A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

The same system of course applies to dwelling-houses, and to the meanest objects of architectural art. The string-course that marks externally the floor-line of the different storeys is as legitimate and indispensable an ornament as a vaulting shaft, and it would also be well that the windows should be grouped so as to indicate the size of the rooms, and at least a plain space left where a partition wall abuts, or better still a pilaster or buttress, or line of some sort, ought to mark externally that feature of internal construction.

The cornice is as indispensable a termination of the wall as the capital is of a pillar; and suggests not only an appropriate support for the roof, but eaves to throw the rain off the wall. The same is true with regard to pediments or caps over windows: they suggest a means of protecting an opening from the wet; and porches over doorways are equally obvious contrivances. Everything, in short, which is actually constructive, or which suggests what was or may be a constructive expedient, is a legitimate object of decoration, and affords the architect unlimited scope for the display of taste and skill, without going out of his way to seek it.

The difficulty in applying ornaments borrowed from other styles is, that although they all suggest construction, it is not the construction of the buildings to which they are applied. To use Pugin’s clever antithesis, “they are constructed ornament, not ornamented construction,” and as such can never satisfy the mind. However beautiful in themselves, they are out of place, there is no real or apparent use for their being there; and, in an art so essentially founded on utilitarian principles and common sense as architecture is, any offence against constructive propriety is utterly intolerable.

The other class, or decorative ornaments, are forms invented for the purpose, either mere lithic forms, or copied from the vegetable kingdom, and applied so as to give elegance or brilliancy to the constructive decoration just described.

The first and most obvious of these are mere mouldings, known to architects as Scotias, Cavettos, Ogees, Toruses, Rolls, &c.—curves which, used in various proportions either horizontally or vertically, produce when artistically combined, the most pleasing effect.

In conjunction with these, it is usual to employ a purely conventional class of ornament, such as frets, scrolls, or those known as the bead and reel, or egg and dart mouldings; or in Gothic architecture the billet or dog-tooth or all the thousand and one forms that were invented during the Middle Ages.

In certain styles of art, vegetable forms are employed even more frequently than those last described. Among these, perhaps the most beautiful and perfect ever invented was that known as the honeysuckle ornament, which the Greeks borrowed from the Assyrians, but made so peculiarly their own. It has all the conventional character of a purely lithic, with all the grace of a vegetable form; and, as used with the Ionic order, is more nearly perfect than any other known.

The Romans made a step further towards a more direct imitation of nature in their employment of the acanthus leaf. As applied to a capital, or where the constructive form of the bell beneath it is still distinctly seen, it is not only unobjectionable, but productive of the most pleasing effect. Indeed it is doubtful if anything of its class has yet been invented so entirely satisfactory as the Roman Corinthian order, as found, for instance, in the so-called Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome. The proportions of the order have never yet been excelled, and there is just that balance between imitation of nature and conventionality which is indispensable. It is not so pure or perfect as a Grecian order, but as an example of rich decoration applied to an architectural order it is unsurpassed.

With their disregard of precedent and untrammelled wildness of imagination, the Gothic architects tried every form of vegetable ornament, from the purest conventionalism, where the vegetable form can hardly be recognised, to the most literal imitation of nature.

While confining himself to purely lithic forms, an architect can never sin against good taste, though he may miss many beauties; with the latter class of ornament he is always in danger of offence, and few have ever employed it without falling into mistakes. In the first place, because it is impossible to imitate perfectly foliage and flowers in stone; and secondly, because if the pliant forms of plants are made to support, or do the work of, hard stone, the incongruity is immediately apparent, and the more perfect the imitation the greater the mistake.