'Strong' mouldings and falling water

The plates and comments are from Asher Benjamin's, Th,e American Builder's Companion, published in 1797 in Greenfield, Massacchusetts. These are from the reprint by Applewood Books, Bedford, Mass.

The top picture is Benjamin's description of Plate I.

Plate I is below.


Asher Benjamin is the only writer I know of who discusses why to use one molding instead of another. I have added some comments.


" The ovolo and ogee, being strong in their extremities are fit for supports; the cimarecta and cavetto, though improper for that purpose, as they are weak in the extreme parts, and terminate in a point, are well contrived for coverings to shelter other members;"*
  I love that he asked me, the reader, to see if a molding seems to convey a feeling of strength or shelter. It's only a shape - a bit of trim casting a shadow, if there's enough light.

 "... the tendency of their outline being very opposite to the direction of falling water, which, for that reason, cannot glide along their surface, but must necessarily drop." *
  This last piece of his sentence is one reason I think Benjamin's books were so successful. Not only was he explaining to the carpenter how to think about how a specific molding would communicate an idea, a sense of a building's character, he was reminding the reader of the basic problem of construction: keeping water away.

Asher Benjamin doesn't forget the important stuff: Successful buildings need to do everything at once: delighting the eye while also keeping us dry and comfortable.

*Both of these quotes come from page 27 of The American Builder's Companion, Asher Benjamin, Sixth Edition; Reprint by Dover Publications, Inc. NY, 1969.

a new c. 1795 entrance

This is an experiment - me teaching myself how to load a few pictures -


The owners of this farm house c. 1795, asked me to help design a new entrance. The one in the picture dates to the late 1940's, and is in poor repair.

I had already added a garage, screened their back porch, and repaired their family room , a shed which was poorly attached to the house about the same time as the entrance was modified.

This was a new problem. We had an old vague photograph of the house taken from a distance showing the original entrance. We knew of two other houses in town from the same period but their entrances were grander than what our photograph showed. So what should the entrance be? Exactly how big ? What mouldings?

Luckily, I was working with a fine contractor and a millwork carpenter. We knew each other's work and respected each other's opinions.

The quirk and bead, and why they matter

When I began to teach myself about mouldings, I didn't even know the shapes had names. One of the first pieces of moulding I learned about is the piece that goes between the masonry of a fireplace and the wood mantle, called a 'bead'.

In the upper right drawing, the bead is the raised hump in the moulding. When used next to a fireplace in this way, the wood on the left side of the bead (see the drawing on the upper left) would be cut off at the far edge of the quirk (the narrow groove carved into the moulding), leaving the moulding to end with the bead. The bead can then be scribed on the back so it fits the irregularities of the brick or stone and sits cleanly against the wood. It is a magical piece because its quirk, maybe as small as 1/16 inch, makes a shadow so that you cannot 'read' the inevitable uneven plane between the masonry and the wood. After I learned about beads and quirks, I saw them everywhere, being used to make joints visually neat and graceful.

The tongue and groove wood paneling system, used extensively in Victorian times, was an excellent surface covering for places that might be damp: bathroom walls, porch ceilings; or banged into: halls, kitchens, school rooms. And in order to make the joint of the pieces less visible, a bead was cut on one edge, and then a bead strip, or two, run down the middle of the panel. When the boards were fitted together, the strips (actually, their shadows) were what caught the eye, not the - possibly uneven - joints. When I realized the trick of the quirk and bead, I was in awe of those who figured it out - what a simple and neat solution!

I discovered that 'quirks' and 'beads' changed size over the years. The depth and width of the channel and the shape of the curve can date a bead moulding and whatever it attaches to. Arts and Crafts quirks and beads are wider and deeper than their Victorian antecedents. Victorian ones are bolder than those cut before the Industrial Revolution. Next time you are in a big box home improvement store, look at the beadboard paneling offered for sale. The quirk is so shallow that a shadow hardly exists. (I can't resist adding: a shadow of its former self.)

Asher Benjamin wrote eloquently about shadow and mouldings, but I skimmed over those plates and discussion with little comprehension until I understood about beads.

Why an early 19th C. architect matters

I've already quoted Asher Benjamin on the difference between the shadow cast by a curve and that cast by an ellipse. He also spent several pages talking about how to combine different sizes and profiles (what a moulding looks like from the side). Here's a brief excerpt: " ...whenever the profile is considerable, or much complicated, ...(it should) be accompanied with one, or more, other principle members; in form and dimensions, calculated to attract the eye; create momentary pauses; and assist in the perception of the beholder." He continues with very specific examples. He is very wordy!

