The Pugin Trail

My piece on Birmingham's Pugin Trail has been published in the current edition of the Church Times.

One strand of the Trail explores prints as an important vehicle by which Christianity was extended to and received by the wider community. Pugin used the work of Dürer, seem by him via prints, as inspiration for his own architectural and interior designs including furniture, tiles, wallpaper, and stained-glass windows.The influence that prints could have was also demonstrated by Pugin's own influence as his own name was made with the publication in 1836 of Contrasts, a book of satirical “before and now” etchings, through which he contrasted the glories of medieval architecture and its civilised society with the tired classical constructions that were the product of the degraded modern industrial city.

Rosemary Hill's God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain provides an excellent introduction to the man and his work. The BBC documentary Pugin: God's Own Architect can currently be seen in i-player.

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Bobby Womack - Deep River.