HYLAND HYLAND HYLAND
I was particularly pleased to notice among the essayists in
Classical Details, the architectural historian David Watkin,
who I once heard, at a symposium on ornament at the
Victoria & Albert Museum, deliver a brilliant lecture on the
use, mutation and meaning of the palm motif in the history
of architecture. If God is in details, then Watkin, in his mas-
terful exegesis of the critical relationship of part to whole,
is a prophet. In Radical Classicism: The Architecture of
Quinlan Terry (2006) Watkin threw down the gauntlet: "The
modernism with which Quinlan Terry has had to battle is,
like the Taliban, a puritanical religion."
The houses featured in this volume are enriched by ornament
with notable restraint; some might even appease a staunch
modernist, so discreet are their details. Take, for instance,
JEFF
gahrES
