Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/965

 VILLAS IN VARIOUS STYLES. 941 purposes, mere alternate patterns of different colours. The best of these tiles were executed by indenting the required ornament in the substance of the clay while moist, and filling up the vacuities with clay of a different colour, after which they were subjected to the fire. Unfortunately, however, many of them appear to have had their embellish- ments applied only to the surface, and their subjects have consequently been soon obliter- ated. In porches, halls, conservatories, &c. in which the pointed style is imitated, the paving might be consistently interspersed with tUes of this description, which, probably, would not prove expensive, when their manufacture had once been tried with success. [^Ir. Wriglit's tiles (§ 1785) are exactly what is here described, but are manufactured in a superior manner.] 1902. Chimneii-pieces are matters of internal design which require much judgment, and which would aditdt of considerable decoration, were excellence of workmanship pre- ferred to expensiveness of material. As it is, indeed, the pencil is often fettered by the fear of massiveness on the one hand, and of waste on the other (when marble is the sub- stance to be employed), no less than by the want of spirit and feeling. Boldness, however, is here essential to character, the composition of a well-designed chimney-piece differing little from that of a gateway in miniature, reduced to a flattened proportion, and some- times finished above with a course of tracery compartments, and a ledge, scarcely to be called a shelf, arising from the projection of a massive cornice moulding ; the whole being bounded on each side, perhaps, by a slender column, or octagonal shaft, attached to the jambs. On the other hand, this feature may be reduced to an extreme of simplicity, equal in economy to that of an ordinary bed-room chimney. It is, however, to be so reduced by a regard to the primitive forms of arch and jamb, and not by the sinking of a quatrefoil on the blocks of an every-day article, and calling it Gothic. 1 903. The Staircase. One conspicuous object of internal arrangement which remains for our notice is the staircase. For this, unfortunately, we have scarcely any precedents in old works applicable to the modern principle of construction ; the common arrange- ment being, anciently, that of the corkscrew stone staii-case, still used in church towers, of which the steps become the radii of a circle, each lending its aid to form a round newel up the centre. The great staircase of Chj'istchurch College, Oxford, is one example more closely resembling the modern plan ; but it is one upon a 1643 .,a>^^ '^ "^ scale of splendour rarely to be ap- ^s^S^iT^ proached under the economical re- strictions of the present daj-. It will, however, afford many usefid hints to the student; hints which will be seconded by every principle of architectural analogy and right feeling ; and this, among the first, — that Pointed Architecture knows no such finishings as those of the com- mon rail and baluster; but that, if an equivalent to such be wanted, it must be gained under the form of the coping-moulding and the mul- lion. Another point of observation will be, that what ai-e called con- tinued handrails (even supposing their section to be correct), are neither so manageable nor so charac- teristic for Pointed Architecture as those with newels, belonging to the form of the square well-liole, or to what is technically termed the dog- legged staircase. In figs. 1643 and 1644 we have offered some ideas upon this subject, as applicable to the purposes of modern domestic use. In fig. 1643 the staircase us finished with a close string-board, and with balusters which take the character of plain mullions. It is easily to be perceived that the forms here simplified will admit of any degree of decoration, by the introduction.