Pugin

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See also Gothic Revival, Gothic

Contents

Pugin's Influences

Pugin was born in 1812 to a wealthy mother from a well known family called the Welby's. His father had been a penniless artist from France when his married Pugin's mother.

He was home schooled and very well informed. As he was growing up he was constantly moving as his father often took the family on the road to teach his artist classes. At six years of age he was taken to see Lincoln Cathedral and was impressed by the flying buttresses and the sense that the stone work seemed free of gravity. He was impressed by the master craftsman's engineering honesty. They expressed the engineering feats in the design of the work such as the spines on a vaulted ceiling. His influence were also the Gothic architecture of northern France such as Rouen Cathedral.

In contract he deplored the Georgian architecture of the day. He saw symbolism in the pilasters that did not actually hold the building up, the stucco facades that hid plain brick, the impressive long facades that hid a house that may be just one room deep. He found it dishonest and immoral and a metaphor of the immorality and decadence if the period and extremes of wealth and deprivation that were part of the early part of the Industrial Revolution.

Contrasts

Pugin wanted a moral revolution and vision expressed in architecture. In his first book written when he was twenty-four he expressed his hatred for Nash's Buckingham Palace and Soane's British Museum. From here he started to design churches, monasteries, convents, schools and a few private homes. Later in 18?? he would complete St Giles, Cheadle for John Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury. The interiors are resplendent harking back to the great Gothic churches of the Middle Ages. Every where you eyes rest in the church is designed in a way to move you. For instance he revived an ornamental Rood Screen to signify where Heaven met Earth. He collaborated widely in the building of the church employing John Crace on the interiors, Herbert Minton on the floor ceramics and John Hardman on the metal work. On this building and others in the future he would use master craftsman John Myers.

St Giles Church, Cheadle

True Principals of Pointed Architecture

In 1841 he wrote his second book. He outlined six principals of Gothic architecture that needed to be incorporated into the building design. In his designs everything bit of construction should mean something and express his honesty. For instance hidden hinges were not for him. Hinges were visible, large and intricate. You cans see the influence of Pugin's in todays post-modern architects such as Richard Rogers and Norman Foster

Pugin's conversion to Catholicism

His mother had been a devout Low Church protestant but the evangelical preaching in austere surroundings led to to eventually loathe the Low Church values. He started to design theatre sets that included the one for Shakespeare's Henry VIII at Covent Garden.

Later life and the Palace of Westminster

After his wife of 4 months died giving birth and the death of his Mother and Father in short order he converted to Catholicism. Despite this he was invited by Charles Barry to work on the new Palace of Westminster after he burned down on 1834. After it was decided that the new design would be Gothic, he helped Barry win the commission and set to work on the elaborate interiors. You can see his influence in the heavy use heraldry, carvings, sculpture, gildings covering every inch of the rooms.

Pugin was not a good publicist for his reputation and for a hundred years was barely mentioned in association with the new parliament. While Barry pocketed 20,000 pounds for the commission, Pugin received just 800 pounds. Ironically work was now drying up as the Church of England preferred a new breed of protestant Gothic architects.

His misfortunes and poor health continued to dog him. His second wife died and his eye sight was failing him. He wrote his third and final book An apology for the revival of Christian Architecture and built himself a new house in his adopted home of Ramsgate called The Grange. This was no flat Georgian facade but a swirl of rooms emanating fro the colorful hallway. It is very intricate down to the Gothic doorknobs and escutcheons


The Grange


For the 1851 Great Exhibition he designed a medieval court. It was a great hit with the public bit won no prizes. He was distraught and buried himself in the every more expensive church he was building next to his house. There was one last swansong for Pugin. In 1850 Barry approached him to design the not yet built Clock Tower at the Palace of Westminster. It would become the defining element of the Palace and the symbolism of Parliament and Britain. He did not live to see it built. In 1852 he suffered yet another mental breakdown and was confined to Bedlam. He returned home but died aged forty on the 14th September 1852. He is buried in his church at St Augustin's.

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