.1846.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECrS JOURNAL. 



269 



ON RUSTICATION. 

 By Candidus. 



Taking at his word the writer who has just decried Rustication as being 

 no better than the counterfeit of deformity ; and believing, or at least pre- 

 tending to believe, him sincere when he declares his willingness " to be 

 set right," I purpose to do so — at any rate, to make it apparent to others 

 t hat he has been setting them wrong, — to expose the futility and one-sidedness 

 of his objections, and to convict him either of great intolerance in some mat- 

 ters, or of great inconsistency in tolerating in others what may have similar 

 objections may be enforced against with equal plausibility. That Rustica- 

 tion is most decidedly expressive of stonework construction, and that it 

 renders the articulation of masonry more prononci, is not to be denied. 

 Buildings are not supposed to be e.xstructcit or carved out of solid masses, 

 they being known to consist of separate stones put together in courses ; 

 wherefore there can be no impropriety — nothing irrational in permitting 

 such compaction and bonding to declare itself* to the eye, and become a 

 mode of decoration for the general surface of the walls, which, accord- 

 ingly as it is treated, may be expressive chielly of rude strength and 

 energy, or of finished elegance and elaborate symmetry. While it is so uni- 

 form that it does not at all cut up the surface and distract the eye — there- 

 fore, is not destructive of simplicity — it gives the surface richness, crisp- 

 ness, and colour, and forms a ground that greatly relieves pilasters and 

 other architectural members, causing them to appear more distinct. So 

 far from deserving to be stigmatized as a deformity or studied counterfeit 

 of it. Rustication appears to me to be perfectly legitimate and ajsthetic — 

 at least in itself, for like everything else, it may be made to minister to 

 bad taste as well as to good. 



One formidable argument levelled against Rustication, and intended to 

 operate as a complete demolisher, is that it was not practised by the 

 Greeks ; at least, not at the best period of their Doric style. Yet what 

 then ? — are we at once to condemn, without further inquiry, everything 

 that does not accord with Greek practice? Is it pretended to be affirmed 

 that the Greeks, who contented themselves with just one or two ideas in 

 their temple architecture, so completely exhausted all the modes of beauty, 

 and all the resources of design available for any similar style, as to leave 

 113 no other alternative than either doing precisely as they did, or plunging 

 into deformity ? Because severe simplicity was the character of the Par- 

 thenon, is it to be that of every other structure ? Are critics to be allowed 

 to make use of the Parthenon for ever as a bed of Procustes, by which 

 they take measure of every building, lopping off from the unlucky one 

 which has fallen into their clutches, whatever of it exceeds that infallible 

 standard of excelleuce ? The Parthenon w as, unquestionably, most ex- 

 quisite both as to material and execution, as it was constructed of large 

 blocks of white Pentelic marble, so admirably wrought that the jointings 

 of the masonry were imperceptible. But to that kind of beauty our 

 buildings may not aspire — we have neither the marble nor the climate of 

 Greece. Our best ashlar stone-work will not retain perfect uniformity of 

 tint and surface, and even were it to do, and could it be so wrought that 

 the masonry joints would not at all be seen, the effect, it may be presumed, 

 would be no other than that of good stucco, — of course more durable, but 

 no better in appearance than the other, so long as the stucco remains in 

 good condition. It is, therefore, an advantage that we are enabled by 

 means of Rustication to turn the masonry jointings to account, and to pro- 

 duce a difTereut species of regularity and beauty of surface. 



If we are to abide by Grecian architecture alone, and to reject all that 

 has been added to or engrafted upon it, only as so many corruptions of it, 

 we ought not only to protest against Roman and Italian architecture, but 

 ought to abandon the study of them, lest we should catch infection from 

 them. The Florentine style more especially must be held in aversion by 

 those who perceive neither grandeur, vigour, nor any other merit in Rus- 

 tication, but only unqualified deformity, and what the writer whom I am 

 trying " to set right" is pleased to brand by the intended-to-be-ignominious 

 terms of " tatooed masonry" and mere " surface decoration." He will 

 have it that '' as soon as chamfered masonry is introduced, all simplicity 

 is lost at once, each stone assuming a separate individuality ;" yet, as it 

 appears to me, he might just as well maintain that a striped dress is incon- 

 sistent with perfect simplicity of attire; or — to keep to architecture— that 

 a striped — in other words, a fluted — column is contrary to simplicity and is 

 a barbarism, a shaft so decorated being in fact neither more nor less than 

 " tatooed," while each of the fillets " assumes a separate individuality;" 

 and the beautiful rotundity of the shaft itself being greatly impaired by 

 * The reader will excuse the singular or can substitute the plural number for it. 



such unlucky " surface decoration." Even the Greeks themselves then, 

 it would seem, were not altogether infallible; and besides being at vari- 

 ance with what appear to be some persons' notions of true simplicity, 

 what meaning is there in the fluting of a column ? — what does it express? 

