work of Lübeck is far
inferior, in delicacy and beauty, to that which I have seen in Italy,
there is much to be learnt from it, and much proof to be obtained, if
proof be needed, that brick is really a most noble and serviceable
material, and one which, wherever it is the material of the district,
ought invariably and unhesitatingly to be used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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