William Pain's 'The Practical Builder' and Lavius Fillmore

 

 Here's the Old First Church, Bennington, Vermont.*

 

In 1803 the church elders invited the Master Builder, Lavius Fillmore, to build a new church in Bennington. He had already built 4 churches in Connecticut. The latest had been included in Asher Benjamin's first pattern book, The Country Builder's Assistant, published in 1797.**                               

Pattern books were architectural guide books for builders. Their images were studied and copied by gentleman scholars and master builders; their instructions studied and followed by apprentices, journey men, and carpenters.

William Pain, in London, had written many pattern books, 8 of which are known to have been available through book sellers and in private libraries in the States. While there is no written record of what pattern books Lavius Fillmore owned or might have seen, I think he must have studied Pain's The Practical Builder, printed in London in 1774.***

 

 

Here is the evidence:

 

 

This engraving, part of Plate XIV, The Practical Builder, explains the proper design for the 'Frontispiece of the Dorick Order'. Note the fanlight tracery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Compare Pain's tracery to that in the fanlight of the Old First Church. 
Fillmore has elaborated upon and refined Pain's design. ****

 

 The columns  however, do not match the illustration of a Doric frontispiece. They are topped by Ionic volutes. 

In this photograph they look like the ends of rolled up paper. Or maybe balls of white yarn?

 

 

This is Pain's 'Frontispiece of the Ionick  Order', part of Plate XVI. 

 

 

 

The volutes match those of the Old First Church.

 On the left side the 'entablature' (the section between the door frame and the roof) also matches that of the church.

 

 

 

Here is Pain's detail of the capital. The right side of the entablature matches the 2 sections, the 'architrave' and 'frieze' of the Old First Church door. 

The volutes on the columns in the church sanctuary also match those on the frontispiece. The columns also have the same architrave, frieze (the top part above the volutes) and the very top part with the dentils - the cornice -  as are shown in the drawing.

Notes:  

*For more about the Old First Church, see the church website: https://oldfirstchurchbenn.org/

** Asher Benjamin's first pattern book is available on line. The original can be read at the Historic Deerfield Library, Deerfield, Massachusetts. We know what books Benjamin studied; he copied their engravings and used them in his own books.

*** William Pain, The Practical Builder, or Workman's General Assistant, I Taylor, London, 1774, Dover Press reprint.

****I have drawn the practical geometry for the fanlight. See: 

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2021/10/geometry-of-old-first-church-fanlight.html 

I also drew the geometry of the church, 10 years ago. It needs to be rewritten, made simpler and clearer.  

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2014/11/old-first-church-and-daisy-wheel-part-3.html 

The Geometry of Ionic volutes, as drawn by those who used them

 

Ionic volutes, those curly ends of Ionic capitals, with these wonderful curves!
How were they drawn? 

This post began as an exploration of the use of practical geometry vs. the use of the golden section in construction.  In all my research I found no references to the golden section as a construction tool.

So, what to do with the images and descriptions I found? Write about them!

Here are the instructions, written by the designers, master builders, architects, and those who used these volutes. 

First, of course, is Vitruvius. He writes, in the 1st c. BCE,  "As for the drawings of volutes so they are properly coiled with the use of a compass, and the way they are drawn, the form and the principal of these will be set down at the end of the book.' * 

Unfortunately, those drawings at the end of his book are lost. 

Beginning about 1540, many architects, builders, historians, professional and amateur, measured the Ionic volutes still extant, those created during the Greek and Roman empires.

Giacomo Barozzi de la Vignola published his engravings in 1562. The illustration  is from the English translation of Vignola by John Leeke in 1669. Vignola begins by noting the reference lines and then the small square in the circle in the upper right corner of the page, 'A'. "Having drawn the Cathetus (the vertical guideline) of this first voluta and the other line S square to it, the said eye is divided in the manner expressed above in the figure A..." 17 lines, total, all quite easy to follow.

 

Andrea Palladio and Sebastiano Serlio worked at the same time as Vignola and probably knew him. 

 Here is Palladio's drawing in his 4 Books of Architecture, First Book, Plate IXX, 1570. 

Serlio's On Architecture, was written before 1550.  Serlio takes 32 lines to explain how to draw the volute.  He includes, "This matter (as I said) consists more in the practice than in the art because making it diminish both to a greater or lesser extent is dependent on the architect's judgement in placing the point of the compass a little higher or a little lower. The size of the band should not always be all the same."

If you look carefully at Vignola, Palladio and Serlio's drawings, you will see that they do not quite agree about the location of those 2 first lines, the cathetus and its perpendicular. They probably had measured different volutes. Later writers mention which volutes they think to be most perfect.

