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Monthly Archives: March 2016

Art Nouveau in Great Yarmouth

25 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, Decorative Arts

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Art Nouveau, Cockrill, Fastolff House, Great Yarmouth buildings, Yarmouth Hippodrome, Yarmouth School of Arts and Crafts

Two Art Nouveau buildings (and a surprising one)

If the architect George Skipper was to Norwich what Gaudi was to Barcelona (see previous blog) then, surely, RS Cockrill was to Yarmouth what Skipper was to Norwich. OK, the line from Barcelona to Great Yarmouth does seem rather tenuous but what all three architects shared was a desire to bring the new art to their native towns.

Ralph Scott Cockrill  designed several buildings in Great Yarmouth with a strong Art Nouveau flavour. When researching the Royal Arcade in Norwich as an example of this style I read in Pevsner and Wilson [1] that “only two commercial buildings deserve a place in any book on the subject (The Arts and Crafts) in England: the Royal Arcade … and Fastolff House in Regent Street, Great Yarmouth…“. I didn’t know it, went to see it, and it is tremendous.

Fastolff House_1

Fastolff House, Regent Street, Great Yarmouth. Built 1908, designed by Ralph Scott Cockrill.

Fastolff House is evidently named for Sir John Falstoff  – Shakespeare’s Falstaff – who was born in nearby Caister Castle. The olde worlde reference is appropriate for an Arts and Crafts building that, with bands of casement windows, was designed with Norman Shaw’s Old English Revival in mind. The outstanding examples of English Art Nouveau – The Royal Arcade, Norwich and The Edward Everard Printing Works, Bristol – achieve their stunning effect with polychrome tiles designed by Doulton’s Neatby. But here, Fastolff House is covered by a facade of monochrome grey faience whose effect depends upon three-dimensional sculpturing instead of illustration.

FH decor above door_1.jpg

The strongly three-dimensional moulding of the faience tiles above the front door contrasts with the low-relief tiles used in Skipper’s Royal Arcade, Norwich

RS Cockrill’s father John William Cockrill had an association with the Doulton’s Lambeth factory via his Cockrill-Doulton Patent Tiles so they seem an obvious candidate for the faience here. But Doulton’s archive has suffered over the years from fire and flood and there seems to be no record that they were associated with Fastolff House. Of course, other potteries were available. The impressive frontage of The Empire on the promenade, for instance, came from The Leeds Fireclay Company.

Fastolff House 1st floor_1.jpg

The decorative faience superimposed upon this Arts and Crafts building has been referred to as an “odd facade … with lively Germanic Art Nouveau” [2]. It is true that German Art Nouveau, like British, resisted the excesses of the whiplash line of France and Belgium but there are plenty of domestic sources for this restrained variant of Art Nouveau style – look no further than the front cover of The Studio …

The Studio 1898_A.jpg

Liberty’s of London used a wide variety of bird and tree patterns “recalling the designs of Voysey (see fabric design further down) and Knox … while others are in a typical ‘Glasgow style'”. Such Glaswegian motifs “were organic, but highly stylised, with … sinuous curves contrasting with taut, straight lines“[3]. This neatly summarises the style applied to Fastolff House.

Fastolff House Gable_1.jpg

The upper clerestory punctuated by heavily-undercut foliage around the gable. The roof tiles are green faience.

Fastolff House lanterns_1.jpg

The ‘lanterns’ in the ground floor windows may be a playful reference to pre-electric illumination used in Old English buildings

Fastolff House side door_1.jpg

The lights above the transom and the elongated stems of the flowers accentuate the proportions of the narrow side door

 

Fastolff House bronze door_1.jpg

The ‘W’ on the beautifully patinated side door probably refers to James Williment who developed this purpose-built office block [1].

The second Art Nouveau building in Great Yarmouth is The Hippodrome (1903).

