Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/212

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Of Cast Iron.

always direct, unpretentious and effortless, in a manner that became at this time quite a tradition.

The verandahs also, of which there are so many in Piccadilly or Mayfair, with posts reeded and of delicate profiles, are of the same kind, confessedly cast iron, and never without the characterising dulness of the forms, so that they have no jutting members to be broken off, to expose a repulsive jagged fracture. The opposite of all these qualities may be found in the "expensive"-looking railing on the Embankment enclosing the gardens, whose tiny fretted and fretful forms invite an experiment often successful.

It must be understood that cast iron should be merely a flat lattice-like design, obviously cast in panels, or plain post and rail construction with cast uprights and terminal knops tenoned into rails,

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