Cotswolds Arts and Crafts Architecture - Meet the Author at Court Barn Museum

Catherine Gordon will be signing her new book Cotswolds Arts and Crafts Architecture at Court Barn Museum, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire GL55 6JE on Saturday 12th December between 2-4pm.
 
The Cotswolds glories in its stone vernacular buildings: the grey and golden limestone, the roofs of graded slates which reminded William Morris of a fish’s scales; all sorts of modest, serviceable buildings that have that rightness in the landscape.
 
In the 1870s William Morris leased the 16th and 17th century Kelmscott Manor, loving its grey and native feel. In the 1890s a young architect called Guy Dawber praised the simplicity and breadth of treatment of the Cotswold vernacular, proposing it as a good model for modern work. At this period, the Arts and Crafts movement encouraged architects to be sensitive to local traditions in their building work.
 
Catherine Gordon tells this story fully, breaking much new ground. She comes at her subject from different angles: building types, localities, repair and re-use. She tells us, not just about well-known figures like C. R. Ashbee, and the Barnsley brothers, but also about Alfred Powell who built, unusually, in wood and Detmar Blow whose life was dangerously balanced between high society and rural idyll. Her account is thorough and carefully written, and it is very welcome.
 
Catherine Gordon has a life-long interest in architecture and local history, and in particular the Arts and Crafts movement. This book represent a reappraisal of a favourite subject and a welcome return to familiar places. 

Source: Court Barn Museum