ARTIFICIAL ROCKWORK 
By H. A. Caparn 
YX 7 "HEREVER people make gardens and 
* * loose stones are to be found, there is 
sure to be an attempt at artificial rock work. 
It usually takes the form of a pile of stones of 
about the size that a man can carry without 
too great an effort. Some tall nasturtiums 
or other plants are making more or less of an 
effort to cover its bareness with the decency 
of vegetation. As likely as not the whole 
pile is whitewashed. 
Although these futile and rather absurd 
heaps of stones are to be found in every town, 
yet there are so many pleasing and rational- 
looking artificial structures of natural rocks, 
that there must be some underlying princi¬ 
ple of design to be discovered, some general 
classification into good and bad with the 
causes of its effect behind it. Take, for 
instance, the rockwork cascade at the Troca- 
dero, or the Fountain of Trevi, the island in 
which stands the Temple of Aesculapius in 
the Borghese gardens at Rome, the grottoes 
and waterfalls in the Villetta Dinegro at 
Genoa, the elaborate fabrics at Schoenbrunn, 
and the most extensive of all artificial 
rockeries, the cascades at Caserta, all 
diverse in conception, purpose and effect, 
yet all more or less beautiful, appropriate 
and impressive. Such things as these are 
often grotesque, but they are architecture 
of the garden, where grotesquerie often be¬ 
longs; they are often used like a sort of 
garden tapestry or free carving as a relief 
and foil to formal design. They must 
not be judged by the canons of Vignola, 
for they are in a class of their own, and, if 
they are sometimes misplaced and misman¬ 
aged, it should be remembered that most of 
them were made at a time when architecture, 
with most of the other arts, was exhausted 
and anaemic, kept alive by artificial respir¬ 
ation; and many are too ready to decry 
them, partly for this reason, and partly 
because they lack the expression of formal 
design. Yet they have an expression of 
their own that is valuable, though popular; 
FOUNTAIN IN THE GARDENS OF THE VILLA DOR (A PAMPHILY, ROME 
*57 