The Yarmouth Hippodrome and the Blackpool Tower Circus are the only two purpose-built, permanent circus buildings remaining in Britain. The sawdust “ring (was) 45 feet in diameter (and) is so constructed as to be converted in a few minutes to a miniature lake of 60,000 gallons of water” [4]. The original mechanism that drops the floor and floods the ring still works and currently supports a ‘live action water show’.

Yarmouth Hippodrome_3.jpg

A busy and beautiful Art Nouveau facade but metal straps around the columns indicate the urgent need for restoration

The Hippodrome was built on the site of George Gilbert’s Circus.

Gilberts Circus_1.jpg

George Gilbert’s Circus. Courtesy of Colin Tooke.

When constructed, Cockrill’s  Hippodrome directly faced the promenade …

The Hippodrome Gt Yarmouth.jpg

Yarmouth Hippodrome 1911 (c) Great Yarmouth Local History and Archaeological Society

… but later building obscured it from the road.

Yarmouth Hippodrome.jpg

Yarmouth Hippodrome 2016

yarmouth hippodrome_1.jpg

The decorative surface of RS Cockrill’s Hippodrome is provided by buff-coloured terracotta moulded with various Art Nouveau motifs.

Face Hippodrome_1.jpg

Face of a young woman crowned by a wreath of heart-shaped honesty leaves – a common art nouveau motif. This and many of the following panels require urgent restoration.

peacocks_owls_1.jpg

A panel of stylised peacocks (above) and a frieze of owls (below)

faces_tree_1.jpg

Left: Above the capital of honesty leaves is a panel of figures with hair in smoke-like tendrils. Right: Terracotta block depicting a tree bearing the highly stylised leaves.

birds_tree hippodrome1.jpg

The design on this terracotta panel is strongly reminiscent of work by Voysey (below).       The different coloured tile cements further underline the urgent need for restoration.

 

Birds-in-a-tree was a favourite design of the architect CFA Voysey, which he reworked and updated in many different ways. He used these patterns on an enormous number of wallpaper and textile designs, ensuring their widespread dissemination [3].

voysey design1.jpg

Charles Francis Annesley Voysey. Fabric design 1898 (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The previous two buildings emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement of the nineteenth century and depend for effect on surface decoration. In the next building, by contrast, superficial decoration is suppressed (though not entirely) and looks forward to a twentieth century style of construction. The thread running through all three buildings is that they were designed by a Cockrill, except the third was produced not by Ralph Scott Cockrill but by his father John William (1849-1924). JW was born in Gorleston and was appointed to the local Board as Surveyor and (the rather Dickensian) Inspector of Nuisances. It is thought he picked up his other monicker of ‘Concrete Cockrill’ as a result of the concrete pavements he laid [5]. In 1912 he designed the School of Arts and Crafts, now restored as apartments. It is a handsome building but the local mayor ungraciously said it was “a lost opportunity with its austerely unlovely exterior“[5]. This should not be the lasting judgement because the building was an important pioneer of a new kind of architecture.

yarmouth school of art_1.jpg

School of Arts and Crafts with its austere north facade

At about this time Walter Gropius in Germany was expounding his revolutionary ideas of a modernist architecture in which conventional load-bearing walls are replaced by columns of concrete and steel that support large expanses of steel-framed glass. His Fagus Factory (with Adolf Meyer) of 1911-13 is an icon of the modernist movement that dominated C20th commercial building on an international scale.

Fagus-Werke_1.jpg

Fagus Shoe-Last Factory, Alfeld, Germany. Designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer 1911-1913

JW Cockrill’s Yarmouth School of Arts and Crafts (1912) illustrates many of these principles: the  flat roof, its steel frame, the extensive use of concrete, large expanses of glass and (for the most part) shunning of ornament mark it out as one of the first examples of modernist design in Britain.

 

yarmouth school of art doorway_2.jpg

The front facade bears the only decorative surfaces

 

JW Cockrill said that everything in this building was concrete except the doors … but he was working on it [5].

concrete cockrill plaque_1.jpg

Sources

  1. Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Yale University Press. See pages 161 and 509.
  2. http://tilesoc.org.uk/tile-gazetteer/norfolk.html
  3. Morris, Barbara (1989). Liberty Design. Octopus Books Ltd.
  4. Kelly’s Directory of Norfolk 1904, page 45.
  5. Summers, David. The Building Cockrills of Yarmouth. Norfolk Historic Buildings Group Newsletter No25 Spring 2013. pp7-8.

