A Weatherboard Arts and Crafts Style Villa - Ballarat
Standing behind a neat picket fence, this Reformist (Arts and Crafts) style Edwardian villa would have been built in the decade after Australian Federation in 1901.
The wonderful stepped central gable is very Arts and Crafts inspired, as is its half timbered treatment. What is unusual is the choice of weatherboard for the construction, as most Arts and Crafts style homes tended to be built of brick. Unlike its more stylised Queen Anne neighbours, this villa has no stained glass in any of its windows, only leadlight panels set in rather geometric pattern in the upper panes of the bay window. It does however feature stylised Art Nouveau stained glass of flowers in an unusually shaped panel on the front door.
Arts and Crafts houses challenged the formality of the mid and high Victorian styles that preceded it, and were often designed with uniquely angular floor plans. This villa appears to have a more traditional floor plan, with a central hallway with the principal rooms off it to either side.
This style of house would have appealed to the merchant middle-classes of Ballarat whose money came from supporting the Nineteenth Century gold rush through commerce and industry well into the Twenthieth Century. Comfortable and very English, it would have shown respectable and not inconsiderable wealth.
A Weatherboard Arts and Crafts Style Villa - Ballarat
Standing behind a neat picket fence, this Reformist (Arts and Crafts) style Edwardian villa would have been built in the decade after Australian Federation in 1901.
The wonderful stepped central gable is very Arts and Crafts inspired, as is its half timbered treatment. What is unusual is the choice of weatherboard for the construction, as most Arts and Crafts style homes tended to be built of brick. Unlike its more stylised Queen Anne neighbours, this villa has no stained glass in any of its windows, only leadlight panels set in rather geometric pattern in the upper panes of the bay window. It does however feature stylised Art Nouveau stained glass of flowers in an unusually shaped panel on the front door.
Arts and Crafts houses challenged the formality of the mid and high Victorian styles that preceded it, and were often designed with uniquely angular floor plans. This villa appears to have a more traditional floor plan, with a central hallway with the principal rooms off it to either side.
This style of house would have appealed to the merchant middle-classes of Ballarat whose money came from supporting the Nineteenth Century gold rush through commerce and industry well into the Twenthieth Century. Comfortable and very English, it would have shown respectable and not inconsiderable wealth.