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Alexander Keiller's Avebury
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Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Re: Alexander Keiller's Avebury/The Sanctuary
Jan 24, 2013, 13:32
VBB wrote:
What Ruskin said:

‘Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place.’


I’ll get back to you on that after I’ve finished restoring, conserving and preserving the three Japanese paintings I’ve been working on for the last four years ;-)
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