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"If we copy, the thing never looks right [and] the same occurs with regard to those buildings which do not profess to be copies; both they and the copies want spirit. They are dead bodies... We are at our wits."
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William BurgesWe have no architecture to work from at all; indeed, we have not even — William Burges
"We have no architecture to work from at all; indeed, we have not even settled the point de depart... our art... is domestic, and... the best way of advancing its progress is to do our best in our own houses... if we once manage to obtain a large amount of art and colour in our sitting-rooms... the improvement may gradually extend to our costume, and perhaps eventually to the architecture of our houses."
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William Burges
William Burges
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William Burges was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the P
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"Pugin says in one of his works that had he a cathedral to build, one of the first things he would do would be to set up a to turn the smaller columns."
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William BurgesQuote
"Use a good strong thick bold line so that we may get into the habit of leaving out those prettinesses which only cost money and spoil our design."
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William BurgesQuote
"Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones of industrial art which is now taking place."
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William BurgesQuote
"Allowing, therefore, the great usefulness of the Government Schools, the Exhibitions, and the Museums both public and private, the question now arises as to what are the impediments to our future progress. The principal ones appear to me to be three."
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William BurgesQuote
"The thirteenth century, in particular, was Burges’s chosen field, and he modelled his style of draughtsmanship on the famous sketchbook of in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris."
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William Burges