Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
In August, 2002, Jimmy Price enticed Historic Brickwork Consultant and
Master bricklayer Gerard Lynch to visit St. Mary's City and to observe the
exposed foundations as well as the archaeological artifacts of the Chapel, and
my colleague Jeff Baker and I were introduced to him. Upon examining the
Chapel bricks, he was of the opinion that the bricks had been clamp-fired
rather than kiln-fired. While this fact had eluded us, he pointed out that the
bricks were most likely close-stacked rather than open-stacked method of firing
in a kiln of that period that often leaves tell-tale 'kiss-marks' on the faces. This
made sense. The chapel was the first brick structure erected in the colony, and
its construction required a huge quantity of brick.
After St. Mary's, we joined him and Jimmy on a tour of early masonry struc-
tures in Virginia. The sites visited included Jamestown with its church tower
of 1638 and artifact collection in the archaeological laboratory there; under
the care of Curator Blye Straube. St. Luke's Church at Smithfield dating from
the late 1600s, Bacon's Castle nearby from
c
.1665; and Colonial Williamsburg.
On several of these buildings Gerard detected surviving evidence of colour
wash and pencilling. At all these sites, he also observed the telltale signs of
scribe lines and chiselling on shaped bricks which we were informed came as
a result of the bricks being worked post-fired with tools such as the brick axe.
Heretofore, we had assumed green-clay molding produced shaped bricks, and
that their rough surface resulted from centuries of weathering. It was now evi-
dent to us that masons cutting rather than green-clay molding formed most of
the shaped bricks found at St. Mary's.
Subsequently, in the autumn, we began to develop final designs for the
chapel. Robert Pierpont, an architect on our staff, well versed in traditional
architectures, undertook an exploration of alternative designs for the exte-
rior of the Chapel. Working with the voluminous data Jeff Baker and I had
gathered on our research trips in the Virginian tidewater region, in England
and the low countries. This was together with a growing file of the architecture
of 17th century churches erected by the order of Jesuits around the world; he
soon came to the realization that the façade historically was the principal area
of architecture concern. As modern architects, who had been trained to con-
sider the integration of interior spaces with the entire exterior design as an
essential challenge, we had nearly lost sight of the powerful expressive force
traditionally assigned to the frontal aspect of even free-standing buildings.
Hence, the search for an appropriate façade composition resulted in dozens of
schemes to organize the façade.
Several 'givens' and numerous 'precedents' guided the reinvention of the
façade. The three foot wide foundations extended five feet into good soil where
a couple of feet would have sufficed. Palladio and other Renaissance archi-
tects stipulated that foundations should be one-fifth the height of their walls.
