ABSTRACT
A concern with the material cultures of schooling has long interested English architects and designers. As early as 1874, E.R. Robson’s illustrated School Architecture (1874) offered ‘practical remarks on the planning, designing, building and furnishing of school-houses’. For Robson, the health and happiness of both the teacher and the child were dependent of the ‘manner in which their schoolhouses’ were ‘constructed and furnished’ (Robson, 1874: 7). Robson’s colleague John Moss contributed a chapter on ‘School Furniture and Apparatus’, where he wrote:
The furniture of the school-room should be graceful in form and good in quality and finish. Children are particularly susceptible of surrounding influences, and their daily familiarisation with beauty and form or colour in the simplest and most ordinary objects, cannot fail to assist in fostering the seeds of taste . . . In our time it is desirable to extend the process of education . . . by the adoption of good and tasteful designs as well as of superior workmanship for the necessary mechanical aids. The insensible influence thus exerted will not be without due fruit in future years, and, in the present, will assist in promoting a love for the school.
