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C.F. Annesley Voysey : the man and his work
INDEX OF PARTS
Part 5, 4th March 1927
Part V (The Architect & building news, 4th March 1927, pp.404-6)
In speaking last week of the house at Combe Down it should have been mentioned that it was the owner’s desire that the building should reflect the character of Merton College, Oxford. The house is built upon a mound in the centre of a stone quarry.
It has already been said that when, in 1884, Voysey set up in practice on his own account, he had no commissions, and had not, at that time, tried his hand at the fabric and wallpaper designing, which was to keep him afloat during those first five years. The circumstance which led him to turn his attention to this work was accidental. If he had not happened to visit his friend A.H. MacMurdo at a certain hour on a certain day he would not have then given his attention to this field of design, and, as other activities of some sort would have engaged him, it is conceivable that he would in that case never have designed fabrics or wallpapers and probable that he would never have become widely known as a designer. A.H. MacMurdo was a man of gifts and a pioneer in the rescue of furniture design from the slough of stale, unfeeling conventions in which industrialism had engulfed it. He was perhaps the first to adventure on the new ground which Morris and Voysey were to possess. At the Inventions Exhibition in 1883 he showed examples of furniture of a simple, practical design, then quite a new thing, his intention being to illustrate how such furniture could be made without dispossessing the almighty dolt machine. MacMurdo was an intimate friend of Ruskin and, among other works, was architect of Hamo Thornycroft’s – the sculptor – house at Hampstead. At the moment Voysey called on him he was employing himself in fabric or wallpaper design, and it was this that put it into Voysey’s head to adventure in the same field. His first work, a design for a frieze, was bought by Jeffreys, who afterwards undertook the whole of the printing of Morris’ papers, and Voysey at once found buyers of his designs. In particular the Essex Company may be said to have adopted him. For a long time Voysey was under contract with the firm to supply it with twenty designs a year. Voysey in fact established the Essex Company; the character of their wallpapers was identified with Voysey’s individuality, and when the public spoke of “Essex wallpapers” they meant Voysey designs. Mr. Essex was discerning, and he was courageous in talking his opinion as he did; and the enormous vogue which Voysey wallpapers soon obtained was due to him. Voysey made the Essex Company, and in a less exact sense the Essex Company established Voysey design.
It must be remembered that the influence of Morris was at that time only beginning to be felt; in 1880 his work was unknown except to satelites. Voysey first noticed Morris designs one day when he passed the Oxford Street shop. He appears to have at once recognised their power, for he paid them the signal tribute of studiously avoiding the shop and not noticing Morris designs when he otherwise encountered them. I devine that he was afraid of them; he felt that to become familiar with them would lead him astray from the full development of his own sense of design. Most men would have noted Morris’ method and tried to benefit by what they learned in doing so, but Voysey took the Voyseyesque line and did the opposite. Those days, however, are long past; Voysey is a great admirer of Morris patterns, although he does not at all admire a great deal of Morris’ interior decorative work – Stanmore Hall, for instance.
There are marked differences between Voysey and Morris designs. It is difficult to imagine that from the huge output of the two men any one pattern could be chosen which would for a moment confuse anyone on the question of authorship. The individuality of the artist might alone mark the distinction, but there are, I observe, radical differences. Voysey characteristically conceives a design as a pattern and seeks to emphasise the pattern; with Morris the pattern is never emphasised, but appears rather as a restriction imposed by the need for repetition: in some of his wallpapers – the “Willow,” for instance – the fact of repetition is so veiled that it is only by close scrutiny, supported with the knowledge that a pattern must be there, that it can be discovered; and even after discovery and close acquaintance this design still does not resolve itself into a pattern; its appeal is not the appeal of a pattern. Even in his simplest designs, which consist of the repetition of two or three separate emblems – as in the well-known “Daisy” – the design does not recommend itself, or even markedly present itself, to the beholder as a pattern. With Voysey, on the other hand, we feel that the pattern is the chief thing: in fact, apart from the individuality which marks every spray, bird, insect, or flower which he has drawn, it seems to me that the thing which Voysey has particularly contributed to the art of wallpaper and fabric design, and made the common property of designers, is the effects to be obtained by arrangements in pattern. I observe, too, that while Morris made no use of abstract forms – shapes not directly associated with any object in nature – Voysey has some fondness for them. It is odd, therefore, that Voysey’s designs should, with this exception, be much closer to nature than those of Morris. No one who has seen the early Rheims tapestries, some of which were lent to South Kensington Museum six or seven years ago, could have any doubt of the origin of Morris’ inspiration in wallpaper design. McKail, in his Life, says nothing of this, although he speaks of Morris’ travels as a young man in the North of France. It can, however, be said that if he had not seen these tapestries, and Botticelli’s pictures, and such things as the wardrobe in the Pope’s Palace at Avignon, Morris, as he is known to us, would not have been. Morris seems to avoid any close representation of natural forms; Voysey, on the other hand, observes closely the plant or creature he embodies in his design: we can recognise and name all of them. His birds, of which he makes use in large numbers and of many kinds, are remarkable for the identity of the species. We can recognise them at once; and the few board touches and washes by which they are represented usually show us some characteristic of the bird which we had not previously observed. Voysey’s version of a particular kind of bird is more like the bird it depicts than the actual bird itself is. Morris either avoided, or spared himself the trouble, of such close observation; he is content to stop at the genus, and, although he often fills in more detail than Voysey does, indicating sometimes the feathers, he leaves us guessing, should we so amuse ourselves, at the species, while Voysey, without any pictorial elaboration of the hoard rendering of the design, interprets the species to us with a skill which no draughtsman could attain who was not a devoted observer and lover of birds. The above comparison is not intended to set Voysey above Morris as a designer, but only to draw attention to the strong differences in motive and in execution which distinguish the work of the two men.
