Ruskin

Tectonic into Textile: John Ruskin and His Obsession with the Architectural Surface

Textile, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp. 68–97

DOI: 10.2752/175183509X411771

Reprints available directly from the Publishers.

Photocopying permitted by licence only.

© 2009 Berg. Printed in the United Kingdom.

This paper considers the architectural writings of John

Ruskin (1891–1900), an important architecture, art and social critic in Victorian England and interprets his preoccupation with surface ornament. The paper reveals that, for Ruskin, architecture was a living entity. His idea of life was influenced by Thomas Carlyle’s philosophy of clothes, according to which the human soul was more important than the body and it could be expressed only through clothing. Ruskin translated this notion into an architectural theory. He believed that the soul of architecture was contained in the veneer of decoration that concealed

the exterior walls. In addition, he argued that the composition of the decorative veneer exhibited qualities of dresses and textiles. This article terms this as Ruskin’s theory of the adorned “wall veil.” It argues that this was the motivation for his interest in the architectural surface. The article counters the claim that Ruskin’s writings were unarchitectural or, in other words, unconcerned with space, structure and function. It argues that the theory of the adorned wall veil attempted to shift the ontological identity of architecture. It also contributed to the nineteenth century debates on architectural ornament and dress.

ANURADHA CHATTERJEEAnuradha Chatterjee is the founding editor of The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today and Sessional Faculty at the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales (UNSW). She has completed her doctorate in architectural history and theory from UNSW.

Keywords: Dress, architecture, body, nineteenth century, Ruskin

Abstract

IntroductionJohn Ruskin (1891–1900) wrote two widely read and reviewed books in Victorian Britain on the history of medieval and Renaissance architecture. These were The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and the three-volume study The Stones of Venice (1851–53). While Ruskin influenced the Gothic revival movement in Victorian Britain, evidenced in the design of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (1860) by Thomas Deane (1828–99) and Benjamin Woodward (1816–61) and the Arts and Crafts movement because of his theory of creative labor, his status as an architectural theorist has been given less credence. His writings were not only controversial but they were also difficult to grasp. In Seven Lamps, he stated that architecture was the addition of “venerable or beautiful” but “unnecessary” features to an edifice. He claimed that: “no one would call the laws architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is Architecture.”

He added:

Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use. I say

common; because a building raised to the honour of God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it; but not a use which limits, by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details. (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 8: 29)

In this passage, Ruskin appeared to overstate the case about the superfluity of ornament. Decorative features were meant to be enjoyed for their own sake and the symbolic function of these elements was unrelated to an architectural purpose. As a result, Ruskin’s perception of architecture was condemned as being painterly, and his allegiance to Byzantine and Gothic architecture was regarded as being indicative of backward-looking religious medievalism.

Nineteenth-century commentators felt that his perception of buildings was not architectural, as he privileged color and ornament over structure.1 Along similar lines, twentieth-century historians such as Charles H Moore and Paul Frankl claimed that Ruskin’s grasp of Gothic style was poor, as it showed little awareness of structural principles and interior spaces (Moore 1924: 17; Frankl 1960: 560–61).2 Later scholars such as Kristine Garrigan argue that he was constrained by two-dimensional vision. As a result, he could admire Italian

Tectonic into Textile: John Ruskin and His Obsession with the Architectural Surface

Tectonic into Textile 71

Gothic buildings but he could not appreciate the three-dimensional complexity of the Gothic cathedrals of northern Europe (Garrigan 1973).3 More recent scholars such as Mark Swenarton note that “rarely did Ruskin think in a more strictly architectural manner that

is in terms of the disposition of masses and volumes” (Swenarton 1989: 12). These claims are not unjustified.

The basis for these claims can be found in the illustrative method used by Ruskin. The plates in Seven Lamps show that naturalistic and

inlaid ornament from medieval buildings across Europe were sketched, collated and presented as a collage of fragments, which were isolated from the larger context of the building (Figures 1 and 2). The method of focusing on surface fragments intensified in Stones,

Figure 1Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lô and Venice (Ruskin 1889: 27).

72 Anuradha Chatterjee

where profiles and elevations of a whole array of archivolts, jambs, bases, cornices and capitals from different buildings were composed into a single image, representing a comparative study of parts. The content and composition of these illustrations would have suggested

to any reader that the emphasis was on ornament and not on the building.

This article is a critical examination of Ruskin’s preoccupation with surface ornament. It shows that Ruskin was interested in the surface

Figure 2Pierced ornament from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona and Padua (Ruskin 1889: 95).


because he reinterpreted the anthropomorphic tradition in architecture, using Thomas Carlyle’s moral theory of the body. In this theory, the soul was more important than the body and it was expressed through clothing. Following these ideas, Ruskin suggested that the surface was like clothing and the single most important element of architecture. This indicated an attempted shift in the ontological identity of architecture, which was defined by interior space, structure and function. Furthermore, his writings advocated vivid analogies between the architectural surface and the form of the dress and the patterns in textiles. This contributed to debates concerning dress and architecture, particularly as it was concerned with interrogating the meaning of ornament.

The article is presented in sections. The first section outlines the history of body analogy in architecture and Ruskin’s position in relation to these debates. This section outlines Carlyle’s philosophy of body, soul and clothes. It considers Ruskin’s allegiance to these ideas and their architectural implications. The second section examines Ruskin’s fragmented oeuvre and reframes it as the theory of the adorned “wall veil.” It reveals the theoretical, formal and historiographical processes through which Ruskin justified this theory.

Ruskin’s Theory of the Body, Soul and ClothesThe analogy of the body has been a chief source of meaning in the classical theory of architecture. The image of the human body

was the means through which “something invisible and ultimately unknown was grasped and made familiar” (Klassen 1994: 58). Joseph Rykwert argues that the analogy between body and building “is deeply ingrained in all recorded architectural thinking” (Rykwert 1996: 29). The earliest evidence of this was in Vitruvius’s De architectura (17 bc). Following the Pythagorean tradition of knowledge, based on mathematics, Vitruvius derived a set of numeric relationships between parts of the body (such as the palm, head, chest, face and foot) and the whole (Drake 2003: 2). These proportional relations were used for understanding the disposition of various parts of the building. The body, according to Vitruvius, could also be understood in geometric terms. It reflected the combination of earthly and transcendent order, as it could be inscribed simultaneously within a circle and a square (Drake 2003: 3). This idea came to be known as the “Vitruvian man,” illustrated for the first time by sixteenth-century theorists who translated De architectura.4 The invisible inscription of the body in architecture through numerical and geometrical means was given an expressive dimension by the various orders. The Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders represented ideal bodies, possessing strength, discipline and vigor. These ideas inspired Renaissance architectural practice and theory.

