8 C O N T E X T 1 3 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 about the fine post-war churches of Hans Feibusch and Thomas Ford. Feibusch was possibly the leading mural painter in Britain from the end of the second world war until the 1960s, having left Nazi Germany for Britain in 1933. Initially he designed posters for Shell, and obtained his first mural commission from the modernist architect Maxwell Fry. Feibusch went on to create murals in 12 new churches in collaboration with Ford, who was diocesan surveyor for Southwark. Joshua Mardell considers the careen of Rex Hakesworth, the exception to John Betjeman’s justifiable 1933 diatribe about the speculative builder who ‘buys some virgin fields… measures them out to get as many houses into them as possible… buys a few hundred doors, a few hundred window frames and some bricks. He hurriedly puts them up, nails some beams on the outside to give what he calls character to the house, regardless of local characteristics, with the result – long pinks strips like Euthymol toothpaste smeared across a field’. It sounds horribly familiar, apart from the ready supply of bricks, but Mardall was able to demonstrate just what could be achieved by the spec housebuilder with good design input. The issue also features the work of teacher and designer (of, among other things, tile murals in post-war schools) Peggy Angus (1904–93); and a celebration (the correct word, I think) of the high architectural quality of many 1950s, 60s and 70s municipal crematoria. Few crematoria built to these inspiring standards will be seen in future, as cremations move to the private sector, existing buildings struggle to meet EU emission regulations, and a quasi-vernacular aesthetic emerges to make such buildings indistinguishable from golf clubhouses and supermarkets. You may be reading this immediately prior to the opening, in October (until January 2015) of a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, ‘Anarchy and Beauty:William Morris and his legacy, 18601960’. The exhibition, the biggest on Morris since the V&A’s centenary survey of 1996, is being curated by biographer Fiona MacCarthy, vice-president of the Victorian Society and author of the magisterial William Morris: a life for our time, published in the same year. Morris appears on the cover of the most recent issue of The Victorian (No 46, July 2014). Inside, MacCarthy explains why he is not just a Great Victorian but why he is also a figure of potent contemporary significance. The main focus of the exhibition will be art for the people, and Morris’s view that art was an important part of human personality. On the subject of significant anniversaries, the same issue also celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the architect William Butterfield, a somewhat under-regarded figure until 40 years ago. Michael Hall’s article starts by saying that a good case could be made for saying that the Victorian Society was formed to defend everything that Butterfield stood for. Butterfield’s reputation was rehabilitated by the society after sustained criticism by mid-20thcentury architectural historians, John Summerson in particular. This year is also the 140th since the founding of Watts and Co by three leading architects, George Frederick Bodley, Thomas Gardner and George Gilbert Scott Jr. The company still flourishes as a designer and manufacturer of ecclesiastical vestments and furnishings, and domestic textiles and wallpapers, particularly for the country-house market. An article by Ayla Lepine in this same issue of The Victorian outlines their history. Bob Kindred MBE From Rural Architecture by Lewis F Allen, published in New York in 1852 We are not among those who cast off, and on a sudden condemn, as out of all good taste, the time-honored white house with its green blinds, often so tastefully gleaming out from beneath the shade of summer trees; nor do we doggedly adhere to it, except when in keeping, by contrast or otherwise, with everything around it. For a century past white has been the chief color of our wooden houses, and often so of brick ones, in the United States. This color has been supposed to be strong and durable, being composed chiefly of white lead; and as it reflected the rays of the sun instead of absorbing them, as some of the darker colors do, it was thus considered a better preserver of the weather-boarding from the cracks which the fervid heat of the sun is apt to make upon it, than the darker colors. White, consequently, has always been considered, until within a few years past, as a fitting and tasteful color for dwellings, both in town and country. A new school of taste in colors has risen, however, within a few years past, among us; about the same time, too, that the recent gingerbread and beadwork style of country building was introduced. And these were both, as all new things are apt to be, carried to extremes. Instead of toningdown the glare of the white into some quiet, neutral shade, as a straw color; a drab of different hues—always an agreeable and appropriate color for a dwelling, particularly when the door and window casings are dressed with a deeper or lighter shade, as those shades predominate in the main body of the house; or a natural and soft woodcolor, which also may be of various shades; or even the warm russet hue of some of our rich stones—quite appropriate, too, as applied to wood, or bricks—the fashionmust be followed without either rhyme or reason, and hundreds of our otherwise pretty and imposing country houses have been daubed over with the dirtiest, gloomiest pigment imaginable, making every habitation which it touched look more like a funeral appendage than a cheerful, life-enjoying home.
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