1913 Edition of The Seven Lamps Of Architecture

Inside my 1913 Edition

For a student of craft work like me seeing a 1913 Edition of The Seven Lamps Of Architecture in an antique book shop was like finding gold! It was $9.50 for me to buy and it probably wasn’t even worth that much but I’d have gladly paid double. Funny how we place value on certain things that others wouldn’t take for free. All of you Kindle and Nook users are nodding at the screen right now however I'm nostalgic about a lot of old stuff including books! I already have a more recent printing but it's a soft cover and lacks the character of an almost 100 year old hard back.

So why is this book in particular of value to me? If you go to Wikipedia and look up John Ruskin this is what you will find:

John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was an English art critic and social thinker, also remembered as a poet and artist. His essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

You will also find a slew of other information but not a whole lot about what is important to me about John Ruskin.

Ruskin was an early champion for the artisan to rebel against the machines of industry. After modernism and the industrial revolution cast out craft work he called for artisans to reclaim societies respect!

In the mid 1850’s Ruskin along with others created a Working Men’s College where he gave lectures to craft workers on a variety of topics. The purpose was to create a positive environment for people who worked with their hands AND their minds. In 1849 Ruskin released The Seven Lamps of Architecture which offered seven guides for anyone who works directly on material items. These are the seven (with descriptions borrowed from Richard Sennett’s book “The Craftsman”) :

“The Lamp of Sacrifice,” the willingness to do something well for it’s own sake, dedication;

“The Lamp of Truth,” the truth that “breaks and rents continually” embrace of difficulty, resistance, and ambiguity;

“The Lamp of Power,” tempered power, guided by standards other than blind will;

“The Lamp of Beauty,” which for Ruskin is found more in the detail, the ornament-hand sized beauty-than the large design;

“The Lamp of Life,” life equating to struggle and energy, death with deadly perfection;

“The Lamp of Memory,” the guidance provided by the time before machinery ruled; and

“The Lamp of Obedience,” which consists of obedience to the example set by a master’s practice rather than his particular works; otherwise put, strive to be like Stradivari but do not seek to copy his particular violins.

This book really sealed Ruskin’s fame but a later book he wrote “The Stones of Venice” is more widely regarded. I wonder if I can find a cool old edition of that one too. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from “The Stones of Venice”.

"You can teach a man to draw a straight line; to strike a curved line, and to carve it . . . with admirable speed and precision; and you will find his work perfect of it's kind; but if you ask him to think about any of these forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that, he was only a machine before, an animated tool."