Old Houses in HollandJones, Sydney R. (Sydney Robert)
History
Old Houses in Holland
Jones, Sydney R. (Sydney Robert)
Architecture, Domestic -- Netherlands
The sides of the gables of farmhouses and country cottages, straight
and unshaped, are not uncommonly protected by barge-boards. The two
timbers, running from base to apex, may have mouldings worked at the
edge of them; or the undersides are diversified by repeating curves,
with pendants appearing at the lower ends. Both methods are figured
in detail in drawings 1, 2, and 4 on page 111. Fascia-boards, applied
to overhanging stories of wooden houses, are similarly decorated;
two are exemplified in numbers 6 and 7. The wooden finials, which
are planted on the outer faces of the gables at their highest points,
are variously shaped and perforated, and the details numbered 1, 2,
3 and 5 give four examples of them.
There is an absence of interesting chimneys in Holland, for the gable
ends of the high and narrow-fronted houses, bordering the street,
obscured from view these objects of usefulness. Solely utilitarian,
therefore, they generally remained, shafts of the simplest form,
serving the purpose for which they were devised, owing nothing to
beauty or ornament and little to precedent. When hipped roofs were
employed, instead of gables, chimneys came into greater prominence. But
even then--with an absence of developed, traditional forms to give
the basis for the evolution of a settled type--they did not constitute
important decorative factors in the architectural scheme. Many stacks
have neither mouldings nor other projection at the top. Chimneys a
little more elaborate than was usual are shown by the two illustrations
from Hoorn and Zutphen (page 112). They deviate somewhat from the plain
rectangular shape, and both have moulded heads; while the Hoorn example
has a pyramidal hood covered with lead and supported by four metal
uprights.
Isolated stone ornaments are numerous. They were inserted into walls
with freedom and wheresoever caprice or fancy suggested--high up on
gables, around doorways, over windows, or distributed on what would
otherwise have been unrelieved spaces. The rich appearance of the
buildings is in no small measure due to the extravagant use of these
details. That bizarre kind of ornament, known by the name of strapwork,
and well shown in the Arnhem gable (page 108), was freely used, as
was carved work based upon Italian motives. Among the latter may be
mentioned the more or less conventional representation of human forms,
fruit and flowers, birds, fishes and beasts, with prominence given
to heads of lions, or the complete animal in the attitude sejeant,
popularly used as a gable termination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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