C F a Voysey

An influential architect and designer in Britain's Arts and Crafts movement, Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857-1941) is best known for his white, roughcast houses with green slate roofs, models of economy, clarity, the use of natural materials and the harmony of a building and its surroundings. In this impressive, beautifully illustrated monograph, London-based architectural historian Hitchmough scrutinizes the English architect's cottages and grand houses; designs for offices, a factory, a school, a village hall; as well as his curvilinear furniture, metalwork and fresh, charming wallpapers, fabrics and textiles. Translating the critical philosophy of John Ruskin into simple, practical statements, Voysey invented a housing type at once fashionable, rooted in tradition and progressive in its insistence that all elements in the makeup of a dwelling be integrally linked. Hitchmough appraises the legacy of an individualist who, though he scorned modern architecture as ``false originality,'' has been hailed as a precursor of the modernist movement. (Nov.)