The interest in the body continued to fascinate Renaissance theorists. This is exhibited vividly in the designs of Francesco di Giorgio (1395–1482). His notebooks were full of studies of the Vitruvian

figure along with the studies of the “human proportion in relation to plans, facades, entablatures and even whole cites” (Drake 2003: 45). Rykwert points out that di Giorgio was the “first to draw the human profile imposed on the section of a cornice” (1996: 59). Di Giorgio was interested in the “application of the analogy between the whole human body and building” (Rykwert 1996: 59). He explained that the human body was “divided into nine parts, otherwise into nine heads” which guided the design of the façade (Rykwert 1996: 59). A powerful illustration by him showed a “man with his hands extended, his trunk and head corresponding to the nave of the church, the sloping arms direction the inclination of the aisle roofs,” such that the “nave articulates from the aisles at the elbows,” the “main door opens at the knee joints” and finally the “head is ‘in’ the pediment” (Rykwert 1996: 59). The motif of the Vitruvian man also influenced the plans of centrally planned churches between late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The classical theory of the body analogy was revitalized in the nineteenth century by the British architect and theorist, C.R. Cockerell (1788–1863). Cockerell was influenced by Vitruvius’s text and the teachings of Quatremère de Quincy (Kohane 1993: 327–76). During his professorship at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, he stated his departure from the academic view of classical architecture. Cockerell rejected the mechanistic and dogmatic belief that bodily presence in architecture could be achieved only by following numerical proportions


and geometries, or by employing the various orders (each having a particular human attribute) (pp. 336–37). He believed that the building was not a literal but an “abstract representation of the body’s proportions and contours” (p. 335). Cockerell was inspired by the body’s capacity for controlled biomechanical movement and he believed that this was a sign of health and vigor. He noticed that these attributes could be evidenced in the presence of curves on the surface of the body (p. 327). He argued that a bodily presence could be imparted to all the elements of the building, by introducing subtle curves into their profiles (p. 337). The viewer would have a subjective and a psychological reaction to the subtle allusions to the body in the overall composition, and would therefore derive pleasure (p. 337). In classical theory, the surface of the material body was idealized to derive qualities that could be incorporated into architecture.

In the nineteenth century, the classical approach to the body analogy was challenged by the emerging scientific attitude. According to Antoine Picon, French architect and writer Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79) linked his “vision of structure” (in the Gothic cathedral) with the “conceptions of organism prevailing around the same time in the life sciences” (Picon 1999: 314). Picon explains that Viollet-le-Duc was influenced by the work of French naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), who upheld the view that organisms were functional wholes. They were organized such that every part was necessary

for completing the larger form, similar to the way various pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together (p. 315). This point is explored in detail by Martin Bressani, who argues that Viollet-le-Duc’s study of medieval architecture was like an “anatomist examining the human body, providing a structural physiology” (Bressani 2003: 120). Bressani perceptively notes that, in “Viollet-le-Duc’s patient dismantling of a medieval building, in which absolutely no references to the science of engineering can be found, architecture becomes a combination of organs working together” (p. 121). Viollet-le-Duc was also influenced by the anatomist Marc Jean Bourgery (1797–1849). Bressani argues that Viollet-le-Duc’s complex analysis of a series of exploded perspectives and cutaway perspectives of the springing point of Gothic arches evoked the visual technique of Bourgery, who depicted “each particular bone’s diverse mode of articulation with its adjacent neighbor and its relative position within the ensemble that makes up the skull” (p. 126).5 The idea that the body is a rational combination of parts, working together as a mechanical whole, legitimized a mechanized approach to architecture.

Similar to the Renaissance theorists and nineteenth-century rationalists such as Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin saw a connection between architecture and the human figure. However, he aligned himself neither with the “ancients” nor with the “moderns.” Ruskin was opposed to the classical, Renaissance and nineteenth-century interest in the material


body. He rejected the authority of Vitruvius, which had been upheld for centuries by architects in Europe and England.6 He rejected the idealization of proportions and the codification of orders on the basis that they encouraged mindless and unimaginative copying of past forms. In addition, Ruskin was critical of the rise of the natural sciences in the nineteenth century, because of which he did not share Viollet-le-Duc’s rational vision of organic structures. Ruskin’s understanding of life was linked to Victorian Romanticism. This stream of Victorian thought was a response to industrialization and the increasing mechanization of the intellectual life of society (Sussman 1968: 5). It favored the idea of the living organism, as it contained the promise of unpredictability, irregularity and freedom. Therefore, Ruskin used terms such as “life,” “soul” and “spirit” while writing about architecture.

In order to comprehend Ruskin’s understanding of life, it is important to consider the ideas of prominent Victorians, like Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who recast the philosophical meaning of the body and the soul. Herbert Sussman explains that, for Carlyle, “England’s mechanization appeared bound to philosophical mechanism, the occupation with material means rather than spiritual ends” (Sussman 1968: 15). In a provocative essay, “Signs of the times,” Carlyle declared that the nineteenth century was the “age of machinery” ([1829/1858] 2004: 100). He claimed that human beings had “grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand” and their “whole efforts, attachments,

opinions” exhibited a mechanical character (p. 103). The mechanistic attitude meant that physical science thrived, while metaphysical and moral sciences vanished (p. 103). The physical sciences were concerned with the “material, the immediately practical, [and] not the divine and [the] spiritual” (p. 111). This emphasized the “outward” (body) and ignored the “inward” (soul) realm (pp. 105, 107 and 115). Carlyle felt that the irreconcilable dichotomy between the body and the soul, the material and the spiritual was the fundamental condition of the nineteenth century. He felt that society had not developed the language for the expression of the inner and spiritual dimension and as a result, the soul would always remain repressed by the bodily and the material realm.7

Carlyle’s pessimistic attitude towards the soul changed in Sartor Resartus (1833–34). In this book, he argued that clothes in their literal and metaphoric form expressed a hidden and an inner idea. The central argument of the book was that “society is founded upon cloth” (Carlyle [1833–34] 1983: 38).8 Carlyle argued that “all visible things are emblems” and “all emblematic things are properly clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven” (p. 54). The very basis of culture was symbolic and all symbols were clothes that expressed a hidden idea. Even language was called the “garment of thought,” as it revealed imagination, the invisible spirit of the human mind (p. 54). These arguments were extended to the human body. Carlyle claimed that clothes were the “grand tissue of all

tissue”, the “vestural tissue”, that “man’s soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other … tissues are included and screened, his whole faculties work, his whole self lives, moves and has its being” (p. 2). Clothes were imparted with a corporeal quality and an importance greater than the body. Carlyle believed that clothes were the “master organ” or the “soul’s seat,” and that it was possible to gain insight into a person’s inner spirit, by looking “fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent” (pp. 48, 50).9 Clothes were so significant that he compared them with architectural styles. Carlyle argued that:

neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. In all his modes and habilatory endeavors, an architectural idea will be found lurking; his body and the cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice of a person, is to be built. Whether he flows gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals, tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections and front the world an agglomeration of four limbs—will depend on the nature of the architectural idea; whether Grecian, Gothic, later-Gothic, or altogether modern and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. (Carlyle [1833–34] 1983: 25–26)


By using the term “architectural idea” and by comparing the “body and the cloth” with the “site and materials,” Carlyle suggested that the unadorned body did not possess an innate truth. The body could be signified (given a personality and character) only through the literal and metaphoric construction of an exterior surface. Carlyle’s philosophy of clothes changed the relation between the soul and the body. The soul became more important than the body, and it was allowed to have a direct (on the surface) and an autonomous (separate from the body) expression.

