Historic HomeWorks Forum

[johnleeke]

Many of the old carpentry and masonry trades manuals show the Five Orders of Architecture. That's one of the reasons you see these classically styled details on these old buildings, all the carpenters knew about the Orders. One example is "Audels Carpenters and Builders Guide", that's the one I've had since I was a kid in the 1960s. Another famous one that focuses on just the Five Orders is William Ware's "The American Vignola," first published in 1904 and still available from Dover reprints. I got that book and started using it in 1979 it when I was restoring columns on a porch. They are all based on Giovanni Vignola's "The Five Orders of Architecture" written in Italian in the 1500s. My 8th-great grandfather first translated it into English and published it in 1669 with the title "The Regular Architect."

[TimB]

Thanks for posting this John. Fascinating genealogical tidbit too... architecture seems to be in your blood!

[johnleeke]

The one good thing about Ware's Vignola is that it was on the shelf over my dad's workbench and introduced me to the Orders when I was 13 years old. My dad had sent me to the recently built Governor's Mansion in Lincoln, Nebraska to make sketches and measured drawings of the front portico with it's classical colonnade. He handed me the American Vignola and said, "lay out your drawings just like this, but with your own measurements and details as you find them at the Mansion." I was at the Mansion for five or six Saturdays in a row. The governor's wife came out to see what I was up to, and had the janitor put up a ladder so I could get up to the capitals. On my last day there an elderly gent came walking up the horseshoe drive to say hello, when he noticed my drawings his eyes widened. Turned out he was the architect who designed the building. He invited me to stop by his office at lunch time, and bring my drawings. As we sat there eating sandwiches out of brown bags, he unfurled his original drawings on a big table in the middle of the drafting room and turned to the two pages of the portico showing the columns, and asked me to lay out my drawings. He reached up on a shelf and pulled down an old leather bound book titled, "The Regular Architect: or The General Rule of the Five Orders of Architecture" and Ware's American Vignola Then he pointed out the "particular differences" (as he said) between Vignola, Ware, his drawings and my drawings. He carefully said that none of these four is "The Truth, just opinions." The truth, he noted, was standing out there in the real world, built by the hands of the tradesmen, the ingenious persons involved in the famous art of building.

Later in life, after decades of making and installing columns in the real world, I learned that it was my 8th-great grandfather, John Leeke, who translated and published the first English translation of Vignola's Five Orders as the book, The Regular Architect in 1669.

[TideWater]

That's a great story. Thanks for sharing it. Sounds like you had a great apprenticeship.