THE BUILDER DECEMBER 1926

The Precious Jewels

By BROS. A. L. KRESS AND R. J. MEEKREN

(Continued)

THE consideration of the tracing or trestle board, and its
conjectural forerunner, the square pavement, or floor prepared for
making working drawings on, led us last month rather far afield
into a discussion of the technical methods of the Operative
Freemasons. Some reasons were given, and more might be found, to
make us think that the medieval Craftsman could not have had the
profusion of plans that present day builders are accustomed to
because, for one reason, of the practical difficulty of obtaining
material to make them on, and that he would not have bothered with
them in any case because he did not need them. And, further than
this, a Freemason, was expected to be able to make whatever
drawings he needed for himself to carry out his own job. Some men
would make them more fully and accurately t h a n others. Some
doubtless could visualize their work without them. It would depend
entirely on the type of a man's mind and the extent of his
experience. Besides this it must be remembered that marking out the
work on the rough stone is essentially the same thing as making a
full-size detail drawing. Under present day conditions the workman
in doing this merely copies the drawing made by someone else; then
he was himself the designer and artist, and was given as free a
hand in the matter as his skill warranted. No one yet had dreamed
of a state of affairs where specialization should produce men
capable of doing only one thing or the other.

Now the simplest way of reproducing a drawing or a plan is by
measured offsets from a center line. To use a base line as well
makes for greater convenience and accuracy. This is the general
method employed by all draughtsmen. Where however the design is
complex and irregular, such as figure groups, landscapes, maps and
so on, the method of squares is more convenient. Essentially it is
the same thing in principle, the whole area being measured out
beforehand. In theory any set of crossing lines would serve--
straight, curved or crooked--and it would make no difference
however irregularly they were spaced; but for obvious practical
reasons straight parallel lines at equal intervals, intersecting at
right angles, are most convenient in every way, as we saw in the
discussion of the diamond and equilateral triangle as the base of
measurement and design. That this convenience and practicability is
a real one, and does not depend on being a convention to which
modern draughtsmen are accustomed (as, for example, the system of
coinage used in England, which only use and wont could make
endurable) is proved by the fact of its universality. It is not
only employed by draughtsmen, engineers and architects today, but
it was used by ancient Egyptian artists and painters. Bro. C.
Purdon Clarke is authority for its use by Persian builders in a
very important paper on the subject read before Quatuor Coronati
Lodge in the early days of its existence, and he also reproduced
architectural sketches drawn on squared paper in 1541, and some
plates from the 1621 edition of the vitruvius showing this method
exemplified for drawing the human figure and for setting out a
capital of the Ionic order.

The Persian technique, which is presumably still in use, is very
interesting from our point of view. The drawings having been made
on squared paper are reproduced full size on a specially prepared
floor made of plaster of Paris carefully leveled. The point is not
specifically mentioned, but the modus operandi of the technique
would seem naturally to call for the marking out of this floor into
squares corresponding to those on the paper.

MEDIEVAL WORKING DRAWINGS

Let us now consider what the requirements of the medieval Freemason
would have been. Sketches, done more or less by freehand, would
have been made by the Master called in by those who were having the
building erected--the "lords" spoken of in the Old Charges--and
agreed upon between them. There is no need to suppose they were
drawn strictly to scale, the trained hand and eye of the artist
needs only the barest minimum of measurement, and the Master Masons
of Gothic work must have been as much artists as craftsmen. The
chief measurements of the building may have been recorded in a
memorandum or contract similar to the one quoted last month. Taking
a church as the most typical structure, after the chief dimensions
of length, width and height had been determined, there would be the
question of the number of bays there were to be in chancel and
nave, whether there were to be towers, transepts, chapels and so
on; and the contract already quoted shows how other buildings might
be referred to as models in place of precise descriptions or
drawings. In a large building, where (as was done most frequently)
part was to be completed first, it is probable a plan would be
drawn, but it would be more of the nature of a dimensioned diagram
or sketch, than a drawing done accurately to scale. Every bay in
the structure was a complete unit in itself, structurally speaking,
the chevet, or head, at the east end, whether apsidal or square (as
was most usual in England) would need to be drawn more fully, as
also the west end with the facade and main entrances, and the ends
of the transepts if there were any. But all these parts and their
arrangement were as well known to all the masons as the parts of an
old frame building were to the pioneer carpenters who put them up.
The difference between one church and another was in its
proportions. The relation of height to breadth and length, the size
of the windows, of the lower arches to those of the triforium and
clerestory, and so on. In these there was room for infinite
variety, but the essential skeleton was always the same, that is,
for the same type of church. A small parish church with a timber
roof would not have the flying buttresses that were necessary to
maintain the soaring vaults of a cathedral; yet even here the
flying buttress was only an elaboration of the simpler solid form
used in the smaller building.