Ruskin was influenced by Carlyle’s writings and ideas. He admitted:

I should be very sorry if I had not been continually taught and influenced by the writers whom I love; and am quite unable to say to what extent my thoughts have been guided by Wordsworth, Carlyle and Helps; to whom (with Dante and George Herbert, in olden time) I owe more than to any other writers—most of all, perhaps to Carlyle, whom I read so constantly, that, without willfully setting myself to imitate him, I find myself perpetually falling into his modes of expression … (Ruskin 1996 [1903–12], 5: 427)

He acknowledged his indebtedness in a letter to Carlyle in 1869. He wrote: “I have the Sartor with me also—it belongs to me now, more than any other of your books” (Ruskin [1869] 1982: 146).10 In keeping with Carlyle’s philosophy, Ruskin studied only dressed human figures in

paintings and sculptures. He hated the depiction of nudes, because he believed that the “study of the nude is injurious, beyond the limits of honor and decency in daily life” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 22: 223). In his analysis of the paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, Ruskin openly referred to Carlyle. He asked readers to reflect upon the “external and corporeal qualities these masters of our masters love to paint,” under “Mr. Carlyle’s guidance, as well as mine and with the analysis of Sartor Resartus” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 33: 311). He concluded that the “charm of all these pictures is in great degree dependent on toilette; that the fond and graceful flatteries of each master do in no small measure consist in his management of frillings and trimmings, cuffs and collarettes; and on beautiful flingings or fastenings of investiture” (p. 312). Ruskin believed that the “mere folds of drapery” had a significant “power of expression” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 20: 274). When he looked at Raphael’s drawing of the kneeling Madonna, he claimed that the face “is in no wise transcendent in any kind of expression,” and “nearly the entire charm of the figure is owing to the disposition of the drapery in accordance with tender and quiet gesture” (pp. 274–75). Traditionally, the face was considered as a window into the soul and the innermost emotions. This role was now performed by the dress. Ruskin’s view of the body was informed by Carlyle’s philosophy of clothes.


Architecture was also regarded as having a body and a soul. Ruskin argued:

What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the distinctively political art of architecture … Uniting the technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it shows the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence of the lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive, with the purity and simplicity of the reflective element. This tendency, like every other form of materialism, is increasing with the advance of the age … (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 8: 20–21)

In architecture, the body was the “technical” or the “constructive” aspects. This referred to the brute masonry and the space inside the building. This was considered as the “lower” element. Ruskin was critical of a whole range of building types that exposed their constructive aspects, such as the monotonous brick buildings in England, the commercial buildings that were made of iron pillars and plate glass, and Gothic cathedrals in which the ribs and the shafts were emphasized. As the emphasis on the physical or the biological body did not adequately celebrate human life, the blatant expression of the material conditions of strength, construction or mechanics did not express the soul of architecture. According to Ruskin, the soul of architecture was the “imaginative” or the “reflective” quality of buildings. It was considered as the “higher” element

in architecture. It was expressed through the layer of decoration that concealed and transformed the masonry wall. Thus, architecture was an image of the dressed body.

The spiritualization of architecture was also evidenced in Ruskin’s sentimental attitude towards the nineteenth century restorations of dilapidated Venetian buildings. Restoration normally involved partial repairs to the structure and decoration, taking the building back to its original state. Ruskin argued against this. He claimed that:

Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time and it is then a new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up and commanded to direct other hands and other thoughts. And as for direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The whole finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone. (Ruskin [1903–1912] 1996, 8: 242–43, emphasis in original)

Ruskin’s ideas on restoration were unusual and paradoxical. The “death” of the building happened as a result of the destruction of its cladding and the ornamentation,

and not because of the damage to its inner walls or structure. Repairing the surface was like patching up a dead person and therefore unthinkable. However, this death was reversible. The building could be “reborn” if the cladding and the ornamentation were completely ripped off and replaced with a new veneer of decoration. This showed that Ruskin was thinking of a spiritual, rather than a biological life. The surface was like a dress. It contained the soul. Therefore, it could be changed to impart a new life (new meaning) to the building. As clothing was the essence of the human figure, surface was the substance of architecture. However, the analogy between clothing and surface was not merely asserted. It was developed through complex formal and historiographical processes.

Tectonic into Textile: Ruskin and the Theory of the Adorned “Wall Veil”The transformation of the tectonic into textile has a long tradition. It has its roots in the anthropomorphic tradition in architectural theory. It can be traced back to Vitruvius’s description of the Ionic order. In The Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius wrote:

Just so afterwards, when they desired to construct a temple to Diana in a new style of beauty, they translated these footprints into terms characteristic of the slenderness of women and thus first made a column the thickness of which was only one eighth of its height, so that it might have a taller look. At the


foot they substituted the base in place of a shoe; in the capital they placed the volutes, hanging down at the right and left like curly ringlets and ornamented its front with cymatia and with festoons of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they brought the flutes down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the robes worn by matrons. Thus in the invention of the two different kinds of columns, they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned, for the one and for the other the delicacy, adornment and proportion characteristic of women. (Vitruvius 1960: 103–4)

During the Renaissance, the analogy between clothing and architecture was not limited to the design of classical orders. It became applicable to the entire building. This was due to the notion of decorum—a social ideal, in which behavior, conduct and appearance were expected to reflect the status of the individual with the social order. An important aspect of decorum was dressing according to ones position within the social hierarchy. Decorum was relevant to architecture, because buildings had to be adorned with ornament appropriate to their context, use and status (Hill and Kohane 2001; Forty 1989: 10).11 By the nineteenth century, the notion of decorum began to fade and, according to Forty, dress was “put to some very different, rather surprising, uses” (1989: 10).12 The unforeseen use of the metaphor of dress was because of the crisis of representation. Architectural representation came

under serious scrutiny during the post-enlightenment period in Europe and Britain, as a result of the archaeological, scientific and artistic discoveries. Ornament did not embody traditional ideals and its meaning was reconsidered.13

One of the key aspects of this debate was the speculation about the textile origins of architectural ornament by Gottfried Semper (1803–79). In The Four Elements of Architecture: A Contribution to the Comparative Study of Architecture (1851), Semper discussed the Caribbean hut. He argued that the first enclosure was a screen, which was made out of woven twigs and leaves, replaced thereafter by mats and carpets, and held up by a timber screen. He explained that solid masonry walls were introduced to take the load of the carpets and for permanence and better security. However, the wall had nothing to do with dividing space. Semper notes that the solid wall was an “inner, invisible structure hidden behind the true and legitimate representatives of the wall, the colorful woven carpets” (Semper [1851] 1989: 104).

With the development of culture, materials more durable than textile began to be used for decoration, such as stucco covering, bitumen plaster, terracotta, metal plates, granite and so on. However, despite the change in materials and techniques, the motifs persisted. Semper claimed that the “artists who created the painted or sculptured decorations on wood, stucco, fired clay, metal, or stone traditionally though not consciously imitated the colorful embroideries and trellis works of the age-old carpet walls” (p. 104). He argued


that the evidence for this was the bas-reliefs found on the walls of the buildings discovered in Nineveh and Nimrud, which showed strong affinities with Assyrian carpets. In other words, the decorated surfaces of masonry structures signified the textile origins of the wall.14

While Semper used the theory of origin and dress to justify architectural ornamentation, Viollet-le-Duc used the metaphor of dress to propagate the idea of rationality in Gothic architecture. He wrote a four-volume publication on applied arts titled Dictionnaire du mobilier français (1858–75), and a large part of this was devoted to dress.15 Forty explains that, according to Viollet-le-Duc, France rejected Byzantine and Romanesque building methods and evolved the new style of Gothic architecture by adopting rational principles of construction (Forty 1989: 10). In Dictionnaire du mobilier, he applied the same rationale to the development of clothing. After discussing the Graeco-Roman clothing in the twelfth century, Viollet-le-Duc claimed that:

in the thirteenth century it was rapidly succeeded by a plain garment, comfortable, common to almost all classes and which drew its value from the style in which it was worn … They sought the form best suited to daily habits and just as in architecture—which is also a garment—they sought the most rational way of clothing the structure. (Viollet-le-Duc 1872, 4: 429)16

Thirteenth-century dress was ideal because it did not conceal physical defects and it closely

followed the form of the body (Forty 1989: 10–11). As in architecture, the thirteenth-century clothing was designed in accordance with utility and reason. By imposing the idea of rational expression on medieval dress, Gothic architecture was reinterpreted as a structurally honest construction.

