An advertisement for Robert Boyle & Son's Air Pump Ventilators in The Building News, 1879.
Finding Inspiration
20 November 2023
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An advertisement for Robert Boyle & Son's Air Pump Ventilators in The Building News, 1879.
Architects in New Zealand during the 19th Century looked to England and Europe to set the trends and fashions for design. But finding out what those fashions were from half a world away was no easy feat. Those with the means were able to travel abroad to study and absorb firsthand any new developments in architecture. Many of the Canterbury College architects, including Wililam Armson, Samuel Hurst Seager, J.J. Collins and J.G. Collins, travelled to Europe at different points in time to find inspiration. From the Armson Collins collection for example, we can see that J.G. Collins visited England during the Coronation in 1953, as the collection holds a number of souvenirs of the event with his name inscribed. Architects would then take advantage of the opportunity to return with prints and photographs of buildings that they admired and could utilize in their work.
More commonly, architectural firms began to invest in extensive libraries of reference texts to which they could turn for guidance and instruction. Treasured architecture books were brought out to New Zealand by immigrants, and added to by those architects born and raised here. The Armson Collins collection for instance includes many texts probably purchased by William Armson, and added to by subsequent generations of the Collins family.
The ‘Collins Architects’ bookplate can be found inside books on Gothic architecture in the University Library Collection, including texts such as An Analysis of Gothick Architecture: Illustrated by a series of upwards of seven hundred examples of doorways, windows, etc by Raphael and J. Brandon, 1849, or The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture by M.H. Bloxam, 1843.
As architecture became an increasingly specialized profession throughout the 1800s, the emergence of publications such the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, or The Building News and Engineering Journal added to the resources available for architects. Armson Collins must have subscribed to The Building News from an early date, and the subscription was maintained by the firm over many years, as is evidenced by several boxes of clippings from the journal which date from the 1870s onwards. An additional reason for gathering together books and journals on architecture would have been to share inspiration with clients. The development of architectural journalism promoted the profession, and allowed architects to have their designs published where they could be seen and admired by potential clientele.
