OTHER RECENT BOOKS
nd English Cottages and Farmhouses—Text by he Olive Cook, photographs by Edwin 'Y, Smith. (Thames & Hudson. 42s.)
THE subject lends itself all too easily to a
ity facile and sentimental treatment. Miss Cook and Mr. Smith have avoided that particular ler 1341'111, and their book is an honest attempt to give a general anthology of English rural st. building. But the range they cover is much
'0- too wide for their treatment to constitute
:er more than the sketchiest of contributions
11eto the literature of the subject. They have included barns at the one extreme, and habitable follies at the other, and occasion- we te, ally, as in Plate 19, they have included ier buildings which are neither cottage, farm-
Ens house, barn nor folly—in this case a pros- perous merchant's house in a town, a house ry which was in fact a shop in thexarly sixteenth na century. There is more rhyme and reason ies about traditional plan-forms than Miss
!at Cook seems to imply on page 13. Many People will quarrel with her assertion a little later that 'perfection of technique is ou I always the enemy of art.' But perhaps she
to attaches a craftier meaning to the word 'art' than we do, though technique and crafts- he manship are surely not adversaries?
ws But in spite of a certain woolliness of le, Purpose there is something about this book ds that sets it well above the average travelogue. :e. ror one thing, Miss Cook, though not here a displaying great learning, and a little inclined fe, to underline the obvious while apparently he not noticing the equally obvious (Plates 42 is and 43) has an eye for details and visual relationships and is reasonably well-informed
rn in her comments. And Mr. Smith's camera is ry 11 sophisticated machine, artfully concealing
Its ts art and eschewing alike the quaint and at the ' angled' shot. Beautifully produced, [le this book is like an English landscape, full
as of little odd:ties and humble things patinated
er by centuries of use.
M. C.
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