Ruskin participated enthusiastically in the debates concerning the relation between architecture and dress. In the final volume of Stones, he declared: “Precisely analogous to this destruction of beauty in dress has been that of beauty in architecture; its color and grace and fancy, being gradually sacrificed to the base forms of the Renaissance” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 11: 225). Ruskin proposed a new theory of architecture. The paper terms this as the theory of the adorned “wall veil.”17 The term “wall veil” was coined by Ruskin. It was actually the exterior masonry wall of a building and the term veil was used deliberately instead of the term body. It signified the outermost part of the human body (skin and flesh) that concealed and protected a fragile interior space.18 However, as Ruskin was concerned with the dressed body, the wall veil had to be adorned with a flat and thin layer of chromatic and relief ornamentation, which would run from end to end and base to coping, covering every part of the masonry wall without being constrained by function and necessity.

There were significant differences between Ruskin’s theory and that of Semper and Viollet-le-Duc. Ruskin’s writings echoed Semper’s theory of textile origins of ornament. However,

unlike Semper, Ruskin was concerned with the entire dressed body. This may have been due to the different intellectual contexts within which they were operating. While Semper was responding to the archaeological discoveries and ethnological theories of the 1840s, Ruskin was influenced by the dress reform movement in Britain. Furthermore, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc espoused thirteenth-century clothing as the model for architectural ornamentation. However, unlike Viollet-le-Duc, who associated Gothic architecture as well as thirteenth-century clothing with rational depiction of structure and body, Ruskin emphasized concealment. Ruskin justified the theory of the adorned wall veil through complex theoretical readjustments, as well as historiographical and interpretive processes.

The theoretical readjustment was made in terms of the wall. Ruskin proposed that the wall (wall veil) was the key element of architecture. However, he was not the first one to do so. In De re aedificatoria (1452), Leon Battista Alberti noted:

When considering the methods of walling, it is best to begin with its most noble aspects. This is the place therefore where columns should be considered and all that relates to the column; in that a row of columns is nothing other than a wall that has been pierced in several places by openings. Indeed, when defining the column itself, it may not be wrong to describe it as a certain, solid and continuous section of wall, which


has been raised perpendicularly from the ground, up high, for the purpose of bearing the roof. (Alberti 1988: 25)

The wall was a column-like element. It could be pierced as well as raised vertically to take on the role of a load-bearing element. In other words, it was the fundamental constructive element of architecture. However, Alberti explained:

In the whole art of building the column is the principal ornament without any doubt; it may be set in combination, to adorn a portico, wall, or other form of opening, nor is it unbecoming when standing alone. It may support a trophy; or it may act as a monument. It has grace and it confers dignity. (Alberti 1988: 183–84)

While the wall could be transformed into a column, the column was only ever an ornament that was added onto a structure consisting solely of walls.19 This can be seen in Alberti’s design for the church of San Sebastiano (1459) at Mantua, which consists of a solid wall face adorned by a large entablature that appears to rest on thin pilasters (Wittkower 1988: 51–52). Wittkower explains that this tendency may have had to do with the fact that Alberti’s only guide was Roman imperial architecture, which “may generically be described as half-way between the Greek and the Renaissance. It is essentially a wall architecture, with all the compromises necessitated by the transformation of the Greek orders into decoration” (Wittkower 1988: 41).

Ruskin had read Alberti and he was influenced by his writings. Cornelius Bajon notes that there are strong similarities between the structure of De re aedificatoria and the first volume of Stones, especially as architecture “in both is approached in terms of stone walls rather than of beams and lintels” (Bajon 1997: 406). Despite these similarities, the emphasis on the wall was for different reasons. While Alberti’s reason for suggesting “wall architecture” was historiographical, Ruskin’s interest in the wall was to do with ontology or the qualities of built structures that give them the status of architecture.

In “The six divisions of architecture” (Stones I), Ruskin claimed that the wall was one of the three elements that constituted architecture. The other elements were roof and apertures. In addition, four chapters were dedicated to the wall (“The wall base,” “The wall veil”, “The wall cornice,” and “The wall veil and shaft”), while the rest of the chapters discussed surface details. The illustrations documented wall decorations and profiles of elements. Considered together, the textual and graphic documentation suggested the development of a new language—that of surface architecture. In Seven Lamps, Ruskin expressed that the wall was the only element in architecture that was worth considering. He argued:

Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be considered, none appear to me more significant than that into buildings whose interest is in their walls and those whose


interest is in the lines dividing their walls. In the Greek temple the wall is as nothing; the entire interest is in the detached columns and the frieze they bear; in French Flamboyant and in our detestable Perpendicular, the object is to get rid of the wall surface and keep the eye altogether on tracery of line: in Romanesque work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and honored member and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously decorated … (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 8: 108–9)

The exterior surface of Greek temples consisted of shafts. The surface of the French Flamboyant and English Perpendicular Gothic buildings was composed of flexible tracery bars. In both types of architecture, the exterior is composed of linear elements that constitute a perforated surface. However, for Ruskin, the wall was “wide, bold and unbroken” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 8: 109). This was evidenced in Egyptian temples, which consist of solid walls incised with low-relief ornamentation and Romanesque buildings such as the Pisa cathedral (1063–1350) that have continuous spans of relieved walls that are covered with colored bands. This had major implications.

Ruskin suggested a new way of studying historical architecture, which moved beyond the frameworks of style, period and type. His classificatory system was based entirely on external walls. In fact, the terms “Gothic” and “Renaissance” were indicative of different attitudes to the architectural surface. The wall

was not merely one of the various elements of the building. It was synonymous with architecture.

The wall veil was described as a membranous and elastic element. Ruskin accomplished this through a play of literary metaphors. In an unpublished draft of the chapter “Gothic palaces” (Stones II), he argued that the:

first conception of any given storey of a house in the Byzantine mind is that of a space enclosed by a wall-veil crowned with a simple cornice … The second idea is to cut this wall-veil into pieces, cornice and all … and head the intervals with arches; the simple cornice remaining wherever the wall-veil was left and becoming a capital wherever the wall-veil became a shaft … And in this stage the whole width of the house is considered as one arcade with intervals more or less wide. But in the third stage the idea of the continuous arcade is lost. The groups of its arches contract themselves only windows; the cornice, as if unable to bear the contraction, snaps and remains only in fragments at the top of the narrow pilasters. The windows as they shrink in width, shrink in height also, draw up their feet, as it were and instead of falling to the general foundation of the building, receive, as we have just seen, a narrow plinth or still for a foundation of their own. At the same time the great arch of the entrance sinks into a mere door; and the building, instead of the appearance of a great court or public place surrounded by

arcades, assumes that of a very closely veiled private house, with door and windows of ordinary size … (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 10: 275–76)

Ruskin was a proponent of stylistic continuity. He believed that the “germ” of the “Gothic arrangement is already found in the Byzantine” buildings (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 10: 276). This passage revealed that the basis for stylistic evolution was an increasing level of privacy. The interior of Gothic palaces were completely concealed because the wall had fewer and smaller openings. The wall was like a veil between the inside and the outside. In addition, the transformation of architectural styles did not take place through changes in plan or construction systems. It took place by cutting, contracting, shrinking and lifting the wall. This showed that a new language of architecture was invented, which transformed the materiality of the wall. The theory of the wall did not coincide with its constructive reality. It was as if the wall was not constructed by builders and masons, through a precise and laborious manipulation of heavy and rigid materials.

