Overview

Edward Schröder Prior (1852-1932) is not easily labelled. His reputation as an Arts and Crafts architect is well-earned but his output is much broader and more complex, offering a fascinating window into the debates surrounding English architectural and design culture around the turn of the 20th century. This book brings together the various strands of his work to present a far more complex, holistic understanding of his particularly rich and insightful thinking and his creative approaches. A contemporary and close friend of C.F.A. Voysey and W.R. Lethaby, as well as C.R. Ashbee and Ernest Gimson, Prior was perhaps most famous in his lifetime for his writings, including his books and articles on English medieval art, and as Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge University, where he set up the first architecture course. In subsequent decades, his writings have been upstaged by his original, innovative and varied architecture, with his best-known building, St Andrew’s, Roker (Sunderland), dubbed the ’cathedral’ of the Arts and Crafts movement. When taken together, Prior’s writings and architecture demonstrate the complexities and contradictions inherent in his work, as well as contemporary and visual cultures. The topics which were at the heart of his work – the conflicts between architecture as a creative process, a profession and a business; the translation of design intentions through a project; the challenge of representing architecture to clients and the public; the position and treatment of architecture students in practices; the nature of work in ‘historic’ buildings – make fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in architectural and visual culture, then and now.

Full Product Details

9781848227224

Table of Contents

Reviews

'This book brings together for the first time the highly original and intriguing work of E.S. Prior, a leading but previously underrated member of the experimental wing of Arts and Crafts architecture. David Valinsky shows us Prior, the architect and the writer, and uses the writings to explain his architecture. From garden making to conservation, from structure to stained glass, Prior promoted the centrality of makers and materials, developing new roles and methods for architects and building workers in an uncommercial construction process outside the contract system. Valinsky considers how these ideas played out in his domestic architecture, churches, schools and college buildings and were most fully achieved at Voewood, a house in the Norfolk countryside, which was Prior's magnum opus. 'However, this book is not a hagiography but a contextualised, closely considered critique of Prior's work, which is unusual in architectural biography. Valinsky also pushes our understanding of Arts and Crafts ideas beyond vernacular architecture and simplicity in design to include Prior's experiments in reinforced concrete, turn-of-the century Classicism, and architectural education (at Cambridge). 'In E.S. Prior, each building is exceptionally well-represented through archival photographs and shown at its best, in excellent, freshly minted photographs and drawings by the author with value added by Prior's formerly unpublished drawings. As someone who researched E.S. Prior for the good part of a decade, I cannot recommend this book too highly.' - Dr Lynne Walker, Institute of Historical Research, London

Author Information

David Valinsky is an architect and an award-winning architectural photographer.

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