ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the 'bricks', not the 'stones' of Venice, using field and archive work into the notebooks and drawings from which Ruskin constructed the Stones of Venice. John Ruskin's aesthetic and social ideas materialize out of a deep grasp of the stuff of architecture; watched closely, architecture indexes the economic and political structures of its making. Ruskin begins Unto this Last attacking any idea of political economy that disregards the moral function of the influence of social affection. Stones of Venice contains many close analyses of brick architecture, notably that of the apses of San Donato, Murano. Ruskin considered brick inferior to stone, preferring stone to be used solid or as a veneer incrusted over a supporting brick carcass. Ruskins polemic, and inspiring collage-like plates, encouraged the almost manic variety of High Victorian architecture; but the huge spectrum of coloured and glazed brickwork offered by the manufacturers was coincident with the transformation of brick making by mechanical processes.
