Academic literature on the topic 'Bricklayers' guild'

ABSTRACTWhile the role of women as designers and/or patrons of architecture in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland is increasingly recognised, their role in the making of architecture remains contested. This article sheds light on the subject by drawing not just on the extensive secondary literature, but also on records of livery companies and other primary sources in London and Dublin. It begins with the building site, focusing on female apprenticeship. Here substantial evidence is provided showing that girls bound to bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers as apprentices — the so-called ’lost labourers’ of recent scholarship, recorded in guild registers and court minutes — did not in fact acquire craft skills or work as on-site operatives in those trades. The article then turns to those areas of the building process to which women did make a substantial contribution: first the practical realm, including brickmaking, lime-burning and the cleaning and preparation of carved and moulded work for painters and decorators; then the organisational realm of business, including property development, house-building and estate management. Taken together, these stories from the margins of architectural and labour histories make clear the distinction between competence in skills and competence in business, giving a more accurate picture of the multifarious nature of female participation in the construction industry in the Georgian era.

AbstractIn the Vleeshuis museum in Antwerp is a painting which is signed and dated G.COINGNET.FEC.1583 (note 1 and fig. 1). It allegedly represents 'Queen Dido, giving orders for Carthage to be built.' However, in the painting an architect is presenting the putative queen with a construction drawing (fig. 2) which bears the inscription PORTA DE LA GOLETA. La Goletta was a fortress built by Charles v to keep Tunis under Spanish control when he took possession of the city in 1535. In the 1560s, to cope with the threat of renewed Turkish attacks, La Goletta was substantially reinforced. Work was also begun on a new fort ('Nova arx') between Tunis and La Goletta. However, the Turks finally took both fortresses and the city itself in 1574. The conquest of 1574 is depicted and described in Civitates orbis terrarum by Braun and Hogenberg (note 7 and fig. 3). The authors suggest that the 'Nova arx' was modelled on the fortress of Antwerp. This edifice was built in 1568-69 by the Duke of Alva to subdue Antwerp, but after the initial success of the uprising against Spanish domination it was taken by the rebels and integrated in the city's fortifications. This was the situation in 1583, when Coignet painted his picture. The role assigned to the Antwerp guild of bricklayers and stone-masons in the painting is so prominent, that it is safe to assume that it was commissioned by the guild. In all probability it represents an anti-Spanish political programme. A further indication is provided by the drawing which is being presented to the queen; it bears a strong resemblance to the plan of Hadrian's port in ancient Ostia (note 11 and fig. 4). In Civitates orbis terrarum we read that the Turks, after their conquest of Tunis, razed the city's fortifications to the ground, replacing them by a naval port to make things as awkward as possible for the Catholic enemy. There is thus an obvious connection between La Goletta and a port of Antiquity; in that connection the role of the Turks also emerges. During the Dutch revolt against Spanish domination there was often talk of making overtures to the Turks, who, although not noted for their gentle disposition, were far more tolerant in matters of religion than the Hapsburgs. Indeed, one of the slogans of the revolt was 'sooner Turkish than popish'. There is also evidence of actual contacts between Antwerp and Constantinople during this period. The specific reference to La Goletta thus clearly indicates the intention of the painting: in analogy with the Turkish conquest of 1574, the Antwerp building trade guild assigned to Dido a new, allegorical role: that of ordering the conversion of a fortress erected by the enemy into a fortified port for the purpose of vexing the emperor of the Roman, c.q. the Roman-catholic realm. The link with the hated fortress which Alva had built for Antwerp is evident. There is little likelihood that plans were actually made to provide Antwerp with such a port; the painting probably had a propagandistic function. In 1585 the Duke of Parma definitively took the city for the king of Spain, and the fortress was separated from the fortifications again in order to quell any fresh uprisings. The fortress was pulled down in 1884; today the Museum of Fine Arts stands on the site.

