Domestic Architecture. 95 



Classic and Gothic. Tlie Classic division has been taken by a writer 

 on this subject as including Italian, Greek, and what is known as Queen 

 Anne or Free Classic — and Gothic, on the other hand, may be taken as 

 including the pointed styles, such as early English, Decorated, Per- 

 pendicular, Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean. Nearly everything 

 we build, may be inclined as being at least allied to one or other of 

 these styles. 



I am disposed personally to think that while the pointed styles, 

 and Elizabethan, as above referred to, are eminently suited to the 

 homes of England, the Italian-renaissance would be found to be more 

 adapted to our climatic and other conditions, where villas of any 

 pretensions are erected, and it is surprising, I think, that so little 

 attempt has been made to introduce either this style or the simpler 

 forms of Venetian Gothic work. These styles, coupled with the 

 system of the ancient Greeks and Romans of grouping the various 

 parts of the building round a centra] court or peristyle, georgeous 

 in colour as it may easily be made in this climate with a profusion 

 of flowers, need not involve extraordinary expense or costliness of 

 detail. 



Extremely effective work could be carried out in most cases with 

 such simple materials as brick work and cement, or terra cotta. But 

 with regard to the former material, brick, I take this 

 opportunity of asking whether much more might not be done by 

 brickmakers, in placing within our reach for such purposes a 

 greater variety of moulded bricks, and a greater variety of colour. 

 The brickmakers of to-day, as a rule, aim at producing bricks as 

 exact in shape, as sharp in the arisses, as smootii as possible on the 

 surface, and of as uniform and bright a red as they can make them, 

 and it is a verv common practice to select carefully the face bricks 

 so as to reject any which vary in colour, thus producing in 

 the wall filling as monotonous an appearance as is practicable. 

 Then, by way of improving matters, the detestable method is 

 perhaps adopted of covering the mortar joints w'ith a pointing of 

 thin strips of white lime putty, or perhaps black charcoal lines, 

 having, of course, first roughed the brickwork all over with Venetian 

 red. joints and all, so as to complete the final likeness to the white 

 jointed doll's-house of our infar^cy. a triumph of soulless uniformity, 

 delightful to the heart of the modern bricklayer. 



The treatment of moulded brick w^ork was carried to great 

 perfection in Northern Italy, during the Gothic and early Renais- 

 sance Period, and there is hardly any beauty of detail or design on 

 a small scale, which mav not be obtained by the use of well burned 

 moulded bricks of variegated colour. And where stone cannot be 

 obtained, except at prohibitive prices, for the work in question, pro- 

 jecting* cornices, etc., can always be reliably overcome by the use of 

 Portland cement, provided proper precautions are adopted as regards 

 its quality and its use — precautions which. I fear, are not always 

 as rigidlv enforced in ordinary building work, as they should be. 

 There is. pmbablv, no greater source of evil in the production 



