Review: Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain: Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment, by Paul Dobraszczyk

Until recently critical discussions of architectural ornament were generally to be found in writings about nineteenth-century and/or Islamic architecture. Still riding the contemporary wave of interest in ornament and its relationship to architectural form, Paul Dobraszczyk's Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain offers the reader new perspectives on a historical moment of the nineteenth century that is curiously apposite to architects and theorists today.¹ One aspect of the resurgence of this interest is carefully detailed and chronicled in Dobraszczyk's comprehensive study of Victorian Britain's experience with iron as the first truly modern building material. Dobraszczyk articulates a technological experience for Victorian architects that is analogous to...