Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) was one of the most influential architects and designers of the 19th century. He pioneered an appreciation of medieval art and architecture and established in his polemical writings and design manuals the principles upon which the 19th-century Gothic Revival was based. His ideas were adopted and developed by followers as diverse as William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright. Pugin virtually invented modern concepts of interior and industrial design. A master in the use of colour, pattern and ornament, with no fear of modern technology, he was also a prolific product designer, creating furniture and woodwork, silver, metalwork and jewellery, pottery and tiles, textiles and wallpapers, and books, all of which reflected his desire to adapt the principles of medieval art to the modern world.

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Publishers Weekly Review

English architect, designer, polemicist and convert to Catholicism, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) changed the course of Gothic Revival by linking it firmly to its medieval roots. No mere revivalist, he regarded Gothic as a living language, and his cathedrals, churches, colleges, seminaries, cottages and secular buildings are highly original and personal in their concern for context and texture. Pugin's design of the interiors of the Houses of Parliament reveals his mastery of pattern, color and ornament. He suffered periodic bouts of insanity and loss of eyesight, dying at 40 shortly after a complete mental breakdown, yet his legacy lived on in the Gothic movement in Europe and North America. The catalogue of an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts in New York City, this handsomely illustrated study includes essays by 10 American and English scholars who discuss his tragic life, his architectural theory and the full range of his work in ceramics, furniture, sacred vestments, metalwork, textiles, jewelry, stained glass, tiles and wallpaper. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

This volume comprises essays by various American and English scholars and the catalog of an exhibition held at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York, Nov. 1995-Feb. 1996. It was inspired by the 1994 Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition and accompanying book Pugin: A Gothic Passion (CH, Jan'95). The 11 essays by ten authors cover a variety of subjects relating to Pugin: his life; his work in England, Ireland, and France; and his designs as applied to manufacturing. Margaret Henderson Floyd's essay on Pugin and the Gothic Revival in North America discusses a subject not covered in the earlier volume. Although Atterbury and five of the authors also contributed to the earlier work, there is less overlap than one might expect, and most of the illustrations are very different. The richly illustrated catalog section has some objects included in the Victoria and Albert exhibition book (it was not a catalog of the exhibition) but also numerous objects from American collections, particularly from the Lewis Walpole Library. Although we still do not have the great monograph on the artist, the two volumes of essays plus Phoebe Stanton's short biography Pugin (London, 1971) go a long way toward it. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; general. T. J. McCormick emeritus, Wheaton College (MA)