202. Plaster Frieze at Coles Farm, Box, Wiltshire (1649).
203. Plaster Frieze at Coles Farm, Box.
Just as the small panels of Jacobean woodwork gave way to the large panels of Wilton House and Boughton, so were the busy ceilings of the early seventeenth century gradually superseded by a more massive treatment. The older treatment survived in remote places till half-way through the century, and a plaster frieze of 1649, from Coles Farm, near Box in Wiltshire (Figs. 202, 203), shows how the old forms lingered on, although losing some of their vitality. The pattern in these busy ceilings covered the whole area, and the ground of the area was unbroken except by the pattern; any constructional beams that were required were concealed. But in course of time the beams asserted themselves, and were so arranged, with the addition of heavy ribs forming circular, oval, or octagonal panels, as to divide the area into several large spaces, thus breaking it up into deeply recessed divisions. The ornament, instead of being spread over the whole ceiling equally, was concentrated on and near the beams and ribs. The whole character of the ceiling was altered: instead of being a large, evenly fretted surface, it was broken up into several massive bays, which gave it a heavier and more monumental appearance. As in the wood-carving so in the plasterwork, much greater relief was aimed at, and in some of the finest ceilings of the time of William and Mary much of the work is so detached as to require a framework of wire for its foundation. This large way of handling the ceiling prevailed throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is exemplified by the work at Thorpe Hall (Fig. 204), designed by Webb, the house in Buckingham Street (Fig. 184), and a house in Warwick Square in the city, once the home of a wealthy merchant (Fig. 206). It survived in occasional examples till towards the close of the eighteenth century. Ware held it to be sufficiently in vogue to justify him in giving instructions as to the treatment of ceilings, and the design in Fig. 205 gives an excellent idea of the system and of the contrast it presents to Jacobean methods. An example of yet later date is in a room at the old War Office (Fig. 188), but here the main lines are unconstructional in their shape: the subsidiary ornament is of the delicate type associated with the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
204. Ceiling from Thorpe Hall, Northamptonshire (cir. 1656).
205. Ceiling designed by Isaac Ware.
206. Ceiling from a House in Warwick Square in the City of London (cir. 1707).