 

I am grateful to David Summers, Judith Martin and Colin Tooke for their helpful advice.

 

 

 

 

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Skipper’s Art Nouveau Building

12 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Art, Arts and Crafts, Decorative Arts

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

AH MAckmurdo, Art Nouveau, Doulton tiles, Edward Everard, George Skipper, Norfolk Daily Standard, Royal Arcade Norwich, WJ Neatby

Art nouveau (the new art), le style moderne, Jugendstil (youth style), Secessionism, all refer to the newness of an art that, around 1900, broke away from academic tradition and – in some versions – emphasised the curved line of plant form. But this sensuous, rather decadent, style with its characteristic whiplash line might have had its origins in religious architecture.

Six hundred years earlier the curved line was being used to design the stone tracery decorating the tops of Gothic windows. Instead of scribing complete circles with his compass to produce, for example, the clover-leaf trefoils of the earlier Geometric phase,  the master mason of the Curvilinear period would join separate arcs to produce the sinuous S-shape of the ogee [1].   Nikolaus Pevsner described this window below as, “The best Decorated example in Norfolk” [2].

StMarySnettsiham.jpg

The curvilinear tracery of St Mary Snettisham, Norfolk. Photo: Spencer Means, Creative Commons

Compared to the sinuous line of the English Curvilinear period the continental version seems even more convoluted, reflexing back on itself to produce the flame-like curves of the Flamboyant period.

MilanCathedral.jpg

Flamboyant window in Milan Cathedral. Photo: Mary Ann Sullivan

The reversed curve may therefore have been deeply embedded in the architectural folk memory and, in Britain at least, reawakened  by the Victorian Gothic Revival. However, the first time that the flexuous line emerged as a recognisably art nouveau design was when this book cover by the English designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo was published in 1883. It was, said Pevsner, “the first work of art nouveau which can be traced” [3].

MackmurdoWren1883.gif

Book cover for Wren’s City Churches by A. H. Mackmurdo 1883.

Norfolk readers may appreciate Mackmurdo’s early Art Nouveau ‘Cromer Bird’ pattern, which used a similar undulating line.

cromer bird.jpg

A.H.Mackmurdo 1884. ‘Cromer Bird’ design for block-printed cotton.

In medieval Gothic architecture even the most curvaceous designs of the Curvilinear period remained symmetrical: either radially symmetrical (as in the second figure above) or with left/right bilateral symmetry as in the first example of a Decorated window. But in designing this chair-back Mackmurdo resisted the urge for symmetry.

Mackmurdo chair.jpg

Mackmurdo chair of 1883-4. The seat and legs are entirely conventional but the fretwork splat is wonderfully asymmetrical – almost a 3D version of the ‘Wren’ book cover above.

The ‘Wren’ book cover might imply that Art Nouveau originated in Britain but in reality the new art was an amalgam of styles that emerged at about the same time across Europe and America. However, Art Nouveau never fully emerged as a dominant architectural style here, perhaps being thought too decadent and sensuous for Protestant Britain. The major exception was in Glasgow where Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s buildings are masterpieces of a new style, although his version was more rectilinear and geometric than these snaking lines displayed in Victor Horta’s  Hotel Tassel, Brussels.

1024px-Tassel_House_stairway.jpg

Hotel Tassel, designed by Victor Horta, Brussels 1893-4.

Compared to the pent up energy of the whiplash line unleashed in continental architecture the rare examples of Art Nouveau buildings in England appear restrained.

The Royal Arcade in Norwich is a nationally important example…

NeatbyNorwichArcade_1.jpg

Royal Arcade Norwich 1899. Architect GJ Skipper, designer WJ Neatby of Doulton Lambeth Pottery

The photograph below, taken in 1955,  shows the ground floor of the shop that flanked the left entrance to the arcade.

