Principles and Practice: Craft and Mechanisation in the Fabrication of A.W.N. Pugin's Designs in the Applied Arts

The British Victorian architect and designer Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) was responsible for a wide variety of buildings and designs in the Gothic Revival style. In his publications, Pugin championed the architecture of the Middle Ages as representing an ideal mixture of style and faith and has subsequently been portrayed as advocating the return to a Medieval way of life. Conflated with that other champion of the Gothic Revival John Ruskin, scholars have applied Ruskin's dislike of machine-made products to Pugin when in fact he was never concerned with the way in which his goods were produced. To accomplish such a vast amount of work in his short lifetime, Pugin relied on a group of skilled and trusted collaborators - John Hardman for metalwork and stained glass, John Gregory Crace for wallpaper and furniture, Herbert Minton for encaustic tiles, and George Myers for building construction - who utilised a range of mechanised processes to realise his designs. By examining Pugin's working process, this thesis has sought to show that rather than rejecting mechanisation, Pugin took advantage of new materials and methods as a means to conveniently and expeditiously create the range of high-quality works for which he is known today.