The Architecture and Writings of E.S. Prior (Challenging the Arts and Crafts)

Edward Schröder Prior (1852-1932) is not easily labelled. His reputation as an Arts and Crafts architect is well-earned but his output is much broader and more complex, offering a fascinating window into the debates surrounding English architectural and design culture around the turn of the 20th century. This book brings together the various strands of his work to present a far more complex, holistic understanding of his particularly rich and insightful thinking and his creative approaches.

A contemporary and close friend of C.F.A. Voysey and W.R. Lethaby, as well as C.R. Ashbee and Ernest Gimson, Prior was perhaps most famous in his lifetime for his writings, including his books and articles on English medieval art, and as Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge University, where he set up the first architecture course. In subsequent decades, his writings have been upstaged by his original, innovative and varied architecture, with his best-known building, St Andrew’s, Roker (Sunderland), dubbed the ’cathedral’ of the Arts and Crafts movement.

When taken together, Prior’s writings and architecture demonstrate the complexities and contradictions inherent in his work, as well as contemporary and visual cultures. The topics which were at the heart of his work – the conflicts between architecture as a creative process, a profession and a business; the translation of design intentions through a project; the challenge of representing architecture to clients and the public; the position and treatment of architecture students in practices; the nature of work in ‘historic’ buildings – make fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in architectural and visual culture, then and now.