In one particular Morris had a great advantage over Voysey: he controlled the whole process of manufacture until the paper left the printing machine and the fabric the loom. He overlooked the cutting of the blocks, the mixing of the colours, the choice of the paper, tested and experimented in all directions so that he was responsible for the finished production down to the smallest detail, and was able to secure that only the best methods and materials were employed. Voysey had no such opportunities. His work ended with the making of the design, and he was then at the mercy of those who bought the design. He had no control over the use made of his design, which, if a wallpaper, was not necessarily printed in the tints he had fixed, but in approximations to them only, or even with tasteless transpositions or substitutions of the colours he intended, and by machinery and on any kind of paper which the manufacturer chose to use. Parallel conditions handicapped him in getting justice done to his fabric designs. It is a mark of the force of his ideas that in spite of such handicaps Voysey’s achievement should stand where it does.
The design of furniture, which Voysey first embarked upon in completion of his house designs, has also had a deep influence upon modern furniture; and here again not so much in the permanency of the designs themselves, as in his approach to the subject of furniture design – in the spirit which first clearly perceives the exact need and then sets about to interpret that need freshly, efficiently and economically. The simple form and the fine lines of the furniture shown in some of the photographs illustrating these articles will be recognised as begetting much that has since become the common property of furniture designers. The billiard table illustrated in these pages is typical of the vigour of Voysey’s liberating influence. This design was made when all the legs of all billiard tables displayed heavy bulbous turberosities which bore no relation to the fine lines and rigid form which the purposes of the table gave to its frame and bed. The design was made for Messrs. Thurston’s many years ago, since when the firm has sold more of it than of any other design, and it still remains the best liked by billiard players who wish to furnish their own room.
If it had been possible to illustrate the whole field of Voysey’s work in these pages they would have shown architectural designs representing many different classes of buildings, wallpapers, fabrics of all kinds, carpets, furniture, silver and brass work, church ornaments; designs in mosaic, enamel, marble inlay, and stained glass; book plates, medals, and wood and stone sculptured from his models. His versatility is remarkable, as is his enormous output, which was dependent not only upon his industry, but upon the speed with which ideas present themselves and are reduced to practical terms on the drawing board. In his most active years Voysey’s staff seems to have consisted of no more than two or three pupils, and in an atmosphere of a happy family the letters were written by someone and press copied by somebody else. No telephone ever disturbed the tranquility of Voysey’s work, which during a large part of his career was done at his home, which at one time was at Bedford Park and at another at Streatham.
It has only been possible in these articles to give a hurried survey of what seems most important in Voysey’s work and to attempt to identify the matters in which the younger generation of architects – all too unknowing – are indebted to his discernment and fearless single-mindedness of purpose. The times have changed: the forms that once pleased because they were new now cease to do so because they no longer are. From year to year – nay, from month to month and day to day – the need for each idea to be a variant of what is familiar, is marked by ever-changing fashion of taste; but there is a fundamental truth that is everlasting, for it is one with the spirit of man and underlies the meaning of all Art. This is the spirit of worship. Does not the canoe-paddle devotedly carved with a splinter of shell by a poor savage, throw into contempt the whole vain lumber burdening the groaning floor of a city’s emporium? When Time has given the perspective in which alone mankind can determine the value of its own achievements, I deem that the thing Voysey stands for , and those of his works which best represent his aspirations, will be raised high in the affections of all men.
The study, "The Orchard," Chorley Wood
[Designed in 1899 by Voysey for his own use.]
Billiard room, "The Homestead," Frinton-on-Sea
[Designed in 1905-6 for Sydney Claridge Turner.]