Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/23

 ie a ay hi sf JAN. 5, 1872. | THE BUILDING NEWS. 7 with rouge or bole to prevent the gold stick- ing to them. The cutting of the gold is effected by a slight hardwood frame or gauge with sharp edges. Now, by calculating the thickness of the ribbon of gold as it passes into the hands of the goldbeater, and the subsequent division which it undergoes, and allowing for waste, it is proved that the leaves are not more than one two-hundred- and-eighty-thousandth part of an inch in thickness, and in France, where it is beaten much thinner than with us, the thickness is said to be less than the one four-hundred- thousandth of an inch. An ounce of gold may thus be beaten into 1,600 leaves, which, if taken at Sin. square, will cover 159,052 times its former surface. Pliny says, of Roman gilding, that 750 leaves, four fingers square, were all that could be got out of an ounce of gold in his day. Double gold—that is to say, gold leaf double the thickness of that generally used—is sometimes used, and ean be at any time procured, by special order, from the goldbeater, not being kept in stock. This double gold is used for the gilding of the figures on church-clock faces, weather vanes, finials, &c., and all articles that are dificult to get at, and are much exposed to to the atmosphere. When these are well gilt with the double gold they will bear the wear and tear for a very great number of years. If we paint one portion of a vane, and gild another portion, the gilt portion will show scarcely any depreciation, while the paint will have utterly perished. Many persons have a notion that the durability of gold is increased by being varnished. ‘This is true enough when speaking of such surfaces as are liable to be scratched by abrasion, or that require to be washed frequently, but is not true of gilding which is not subject to the above conditions, and the reason of this is simply that the varnish will perish quickly, especially on outside work, and in decay falls off, cracks, and covers the gold with it. Varnish is also thought to add to the splendour of gold. This is also a mistaken notion, which will be at once evident if we compare the two. Nothing can compensate for or add to the beauty and splendour of pure gold. Gold leaf in the books, when kept in stock for any length of time, should be kept in a perfectly dry place, and may be so kept for any length of time without dete- rioration ; but if the place it is stored in is at all damp the paper books will absorb the moisture and the gold will stick to the paper, and thus it will be unfit for use and cause much waste and loss. Much care is also necessary in the moving it about, and in the handling, as without this care the leaves get broken and torn. It should also be borne in mind that although the gold leaf may be spoiled by carelessness, for gilding purposes, that it is in fact an indestructible metal, and that every particle or portion of a leaf of gold is of value, and may be purified from dirt and any foreign substance. It will bring its price, and be again melted and beaten out into gold leaf, so that it behoves the work- man to keep a sharp look-out for every scrap of apparent waste. Silver is beaten out in the same manner into silver leaf; but, from its inferior ductility in comparison with gold, the leaves are of necessity much thicker, and about 5in. square. Until very recently, silver leaf was not of much importance in the arts, on account of its liability to tarnish, and the necessity thus caused for its being coated with varnish to preserve it from the atmo- sphere. We are not quite sure as to our dates, but we believe it is somewhere about thirty years since the imitation gold mould- ings were first introduced from Germany into England ; since that time their use has become almost universal. They are principally used for room mouldings—that is, for placing ander the cornice and on top of the skirting of drawing and dining-rooms, for which pur- pose they are admirably adapted, both as to price and wear, being washable, a great recommendation and safeguard against the housemaid’s duster! There is also a great demand for the article for the manufacture of the cheaper kinds of picture-frames, hundreds of thousands being made yearly. Silver leaf is used for gilding these mould- ings: itis laid upon the mouldings in the same manner as the gold leaf (to be hereafter described, the mouldings being also prepared to receive it in the same manner), and, when it has been burnished, it is then covered with a laecquer—varnish stained with gamboge, and other yellow stains—which gives the silver a golden tinge, without injuring the brilliancy of the burnish. It is a singular fact, well authenticated, that the same pro- cess was used by the Italians two hundred years ago as a substitute, and to avoid the then great cost of gold. Many of the so- called gold grounds for mural paintings were, no doubt, laid with silver, and then coated over with some such transparent-coloured varnish as the Germans use at the present day. Anderson, in his ‘Origin of Com- merce,” says that this practice was intro- duced into England by one Evelyn, in 1633. Be this as it may, it is evident that the pro- cess did not obtain to any great extent; in fact, we question whether it did so anywhere, only for occasional artistic purposes, and we may fairly give the Germans credit for hav- ing made the process commercially valuable to themselves, and furnishing us with a good aid to decoration at a tenth of the cost per foot of the real gold moulding. (To be continued.) << MR. RUSKIN ON SCAVENGING. N R. RUSKIN sends the following droll letter to the Pall Mall Gazette :—* I have beenevery day on the point of writing to you since your notice on the 18th of the dirty state of the London streets, to ask whether any of your readers would care to know how such matters are managed in my neigh- bourhood, I was obliged a few years ago, for the benefit of my health, to take a small house in one of the country towns of Utopia, and, though I was at first disappointed in the climate—which, indeed, is no better than our own (except that there is no foul marsh air),—I found my cheerfulness and ability for work greatly increased by the mere power of getting exercise pleasantly close to my door, even in the worst of the winter, when, though I have a little garden at the back of my house, I dislike going into it, because the things look all so dead; and find my walk, on the whole, pleasanter in the streets, these being always perfectly clean; and the wood carving of the houses prettier than much of our indoor furni- ture. But it was about the streets I wanted to tell you. The