context

54 C O N T E X T 1 7 9 : M A R C H 2 0 2 4 them, all named Ruskin. His work is still relevant to thinking about cultural heritage and building conservation. But Ruskin admitted that he did not consider that he had reached a balanced position on any subject unless he had contradicted himself at least three times. His writing was variously eloquent, inspiring, overblown and opaque. He is accused of combining an understanding of the value of historic buildings and places with a narrow- minded fetishism for materials. Gill Chitty’s book focuses on Ruskin’s writing on architecture and buildings, and landscape and cultural heritage. She presents six essays of her own, each followed by an extract from Ruskin’s writing on art, architecture or culture. Her essay on ‘Restoration and conservation futures’, for example, explains Ruskin’s theories of perception and his aims for The Seven Lamps of Architecture . Chitty discusses how his ideas on preservation connected and, at times, conflicted with those of his contemporaries. She suggests how his own thinking was transformed in the hands of others and sets it in the context of current thinking on heritage futures. The Ruskin extract that follows that essay is from The Opening of the Crystal Palace . Ruskin recalls that ‘in the year 1851, when all that glittering roof was built, in order to exhibit the paltry arts of our fashionable luxury, the carved bedsteads of Vienna, and glued toys of Switzerland, and gay jewellery of France – in that very year, I say, the greatest pictures of the Venetian masters were rotting at Venice in the rain, for want of a roof to cover them, with holes made by cannon shot through their canvas.’ He goes on to propose alternative priorities. Chitty’s essay on ‘Ruskin on craft and labour’, showing how his ideas influenced the arts-and-crafts movement and the revival of traditional craft making, is followed by an extract in which Ruskin sets out three precepts for a well-made thing. Choose only necessary things made with inventiveness, he urged; expect a finish to have practical use or meaningful design intention; and make replicas only when needed as a record. ‘Is it that [Ruskin’s] words connect into something fundamental, the tactile experience of handling an object made with careful skill by another human, and the uncanny way it can connect over time?’ Chitty asks. ‘Or does he simply, but profoundly, expose the complex relationship between the work of the hand and the mind, between labour and ingenuity, between the way that a society produces things and its values?’ That thought prompts her to wonder how it would work to apply Ruskin’s three rules for ethical production to today’s conservation practice; and whether there is a line for future conservation thinking there, ‘to follow the path of craft practice into a different modernity.’ Chitty’s essays are superb and her extracts from Ruskin constitute an admirably short selection from the vast swathes of his work. There is a great deal of enlightenment to be found here and much thought will be provoked. At £90 for 176 pages and only a few illustrations, the book is ridicu- lously expensive. Rob Cowan, editor of Context Eloquent champions This is Architecture: writing on buildings Edited by Stephen Bailey and Robert Bargery, Unicorn, 2022, 112 pages, 48 colour and black-and-white illustrations, ISBN 978 1 914414 86 2, hardback, £25 The Royal Fine Art Commission (RFAC) was established in 1987 to advise the government on matters of public interest and aesthetics. It was replaced by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in 1999, which was later merged with the Design Council. Strangely, the RFAC is survived by the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, a charity that was set up in association with the RFAC to promote good design. Its Building Beauty Awards have been its principal activity over the past two years. It has also turned to commissioning books. This is Architecture is edited by Stephen Bayley, chair of the trust, and Robert Bargery, its director. Their intention is to ‘enhance popular appreciation of architecture and to celebrate those who are architecture’s eloquent champions.’ They do this by selecting examples of writing about architecture by a wide variety of authors, over 90 in number, chosen for the quality of their writing alone. Their criterion for inclusion is writing that is clear, instructive and (ideally) entertaining; and they have excluded the self-consciously clever and, above all, the turgid and jargon laden. Not all the subjects are great buildings, some are vernacular or quite commonplace, and not all the writers are associated with architecture. Obvious choices such as Ruskin, Summerson, Jane Jacobs, Pevsner, Reyner Banham, Robert Byron and Goethe are all there but so too are Virginia Woolf, Guy de Maupassant, Trollope, Ouida, André Gide and Will Self, all of whom, sometimes surprisingly, have something interesting to say about buildings. Several of the pieces are