Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
only have an exaggerated entasis at their sides, but come bellying out in front like
the sails of a ship, they remind one of the fable of the frog and the bull, and the
bricks seem swollen with conceit at having attained to a form utterly foreign to
their nature. And it is this, rather than the ugliness, which I so strongly object to.
Brick is a hard material moulded and baked in a kiln, and moulded bricks seem
to me perfectly legitimate; but surely the original baked surface is the most fit-
ting to resist the weather; and if you go and rub and cut all the surface off, and
then give the material a shape and form utterly foreign to its nature, you are com-
pletely reversing the practice of the Mediaeval builders, who have left us the most
magnificent examples of their skill, and who invariably gave to each material they
employed the ornamental treatment that it was best fitted to receive…..
Clearly these writers knew nothing of the prolific practices of the medieval
hewers, or of the finest Stuart and Georgian bricklayers, and their legacy of
magnificent post-fired enrichments, or that baked rubbers differ from well-
fired bricks.
The differences in this revivalist fashion were not only the stylistic and
design conundrum and use of traditional enrichments, but also the impact of
changing technology behind their constructional use. This is immediately
apparent in the quality of rubbers over their seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century predecessors, giving features a much more homogeneous appearance
in both colour and texture. It is especially noticeable on high-quality work
where colour-matched rubbers could be insisted on, ensuring no variation in
quality, texture, or tone; this can cause the gauged work to appear less organic
and sincere than the best work of the earlier periods it seeks to emulate.
Over-sized rubbers also have a dramatic impact, as architectural features are
being formed from individual units much bigger than was typical before. Arches
of this period are frequently set-out to a larger brick gauge at the extrados due to
different setting-out techniques employed from earlier periods and less voussoirs
in an arch face of comparable span to one from the previous periods; creating a
rather heavier appearance. On flat or camber arches, for example, travelling the
dividers along the length of an arc drawn from the striking point, rather than
along the extrados could set out voussoirs. This arc could either be drawn
above the arch commencing from the top of a skewback, or alternatively from
the extrados of the key brick at the centre line, and drawn down and the across
the arch face to the skewback. Either of these methods resulted in individual
voussoirs that get increasingly wider along the extrados from the keybrick to the
springing brick at the skewback. This method was not possible given the thin-
ner gauge of bricks from earlier periods. Oversized rubbers, however, could
facilitate certain detailing more easily than smaller bricks, such as the rusticated
semi-circular arch as at Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth (Hampshire). Here, the
oversized voussoir bricks of the arch extrados were capable of being cut to spe-
cial individual shapes in order to link the varying radial lines with the horizontal
offsets of the blocks, or rustications (Fig. 140).