Moldings cover joints, allow buildings to move in the weather without leaking, are a way of fitting pieces together neatly. They give proportion, scale and pattern to spaces and shapes, and by emphasizing a part of the structure, direct our attention.

As far as I can remember, no one ever mentioned those ideas in school. Today I am surprised, but then I didn't know what I was missing. I did not expect to be an architect who took care of old buildings. 'Molding' was not even a word in the lexicon. In the 1960s, we were expected to express the structure of the building by showing it - I don't remember anyone in architecture school, or in my undergraduate architectural history classes discussing how to create ourselves what we saw (except by copying). We loved wonderful buildings, but we did not practice using pattern, proportion, massing, rhythm, symmetry or balance. Those ideas were not in our design tool box.

Interlaced, Paired Ribbons: Guiloche

This is the door of the Hiland Knapp House in N. Bennington, VT.




The drawing below of guiloche (paired ribbons flowing in interlaced curves around a series of voids, usually circular) is half of Plate LII from The Architect, or Practical House Carpenter, 1830, by Asher Benjamin.









This close-up - of the frieze below the transom - shows almost the same guiloche on the door as is in the middle drawing:






But the pattern on the door is not an exact copy, and for a good reason. A 'running' pattern (like the one in the drawing) does not have a beginning or an end. But a front door is the visual focus of a house; it's not on its way to someplace because it is the place.

But, adding a curvy piece above the door emphasizes the whole entrance nicely while complimenting the Ionic columns. So what's a builder to do? A simple answer might be to put one circle of the guiloche smack-dab in the center above the door. But it's still a 'running braid': visually it doesn't stand still, it 'runs'.

The builder of this house came up with an admirable solution: the pattern starts from both sides, so that the ribbons meet in the middle, in an open circle. Now your eye traces the pattern to the circle centered above the door - and stops. Voila!

(The design makes me smile.)

Neither Batty nor Swan!

This is a photo of the mouldings in my house, which look so much like the ones used in the Robert E. Lee house, in Arlington VA. I thought it would be an easy matter to matching this moulding pattern to an illustration in a pattern book - I assumed that I'd simply look in the books that the American builders (joiners) were using in about 1800, find the right page, and there it would be.

Nope.

The door casings here at the farm and at Lee's house have a simple 1/4 circle curve, as part of a sequence of square edges, beads and flat sections (although not in that order!). But the mouldings in Batty Langley's 'The Builder's Director or Bench-Mate', 1751, and in Abraham Swan's 'The British Architect', 1758, both published in London, are more complicated. Both show reverse curves: Cimarecta, which first curves in before it curves out, and Ogee, which starts the other way, convex before it is concave. But the American casings use 1/4 round or a Scotia, which is a 1/4 round that curves in, not out.

However, Asher Benjamin, in his book 'The Country Builder's Assistant,' published in 1795 while he still was practicing in various towns on the Connecticut River, show an 'architrave' similar to the ones I know. So, was Benjamin inventing? If he was copying, who was his inspiration? Was his book well enough distributed that carpenters 500 miles away from each other would have seen it? Is this an example of different 'styles' (preferring one shape over another), or is a reverse curve moulding harder to make? Or is this something about the tools - the planes, the knives or blades which were available to the builders?

Thinking about old house tours

This is a photo of the Park-McCullough House, in Bennington VT, where I volunteer as a docent. I took the photo from their website. I'm currently designing a walking tour of the grounds, for people who just drop in - when it's done, it will be available on the website.

Just this weekend, I took a tour with my family of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. We had a great time, especially since I discovered that the molding in the oldest section of the house (1805) is almost an exact match to the molding in my own (1815) farmhouse, in Vermont. (Now I have to go back to my library, and figure out what designer they were both pulling from. I think it's either Swan or Batty Langly.) The tour was also fun because the two young guides took us on an extended tour after everyone else moved on, and we got to see and talk about all the fun details of the house. There are doors between the old and newer sections which do not line up, and a hobbit door in the basement, leading to a tunnel under the house. But the slave quarters, which are undergoing renovation, were the most interesting of all, because all the layers of brick, plaster and framing are visible.