ABSTRACT
‘Lost in translation’ surveys the reception and relations of Ruskin's ideas in the emergence of heritage conservation as a field of practice in Britain, Europe, North America and Asia during the later 19th and 20th century. It provides a broader context for positioning Ruskin's contribution and parallel strands of thinking about heritage conservation at the time. It also grapples with the difficulties of distinguishing between a form of cultural transmission of ‘Ruskinian’ discourse into international practice, and comparable approaches that apparently mirror his (or not) but which are equally possibly the outcomes of common social and cultural influences across the West. The extract from his writing here is a key passage from ‘The Lamp of Memory’ in The Seven Lamps of Architecture.
