A lot of style ideas were shared with the public and the architectural pros through architectural pattern books. During the early Victorian era, the pattern book kept going, and as new printing and drawing methods and bigger book markets grew, it took on more shapes and sizes. During this time, there were pattern books with designs by a single builder, collections of designs by different named designers, pattern books with designs that had not been tried yet or had been tried and built, and books on how to correctly detail historical buildings. The 1820s and 1830s were a great time for villa and country books.
One example is Villa Architecture, A Collection of Views with Plans of Buildings, executed in England, Scotland, etc. in 1828 and again in 1855. It is the last of Robert Lugar’s three books. Many people knew Lugar as the architect who designed cottage ornés and Gothic houses with castellated roofs in the Nash style. It was in the usual format, with a short opening and 42 hand-colored aquatints and etchings of buildings in Birmingham, Liverpool, and other places. The designs were of a wide range of styles and sizes, such as Gothic homes, an Indian villa, and a Turkish summer. Lugar, like other pattern book authors, made clothes for newly rich industrialists.
This book is dedicated to William Crawshay, who owned the Cyfarthfa ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil and was, by the 1840s, the biggest iron-making company in the world. The book shows pictures of Cyfarthfa Castle, which was built in 1824 and is high up in the hills with a view of the works. Henry Russell Hitchcock says that Lugar’s castellated style, with its chunky, coarse details and free planning, looks forward to the Victorian era.
The price of £30,000 made Crawshay’s father question whether it was a good idea to build something so big. No one can say how much it will cost to finish, equip, and keep up. But Crawshay said that Cyfarthfa Castle was “a thousand times” better than any other home in Merthyr because it had a “lake larger than 50 fish pools,” huge hot houses, and “an ingenious icehouse for keeping game and meat in perfect condition.”
As was said in the introduction, Peter Frederick Robinson, one of the founders of the Institute of British Architects and one of its first vice presidents, wrote one of the most important pattern books. He designed many cottages and mansions, but his pattern books were what really added to the discussion about style in the early 1800s. He made the Swiss house popular, and over the next few decades, builders and architects copied or changed his Old English/Tudor designs.
In fact, the Tudor style had an impact on the Vernacular revival and Arts and Crafts styles of the late 1800s, as well as on houses built between World Wars I and II in the 1900s. John Archer said that Robinson’s first book, Rural Architecture, or a Series of Designs for Ornamental Cottages, which came out in 12 parts, was the first collection of designs in the “Old English” style.
“Very extensive” sales of the book led to a fifth edition in 1850. The 1836 version said that “many of the plates were newly worn out; they have been redrawn at considerable expense.” As we already said, Robinson’s books were also notable for the lithographs that Hullmandel printed on them. The 1836 edition noted that “the art of lithography has considerably improved since the publication of the original work,” which shows how the medium was always getting better. Each design in the book had several drawings that were pen-and-ink lithographs of the front and side elevations, plans, and a scenic view in chalk-style printing. Many of these drawings were done by Harding.