From Publishers Weekly
An influential architect and designer in Britain's Arts and Crafts movement, Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857-1941) is best known for his white, roughcast houses with green slate roofs, models of economy, clarity, the use of natural materials and the harmony of a building and its surroundings. In this impressive, beautifully illustrated monograph, London-based architectural historian Hitchmough scrutinizes the English architect's cottages and grand houses; designs for offices, a factory, a school, a village hall; as well as his curvilinear furniture, metalwork and fresh, charming wallpapers, fabrics and textiles. Translating the critical philosophy of John Ruskin into simple, practical statements, Voysey invented a housing type at once fashionable, rooted in tradition and progressive in its insistence that all elements in the makeup of a dwelling be integrally linked. Hitchmough appraises the legacy of an individualist who, though he scorned modern architecture as ``false originality,'' has been hailed as a precursor of the modernist movement. Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

C. F. A. Voysey was one of the most renowned British architects from the 1890s until the outbreak of the First World War. His white-rendered houses with stone window-dressings and sweeping slate roofs combined clarity and simplicity with a sensual appreciation of natural materials. However, it was his conviction that no detail of a house was too small to deserve the attention of its architect which led him to design everything from the plan of the garden to the handles on the kitchen-dresser. Voysey's belief that the house should embody 'Quietness in a storm, Economy of upkeep, Evidence of Protection, Harmony with surroundings, Absence of dark passages' placed him at the heart of the Arts and Crafts Movement, while the elongated simplicity of his furniture together with the fluid, undulating curves of his decorative designs made him a formative influence on Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Henry van de Velde and the Art Nouveau style. During the 1890s Voysey's reputation spread across Europe and America, only to be revived in the 1930s by John Betjeman, Nikolaus Pevsner and others in Britain, when he was hailed as a precursor of the Modern Movement. He was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1940 at the age of eighty-three. This monograph is illustrated with photographs specially commissioned from the photographer Martin Charles. Placed throughout the text, they form a comprehensive visual record of Voysey's work, as well as individual, detailed pictorial accounts of his major houses.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly