Stained Glass: Arts & Crafts to Art Nouveau

08 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Arts and Crafts, Decorative Arts, Norwich history

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After writing about medieval church glass in a few posts this article is about the stained glass that decorated secular buildings in the late C19th/early C20th century (plus a few latecomers).

Fanlight in office on All Saints’ Green, Norwich

But first, why the three hundred year gap in glass making until its revival in the mid-C19th? Norwich was once an important centre for medieval glass painting [1, 2]]. The kaleidoscopic appearance of this window, with a feathered angel playing a lute and a reflection of a disembodied hand doing the same above, suggests it was salvaged after one of the waves of destruction that followed the Protestant Reformation (C16-C17).

C15th Norwich School painted glass from All Saints Bale, Norfolk [3]

Medieval glass was almost exclusively religious. These C16th Norwich School roundels are refreshing for depicting non-biblical characters at work (plus a king enjoying the fruits of their labours)[4].

Four (of eight) ‘Labours of the Months’ roundels ca 1500-1525, attributed to John Wattock [4]. Clockwise from top left: ‘Pruning’, ‘A King Feasting’, ‘Harvesting Grapes’, ‘Sheltering from a Storm’.(c) Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Painted vs stained glass. ‘Painted glass’ refers to the process of painting the pattern with a solution of metallic salts (e.g. silver nitrate) before firing, as in the medieval glass above. ‘Stained glass’ also includes pieces of coloured glass arranged in a pattern and held together by strips of lead.

After the puritanical rampage there was little ecclesiastical glass-making until the great religious revival of the C19th. In 1861, William Morris founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co with his Pre-Raphaelite friends, including Rosetti, Ford Madox Brown and Burne-Jones. The company initially focused on church glass but some of their patterns were applicable to the home. Taste-makers were keen to bring something of the Gothic/Arts and Crafts Revivals into their houses and the fashion for domestic stained glass can largely be traced to Morris & Co, for whom Edward Burne-Jones was a main designer [5].

‘Penelope’, stained and painted glass panel, designed for Morris & Co by Edward Burne-Jones – a major designer for the firm ca 1864. (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This large house in Eaton, Norwich was built in 1905 as a late example of the English Domestic Revival style. The large window on the half-landing contains a series of nine painted-glass roundels based on the ‘Signs of the Zodiac’.

The remaining three signs of the zodiac are fitted into a round window to the side.

The hand-painted glass below is very much in the Arts and Crafts tradition. It is in the 1852 Heigham house built by Robert Tillyard, a leather merchant and one of the founders of the Norvic shoe factory [6, and previous post].

Stylistically, these paintings resemble Aesthetic Movement portraits of the 1870s-1880s. ‘Juliet’s’ strong chin, below, is reminiscent of Morris’ wife, Jane.

The top figure is unlabelled; the lower pair bear the names Juliet and Elaine. Could these be a romanticised version of Tillyard’s wife Julia and his daughter Ellen?

In contrast to the unique paintings of Tillyard’s family, the coloured glass panels that decorated so many late Victorian doors were made in large quantities. Realistically-painted birds and flowers are typical of domestic glass of this period.

Late Victorian stained glass door panels in the Golden Triangle, Norwich. The inset shows the left-hand panel containing painted bird and flowers.

Front door panel in a 1900 house Cecil Road, Norwich

Below, the flowers in the vase are not painted but assembled from individual pieces of coloured glass. The sinuous line of the leadwork and the move to abstraction anticipates the arrival of Art Nouveau.

Door panels in a house on Unthank Road

The house with the Arts and Crafts ‘Signs of the Zodiac’ glass (above) also has stained glass (below) containing the stylised Mackintosh rose of the Glasgow School (ca 1905). This nicely illustrates how glass design developed: from its early Arts and Crafts origins through to the Art Nouveau that persisted in some form until the First World War.

The highly stylised, and less sinuous, Mackintosh rose – the more muscular version of Scottish art nouveau.

Comparison between Victorian-looking stained glass and the new designs of the early C20th shows the simplification that occurred once Art Nouveau struck: patterns were less fussy and designs tended towards the abstract.

Left, a window from George Skipper’s Hotel de Paris, Cromer (1895) and, right, an Art Nouveau door panel from Unthank Road (ca 1910) illustrate different ways of handling a similar theme: the design on the left is mostly painted, the right is a mosaic of coloured glass set in lead.

The upper window lights around the dining room in the Hotel de Paris offer a scenic tour around Cromer. The glass paintings appear to have been skilfully copied from photographs.

Hotel de Paris Cromer dining room has painted roundels depicting sights around the area; here, the town itself

By contrast, Art Nouveau-influenced glass is hardly representational; flowers, for instance, were not necessarily identifiable, just generically floral.

Stained glass fanlight and door panel on Christchurch Road

Two panels, bearing stylised flowers, and a fanlight in stained glass, Park Lane, Norwich

As part of this simplification the lead itself became an intrinsic part of the overall pattern. Of practical importance, the relatively small amount of stained glass allowed more light into the hallway.

The colours here are subdued. Valentine Street, Norwich

Larger houses ca 1900 had room for six-panel windows on the half-landing. Mile End Road, Norwich

Front door panel from an Arts and Crafts house (built 1904) on Lindley Street, Norwich

Upper lights in a bay window of the same house on Lindley Street

Hall window of Lindley Street house showing opalescent glass panels

George Skipper’s Royal Arcade (see previous post) is the city’s most expressive Art Nouveau building. This semi-circular stained glass panel above the east entrance contains birds flying amongst trees bearing stylised daisy-like flowers.

East end of Royal Arcade 1899

The Royal Arcade, with Art Nouveau tiles designed by WJ Neatby of Doulton Lambeth, is decorated with peacocks. In this large stained glass window the repeated motifs resemble the eyes of peacocks’ feathers.

Back of The Royal Arcade, first floor Jamie’s Italian (not accessible to the public)

After the First World war, and the demise of Art Nouveau, stained glass door panels often depicted cosy, reassuring images, as in these adjoining houses in Cecil Road.

Door panels from adjoining houses ca 1920-30

Although the glaziers of the interwar years rejected a return to the pared down geometry of the Art Nouveau, they were content to use other, more representational images from around 1900, like the sailing ship (see post on The Sailing Ship as an Arts and Crafts Motif).

Left: interwar house on Kett’s Hill; St Stephen’s Road ca 1905.

The Gatehouse PH (subject of previous post) was built in 1934. This turreted building also looks back to the Arts and Crafts style, with cartoon-like medieval glass to match.

Montage of cameos from The Gatehouse PH, Dereham Road.

The Owl2.jpg

The benefits of reading. Above entrance of Mile Cross Branch Library, Aylsham Road, Norwich 1931

The benefits of drinking. Advertising glass at The Ribs of Beef PH at Fye Bridge,Norwich

The Norwich Society helps people enjoy and appreciate the history and character of Norwich. More details on their website www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk

Thanks to Keith Roberts, Grant Young and Gareth Lewis and all who let me photograph their glass.

Sources

Woodforde, Christopher (1950). The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century. Pub: Oxford University Press.
See previous post on Norfolk’s stained glass angels http://wp.me/p71GjT-t
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/bale/bale.htm
Vance, Francesca (2013). Stained Glass Roundels: the Labours of the Months.

In, Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia, exhibition catalogue (ed Ian Collins) SCVA.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O8452/panel-morris-marshall-faulkner/
Holmes, Frances and Michael (2013). The Story of the Norwich Boot and Shoe Trade. Pub: http://www.norwich-heritage.co.uk.

Entrances and Exits (Doors II)

16 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Art Nouveau, Georgian doors, Norwich architecture, Norwich buildings, Norwich history

In the previous post I covered Kent and Stephenson’s [1] selection of twenty Tudor-to-Georgian doorways still standing after the war (1948). In walking around Norwich I photographed many more doorways; here is my own selection of twenty (plus one from Great Yarmouth).

In 1871 Thomas Jeckyll, a leading light in the Japanese-influenced Aesthetic Movement, designed an extension for High House, Thorpe St Andrew. The brackets supporting the canopy were carved in a loose Jacobean Revival style [2] but perhaps of greater interest to Jeckyllites are the terracotta panels above the door – probably of Cosseyware from Gunton’s Brickyard in nearby Costessey (covered in a recent post). The rectangular panel contains the initials of client Thomas Birkbeck while Jeckyll’s own initials are transformed in a Chinese-inspired roundel to the right.

No 1 High House, Thorpe St Andrew, Norwich

This house below was designed in Queen Anne Revival style around the turn of the C19th/20th. Like other Arts and Crafts houses in the city built in the QAR style this house has characteristic smaller panes at the tops of the windows. However, this house is distinguished by the quality of its doorway with hooded canopy carried on carved brackets and slim columns.

34 St Stephens Road, Norwich

Until recently, the magnificent shop front in Upper St Giles belonged to an unmodernised chemist’s. It dwarfs the small Georgian-style doorway to the side whose mystery is enhanced by the purple paintwork (Purpleheart 188 by Little Greene).

76A Upper St Giles, Norwich

The frontage for the Salvation Army on St Giles Street may appear to be hewn from granite but in reality is composed of Coade Stone – a weather-proof ceramic invented by Eleanor Coade (b 1733). The rusticated appearance is produced by cut-back joints and the worm-like tracks on the vermiculated surface (vermiculi = little worms; vermicelli = tastes like little worms). The head on the keystone is thought to be “classically-inspired”; suggestions include Bacchus or perhaps a Greek philosopher.

Salvation Army. 36 St Giles Street, Norwich

The frontage of the Citadel was originally built in 1892 as Mortimer’s Hotel. Around 1900 it was known as the Opera House Hotel probably because it was used by performers from the Grand Opera House opposite (now the site of St Giles car park).

St Giles' St 34 former Mortimer's Hotel [5278] 1969-08-16.jpg

34-36 St Giles Street, Norwich (c) George Plunkett Archive. Photographed 1969. The gates beneath the white-painted single bay to the left were the entrance to their Citadel before the Salvation Army also bought the five-bayed Mortimer’s Hotel .

Princes Street is full of gems. At first glance Numbers 16 and 18 appear to be identical twins but 18 is slimmer. The alternating blocks on the architrave to the sides of the doors, and the blockiness of the wedge-shaped voussoirs and keystone above, are typical of the so-called Gibbs surround.

16-18 Princes Street, Norwich.

This fine, painted house is at the bottom of Cow Hill at the junction with Pottergate. The Georgian doorway, with its simple triangular pediment supported on scrolled brackets, is – in Norfolk dialect – seriously ‘on the huh‘. Of course, this is part of its considerable charm.

95 Pottergate

Number 168 King Street is part of a row of C17 houses that formerly contained the Ship Inn. Above the partly blocked alleyway is a lintel on which is carved ‘Princes In’. It is thought this was re-cycled from the inn of that name that once stood in Princes Street, off Tombland.

168 King Street

The building below was once the home of John Harvey who, over the late 18th/early 19th centuries, became Sheriff, Mayor and High Sheriff. Norwich was famed for its shawl weaving, which is said to have been introduced to the city by Harvey in 1791. The rear of the building has a fine central bay whose three floors are rhythmically related. The ‘blind’ arch of the three-part Venetian door on the ground floor is mirrored in the Venetian window above (where the arched central light is typically the taller of three), and is topped by the semi-circular Diocletian window on the third floor.

Gladstone House (rear), 28 St Giles Street

The rear doorway of Gladstone House (above) is – with the exception of the Venetian lights – relatively plain, with scrolled Ionic capitals supporting an open pediment. The Georgian front door, opening onto St Giles Street, is more imposing (below). The open base of the triangular pediment allows the intrusion of a nine-petalled fanlight of identical design to the one illustrated in the previous post for Thomas Ivory’s 13 All Saints’ Green. The break in the base of the open pediment leaves two floating parts to the cornice, which are carried on consoles; these console cornices are, in turn, supported by two fluted and banded columns, the whole being more decorative than the door to the rear.

Gladstone House (front), 28 St Giles Street

13 All Saints’ Green. Identical to the fanlight on Gladstone House

In about 1330, John Page built a hall house in King Street; one hundred years later the wool merchant Robert Toppes remodelled it to make the entire first floor his trading hall [3]. Then it was known as Splytts, now we know it as Dragon Hall. Toppes became a man of influence in the city. To ensure his spiritual wellbeing, or perhaps to celebrate his status as mayor and member of parliament, Toppes sponsored the stained glass ‘Toppes Window’ in the east end of St Peter Mancroft. My first post showed Toppes and female members of his family depicted in the donor panel of this medieval masterpiece. Part of Toppes’ C15th remodelling of Page’s house involved adding an “expensive stone surround” to the C14th ogee doorway [3], explaining the ‘door-within-a-door’ below.

Dragon Hall, Norwich

The fanlight at 25 St George’s Street is a reminder of times when the word ‘cosie’ could be used unironically. The lettering, sentiment and use of stained glass suggest a date in the early part of the C20th.

25 St George’s Street, Norwich

Jenny Lind (‘The Swedish Nightingale’) was enormously popular in the mid C19th. The profits from three concerts she gave in Norwich helped provide for an infirmary for sick children. The original playground in Pottergate was bombed in the Second World War while children were in the bomb shelter yards away. In 1972 the 70-year-old gate was moved to a new playground in Union Street near the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. The owner of the nearby Littlehaven Coffee Co remembers being one of a line of children recovering in bed after having their adenoids taken out in the Jenny Lind Wing. But the re-siting of the hospital from Newmarket Road to Colney in 2001 left the gateway marooned. Still, it is a fine monument. The classically-influenced stone arch is decorated with blue and green mosaic; the Art Nouveau gates, complete with ‘spade’ cut-outs, were made by Boulton and Paul of Norwich – another target of German bombs.

Jenny Lind gateway 2016

The Jenny Lind gate when in Pottergate 1902-1972. (c) Picture Norfolk

Another commemorative arch is at the entrance to the James Stuart Garden at Recorder Road/St Faith’s Lane, off the bottom of Prince of Wales Road. The gardens were laid out by the Norwich architect Edward Boardman in 1922 in memory of James Stuart, Privy Councillor, of Carrow Abbey (d 1913). It would have been built sooner but for the First World War. The coat of arms on the fascia of the memorial gate is that of the Stewart clan; the Scottish connection is underlined by the thistle in the left-hand spandrel, echoed by the English rose on the opposite side. The renaissance style and use of botanical swags suggests this to be a late example of the English Domestic Revival style.

Politics aside, this is one of my favourite doorways, not for the door itself – which is unexceptional – but for the Art Nouveau surround which elides into the magnificent Royal Arcade around the corner, designed by George Skipper. The Parian Ware tiles were designed by W J Neatby at Doulton’s Lambeth Pottery.

Royal Arcade, Norwich

Despite stumbling around Norwich for many years I had never come across Crown Road, behind the Agricultural Hall, off Market Avenue. The proximity to the former major cereal trading house seems to account for the name – Cereal House – emblazoned on the door itself and, hammering home the point, the sculpture of three wheat-sheaves above the door. This sculpture, apparently cast in bronze, is notable but appears at the expense of the heavily-carved Georgian doorcase that was still present in the 1960s (see further below).

Cereal House, 33-34 Crown Road

Crown Rd 34 Georgian doorway 1962-09-08.jpg

34 Crown Road 1962 (c) georgeplunkett.co.uk

Number 2 Cathedral Close was built by Thornagh Gurdon who wrote a history of Norwich Castle. The house is set inside the cathedral precincts on Almary Green. The ‘Mary’ part of this name could be misleading since it is a corruption of Almonry Green, a reference to the place where the almoner once doled out bread and alms. The entrance to this mid-C18th house is imposing since you have to ascend the stone staircase required to rise above the basement. Given the size of the doorway overall the scrolled Ionic columns are rather slim, set against a rusticated surround. According to Pevsner and Wilson [4] the rounded segmental pediment is “a rarity in Norwich”. (‘Segmental’ in this context means based on a segment of a circle).

No 2 Cathedral Close, Norwich

Numbers 2 and 3 Cow Hill were built in the late C17th as a single range beneath six gables [4]. The architectural detailing and decoration are unified, except for the key features of the front elevation – the doors. The differences in door style are relatively minor (e.g., one has fluted columns, the other fluted pilasters) but it is the size of No 3’s doorway that stands out. Yes, it is further down the hill, requiring extra steps up to the threshold but then the doorway shoots up beyond its neighbour so that the triangular pediment breaches the string course. From the base of the first step to the apex of the pediment the door is less than half the total height.

Numbers 2 and 3 Cow Hill, Norwich

Samson and Hercules House in Tombland is thought to have been built in 1657 [4] on the site of an earlier building made for Sir John Fastolf (the presumed inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff). The Georgian-style porch is supported by the two heroes, Samson (left) and Hercules (right). Samson holds the jawbone of an ass in one hand and in the other a small animal, which looks like a lamb or a kid although closer inspection reveals a bushy tail that could not have belonged to either. The animal is a fox and alludes to the biblical story that Samson caught 300 foxes (probably jackals) and tied their tails together in pairs so that they could trail a burning torch between them (Judges 15:4). Those of us concerned about advertising a lobster restaurant by painting historical figures lobster red can extract some consolation from knowing that the figures are replicas – the original C17th figures having been replaced in 1999. Even so …

Samson and Hercules House, Tombland, Norwich

Showing one Falstaffian house provides the excuse for showing another – a favourite of mine. In a previous blog I mentioned Fastolff House in Great Yarmouth, a striking art nouveau building designed by the local architect ‘Concrete’ Cockrill. The patina’ed bronze door does look like the entrance to a mausoleum.

Fastolff House, Regent Street, Great Yarmouth

Norwich is so rich in historic buildings that I could have selected many other ancient doorways. Most are prized and well-maintained but a significant number are unloved. For example, 41 All Saints’ Green is a large five-bayed merchant’s house built in the late C18th [4]. In 2010 the Norwich Evening News reported that this building had been empty for some time since last used as a dental practice. It is still empty and the fine Doric doorcase is showing signs of neglect. In 2016 the building appears on the Norwich City Council’s Heritage at Risk Register. The Norwich Preservation Trust, who have a fine record of intervention in such cases, is also keeping a watchful eye.

41 All Saints’ Green, Norwich

Number 33 Bethel Street has one of the city’s finest Georgian doorways with an impressive Doric entablature containing martial arms on the frieze. Unfortunately, there appear to be no plans to restore this building, which is described on the council’s at-risk register as “Poor condition. Long-term vacant building”. Shame!

33 Bethel Street, Norwich

Next post: Flint buildings (Sign up for free email alerts)

Sources

Kent, Arnold and Stephenson, Andrew (1948). Norwich Inheritance. Pub: Jarrold and Sons Ltd., Norwich
Susan Weber Soros and Catherine Arbuthnott (2003). Thomas Jeckyll, Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York. Pub: Yale University Press.
Matthews, Richard.(2013). Robert Toppes. Medieval Mercer of Norwich. Pub: The Norfolk and Norwich Heritage Trust.
Pevsner, Nikloaus and Wilson, Bill (1997 ). The Buildings of England. Norfolk I: Norwich and North-East.Pub: Yale University Press.

I thank Jonathan Plunkett for permission to reproduce three images from the George Plunkett archive. I am also grateful to Clare Everitt for permission to reproduce the image from Picture Norfolk. Thanks, also, to Richard Matthew for information about the Dragon Hall doorway.

Art Nouveau in Great Yarmouth

25 Friday Mar 2016

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

≈ 10 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, 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.

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.

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

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

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

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’.

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.

George Gilbert’s Circus. Courtesy of Colin Tooke.

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

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

… but later building obscured it from the road.

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 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.

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

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.

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].

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.

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 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.

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

Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Yale University Press. See pages 161 and 509.
http://tilesoc.org.uk/tile-gazetteer/norfolk.html
Morris, Barbara (1989). Liberty Design. Octopus Books Ltd.
Kelly’s Directory of Norfolk 1904, page 45.
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.

Skipper’s Art Nouveau Building

12 Saturday Mar 2016

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

≈ 7 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].

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.

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].

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 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.

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…

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

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]

However, 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.

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.

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’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

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].

‘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

Sources

Harvey, John (1988). Cathedrals of England and Wales. Pub, Batsford Ltd, London.
Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill (1999). The Buildings of England, Norfolk vol 2. Pub, Yale University Press.
Pevsner, Nikolaus (1975). Pioneers of Modern Design. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Bussey, David and Martin, Eleanor. (2012). The Architects of Norwich: George John Skipper, 1856-1948. Pub, The Norwich Society.
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]
Salt, Rosemary. (1988). Plans for a Fine City (Victorian Society East Anglian Group, Norwich).
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.
http://tilesoc.org.uk/tile-gazetteer/norfolk.html
https://www.fulltable.com/vts/aoi/n/neatby/a.htm

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~ History, Decorative Arts, Buildings

Tag Archives: Art Nouveau

Stained Glass: Arts & Crafts to Art Nouveau

Entrances and Exits (Doors II)

Art Nouveau in Great Yarmouth

Skipper’s Art Nouveau Building

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