Product Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable ; where brighter colours are required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic—a kind of work as durable as the solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time—and let the painter's work be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. This is the true and faithful way of building ; where this cannot be, the device of external colouring may, indeed, be employed without dishonour ; but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids must pass away, and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the mosaics of St. Mark's, are more warmly filled, and more brightly touched, by every return of morning and evening rays ; while the hues of our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud ; and the temples whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, stand in their faded whiteness, like snows which the sunset has left cold. XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we had to deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work for that of the hand, generally expressible as Operative Deceit. There are two reasons, both weighty, against this practice : one, that all cast and machine work is bad, as work ; the other, that it is dishonest. Of its badness I shall speak in another place, that being evidently no efficient reason against its use when other cannot be had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is of the grossest kind, is, I think, a sufficient reason to determine absolute and unconditional rejection of it. Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two enti...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1089353 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Review
Book-length essay on architecture by John Ruskin, published in 1849. According to Ruskin, the leading principles of architecture are the "lamps" of Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. The noblest style of architecture was Gothic, but in time medieval architecture had lost the power to resist innovation. This loss of vitality was the result of the spiritual decline of Christianity during the materialistic Renaissance. The essay took the studies of a generation of medievalists and provided them with a general framework and a moral flavor. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

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Customer Reviews

Lamps for everyone
I first got this book to help study the principles of architecture and found that I could use the concepts in my everyday life. I am currently a student of architecture at WSU and found that the observations Ruskin was making about architecture 150 years ago still applied today. The seven "lamps" mentioned in his book not only apply to architecture, but can also be utilized in almost any field of study or occupational setting. The writing is wonderfully done and ideas are clearly presented to the reader. This is the type of book you get done reading and have a genuine desire to be better at everything you do.

rip off
The kessinger edition of this book is a rip off!!! do not buy it!!!
i received a copy in which the margins on the pages were 2 inches all around and the text was so small. everything seemed to be copied with a fax machine, so there was lots of tiny black dots all over the pages. the images are so unclear. they were black and white with no grayscales and it was so hard to make out what the images were. i returned this book for a refund.
buy the dover edition instead. its practically the same text except the text fills up the whole page and the pictures are clear. its also less than half the price of the kessinger edition.

Architecture's Most Influential Written Work
This book is the origin of virtually every theory held throughout the history of architecture. The arts and crafts movement, Frank Lloyd Wright's organicism, and Corbusier's New Architecture are just a few examples of prominent theories whose foundations lie within the pages of this book. In this book, Ruskin prescribes the essential elements required to make timeless, meaningful architecture. This manifesto is a must for any student interested in the practice and study of architecture.