The pliable nature of the wall was illustrated in Ruskin’s drawing, the “Pier Base” (Stones I) (Figure 3). This image shows a schematic diagram of five types of wall construction systems—the solid wall, two sets of pilastered walls, a row of piers and a row of shafts. However, Ruskin did not regard these wall types as distinct systems of construction. The composition of this image suggested that it was a picture of


the developmental stages of the wall veil. Ruskin argued that the “whole pier was the gathering of the whole wall, the base gathers into base, the veil into the shaft and the string courses of the veil gather into these rings” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 9: 128). The cornice became the capital and the plinth of the wall became the base for the shaft. In other words, wall, shafts, piers, pilasters, capitals and cornices were continuous. It was as if the entire surface of the building was constructed out of a fabric-like material that was easily gathered, cut and stretched. The wall was to architecture what cloth was to fashion and tailoring.

The three-dimensional form of the wall evoked the image of the linear folds in a dress. Ruskin noted

that to “arrange (by invention) the folds of a piece of drapery, or dispose the locks of hair on the head of a statue, requires as much sense and knowledge of the laws of proportion, as to dispose the masses of a cathedral” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 12: 86). These ideas were illustrated in his discussion of a Renaissance and a Romanesque wall. Ruskin praised the Rio façade of the Ducal Palace (Figure 4). He claimed:

Its majesty, indeed, depends chiefly on this, that it is a wall: not a group of regularly designed parts, but one mighty wall, variously pierced and paneled and its divisions are so irregular, so small and so multitudinous in proportion

Figure 3Pier base (Ruskin 1886, 1: 122).


to its mass, that it is utterly impossible to contemplate it as divided and very nearly impossible either to analyze or describe the method of its division. The eye is led from one part to another, or rather receives all at once; and it requires considerable effort to fix the mind on any separate part of it, or find the key to anything like an intelligible symmetry among the perpetual varieties of its composition. (Ruskin [19–12] 1996, 11: 33–34)

The Rio façade is adorned with numerous vertical projections. However, instead of fragmenting the wall, these elements add interest. Ruskin felt that similar qualities were present in the polychromatic pilastered wall of the church of San Giovanni (1119), Pistoia, Italy. He found the surface of San Giovanni intriguing, because the eye was “thoroughly confused and the whole building thrown into one mass, by the curious variations in the adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one

of which is either exactly in, or positively out of, its place” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 8: 205, emphasis in original). In these buildings, the surface is folded like the fabric of a dress. In addition, the folds of a dress do not follow a predetermined arithmetic order. Along similar lines, the panelings and pilasters exhibit subtle and unpredictable variations, in number as well as in width. The form of the wall in the Rio façade and the church of San Giovanni evoked the fall of a dress. The metaphor of the dress informed

Figure 4Rio façade, Ducal Palace, Venice, photo by author.


not only the massing of the wall veil but also its construction.

The adorned wall veil was clearly divided into surface and depth. This condition was germane to the relationship between the dress and the body. Ruskin found evidence for this in geological formations such as mountains. In “Wall veil” (Stones I), Ruskin noted that Mont Cervin in the Alps was not a peak or a tower, but a “vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d’Erin and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 9: 86). He observed that the “courses of its varied masonry are seen in their successive order, smooth and true as if laid by line and plummet, but of thickness and strength continually varying and with silver cornices glittering along the edge of each” (p. 88). In other words, the

face of the mountain was like a wall (Figure 5). It exhibited verticality. It also had architectural elements like the cornice and coursed masonry, and it was composed of different types of stone. However, after a close observation, Ruskin realized that the rock formation was not only a wall but also a dressed object. He noted that the “mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull brick-red color, which yields beneath the foot like ashes” covered hard rock beneath that was “disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 9: 87). He argued that there were no cliffs, which did not “display alternations between compact and friable conditions of their material” (p. 88). In other words, a delicate and decorative outer layer concealed the solid inner core. The separation between an inner and an outer layer was the

Figure 5View of Mont Cervin (Matterhorn) from the east and north east (Ruskin 1996 [1903–12], 6: 284).


fundamental precept of Ruskin’s theory of the adorned wall veil.

The separation between the surface and depth in the adorned wall veil was not just physical. It was also symbolic. In other words, the ornamentation of the wall was disconnected from its construction. Ruskin explored this idea in relation to the Romanesque building, Baptistery of St John (1059–1128), Florence (Figure 6). He called it the “central building of European Christianity” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 23: 298). In Lecture I, “Of the division of arts” (1870), Ruskin declared:

The first building I shall give you as a standard will be one in which the structure is wholly

concealed. The Baptistery of Florence, which is, in reality, as much a buttressed chapel with a vaulted roof, as the Chapter House of York—in order to conceal that buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe, but to conceal ) a flat external wall is raised; simplifying the whole to a mere hexagonal box … surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of encrusting marble of different colors, which have no more to do with the real make of the building than the diaper of a Harlequin’s jacket has to do with his bones … (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 20: 217, emphasis in original)

Ruskin accurately noted that the external wall was independent of the mechanical parts of construction and its internal spatial arrangement. The wall was a separate membrane that was detached from the actual building, enclosing, concealing and simplifying its bulky structural aspects. He compared the wall to a “Harlequin’s jacket.” This was an appropriate metaphor, because the colorful diaper patterned fabric that was used for making the harlequin’s jacket made no reference to the form of body. Along similar lines, the arches, shafts, bays and floor levels delineated using colored marble were illusions. They did not explain the actual disposition of space or

Figure 6Baptistery of St John (1059–1128), Florence, Alinari Archives, Florence.


structure inside the building.20 Ruskin regarded the building’s exterior as a pictorial surface. He called it “one piece of large engraving. White substance, cut into and filled with black and dark green” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 23: 344). His drawing of the Baptistery depicted a cropped view of one of the bays. It suggested that the composition of the external wall could be appreciated as if it was an independently executed art object. The ornamentation of the wall veil was arbitrary and it did not perform any function. It represented an alternate reality, something other than materiality, fact and utility.

The analogy between wall and dress also informed the design of the surface ornament. Ruskin proposed a literal analogy between surface ornament and the pattern and texture of textiles. In Modern Painters I, he argued “that which makes drapery be drapery, is not its being made of silk, or worsted, or flax, for things are made of all these which are not drapery, but the ideas peculiar to drapery” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 3: 151). He added that the “properties which, when inherent in a thing, make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexibility, unity and comparative thinness. Everything which has these properties, a waterfall, for instance, if united and extended, or a net of weeds over a wall, is drapery, as much as silk or woolen stuff is” (p. 151). In other words, drapery was a metaphor that could be applied to objects that were not actually woven. This laid the foundation for a new type of ornament that could challenge the use of attached architectural ornamentation. In the new approach to ornament,

repeatable decorative units—instead of clustering together into conspicuous forms—would fuse and link together to form a flat, thin and flexible membrane. It would be like a film that would spread over a substantial area without losing its form. The three-dimensional quality of ornament was diminished and the distinction between figure and ground, ornament and surface was dissolved. The ornament was flattened and it became identical with the cladding.