Royal Arcade 1955_Plunkett.jpg

The Royal Arcade 1955 (c) georgeplunkett.co.uk

This shop to the left of the Back of the Inns entrance was known as The Arcade Stores. Originally a Bullards pub, Skipper integrated it into the arcade. Below, we can just make out tiles bearing bunches of grapes (left) but they didn’t survive the destruction of this part of the building when converted to a butcher’s shop in the 1960s (see oldcity.org.uk).

ArcadeStoresNorwich_1.jpg

The Arcade Stores 1956. (c) RIBA

Another jewel-like building with polychrome Doulton tiles by the same designer is the Edward Everard printing works in Bristol.

EverardsBristol_Ribapix_1.jpg

Everard’s printing press Bristol, with tiles by Doulton’s WJ Neatby. Only the facade survives, underlining the relative importance attached to exterior versus the interior (c) RIBA

Both built at about 1900, Everard’s and the Royal Arcade share obvious similarities derived from the Doulton tile designer William James Neatby. The figure to the left of the first floor windows of the printing works is the inventor of the printing press Johannes Gutenberg: to the right is William Morris who revived the art of printing with his Kelmscott Press. This in turn has resonances with another building by George Skipper in Norwich, The Norfolk Daily Standard offices in St Giles Street.

NflkDlyStandard_1.jpg

Norfolk Daily Standard offices  (1899-1900), architect George Skipper.

This Skipper gem is decorated with Doulton brown terracotta tiles. Although there are minor Art Nouveau touches it is not really an example of that movement for its influences are more eclectic [4]. But, recalling those two figures of pioneers on the Everard building (and the tendency of architects to borrow a good idea), the Norfolk Daily Standard building bears portraits of  William Caxton (the first English printer) and Daniel Defoe (one of the first English journalists and novelists).

caxton_defoe_1.jpg

William Caxton (printer) and Daniel Defoe (writer) decorate the Norfolk Daily Standard building.

These newspaper offices and the Royal Arcade are prime examples of Skipper’s imaginative buildings, designed about 1900, that brought a modern dimension to the largely medieval and Georgian-style city. As Sir John Betjeman said:

“He was to Norwich what Gaudi was to Barcelona”

Betjeman probably had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he compared Norwich and Barcelona but, don’t forget, Skipper was big in Cromer too. [5]

It was Neatby’s colourful tiles rather than the underlying architecture that caused the press to say the arcade was like a “fragment from the Arabian Nights dropped into the heart of the old city” [6].  At that stage, Neatby had been Head of Doulton’s architectural department for about ten years.

Sir Henry Doulton (d 1897) made his money from the manufacture of glazed stoneware drainage pipes at a time when there was an increasing demand for better sanitation. By 1870 the same clay used for sewage pipes was being used by students who came to his workshop from the nearby Lambeth School of Art to produce what became the enormously popular Doulton Art Pottery.

my pottery.jpg

Left, A Doulton slip-cast stoneware vase in which the pattern is applied by the mould. Centre, a Doulton stoneware vase that has been turned on a wheel with the pattern applied by hand. Right, a transfer-printed, hand-painted vase (factory unknown) showing the more continental whiplash line.

Neatby was an experimentalist and he helped develop Doulton’s Carraraware, a dense white body made to look like marble [7] that was used to clad the external facing of the Royal Arcade.

Neatby_angel_norwich.jpg

This winged angel guarding the east entrance to the Royal Arcade is a reference to the Angel Inn that once stood on this site [4].

The interior was decorated with another product –  a matt material called Parian ware, which was also developed by Neatby [7].

Neatby peacock.jpg

Neatby_Norwich_tiles.jpg

ConservativeClub Norwich_2.jpg

Neatby’s side entrance to the arcade – Parian ware with a raised sinuous line.

Some particularly  attractive tiles are found in the spandrels of the central arches.  These panels depict a young woman holding a circle that, in original illustrations, contained a sign of the zodiac [7].