Certain details, however, would need some elaboration in design as,
for example, the mouldings, one of the distinguishing
characteristics of the Gothic style of building. Let us suppose
that an arch was to be constructed; it does not matter whether for
door or window or for one of the bays, all were designed on the
same principles. Today it would be very carefully drawn to scale,
then some junior draughtsman in the architect's office would make
large size detail drawings for the different parts, and from blue
prints of these the stone cutters would work. All this needs a very
high degree of accuracy in the drawing because the workman follows
it blindly, he has no say in the design and no discretion. The
medieval craftsman on the other hand was told there was to be an
arch, and how high and wide it was to be, and duly instructed to
"go to it," in whatever was the slang of the day.

CHARACTER OF GOTHIC ARCHES

Norman and Romanesque arches were semicircular, those of the Gothic
style were formed, as is well known, on the intersecting arcs of
two circles. A great practical advantage of the circle over any
other curve is that every radius is normal to the circumference,
and the angle that the joint must make with the curve of the arch
is easily found by drawing any line from the center to the
circumference. In Fig. 1 is shown a diagram of a typical Gothic
arch with a simple moulding of two "orders." It will be seen that
it really consists of two separate arches, the outer one deeper
than the inner. It was usual to cut each prominent member of the
moulding on a separate range of stones, so that an elaborate
doorway might consist of three or four "shells" built one outside
the other. In the Norman arch these stones were often Cut square.
An example is to be found in THE BUILDER for August last year [page
231, No. 6. In No. 5 the upper part of a moulded Gothic arch is
shown]. A first step toward elaboration was to cut off the corners,
thus making a chamber, such as is shown in the two small windows of
the north transept of St. Etienne at Beauvais, reproduced in the
Study Club article last December, page 378. A later and more
elaborate form of decoration is to be seen at page 366, but from
the section shown at the right it can be seen that the square
outline of the stones was retained, the ornamentation being chiefly
on the face. The Gothic form was evolved quite naturally, out of
its forerunner, and needed very little change in methods of
working, but the effect produced was changed entirely from the
step-like form of the earlier style to a splayed form giving the
general appearance of sloping outward, though basically it was
worked out of the square step form, the design requiring the
minimum amount of stone to be cut away, as may be seen by reference
to the sections in Fig. 1. Another economy in stone was the
indifference to the size of the voussoirs, which were long or short
as the blocks happened to come, there being no attempt to make them
equal, or to use the joints as ornaments as was done in Renaissance
work. The effect was all gained by the rounds and hollows of the
moulding.

It will be seen also that the voussoirs were interchangeable; it
made no difference how they came so long as together they filled up
the space between the spring of the arch at a and the keystone at
d, as shown in the figure. It will be noticed also that the
centers, marked C, fall within the arch. If the arch were truly
equilateral they would be at the intersections of the arcs with the
base line. In lancets they fall outside, producing a very acute
form. Whatever type it was, the width and the height would be
determined by the general design. When it came to laying them out,
the centers could be found by a simple geometrical construction. It
would make no difference whether working from inside or outside
measurements. The height being set out on the line h d,
perpendicular to the base a b, and with a and d as centers two
intersecting arcs are drawn, shown in dotted lines, and the
straight line joining the intersections will cut the base line at
the required point. It is very probable though that in many cases
the centers were found by simple guess and trial, which with a
little practice can be very easily done quite accurately enough.

Now from what has been said it can be seen that all that is
necessary to work the stones (aside from the moulding) is to get
the proper curve and the correct angles, the length of the stone
being indifferent.