The ornament had to be organized according to the logic of the weave. This is illustrated in Ruskin’s drawing and discussion of a sculptured bracket from the Lyons cathedral.21 In the drawing, the bracket is not simply filled with naturalistic ornament; the foliage is flattened as well as contained within a two-dimensional frame. Ruskin felt that there was a feeling of cohesion in this ornament. He noted: “You will observe how beautifully that figure is thus pointed to by the spray of rose and how all the leaves around it in the same manner are subservient to the grace of its action. Look, if I hide one line, or one rosebud, how the whole is injured” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 12: 60). By examining the drawing, it becomes clear that the sense of cohesion present in the arrangement of the foliage is not accidental. The foliage is interlaced and entangled. A leafy branch from one of the sides of the quatrefoil enters one of the foils, loops around and emerges on to the other side, suggesting that all parts are knitted together. Because of this woven quality, nothing could be added or subtracted without disrupting the whole.


The idea of the weave informed not only low-relief ornamentation but also pierced ornament. Ruskin was referring to surfaces perforated with foliations (Verona, Padua and Lisieux, illustrated in Figures 1 and 2), inlaid ornament and marble screens in Islamic buildings. He argued that the architect can “without danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with holes” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 10: 108–9). However, the solid masses that were left over after the deduction of the voids tended to look “scattered and spotty” (p. 163). Therefore, he suggested that such surfaces were best treated, when:

intermediate spaces were carved into the semblance of interwoven fillets, which alternately sank beneath and rose above each other as they met. This system of braided or woven ornament was not confined to the Arabs; it is universally pleasing to the instinct of mankind … the more profound reason lies in the innate love of mystery and unity; in the joy that the human mind has in contemplating any kind of maze or entanglement, so long as it can discern, through its confusion, any guiding clue or connecting plan … we are never tired of contemplating this woven involution; and that, in some degree, the sublime pleasure which we have in watching the branches of trees, the intertwining of the grass and the tracery of the higher clouds, is owing to it, not less

than that which we receive from the fine meshes of the robe, the braiding of the hair and the various glittering of the linked net or wreathed chain … Byzantine ornamentation, like that of almost all nations in a state of progress, is full of this kind of work: but it occurs most conspicuously, though most simply, in the minute traceries which surround their most solid capitals. (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 10: 163–64)22

According to Ruskin, surface ornament should evoke the images of linking, braiding, weaving and entangling. An appropriate demonstration is the capitals on the western porch of the church of St. Mark’s basilica in Venice (Figure 7). Ruskin liked these capitals because the stone netting covered a solid form within. These capitals were a reflection of the adorned wall veil – a weaker, decorative and woven membrane covering a solid mass. The idea of the weave is also evidenced in Gothic buildings in Venice, such as in Ca’ d’Oro (1428–30), a Venetian palace on the Grand Canal (Figure 8). The marble veneer on the façade is extended horizontally, giving rise to the traceries. The individual bars of the tracery intermingle to form a marble mesh that is stretched across the front of the upper and lower balconies. This creates a surface that is perforated yet united. The emphasis on weaving was an outcome of Ruskin’s study of nature.

He applied Carlyle’s philosophy of clothes to the study of the natural world and he felt that the inner vitality of nature was

expressed as a dressed surface. In “The eagles nest” (1872), he asked readers to:

observe that what is true respecting these simple forms of drapery is true of all other inorganic form. It must become organic under the artist’s hand by his invention. As there must not be a fold in a vestment too few or too many, there must not, in noble landscape, be a fold in a mountain, too few or too many … in Turner’s “Valley of Chamouni” the mountains have not a fold too much, nor too little … (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 22: 219)

Ruskin was referring to an engraving by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), titled “Mer de Glace, Valley of Chamouni, Savoy,” 1812. The ridges and valleys in the mountains were compared to the folds in a drapery. Along similar lines, he claimed that, in the glaciers, the form of the snow had been “modified by the under forms of the hill in some sort as dress is by the anatomy of the human frame” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 3: 447). He argued that, by the “little twigs the most important fabric on the face of the earth was woven” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 7: 467). He also claimed that the “leaves of the forest are ceaseless toilers; all their existence long they are spinners and weavers and miners; and the timber of our largest trees displays the warp and woof of the multiple threads” (p. 467).23 In essence, Ruskin believed that nature consisted solely of woven surfaces.

This outlook had a religious undertone. Ruskin praised the divine “preparation of the earth for him (human being), with beautiful


means of life. First, a carpet to make it soft for him; then, a colored fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sun heat” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 7: 15). He converted elements of the landscape into woven and matted objects. As a result, the field of green grass was like a carpet, flowers were the embroidery on this carpet, and the interlaced branches of the trees were the canopy. The divine creation of earth as a habitable space for human beings was possible because of the creation of

dressed natural forms. As the act of creating was synonymous with dressing, masons and builders mimicked the divine work in architecture. They created textile and fabric analogies in stone.

The relation between dress and architecture was reinforced by employing a contentious historiographical methodology. Ruskin argued that the:

Gothic builders were no longer satisfied with the faint and delicate hues of the veined marble; they wished for some

Figure 7Capital, Western porch, St. Mark’s Basilica (1063), Venice. Photo by author.


more forcible and piquant mode of decoration, corresponding more completely with the gradually advancing splendor of chivalric costume and heraldic device … while, as we have seen, a peculiar simplicity is found also in the forms of the architecture, corresponding to that of the folds of the robes, its colors were constantly increasing in brilliancy and decision, corresponding to those of the quartering of the shield and of the embroidery of the mantle. (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 11: 23, emphasis in original)

The first assumption was that there was continuity between different architectural styles. New styles of architecture evolved as a result of the improvements made to the surface decoration of an older style. The second assumption was that the evolution of architecture took place in tandem with the changes in dress style. Ruskin argued that the

simple early medieval costume developed into a vividly colored and embroidered style of clothing in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Along similar lines, the veined marble veneer of Byzantine buildings gave way to Gothic walls that were decorated with “chequers of very warm color, a russet inclining to scarlet more or less relieved with white, black and grey” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 11: 27). By constructing a single history for dress and architecture, Ruskin naturalized the idea that the building was a dressed body. The adorned wall veil was an all-encompassing theory that informed all aspects of the wall design.

ConclusionThis paper has analyzed Ruskin’s writings on architecture to understand the implications of his emphasis on surface ornament. In the first section, it demonstrated that Ruskin’s interest in the surface was not because he was not trained as an architect. It was because of

his belief that architecture was a reflection of the human body. Ruskin had a radically different approach toward the human body. Compared with classical theorists or Gothic revivalists such as Viollet-le-Duc, who had high regard for the physical body, Ruskin’s model of the body was based on Carlyle’s philosophy of clothes. According to Carlyle, the soul was more important than the body and it could be expressed only through clothing: without clothing, the body was meaningless. This gave rise to the moral triad of the body, soul and clothes. Ruskin extended this theory to architecture. He believed that the masonry structure and the space within the building was the body. The decorative layer that concealed and covered the masonry structure was like clothing, which expressed the soul of architecture.

