Jefferson and Architecture Books

"Would it not be best to make the internal columns of well-burnt brick, moulded in protions of circles adapted to the diminution of the columns? Burlington, in his notes on Palladio, tells us that he found most of the buildings ereced under Palladio's direction, and he described in his architecture, to have their colums made of birck in this way and covered with stucco. I know an instance of a range of six or eight columns in Virginia, twenty feet high, well proportioned and perperly diminished, executed by a comon bricklayer. The bases and capitals would of course be of hewn stone." Jefferson to Latrobe Feb. 28, 1804 (DLC--in chamber's book, p.48-49.

"You are right in what you have thought and done as to the metopes of our Doric pavilion [Pavilion 1, UVA]. Those of the baths of Diocletian are all human faces and so are to be those of our Doric pavilion. But in my middle room at Poplar Forest I mean to mix the faces and ox-sculls, a fancy which I can indulge in my own case, altho in a public work I feel bound to follow authority strictly. The mitred ox-sculls for my room are for its inner angles." TJ to William Coffee July 10, 1822, MHI (Chambers, p. 146)

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