Serlio's treatise was translated from Italian to Dutch to English in 1611. A complete English translation of Palladio wasn't available until after 1715.

 

Batty Langely's The Builder's Director or Bench-Mate, was published in 1745, London, a compilation of "all that is useful to Workmen,... and at so easy a Rate, as to be purchased by any common Labourer." He includes variations for Ionic capitals: 'modern' and 'ancient' all of which are explained by 'Minutes and Parts'. This is his first drawing of 6.

Batty Langley's books continued to be published after his death in 1751, and were available in the Colonies.

 

William Pain published similar 'practical builder' pattern books at about the same time. Here is his Plate XVI from The Practical House Carpenter, or Youth's Instruction, London, 1794, for volutes with parts. He writes that he has included " ... all the measures figured for practice: to draw it, set the compasses at the angle a in the profile..." He rewrites the earlier instructions given by others and reminds the reader again that he has included "the measures all figured for practice."

 

 

 

 Owen Biddle's pattern book, The Young Carpenter's Assistant, 1805, Philadelphia, includes these less flowerly drawings and instructions.

                             

 

 

 Asher Benjamin's  American Builder's Companion, originally published in 1804,  includes similar diagrams.

 

 

 

However, his revised 1827 edition includes the drawing above and also this diagram. "Plate F, From the Inside of the Portico  of the Temple of Minerva, at Athens." 

"Fig. 1. Volute of the capital, with the measurements in feet, inches, tenths, hundredths, & etc."

A footnote explains how to read Feet, Inches "and the decimal parts". 

 

The Architect, or Complete Builder's Guide, written in 1839,  has  this drawing, Plate X.  Asher Benjamin notes, "The  carver will find it to his advantage to imitate these drawings faithfully, and thus escape the censure deservedly cast upon the many clumsy, awkward productions of this capital, which may be seen in both town and country." 

 Benjamin's books were published through the 1850's.

 

Then there's a break - I've found no English language 'how-to' pattern
book instructions on volutes during the height of the Industrial Revolution.
Ionic volutes were used: here on c.1896 porch columns. Probably these were created by craftsmen for a company which specialized in plaster and wood composites. They are probably available today.

 

 

In 1903, in The American Vignola, William Ware describes how to construct a volute, "The vertical line a b, Fig 91, through the center of the eye of the Volute, and the horizontal line c d, will mark in the circumference of the eye the four corners of the square within which a fret whose angles may serves as centers..."* 

6 sentences;  22 lines of instructions. This is a small drawing at the bottom corner of a page.

Architectural Graphic Standards' first edition was published in 1932.  This page in every edition  I own:  2nd -1936, 3rd -1941, 4th -1953,  5th - 1966,  but not the 8th - 1988. 

The pages are quite yellow - I've toned them down here to make them more legible.

 

 

The 8th edition of  Architectural Graphic Standards, 1988, no longer dedicated a page to Ionic details. 

The last 2 pages of the book, titled  Classical Orders at the top and CLASSIC ORDERS at the bottom, are a crowded introduction to centuries of architecture. 

Here's about 2/3 of the second sheet. The architects who complied the page are credited not their sources. 

Do I have a conclusion? Not really. 

I looked for the Golden Section and didn't find it. I read convoluted and simple language as people who knew construction explained with words how to draw something complex.  Many descriptions expected experience using compasses. I appreciated the authors who said, "Practice!" Words help; they are not a substitute for drawing.

Books not listed here are in my bibliography: 

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2019/06/bibliography-includiung-websites.html

Asher Benjamin, Practice of Architecture and The Builder's Guide, new introduction by Thomas Gordon Smith, De Capo Press, New York, 1994.

Batty Langley, The Builder's Director or Bench-Mate, published first in 1754, London, reprint, publisher unlisted.

William Pain,  The Practical House Carpenter, or Youth's Instruction, London, 1794. reprint by Dover Publications.

Ramsey/Sleeper, Architectural Graphic Standards, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York

Giacomo Barozzi daVignola, Canon of the Five Orders of Architecture, John Leeke, translator, published by William Sherwin, London, 1669.

Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, edited by Ingrid D. Rowland, Thomas Noble Howe, Cambridge University Press, 1999

*Wm. R. Ware, The American Vignola, 1903, Dover Publications, 1994, p. 30. 

*Book 3, Chapter 5, paragraph 8,  translation by Ingrid D. Rowland; Viruvius, 10 Books on Architecture, Ingrid D. Rowland and Thomas Nobel Howe, Editors, Cambridge University Press, 1999.