In the second section, the paper argued that the moral triad of the body, soul and clothes encouraged Ruskin to generate the theory of the adorned wall veil. It

Figure 8Ca’ d’Oro (Palazzo Santa Sofia), Grand Canal, Venice. Photo by author.


revealed the complex theoretical, formal and historiographical processes through which Ruskin justified his argument that the exterior surface of architecture was analogous to dress and textile. First, he suggested that the wall was not only the building block but also the essence of architecture. Second, through the play of literary metaphors of cutting, lifting, shrinking and gathering, Ruskin converted the tectonic language of architecture into a language of tailoring and upholstering. Third, Ruskin suggested that the ornamental cladding was a plane positioned parallel to and outside the structural system. The physical and symbolic separation between construction and decoration was evocative of the relation between body and dress. Fourth, Ruskin rejected attached and sculptural ornamentation out. Instead, he privileged pierced screens, traceried openings, inlaid surfaces and flattened low-relief ornament, because they evoked images of linking, braiding and entanglement. Finally, Ruskin constructed parallel histories of architecture and dress. He made the “evolution” of architectural styles correspond to the changes taking place in dress styles.

The theory of the adorned wall veil addresses a gap in the history of architecture and dress. It shows that Semper’s writings were not the sole origin of these debates. Through an original interpretation of historical buildings, Ruskin proposed a parallel theory of equal relevance. It progressed beyond the suggestion that architectural decoration had textile origins. Using the analogy

of body and dress, he put forward an all-encompassing theory of architecture, in which the design of the minor ornament to the massing of the wall could be considered analogous to dress. Most importantly, Ruskin’s theory had a moral foundation; the belief that the soul was more important than the body and that it attained autonomous expression through clothing allowed a subtle questioning of the ontological identity of architecture.

The first assumption to be challenged was that architecture was defined by interior space, structure and function. In Seven Lamps, Ruskin distinguished between building and architecture. He explained that to build was to “put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size” (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 8: 27). In other words, building was a spatial and mechanically stable object. However, Ruskin argued that “mere utility and constructive merit” did not make it architecture (Ruskin [1903–12] 1996, 12: 84). He admitted that architecture was the addition of the “unnecessary feature” or the “useless” element to building. In other words, the additional and the superficial was architecture.

Even though the emphasis on exterior and aesthetic qualities of buildings suggests an art historical framework for architectural criticism, the evasion of discussions of space and structure was deliberate. John Unrau argues that Ruskin had a well-developed spatial consciousness. This was evidenced in Ruskin’s drawing


of the interior of San Frediano, Lucca; passionate descriptions of cathedral interiors in The Bible of Amiens (1880–85); and diagrams and descriptions of vaulting in French medieval buildings in his numerous notebooks (Unrau 1978). Paul Hatton suggests that, in “Ruskin’s case, awareness and interest must not be confused” (Hatton 1992: 129). This paper argues that the emphasis on the surface was an outcome of his belief that clothing was the essence of the human figure, because it expressed the most important aspect of the human being—the soul. Therefore, for Ruskin, the wall and its decorative veneer were no longer merely elements of architecture. It was the new essence or the substance of architecture. For the first time, architecture was equated exclusively with visual affect.24

The second assumption to be challenged was that architectural ornament should be tectonic, i.e. expressive of space, function or structure. This was a prevalent idea in nineteenth-century architectural theory.25 Ruskin’s theory of the adorned wall veil emphasized the atectonic surface. Ornament evoked extra-architectural images such as folds, weaves and fabrics. As a result, it denied its constructed nature. In addition, it followed its own logic, such as flatness, knitted and woven quality and extension. Ornament had no decorative function. It did not address the spatial layout, fenestrations or structure. In other words, representation (the form and symbolic content of the decoration) was always unmistakably disengaged from

production (structure and material). Ruskin’s emphasis on the atectonic surface emerged out of the belief that clothing was an expression of the soul, which was not influenced by the body. It was a direct and autonomous expression of the soul. This article concludes that Ruskin’s theory of the adorned wall veil was a response to the prevalent ideas in architecture. It proposed a new direction for architectural theory and practice.

Notes 1. In the nineteenth century,

one of the well-known commentators on Ruskin was Samuel Higgins, who argued in 1853 that architecture is the “art of the beautiful manifested in structure, of which, by its very nature, as a structural art, form must be the dominant principle.” Higgins claimed that a “building in which construction is made subservient to and whose chief glory is color, whether obtained by painting the surface, or by incrustation with precious and colored material, cannot be architecture at all, in the proper sense of the word” (Higgins 1853: 722–24, 743–44). His opinion was supported by an anonymous reviewer in 1853, who claimed that by focusing on the ornament rather than structure, Ruskin made the “same mistake as it would be to describe the coat instead of the man, sometimes not even the coat, but the buttons and braid which cover it” (Anonymous 1853: 467, 514–15, 602–4).

2. Charles H. Moore claimed that Ruskin’s “apprehensions were not grounded in a proper sense of structure and he had no practical acquaintance with the art of building” (1924: 117). This opinion is echoed by Paul Frankl in his authoritative publication The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (1960). Frankl claimed that Ruskin’s interest was always fixed on the two-dimensional aspects, on the manner in which ornament contributed to the perception of the surface as an “integral whole” and that he did not really understand important advancements in architecture, because he did not adequately visualize or understand three-dimensional interiors (1960: 560–61).

3. Garrigan explained that Ruskin was interested not just in walls but in their planarity. She claimed that he viewed a “building as a series of planes,” that “may be undecorated, beautiful in themselves because of the lovely patterns inherent in their materials” (1973: 42). This explains Ruskin’s admiration for Italian Gothic and ambivalence towards Northern Gothic cathedrals. Garrigan perceptively notes that, because of their strong classical heritage, the Gothic buildings in Italy demonstrated “volumetric clarity and serene resolution of horizontal and vertical elements” (p. 36). These structures were simple and logical. Their bounding walls were planar and solid


and covered by a thin film of mosaic or marble. Italian Gothic did not possess the intricate sculptural quality or the interpenetrative volumes of the Northern Gothic cathedrals. Instead of dissolving the walls, these buildings affirmed the falseness and flatness of the exterior (p. 36).

4. The Vitruvian man was first drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in 1490. It was included in Fra Giovanni Giocondo’s 1511 edition of Vitruvius’s De architectura (see Geddes 2004). The Italian translation of De architectura by Cesare Cesariano, Di lucio Vitruvio pollione de architectura (1521), also featured the Vitruvian man (see Francesco 2004).

5. Bressani explains that Viollet-le-Duc was well acquainted with the anatomical work of Bourgery. In addition, Bourgery shared with Viollet-le-Duc the passion for Gothic. The quoted passage is from Étienne Delécluze, “Variétés Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme …”, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 15, November 1834, quoted in Bressani (2003: 126).

6. For Ruskin’s criticism of Vitruvian thought, see Ruskin (1996 [1903–12], 11: 119).

7. Carlyle claimed that “an inward persuasion has long been diffusing itself and now and then even comes to utterance, that, except the external, there are no true sciences; that to the inward world (if there be any) our only

conceivable road is through the outward; that, in short, what cannot be investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be investigated and understood at all” (Carlyle 2004 [1829/1858]: 105).

