Melsetter House (Orkney, 1898) is one of the most fascinating houses of the Victorian period. Described by William Morris' daughter as "a sort of fairy palace on the edge of the northern seas", it exemplifies the principles underlying the domestic architecture of the arts and crafts movement in the 1890s: simplicity, strength and harmony with surrounding nature.
Roughcast rendering covers walls of local rubble, and the reddish sandstone trimming was quarried on the island. Lethaby's use of materials, the high vertical proportions of the house, and detailing such as the stepped gable, link the building to its site and to local vernacular tradition.
'Architecture In Detail' is a superbly photographed and technically informative series of monographs which embraces a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, drawn predominantly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each sixty-page volume contains a lucid text by a respected author; a sequence of large-format, high-quality colour and black and white photographs; a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details; and a complete bibliography and chronology, thus making these books the definitive work on the subject. They are essential purchases for enthusiasts, practitioners and students alike.
