Book Reviews.

Progress, Volume XVII, Issue 1, 1 September 1921, Page 20

Book Reviews.

Design and Tradition, by Amor Fenn. (Chapman and Hall, Ltd., London; 30s. net.)

This book covers a very wide field and has great interest to professional and layman alike. The author describes it as ''A Short Account of the Principles and Historic Development of Architecture and the Applied Arts." It is one of a series of Universal Art Series devoted almost exclusively to the traditional design in Europe from classic sources. It is divided into sections dealing with - Historic Review, Mouldings, Architectural Proportions, Division of Surface, Conventional Ornament, Treatment in Design, Mythology and Symbolism, etc., and is well illustrated by drawings of technical interest. The author. has made a genuine attempt to produce a book that will be a guiding hand to those interested in design who would otherwise waste a good deal of energy in misdirected effort. .Historic style is of paramount importance to the genuine student, and intelligent destination will show that the underlying factors of i's varying phases are much the same. A book of this nature makes a most valuable treatise for the use of st'Hents of design and art who have gone through our schools, and feel the. need for some guiding hard to establish a permanent style based on good European traditions of an orthodox type.

The author makes a good point when he says that a designer must not be satisfied to prepare an external appearance for the object in question, but must know how it is constructed, and out of what materials, and what are the limitations of the materials over which the craftsman triumphs. An illustration of this may be given in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, which is not, as might be supposed, a mere copy of St. Peter's at Rome, but possesses an unseen interior construction which is as much a part of the design as the exterior.

Geometry for Builders and Architects, by J. E. Paynter'. (Chapman and Hall, Ltd., London; 15s. net.) This book, which is written for use as a text-book by architects and surveyors, as well as students and practical men engaged in the various branches of the building industry, contains examples specially selected for their practical application to the difficulties arising in actual workshop practice. The book is intended more for the practical man with some knowledge of the more elementary principles of geometry than as a primer for beginners, and as such should be widely studied. It would make an excellent book to be read after the study of Mr. Fenn's book mentioned above, by those sufficientlv interested in architecture to become designers. Mr. Paynter deals with scales, angle measurement and triangles, passing on to the construction of plane rectilineal figures which form the bases of our simplest domestic architecture. Mouldings, arches, columns and sewers all illustrate the properties of the circle elaborated in a hundred different directions, and this book shows the geometrical process through which a builder must go who wishes to construct his work on sound lines—whether it be a simple brickwork arch of Gothic, Pointed or Tudor design or a more ambitious attempt.