Was the carver happy while he was about it? Trinity's Museum Building and the Ruskinian principle of happiness

Abstract

The Museum Building of Trinity College Dublin (1853-7), by Deane, Son & Woodward, is a seminal work of Ruskinian Gothic architecture, influencing a generation of British and Irish architects, and revolutionising Victorian architectural taste. Central to the architects’ design was a radical endorsement of the creative power of individual human happiness. Adopting an aesthetic precept first articulated in The Seven Lamps of Architecture of 1849 by England’s pre-eminent art critic John Ruskin, the architects encouraged the freedom of their workmen in designing and executing the building’s external and internal carvings. This paper comes out of Making Victorian Dublin, an IRC funded interdisciplinary research project (2017-18) on the architecture and materials of the Museum Building.