ABSTRACT
The issue about architects and their relationship with craftsmen had already been raised nearly forty years previously. Following the apparently widespread abrogation of responsibility for interior decoration and furniture design by architects early in the nineteenth century, certain retail furnishers and decorators, in their role as middlemen within a creative economy, acted as co-ordinators of interior design projects, and crucially had overall responsibility and control of the works undertaken. The professional journals often harked back to the past and lamented the architect’s loss of control over interior design work. It will be better to begin by ascertaining what the decoration is, then to consider how it affects the architecture, and from the data so gained to judge of the relationship, and impartially weigh the rights and importance of each contributor to the perfect whole. Architecture proper excludes all freehand drawing, and, if the term may be allowed, freehand modelling.
