an update on the possible Rumford fireplace at Lorenzo

Lorenzo was open and quiet when I stopped by in September. That was good. I wanted to look again at the kitchen fireplace and see if it really did have Rumford boilers. The tour guides were gracious, welcoming, and as curious as I was. One had given me the tour last year. It was fun to continue our conversation as we investigated.

The Lorenzo kitchen fireplace has brick work to the right of the firebox itself with holes for pots to sit in, and openings below where coals could be set under the pots. The flue above the pots belongs to the beehive oven. There is none behind the boilers as Rumford suggests. The system is built very close to the floor, not at 'counter height' as shown in the drawings in Asher Benjamin's pattern book.

The fireplace itself now serves as the alcove for a cook stove. It's been bricked in and is covered up.

Of course, this just leads to more questions: Did John Lincklaen know of Rumford's writings? If not, why are the boilers there? What instructions did he give to his masons? How well did the system work? Did other homeowners around Lorenzo copy this fireplace?

I find I am as interested in the spread of knowledge as in the use of new technology.

the bead - a 1/2" of magic

When I began to teach myself about mouldings, I didn't even know the shapes had names.

I knew there is this piece that goes between the masonry of a fireplace and the wood mantle, called a 'bead'. It can 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. Then I saw the bead detail being used in many places, to make a joint visually neat and graceful.

Look at bead board: a tongue and groove panel system used extensively in Victorian times. It was an excellent covering in places which might be damp: bathroom walls, porch ceilings; or banged into: halls, kitchens, school rooms. 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) are what catches the eye, not the, possibly uneven, joint. Oh, when I realized the trick of the quirk and bead, I was in awe of those who figured that out! What a simple and neat solution!

I discovered that 'quirks' and 'beads' change size over the years. The depth and width of the hole and the shape of the curve can date the bead moulding and whatever it's attached 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. Its quirk is so shallow, its shadow hardly exists. I can't resist adding: a shadow of its former self.

Asher Benjamin? Ahh, he knew about shadow and mouldings. But I couldn't see what he had written. I read his pages dutifully with no comprehension. Once I understood about beads, I read in earnest.

Geometry, Taught in 6 Plates

For years I passed over the plates at the front Asher Benjamin's books. At the time, I only wanted to see his buildings, and had no idea why he included plates on geometry and moulding profiles.

Now, through my continuing study of early 19th c. building methods and tools, I understand what Benjamin was doing. The first 5 plates in The American Builder's Companion are instructions on basic geometry because most of his readers were "untaught." They had apprenticed to carpenters or cabinet makers, and had learned to use tools and finish houses in the traditional, hands-on way. So Benjamin provided their geometry course.


He wrote:

A point is that which has position, but no magnitude nor dimension; neither length, breadth, nor thickness.

And by Plate VI , Figure 3, he is describing "How to find the raking mouldings for a pediment" - a semester of academic learning in 6 pages!

It's not just Asher Benjamin who cares about teaching geometry. Peter Nicholson's The Carpenter's New Guide, which ran 13 editions in Britain and the States from 1792 to 1857, spends 126 pages describing what he calls Practical Geometry. He begins with "1. A Point has position but not magnitude." (He's less flowery than Benjamin).

Neither of these pattern-book authors wanted their ideas to only be copied - they wanted their readers to posses the intellectual tools to adapt these designs to their own situations.

Interlaced, Paired Ribbons: Guiloche

This door is 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.)

Copying and Plagarism

Over the past few months, I've been reading other people's writing and research on Asher Benjamin. One such scholar, architectural historian Abbot Lowell Cummings, has reviewed all the earlier pattern books (mainly English) that Benjamin copied. Yes, just copied - plate after plate. It turns out that Benjamin made direct copies from what can be found in earlier pattern books, most of them published in England. And at the time, no one seems to have said, "Hey! This is plagiarism!"

I find this interesting in light of conversations I've had about my own work and ownership of intellectual property. When I, an architect who works on old houses, design a new wing, I pay a huge amount of attention to how the existing house was designed. I am mining the existing house for visual knowledge that will help my wing compliment what's there. Sometimes I just plain copy.

But who owns the design that I copied? The original building may not have had an architect, so could it be the property of the carpenter, or the owner? Does it belong to me, because I adapted it? And should anyone even own it at all?

I'm pretty sure Asher Benjamin wasn't deliberately stealing the intellectual property of his predecessors - I doubt people even thought in those terms 200 years ago. I do think he really liked the designs he put in his first books, and he wanted to share what he saw. His own writing - like his paragraphs about light and shadow on mouldings - are so genuine and earnest, that I can imagine Benjamin choosing the plates for his book with the same passion.

So I'm glad no one slapped a lawsuit on him!

How Long Is Your Cubit?

I've found another reason for Asher Benjamin's geometry lessons and the proportion diagrams on his plates.

It turns out that in 1800, the various and different measuring systems used in the western world were quite divergent. A cubit seems to have been standard measured: from your outstretched middle finger to your elbow (about 18"). But a yard might be from your finger to your nose, (36") or to your near or opposite shoulder, (30", and 42" respectively).

I think this is great, since I have been measuring with body dimensions for years - using my own body to discretely measure an interesting space without drawing attention to myself by whipping out a tape measure, or helping a client to tell me how big is 'big' by stretching out both arms and saying, "This big?"

In 1793, Napoleon tried to create a standard, a metric system, with some success. And in 1824, the English made a standard yard, also with some success. The process took a good 50 years to take hold, and today we still have lots of regional variations, not to speak of the gulf between inches and centimeters.

Here in the States people measured cloth, grain, lumber using the system they had learned in the 'old country'. A Pennsylvania carpenter who repairs 18th century houses has told me he can tell a house built by a German from one built by a Quaker by its dimensioning.

Measuring

A friend who reads this blog sent me a link to a book on tools, published by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, so I have requested it through inter-library loan. However, the problem with books on tools is that the authors love what the tools look like, but rarely date them. This makes it very hard for me to see how specific tools evolved.

Meanwhile I have discovered that what I'm really asking is how carpenters measured around 1800.

People didn't need uniform measurements for construction until they wanted to use interchangeable parts. If your yard was 36" and mine was 35" , it wasn't a problem.
When Asher Benjamin writes his first books, we are still making the parts for a house specifically for that house - no buying off the shelf. So when it came to finish work, each piece of moulding added at a door opening or chair rail was made to order, regardless of how it was measured.

Benjamin's introduction to geometry - his first plates - and his descriptions of how to draw the profiles of various mouldings allow his readers to adapt his patterns to their specific buildings, and use whatever measuring tools they liked.