 — most assuredly nothing constructional, whereas Rustication docs. It 

 has been supposed by some that the first idea of fluting was derived from 

 fissures in the shafts of wooden columns, or from channels worn by the 

 rain ou the surface of stone ones, — an hypothesis, however, that must 

 henceforth be rejected with scorn, because it would make out the Greeks 

 to have been guilty of such very bad taste as to condescend to counterfeit 

 defects and deformities, which would have been an inexcusable enormity, 

 notwithstanding that so counterfeited what were originally defects became 

 beauties. There were very strong aesthetic reasons — too generally known 

 to require to be stated here — which induced the Greeks to adopt the prac- 

 tice of fluting, if such term be not " too dignified" for the scoring produced 

 by " mere streaks," and for the absurdity of covering the shafts of columns 

 ^•tillovci' with mouldings," 



May not the deep channels employed for the flutings of Ionic and Co- 

 rinthian columns be reproachfully described by the terms " gashes" and 

 " incisions," with just as much fairness as the channelled joints of rus- 

 ticated masonry ? Diflicult it surely would not be for any one so disposed 

 to get up — upon paper — a pretty strong case against the practice of fluting 

 columns as an unmeaning one at the best, as one at variance with simpli- 

 city, and partaking more of disfigurement than of embellishment. 



It is contended by the writer who has laboured to prove — and who, no 

 doubt, fancies that he has clearly proved, both the irrationality and bad 

 taste manifested by Rustication — that when employed together with 

 columns, the horizontal channels appear to cut athwart the shafts of the 

 latter and "destroy that idea of verticality which is their essential attri- 

 bute;" of which injurious eflect, he quotes the peristyle of La Madeleine 

 as an instance. Now, had he chosen to say that the columns appear to 

 cut athwart the horizontal lines of the rusticated wall behind thein, he 

 might have done so in welcome, and have made out of that circumstance 

 as much as he could for argument against Rustication ; but as he did not 

 do so, it is for him now to make out how the columns appear to be cut 

 through by lines which they themselves cut by interrupting and iutercept- 

 ing. It is, therefore, rather the idea of horizonlaliUj as expressed by the 

 courses of masonry is destroyed, than that of verticality, which latter is 

 rendered all the more evident by the direct contrast between horizontal 

 and vertical lines so produced. But of the value of contrast the critic 

 who has detected such equally unlucky and curious appearance in La 

 Madeleine seems to have no idea. Fortunate, therefore, is it for the credit 

 of the Grecian-Doric style itself that it is protected by the aegis of classical 

 precedent and authority, else were it ever to suit his immediate purpose 

 to do so, the same writer would probably not scruple to censure as an ab- 

 surdity the intermixture of triglyphs and sculpture iu the Doric frieze. 

 With far greater plausibility of argument than he has now used, he might 

 urge that if sculpture is to be introduced, the triglyphs ought to be dis- 

 missed ; or if the latter must be retained, the metopes ought to be left 

 plain, since sculpture and triglyphs together mutually destroy each other's 

 effect, and produce a most unsatisfactory jumble the very reverse of sim- 

 plicity. Instead of being kept continuous, the sculpture, it might be 

 argued, is cut up into bits and fragments ; each piece of it assumes a 

 separate individuality, and really appears to be " set in a frame ;" besides 

 which, the sculpture of course seems to cut the triglyphs themselves 

 athwart, precisely in the same manner as the rustic joints ou a wall behind 

 columns cut athwart the columns in front. After being so exercised, cri- 

 ticism might descend — might stoop down to examine the steps of Greek 

 Doric temples, and attack with ridicule the deep moulded channel cut 

 below in the front of each of them, as being a marked defect, and causing 

 the steps to appear undermined and weakened. To be sure, those grooves 

 contribute to a;sthetic effect; and if that be sufficient excuse for what, if 

 now done for the first time, would be reprobated as a caprice, excuse may 

 be extended to other cases. 



Having pointed out circumstances in pure Greek architecture, upon 

 which the same sort of captious hypercriticism might be brought to bear 

 which protests so peevishly against Rustication, we follow the writer's 

 remarks, and next find him just after observing that the sunk-channels in 

 Rusticated work cannot be received as " mouldings" — and who has ever 

 called them such ? — talking of the absurdity of a building '■ all over mould- 

 ings ;" so that in one and the same breadth, he denies and admits them to 

 be equivalent to mouldings. As to confusion being produced by so many 

 lines of that kind on a building — that may be left to contradict itself — is, 



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