Utopians have the oddest way of carry- ing out things, when once they begin, as far as they can go; and it occurred to them one dirty December long since, when they, like us, had only crossing sweepers, and they might just as well sweep the whole of the street as the crossings of it, so that they might cross anywhere. Of course, that meant more work for the sweepers; but the Utopians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be done in the open air; they appointed a due number of broomsmen to every quarter of the town; and since then, at any time of the year, it is in our little town as in great Rotterdam, when Dr. Brown saw it on his journey from Norwich to Colen in 1668, ‘the women go about in white slippers,’ whichis pretty to see. Now, sir, it would, of course, be more difficult to manage anything like this in London, because, for one thing, in our town we have a rivulet running down every street that slopes to the river; and, be- sides, because you have coal dust and smoke, and what not, to deal with; and the habit of spitting, which is worst of all. In Utopia a man would as soon vomit as spit in the street (or anywhere else, indeed, if he could help it). But still, it is certain we can at least anywhere do as much for the whole street as we have done for the crossing ; and to show that we can, I mean, on Ist January next, to take three street sweepers into constant service; they will be the first workpeople I employ wit! the interest of the St. George’s fund, of which I shall get my first dividend this January; and wherever I can get leave from the police and inhabitants I will keep my three sweepers steadily at work for eight hours a day ; and I hope soon to show you a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line.’ PRE-HISTORIC FORTIFICATIONS. A T the meeting of the Archeological Section, held on the 21st ult., at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, Mr. Lawson Tait delivered an address upon ‘ Pre-historic Fortifications.” Mr. Tarr, after some introductory remarks, ob- served that weapons began to be used before any definite scheme of fortification came into use. The use of the stick or the sharpened stone commenced at a much earlier stage in the history of armamen- ture than the use of fortifications. The first indica- tion of fortification was what they might naturally expect, viz., a fortified hillock, men finding that upon an elevated position they had an advantage in the use of their weapons. Thus they found that the earlier fortifications were hill forts. The well-known Roman forts with which this country abounded were not such as he classed amongst pre-historic fortifications, because pre-historic meant such as they had no historic knowledge of. In the earliest times, he believed that the structures of which he was going to speak were not intended for permanent resi- dence, as forts now were. The huts of the village were generally on the outside, at a short distance from the fortified hillock. ‘There was one instance in which the huts were inside the fortified enclosure. The lecturer then proceeded to make some remarks upon the fortified rock at Rhunin Strathfleet, Suther- land, which was the earliest type of any he had been able to see. So skilfully was this fortress con- structed on the hill that its existence was never discovered until a sportsman shot a bird and saw his dog disappear over the rude wall which surrounded the enclosure. This fort simply consisted of a space in the top of the rock enclosed by walls, the doorway being on the side which was most accessible. When there was an alarm the people from the village pro- bably went into the enclosed space for protection, but it was evident that such forts were not intended for long occupation, as there was no place for the stowage of provisions. In those days, however, war- likeincursions must have been of short duration. They came to other fortifications of more definite arrange- ment. The fortified rock in Sutherland, to which he had called their attention, and of which there were other instances, evidently belonged to the stone period—the period when men had to use stone arrow heads, stone hatchets, and stone hammers as wea- pons. The structures of which he spoke might all be relegated to the stone age, for although in some cases two or three small bronze implements had been found in them, they were of such a kind as to lead them to the belief that these were there through ac- cidental circumstances. There was no doubt that these structures were after the stone age occupied by men of the bronze age, as they were handed down as national property. After the enclosures which were simply surrounded by a wall, they came to structures which were evidently intended for more permanent residence, there being chambers for the storage of provisions. These chambers were of great interest, as they showed that the people who made them had taught themselves how to form Cyclopean arches, which were not confined to Greece. In the first instance, there was only one chamber in the structures, and this chamber was always on the same side of the doorway. This single chamber, he thought, wasmade to contain the rubble required for fastening up the doorway when there was an attack. The other and more extensive chambers were, how- ever, undoubtedly for the storage of provisions. In one of the chambers in one of these structures in Sutherland the skeleton of a man was found, and amongst his bones was found a ‘ quern,” or grinding mill, and in it some grain. Mr Tait then pointed out that the fortifications were placed in such posi- tions that the people could carry on a system of tele- graphy. So nicely had they been arranged that he had been puzzled to discover the two corresponding towers, until he had got upon the elevation, which exactly corresponded with the original height of the tower. The amount of surveying which the people must have gone through certainly must have entailed great labour. After speaking of several prehistoric remains to be found in various parts of the country, and illustrating his remarks by reference to a large number of diagrams, Mr. ‘Tait called attention to the fact that no one had “ taken up” the prehistoric re- mains in Warwickshire, and then made some remarks upon the mound which they saw at Brinklow during their excursion. He said his impression was that there was no fortification at that place which belonged to either Saxon or Celtic times, or was en- titled to rank as of great antiquity. He thought the fortifications there were too extensive and too well done, and had none of the marks of the ancient fort- resses to which he had drawn attention. If there were any they had escaped his notice.