Edmund Blacket - Influence

Influence

Blacket's architectural practice was to be one of the most influential in Australia's history. His first articled pupil was William Kemp whose apprenticeship was interrupted when Blacket became Colonial Architect. During the 1860s, Blacket's son Owen began training, followed by Cyril in 1872 and the older son, Arthur, who worked in the "Blacket and Sons" business in the 1880s.

In 1880, Cyril travelled to England where he took his examination at the Royal Institute of British Architects, returning to Australia to put up his plate as "Cyril Blacket A.R.I.B.A.". In 1903, he was elected president of the New South Wales Institute of Architects. After Edmund's death, Cyril and Arthur worked for a time as "Blacket Brothers", the most famous building of this period being the Hunter Baillie Memorial Church, (1886) which from its position on the ridge pays homage across the suburbs of Annandale and Camperdown to their father's spire of St Stephen's, Newtown, on the parallel ridge. Cyril's other well-known work is the chapter-house for St. Andrew's Cathedral. Two later Blackets, Cyril's son Pendril and Harold Wilfred Blacket were to follow the family tradition as architects.

During the 1850s, Blacket employed James Barnet, who had emigrated from Scotland, having studied architecture under C.J. Richardson. He worked for Blacket as Clerk of Works for Sydney University, and it has been suggested that the massive hammer-beam roof of the Great Hall may have been his design. Barnet was to become the most successful of the Colonial Architects, with many of his public buildings still serving their original purposes.

Of all the architects associated with Blacket, the one who would become most famous was John Horbury Hunt, who worked with him from 1863 to 1868. It was at this time, that Blacket's architecture developed bolder forms, based upon Norman, Transitional and Early French Gothic architecture, rather than the more refined Gothic. This is particularly noticeable in the presence of simple round windows divided by four circles of tracery in the gables of several churches of this time. Blacket permitted his staff to enter competitions, and it was while at Blacket's office that Horbury Hunt won the commission for Newcastle Cathedral, to be executed in his preferred material of brick. The brick church at Tumut, consecrated in 1873, is ascribed to Blacket, but appears to owe much to Hunt. Hunt, who lived most of his early life in North America, had previously worked under Edward Clarke Cabot. One of innovations that he introduced to Australian architecture while working for Blacket was the saw-tooth roof for industrial building, which was employed at Mort's Woolstore. Hunt appears to have been influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, particularly Philip Webb, and ultimately he created buildings of great originality such as the Anglican Cathedrals of Cathedrals of Grafton and Armidale.