A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852) was the architect and designer who, more than anyone, gave the Gothic Revival its principles. Trained by his father, the architectural draughtsman Augustus Charles Pugin, he was designing professionally by fifteen, when he was commissioned to produce a Gothic chalice for George IV.
He designed across every medium a building might need - furniture and woodwork, metalwork and silver, stained glass, tiles and ceramics, wallpapers, embroideries and woven carpets - and held that ornament should declare the construction beneath it rather than disguise it. That argument was taken up by William Morris and, later, well beyond Britain. His carpet designs, woven at Axminster and elsewhere, belong to the same programme as his interiors for the Palace of Westminster.
Portrait by an unidentified painter, about 1840. National Portrait Gallery, London; the painting is out of copyright, via Wikimedia Commons.