8. For a discussion of Carlyle’s philosophy of clothes, see Keenan (2001: 1–50) and Carter (2003: 1–17).

9. Original emphasis on the word transparent has been removed.

10. For an account of the friendship between Ruskin and Carlyle, see Kegel (1964: 219–29) and Wheeler (1993–94: 2–13).

11. This was evidenced in the Filarete’s statement: “As men should be dressed and adorned according to their dignity, so ought building.” This quotation is from Filarete, Treatise of Architecture, translated by J.R. Spencer (Yale University Press, p. 84), quoted in Forty (1989: 10). Along similar lines, Inigo Jones claimed: “In all invencions of Caprecious ornaments, on must first designe the Ground, or ye thing plaine, as it is for youse and on that varry yt, addorne yt, compose yt with Decorum according to the youse and the order yt is of.” This meant that buildings are built plain and then dressed with ornament appropriate to the status of the building and its occupant (see Anderson 1997: 50).

12. According to Forty, the concept of decorum faded due to the “abandonment of social distinctions in dress,” which “rendered this meaning of the metaphor useless”


(1989: 10). Hill and Kohane suggest other reasons for the disappearance of this concept. Between seventeenth and eighteenth century, decorum was isolated and codified. It was not a pervasive quality of good architecture. In addition, Roland Fréart and Claude Perrault questioned the connection between architectural orders and the universal order. In the nineteenth century, ornament was increasingly perceived as an aesthetic element, which gave the building a pleasing appearance by reiterating its hidden structure (2001: 2).

13. See Bergdoll (2000).14. Semper’s theories were

interpreted variously by modern architects. On the one hand, Otto Wagner (1841–1918), Joseph Hoffman (1870–1956) and Max Fabiani converted the surfaces of their buildings into flat pictorial surfaces (see Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi 2002: 80–91). On the other hand, Adolf Loos (1870–1933) argued that the white plaster coat on the exterior wall was the simple and unornamented clothing of modern man (see Wigley 1993). Semper’s illustrations of knotting, weaving and braiding in “primitive” cultures have been revived in current practice. Lars Spuybroek of NOX architects claims that their design philosophy “radically updates and goes beyond Semper,” such that the “textile” becomes the “tectonic.” This is evidenced in the design of Son-O-House

(2000–4), a public pavilion in Son en Breugel, Netherlands, which shows that a structurally stable form was developed by bundling, weaving, interlacing, braiding and knotting soft members (tensile steel elements) (see Tramontin 2006: 53). For a discussion of the connection between Semper and current architectural practice, see Hartoonian (2002 and 2006) and Quinn (2006).

15. The full title of the book is Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carolingienne à la renaissance (1858–75) and it comprised six volumes.

16. This is quoted in Forty (1989: 10).

17. The term wall veil has been discussed by Brooks (1989: 88) and Van Zanten (1977: 50).

18. For a discussion of the wall veil, see Ruskin (1996 [1903–12], 9: 79–81).

19. For a discussion of Alberti’s theory of the wall and column, see Hartoonian (1989: 45), Sicca (1990: 90) and Wittkower (1988: 41–56).

20. Ruskin explains this point in relation to the church San Zenone, Verona. He claims that the “pleasantness of the surface decoration is independent of structure; that is to say, of any architectural requirement of stability. The greater part of the sculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a flat wall, or of door-panelling; only a small portion of the church front is thus treated and the sculpture has no more to do with the

form of the building than a piece of lace veil would have, suspended beside its gates on a festal day” (Ruskin 1996 [1903–12], 20: 216).

21. Ruskin explains that the Lyons cathedral exterior had niches that are filled in with statues. The pedestals that support these statues are held up by “flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the wall,” about a “foot and a half square” in dimension. These brackets are shaped as a quatrefoil. Four small figures are placed in each foil, with two large ones in the center. Ruskin wrote that he had time enough to make a “drawing of one of the angles of these pedestals; that sketch I have enlarged, in order that you may have some idea of the character of the sculpture” (Ruskin 1996 [1903–12], 12: 59–60).

22. In a lecture titled, ‘The influence of imagination in architecture’ (1857), Ruskin noted the significance of weaving. He argued that as “there is nothing in life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for you, or its gift; and when you are tired of watching the strength of the plume and the tenderness of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river-shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares; and there is not a piece of torn cable that will not twine into a perfect molding; there is not a fragment of castaway matting, or shattered basket-work, that will not work into a chequer or


a capital” (Ruskin 1996 [1903–12], 16: 366–67). He admitted to his “love of all sorts of filigree and embroidery, from hoarfrost to the high clouds. The intricacies of virgin silver, of arborescent gold, the weaving of birds’-nests, the netting of lace, the basket capitals of Byzantium” (Ruskin 1996 [1903–12], 35: 157).

23. For more references to nature and dressing, see Ruskin (1996 [1903–12], 1: 284); (1996 [1903–12], 3: 425); (1996 [1903–12], 3: 592) and (1996 [1903–12], 7: 13–19).

24. The adorned wall veil appears to be a precursor to the current theory of surface architecture. The past decade or so has seen the re-emergence of surface as a legitimate theoretical and artefactual entity in architectural theory and practice. Architectural surface is not merely considered as the façade of a building. It is viewed as having not only a representational role but also as being capable of generating space and in some cases the architectural program. The emphasis on the surface is a critique of the modernist architectural thought, which has up until now privileged space and function. This “turn” in architectural discourse is due to the emergence of digital technologies, as well as a re-engagement with parallel practices such as fashion. Architectural practices that merit attention are Systems Architects, Surface Architects, Frank Gehry and Herzog and de Meuron, as well as

Australian practices like Lyons, Dale Jones Evans and Ashton Raggatt McDougall. The main publications in this topic are Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi (2002), Benjamin (2006: 1–34), Taylor (2003) and Hodge and Mark (2006).

25. The theory of tectonic ornament has been articulated by a number of theorists. One of the key thinkers on this topic was Karl Bötticher (1806–89). Bötticher’s theory of architecture was outlined in “The Development of the Forms of Greek Tectonic” (1840); The Tectonic of the Greeks (1844, 1852); and “The Principle of Greek and German Building Methods” (1846) (see Schwarzer 1993: 268). For Bötticher, the “space enclosed by a building determines its particular technology of roofing; the roof mandates constructive requirements from which a structural skeleton then emerges; finally, the entire system of constructive members forms the basis for artistic enterprise” (Schmarsow and Schwarzer 1991: 52). The tectonic ornament was an integration of space, function and construction of the building. A.W.N. Pugin (1812–52) was writing around the same time. In The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), Pugin delineated two major rules for the appropriate relation between ornament and structure. He claimed: “First, that there should be no features of a building


which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; second, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building” (Pugin 1973 [1841]: 1). For Pugin, ornament was not redundant. This could be achieved by decorating the structural components of a building and by removing all other ornament that did not do so. He felt that classical buildings failed to satisfy these criteria. He criticized St. Paul’s Cathedral, London because a false upper floor was constructed to mask the flying buttress. Pugin explained that the buttress was a structural element and, in a Gothic cathedral, it would have been revealed as well as celebrated through ornamentation (see Swenarton 1995: 206). James Fergusson (1808–86) also contributed to this debate. In Historical Enquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art (1849) and Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (1855), Fergusson promoted the idea that ornament imparted a pleasing appearance to the building and converted it into a work of fine art. The ornament did so by revealing the underlying structure of the building (Hill and Kohane 2001: 63–64, 72).

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