Neatby_female figure_1.jpg

working cartoon neatby_1.jpg

Neatby’s working cartoon for the Royal Arcade tiles. From the Proceedings of the Society of Designers c1900.[8]

The image is strongly reminiscent of the women illustrated by Alphonse Mucha in his lithographic posters; for instance Salome (below), published two years before the Royal Arcade was opened.  Mucha’s free-hand drawings for his lithographs use a detailed, sinuous line but Neatby’s freedom was restricted by his medium: he had to pour enamel glazes into indentations impressed into the mould as it was formed [8]. An early article noted, “Everyone knows that enamel painting on pottery is not so ‘go as you please’ as oil or watercolour painting … the actual technique (is) exceedingly difficult” [9].

alphonsemucha_salome_1.jpg

‘Salome’ by Alphonse Mucha, 1897 (c) backtoclassics.com

Postscript

 Many years ago I bought a framed tile in a junk shop in Cambridge. The buff-coloured  sanitary-ware tile, impressed with ‘Doulton’,  was illustrated with the head of a young woman. Much later I realised she was based on Mucha’s Salome, but flipped left/right.

Mucha_like tile_1.jpg

mucha_salome.jpg

Sources

  1. Harvey, John (1988). Cathedrals of England and Wales. Pub, Batsford Ltd, London.
  2. Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill (1999). The Buildings of England, Norfolk vol 2. Pub, Yale University Press.
  3. Pevsner, Nikolaus (1975). Pioneers of Modern Design. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
  4. Bussey, David and Martin, Eleanor. (2012). The Architects of Norwich: George John Skipper, 1856-1948. Pub, The Norwich Society.
  5. Hitchings, Glenys (2015).George John Skipper (1856-1948). The Man who created Cromer’s Skyline.  Pub, Iceni Print and Products. [Available from City Bookshop Norwich http://www.citybookshopnorwich.co.uk]
  6. Salt, Rosemary. (1988).  Plans for a Fine City (Victorian Society East Anglian Group, Norwich).
  7. Atterbury, Paul and Irvine, Louise (1979). The Doulton Story. A souvenir booklet produced originally for the exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum London 30 May- 12 August 1979.
  8. http://tilesoc.org.uk/tile-gazetteer/norfolk.html
  9. https://www.fulltable.com/vts/aoi/n/neatby/a.htm

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  • Thomas Browne’s World
  • The angel’s bonnet
  • After the Norwich School
  • A few of my favourite buildings
  • James Minns, carver
  • The Norwich Banking Circle
  • Behind Mrs Opie’s medallion
  • Norwich: shaped by fire
  • Street Names #2
  • Street names
  • The Norwich School of Painters
  • Going Dutch: The Norwich Strangers
  • The Captain’s Parks
  • Norfolk’s Napoleonic Telegraph
  • Catherine Maude Nichols
  • The Norfolk Botanical Network
  • City Hall Doors # 2
  • City Hall Doors # 1
  • Late Extra: The Norwich Pantheon
  • Pleasure Gardens
  • The absent Dukes of Norfolk
  • Nairn on Norwich
  • The Norwich Way of Death
  • Norwich: City of Trees
  • The Bridges of Norwich Part 2: Around the bend
  • The Bridges of Norwich 1: The blood red river
  • Norwich knowledge (libraries)
  • Street furniture: palimpsests
  • Putting Norwich on the map
  • Clocks
  • Faces
  • The Norwich coat of arms
  • New book: Colonel Unthank and the Golden Triangle
  • The Pastons in Norwich
  • Reggie through the underpass
  • Gildencroft and Psychogeography
  • Bullards’ Brewery
  • Post-medieval Norwich churches
  • The end of the Unthank mystery?
  • Barnard Bishop and Barnards
  • Public art, private meanings
  • Colonel Unthank rides again
  • Three Norwich Women
  • The flamboyant Mr Skipper
  • When Norwich was the centre of the world*
  • Arts & Crafts pubs in the C20th

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