At the beginning of the 19th century, caught within the ring of the massive walls of the fortress, Timişoara town had been hardly defining its new profile. From 21 military buildings, 20 were situated in the inner side of the fortress. In 1807 this town and its church represented the target of the orations of one young bricklayer who had arrived from Arad: he was also asking for a house in this settlement. e story turned real: for four decades the builder had built princely houses, administrative palaces, barracks, hospitals, churches and record houses throughout the historical Banat. His name had become well-known in the villages and towns of this region. Anton Schmidt – a former pupil of Franz Pumberger, a builder of fortifications in Aradul Nou – had more unacknowledged projects before becoming a significant member of the guild in Timişoara. At the time of his first marriage, with Anna Frantz in 1809, the documents mention him as a simply “Murar”. He participated, for the first time in 1818, in a contest promoted for the construction of an inn named “At the Queen of England,” in the suburb of the Fabric district. Scheduled with halls for dancing and playing billiards, the building had to offer several rooms for travelers too. e edifice, designed from a symmetrical viewpoint, with a central risalit on its façade, and its fronton sustained by four columns with Ionic capitals, which tower a terrace at the first floor level, the exterior of the ground floor decorated “in rustica,” had not been approved by the management board of the town. In 1834 Anton Schmidt signed onto the project of a Communal eatre, a building which was supposed to be raised within the inner side of the walls. Its façade re-engaged the clearer and more balanced elements of the unachieved inn. He proposed a new edifice, with some modern stage equipment, an easy access (separate entrance for the artists and public), a comfortable ground floor and dress circles on the floor for the onlookers, and ball rooms for the high life public too. Yet, because of low financial resourses, this project had not been finalized either. In the meantime, the tireless architect also designed other important and utilitarian buildings: a factory and a wine storehouse (Pesac village), a treatment resort (Băile Buziaş), and manor houses (in Herneacova, Sângeorgiu, Beodra/Serbia). He constructed an impressive number of barracks for the army in the fortress of Timişoara or in the region, he designed and built the Town-Hall (currently the Town Museum) and the Hospital in Pančevo (Serbia), a new one storried barracks in Timişoara (1836), he added some more floors at the Catholic Seminar and executed some repairs at the St. George Church. He traveled to Austria and Hungary and returned with the cathedral project from Eger (Hungary, made by József Hild). In 1841 he proposed the construction of a church for the believers from Călacea, several plans for Catholic (with 300 or 500 people) and Orthodox churches, in 1835 he signed a plan for the Evangelic Lutheran Church in Timişoara. e documents in 1836 mention him as an outstanding member of the society in Timişoara: “Muratorium Magister et Selecta Civica.~ Com~unitatis Membrum”. Getting married, for the second time in 1823, to Anna, the sister of senator Franciscus Mayer, he succeeded in founding a happy family. He was the first builder who had influenced the architecture in Timişoara through his activity. His buildings, most of them scheduled on three levels (wine cellars, ground floors and one upper floor), were characterized by balance, reason and few classical ornaments (columns with Ionic or composite capitals, pilasters, gates marking the axle of the building developed symmetrically on the horizontal level). e more important edifices benefited by one more floor and an attic mounted on classically symbolic sculptures. Only a few of creations have been preserved. e greatest part of the buildings meant to the army (e Genista Barrack, e New Engineers’ Barrack etc.) was demolished when the town was brought up to date. e one-storried castle from Elemir was sold as construction material. We have no information related to the manor house in Banatsko Aranđelovo (Serbia) nor to the Barracks of the Cavalry Squadron in Sânnicolaul Mic (today part of Arad). In Timişoara, in the old historical centre, there is only the imposing building of a business man, Franciscus Xaverius Strohmayer, watching the town out of its numerous windows. He retired in 1851 with a considerable fortune visiting Italy twice. He remained a consultant regarding the important buildings of the town: he elaborated the development plans of the Old Prefecture Palace, he modified his own house in the Iozefin Suburb, sold to the Gendarme Station (1857), he designed for his relatives, he drew and dreamt of ideal familial residencies. Some of these, incomplete drawings and projects, were deposited to the museum in 1908, certifying the fact that... the beseech of the young builder had been finally accomplished.