NORMAN SHAW, VOYSEY, BICHAUDSON

what Morris taught, the name becomes self-explanatory. More and
more original interpretations of architectural traditions were worked
out by the members of this group, almost exclusively in designs
for town and country houses. Lethaby, Prior, Stokes, Ricardo
are amongst the most noteworthy names. They are little known
nowadays, but the freshness of their approach was unique in the
Europe of about 1885 to 1890. In America, however, the country
houses of Richardson and his followers in the seventies and
eighties had already achieved a synthesis of novelty with comfort
and ease which England only reached in the early works of the
most brilliant architect and designer of his generation: Charles
F. Annesley Voysey (1857-1941). Voysey was neither connected
personally with Shaw nor with Morris. His fabrics, wallpapers,
furniture and metal-work especially, so novel and so graceful, had
an effect no less revolutionising than Morris's. In his buildings he
appears just as dainty and lovable (fig. 99). Of period detail little
is kept, but no effort is made to eliminate a general period flavour.
In fact it is just the effortless, unaffected nature of Voysey's archi-
tecture that gives it its charm. Moreover, going more closely into it,
one will be struck by the boldness of bare walls and long horizontal
bands of windows. In such buildings of the nineties England came
nearest to the idiom of the Modern Movement.

For the next forty years, the first forty of our century, no British
name need here be mentioned. Britain had led Europe and America
in architecture and design for a long time; now her ascendancy had
come to an end. From Britain the art of landscape gardening had
spread, and Adam's and "Wedgwood's style, in Britain the Gothic

99. CHARLES F. ANNESLEY VOYSEY: HOUSB AT COLWALL, MALVERN, 1893.
209