Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

of which the Pavilion was the apogee and, though less combative than Carter, he stoutly
defended the right of ‘each one to publish his opinion’. 135 Willson also brought his
knowledge of restoration work on historic buildings to bear, lamenting the loss of
craftsmanship and arguing, as Ruskin would more than twenty years later, that the quality
of medieval carving owed much to the fact that, as he believed, the decorations were
‘designed and executed’ by the same person. 136 He was also no doubt drawing on his
own experience as a carver when he complained that the artisan was too lowly regarded
to be able to develop his skills: ‘The artificer capable of executing the best parts of
Architecture,…ought to be encouraged to acquire a better education’ Willson argued
‘...and his pay ought to be proportionally higher… so that a clever man, though not
possessed of a capital to enable him to become a master, might support himself.’ 137
Willson was extending Gough’s once daring principle of antiquarian intervention
from the conservation of medieval buildings with which it began into a critique of
contemporary architecture and furthermore to suggestions for improving the architecture
of the future, chiefly by urging that ‘more attention must be paid… by architects and their
patrons’ to the difficult details of Gothic. 138 This prescriptive aspect of his thinking was
developed in a third essay, an introduction to Examples of Gothic Architecture, published
in 1831. This was a work in the same format as the Specimens, produced by Willson and
A C Pugin after the latter had fallen out with Britton. Its usefulness to the profession as
Gothic architecture gained in popularity is borne out by the subscription list which
included nearly every eminent architect of the day, Smirke, Barry, Cockerell, Basevi,
Nash and Decimus Burton among them. Sir John Soane, a friend of the slighted Britton,
is a notable absentee. It is unlikely that many of those who bought the Specimens and
Examples for use in architects’ offices ever read the text. If they did read Specimens,
however, they would have found among the details the by now familiar combination of
135
Pugin and Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 2. p. xix.
136
Pugin and Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 2, p. xxi.
137
Pugin and Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 2, p. xxi.
138
Pugin and Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 2, p.xix.
72