Agriculture Reference
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Figure 162
Front elevation of the
north-west building,
Colonial Williamsburg,
Virginia, 2003.
(Courtesy of Jeff Klee)
women trained in the skills of hand cutting, rubbing and setting gauged brick-
work. Without them, who will carry the torch for the future repair and conserva-
tion of our historic gauged brickwork?
The Northwest and South building additions to Merchants Square, in Williams-
burg, Virginia, USA, built in 2003, provided an opportunity to use gauged
work for some of the ornamental dressings. The buildings were designed by
Quinlan Terry. Edward Chappell, Director of Architectural Research with the
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, worked closely with him and states that:
...the design for the northwest building draws on both tidewater Virginian and
East Anglian English sources, with pilasters, cornice, and framed niche inspired
by similar 18th century work in Dedham, (Essex)(Fig. 162).
The bricks for the load-bearing masonry walls came from three sources, salmon
rubbed quoin brick made in a traditional clamp, in the historic area of Colonial
Williamsburg, and an orange field brick, from Old Carolina Brick Company,
North Carolina. The pre-cut ashlared and molded rubbing bricks were all sup-
plied by W.T. Lambs, (Bricks and Arches), Sussex, England. A small amount of
stone trim came from Portland, Dorset, England.
The rubbing bricks, set with 3 32 ins (2.5mm) mortar joints were mainly laid
by Raymond Cannetti as chief gauged brick mason, helping me to maintain
construction quality (Fig. 163). Virginian Contractors, Snow, Jr., and King con-
structed the field [main] brickwork.
Specifically, we used gauged brick on the south building for round and flat win-
dow arches and round windows in the pediments. The gauged brickwork is much
richer on the northwest building, where it comprises the niche and its classical
frame (with Portland stone trim), the west cornice, entablature blocks and pilas-
ter caps, and segmental window archess
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