A builder’s handbook for dividing the orders without fractions: every member found by dividing a height into equal parts with dividers. It spread the classical language to provincial builders in Britain and America.
Gibbs, architect of St Martin-in-the-Fields and the Radcliffe Camera, promised “a more exact and easy manner than has been heretofore practised”. His method replaces the module with successive equal divisions: the entablature into parts, the cornice into parts again, so that the craftsman never needs to multiply.
The book, part by part
I The method
Division of the whole height into equal parts for pedestal, column and entablature; each part then divided again for its members.
Rules: Divide, do not multiply