Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

@Devin wrote:

You will no doubt be familiar with the quote from page 161 of Craig’s Architecture of Ireland about the dutch billys here having “irregular gables stepped or topped with gracelss triangles or the feeblest of Baroque curves fall[ing] short of the picturesque even in fallacious retrospect”

You have to turn over a lot of slimy stones to find a kindred spirit like that :rolleyes:

I think it was on the other . . . ”Origins of the Dutch Billy” . . . . thread that Trace gave the Craig position on ‘Billys’, and included that vile quote from C.P. Curran, who it appears was some kind of ‘historian’ of plasterwork and who has now gone to his reward.

To put the record straight, it would probably be grossly unfair to Maurice Craig to leave the impression that he shared anything like that scurrilous view.

OK maybe Craig, in devoting less than two and a half pages of ‘Dublin 1660 – 1860’ to Dutch Billys, went a bit light on our extraordinary gabled heritage, but back in 1950 Craig was telling a different story and one that hadn’t been told properly before, the story of how Dublin went from architectural obscurity to become the great classical city of lore. In that story, the whole gabled tradition could conceivably be seen as a branch line, and anyway Craig made amends in ‘The Architecture of Ireland’ in 1982, in which he more than hinted at the scale and importance of the gabled tradition, . . . . . without wasting more that two and a half pages on it:rolleyes:

I’ll try and find that other thread and maybe drag it over here.