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It is difficult
to perceive, amid the glitter of ornament, the superior dignity
and beauty of simplicity. We confess as hearty a love of
decoration and ornament in architecture as any one. But it must
be consistent, to satisfy us. It must express a beauty which
pervades the building itself, everywhere, and not seem patched
on, to catch the eye, and hide its defects. Harmonious
proportions, a well ordered distribution of parts, excellent
constructions, and afterwards, a suitable degree of decorations.
Else it is like a poor book badly printed, yet richly bound and
glittering with gold leaf.
A simple, well-planned structure
costs less to execute, for the accommodation obtained, than an
ill-planned one; and the fact of its being agreeable and
effective, or otherwise, does not depend on any ornament that
may be superadded to the useful and necessary forms of which it
is composed, but on the arrangement of those forms themselves,
so that they may balance each other and suggest the pleasant
ideas of harmonious proportion, fitness, and agreeable variety
to the eye, and through the eye to the mind. All this is simply
a matter of study before building, not of additional cost in
building.
Calvert Vaux, Villas
& Cottages, 1867
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