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The Architecture of London Pubs (1966)
'There are no good modern pubs.' With original sketches from 1966 and scathing critique, Gardiner bemoans the state of London's pubs.
What’s happened to those powerful bar tops, the glass flaps over the counter and the bottle-crammed shelves; the complicated cut-glass that fortified you from the fog and the snow, and through which the indecipherable interior form of figures, furniture and lights made impossible shapes from the wet streets outside? Otherwise everything was sucked out of them—all that was good and of real value like the old bar tops, the high backed wooden seats, the grimy mahogany tables with their curvaceous cast-iron legs,the lovely intricate shelves and polished brass rods and knobs, the dark panelling and even the old men with caps and pipes (imagine them sitting in glittering, close-carpeted no-man’s-land!). And instead of rushing ahead with the steamroller that sticks down the rule-of-thumb carpets, wallpapers andplastic tops they should make it their business to discover what the past has to offer in the way of lessons in design and why the kind of plans that were used in the old days were so good, and seem particularly so when set against the dreadful ‘schemes’ that are being done now.
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