Cut a shaft with sixteen shallow flutes or facets, give it a square abacus and a low round base: the “proto-Doric” column of the Middle Kingdom rock tombs at Beni Hasan.
Rules · Ornament · Proportion
The Greek egg-and-dart
Space the eggs from centre to centre at the height of the moulding; make each egg as wide as the space between two eggs, and divide that space into three, giving the middle part to the dart and the outer parts to the shell that encloses each egg.
pitch = height; egg width = gap; gap = shell + dart + shell (⅓ each)
Mauch takes these relations from the earliest Greek examples, above all the Erechtheum. The moulding on which the ornament is carved has the profile of an egg, like the echinus of a Greek Doric capital, and the egg itself is shaped like a serpent’s egg.
Drawn this way, he says, the ornament makes a lasting impression, which cannot be said of the wide, spreading egg-and-dart of later Roman work.
Related rules
Make the corner columns thicker than the rest by a fiftieth of their diameter, because, seen against the open sky, they look thinner than they are.
D corner = D × (1 + 1⁄50); Parthenon: 1.95 m against 1.905 m
To end the frieze with a triglyph at the corner and keep every metope square, move the corner column inward: make the last intercolumniation narrower than the others by the amount the corner triglyph is displaced.
contraction c = e − t⁄2; Parthenon: 4.29 m normal, 3.68 m at the corners (c ≈ 0.61 m)
Let one simple ratio govern the whole: at the Parthenon the lower diameter is to the axial spacing, the width of the stylobate to its length, and the height of the order to the width of the front, all very nearly as 4 is to 9.
D : axial spacing ≈ 1.905 : 4.296 ≈ 4 : 9; stylobate 30.88 : 69.50 ≈ 4 : 9
Divide the height from floor to ceiling into three and a half parts and give two and a half to the opening; make a Doric door five and a half twelfths as wide as it is high (an Ionic one two-fifths), and narrow it slightly at the top.
h = 2½⁄3½ H; Doric w = 5½⁄12 h, Ionic w = h ÷ 2½; top narrowed by ⅓, ¼ or ⅛ of the jamb as h ≤ 16, ≤ 25, ≤ 30 ft
Architecture depends on order (ordinatio), arrangement (dispositio), eurythmy, symmetry, propriety (decor) and economy (distributio).
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The Greek egg-and-dart”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/mauch-egg-and-dart. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.