It would be worked first of all for the two faces, which would have
to be parallel. Then, if a templet were used, the curve and the
line of the joint at each end could be easily marked off. Such a
templet is to be found among the Masonic emblems in the window from
Chartres Cathedral, a drawing of which was given in THE BUILDER
last January, and which, for convenience, is reproduced here [Fig.
2]. There would have to be one for each order or range of stones in
the arch; and in order to make them full sized arcs would have to
be drawn on the floor long enough to get the curve. A reference to
Fig. 4 will make it clear. The stock, or butt, of the implement is
straight and coincides with the radius of the circle, the other
limb is shaped to fit the curve. The tool thus made would be used
exactly like a square, both for marking out and testing the angles
of the joints. The dotted lines give other radii of the circle to
show the constancy of the angle.

In order to make it, only short arcs would need to be drawn, but in
order to get the length of the curves, the arch, or at least one
side of it, would have to be drawn in full. The length of course
could be calculated, but it is doubtful if there were any
mathematicians in the Middle Ages able to do so; it is quite
certain in any case that the simplest and most direct way is the
graphic method of drawing the full arc and taking measurements from
it.

THE COMMON SQUARE

While we are on the subject of implements it may be remarked
incidentally that the squares, like the levels and plumb rules used
by the medieval craftsmen, were undoubtedly made of wood. There is
a widespread theory among Freemasons, in America at least, that
there is a difference between the mason's and the carpenter's
squares. The former is supposed to have limbs of equal length, the
latter to be unequal and to be graduated in inches and fractions of
inches. The currency of this hypothesis appears to be chiefly due
to the authority of Mackey, who, in his Encyclopedia, says under
this head:

The French Masons have almost universally given it [the Square] one
leg longer than the other, thus making it a carpenter's square. The
American Masons, following the incorrect delineations of Jeremy L.
Cross, have, while generally preserving the equality of length in
the legs, unnecessarily marked its surface with inches, thus making
it an instrument for measuring length and breadth, which it is not.
It is simply the trying: square of a stone-mason.

We do not know if this opinion was original with Mackey or not; it
is quite likely it was not, but the facts do not agree with it at
all. At the present time joiners use a try-square, with a steel
blade and a wooden stock. Carpenters use a steel square, graduated,
the long arm being two feet long, the shorter twelve inches.
Precisely the same square is used by stonecutters and other
workmen, blacksmiths for instance. It is peculiarly an American
tool. In Europe the old home-made wooden squares are still in use
both by carpenters and masons, and are exactly like those we find
in medieval representations, a number of examples of which have
appeared in THE BUILDER, as at pages 229 and 230 last year, and
page 24 in the present volume. These are merely samples, in fact we
do not recall any old representation of mason's tools in which the
limbs of the square are shown of equal length. In many cases the
stock is very short in comparison to the length of the blade. There
is a good reason for this in a wooden implement. The shorter the
stock the less strain there is on the joint, and the less likely is
it to be knocked out of truth by an unlucky fall or accidental
blow. The French masons therefore have adhered faithfully to the
original tradition in this. But so also did the English, throughout
the eighteenth century at least. The squares shown at pages 312 and
313 last month are examples of many that might easily be found.
Probably the real reason for making the square equal limbed in
Masonic designs and jewels was merely a desire for symmetry. The
actual shape of the working tool would not balance well as a collar
jewel, nor does it combine so well with the compasses. It is
another case of an imaginary technicality, which has not even the
excuse of having some special symbolism attached to it.

NOTES

1. The reference is given in Gould's Concise History, p. 226 it is
given also in the larger work.

2. What may be intended for a template for mouldings more on the
principle of a T square, is to be found in the curious engraving
from a 1547 edition of vitruvius reproduced in THE BUILDER for
December, 1924, page 384. It is on the left immediately above a
common square and just under a narrow bladed saw. But the curves
shown are not those of Gothic mouldings, which however would hardly
be expected in the sixteenth century.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Under what conditions did the round arch develop into -the
pointed form? Was it borrowed from the Saracens or developed
independently ?

2. Could any symbolic teaching be drawn from carvings and mouldings
either in contrast, or additional to that of square work ?

3. Could any significance be attached to the form of the mason's
square ?




