Master builder

“ The architect of to-day has an advantage over the master builder of long ago in that he is able to grasp all ideas that were introduced into the old house and can restore it without losing the spirit of the original in either the exterior or interior. ”

“ We have letters of encomium from architects as well as from builders and working men; and as it is for the latter that we are most anxious, feeling assured that when matters are right at the base of the social structure, the ornaments are firmly fixed and supported, so we feel the greater pride in perceiving the interest which the workman takes in our labours. It is the architect, however, and the experienced and liberal master builder, the clerk of works, and foreman, who can assist us to the enlightening of the body of the craft ”

“ Contracts for the erection of buildings are often made with the carpenter, as master-builder or architect. In such cases, it is his business to employ persons capable of executing every kind of work required on the proposed edifice, from the bricklayer and stone-mason to the painter and glazier. It not unfrequently happens, however, that the person himself, who proposes to erect a building, chooses to employ the workmen in the different branches. ”

“ There is not a Builder, nor anyone intending to build or otherwise interested, that can afford to be without it. It is a practical work, and the best, cheapest and most popular book ever issued on Building. ”

“ Much has been written of buildings, their origin, age, and architecture, but of the builders hardly a word—so quickly is the worker forgotten, save as he lives in his work. Though we have no records other than these emblems, it is an obvious inference that there were orders of builders even in those early ages, to whom these symbols were sacred; and this inference is the more plausible when we remember the importance of the builder both to religion and the state. ”

“ From the time when men wove together branches of trees or piled up loose stones and mud for shelter to the present day, when they erect huge heaven-soaring structures of steel to house a multitude, the builder has played a most important part in the progress and development of human civilization. ”

“ And God's hand built it—not in masses of slow-mounting masonry, gaining adventurously and toilsomely, foot by foot, and pushing its scaffolding ever higher to keep command of the work, and straining its enginery to swing aloft the chiselled and ponderous blocks to their place—but with one lift, without break of course, or any gradation of rising completeness, the Supreme Builder set the domed mountain in its place, foundation wall, and top-stone—one sublime integral whole, unprofaned by craftsmen's tools, untrod by foot of man. ”

“ Construction, my dear fellow, is an art requiring foresight. The good builder is he who leaves nothing to chance, who does not put off the solution of any problem, and who knows how to give each function its place and value with respect to the whole, and that at the right moment. ”

“ Hours and days turned into weeks and months as Builder taught his people what feeble knowledge he possessed in arithmetic, simple engineering--such as the dam--and most of all, instilling in them the will to want to learn and investigate and question anything they came in contact with--even the very thing he was asking them to do. ”

“ Sometimes a builder could choose his materials and kind of construction. At other times and places a builder had little or no choice of materials and was limited to using the simplest tools and construction methods. ”

“ Not only setting up houses or edifices, but, as we have said before, preparing the materials—aye, even to the very question of the planting and the culture of the oak and the pine, on which the future carpenter is to exercise his ingenuity. As to the brick-field, the quarry, the limekiln, the mine, the forest—consider what enters into the composition and completion of a building, what machines and implements are employed in working and preparing the materials, and its erection—what in the furnishing and fittings—what in the garden and other appurtenances. ”

“ They had been built by human hands, and the builders had heads as well as hands. But now that the bricks had fallen, in making up their minds as to what should be done, they proceed with a defined purpose. The architect precedes the builder; the head leads the hand. They build not at random. They first say what they will build, and how. They also resolve once more to beautify their surroundings with trees, and they make their choice. ”

“ Equally so was it with the art of building—a living allegory in which man imitated in miniature [155] the world-temple, and sought by every device to discover the secret of its stability. Already we have shown how, from earliest times, the simple symbols of the builder became a part of the very life of humanity, giving shape to its thought, its faith, its dream. ”

“ Many a man with less pretensions to the title would call himself a builder now-a-days, or "by'r lady," an architect, and put forth a flaming card, vaunting his accomplishments in the mason's craft, his skill in plans and elevations, and his unparalleled dispatch and cheapness in carrying his designs into execution. ”

“ The most inexperienced laborers can do all the work of the most elaborate béton construction, excepting only the surface-finishing, and this, with all the other work, can be superintended by one competent, experienced builder. ”

“ But if you have an uncontrollable ambition to possess a wellhead, why not get the local builder to construct one for you, with rubble facing of hits of stone of varying colour, only asking a mason to make a sandstone coping for the rim and carve the edge? ”

“ The builder is merely the bricklayer or the carpenter: the builder, in fact, is the machine,—the architect the power that puts the machine together, and sets it going!"—"O, very well, Mr. Architect, that will do! And now, after your very ingenious distinction without a difference, perhaps you can inform the court who was the architect for the Tower of Babel!"—"There was no architect, sir, and hence the confusion!" ”

“ One who builds; one whose occupation is to build, as a carpenter, a shipwright, or a mason.
In the practice of civil architecture, the builder comes between the architect who designs the work and the artisans who execute it. ”

“ The builder should also know the various acts, and in particular the acts specially relating to the erection of scaffoldings, hoardings, gantries, shoring and pulling down of old buildings. He should have a thorough knowledge of all materials, their qualifying marks or brands, and the special features of good and bad in each class, their uses and method of use. He should be able to control and manage both the men and materials; and briefly, in a builder, as opposed to an architect, the constructive knowledge should predominate. ”

“ Such nice men as the carpenters were, and such fun to superintend them: she began to think nature had intended her for a builder, or at least a designer of houses.
I groaned a little for fear my hitherto quiet, satisfied Cilly should develop a propensity for building, and ruin me entirely. ”

“ During the years in which he had been learning his trade he had been thrown with carpenters and builders of every class, and he soon had made up his mind that he would learn all he could, so that, should the opportunity ever come, he should know how to be a builder himself. ”

“ Carpentry and joinery, as well as all other trades connected with building, are subservient to the architect, when an individual of this particular profession [112] has been employed; but it most commonly happens, that the master-carpenter acts in this capacity. ”

“ That your undertaking may meet with a deserved and most abundant reward, is the sincere hope of yours, &c.,
“M. B.”
The suggestion contained in the last extract, as to the title, is one upon which we are glad to make a few remarks, because the same suggestion has been embodied in the observations of other friends, in different ways.
We have confined ourselves to the simple term “Builder,” as best descriptive of all classes and crafts concerned in the art of building itself, and the arts with which it is intimately allied. ”

“ In the past I have always had an expert stack-builder to do the building, but this year the boys and I are doing all the farm work, and I had to build myself. Of course, I have often helped at stack-building, keeping the hay in front of the builder or pitching off the loads, but I never before had the courage to act as chief architect. ”

“ By nature an Idealist, and living in a world of radiant mystery, it was inevitable that man should attach moral and spiritual meanings to the tools, laws, and materials [27] of building. Even so, in almost every land and in the remotest ages we find great and beautiful truth hovering about the builder and clinging to his tools. [14] Whether there were organized orders of builders in the early times no one can tell, though there may have been. No matter; man mixed thought and worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones and fitted them together he thought out a faith by which to live. ”

“ From such records as we have it is not possible to say whether the builders themselves used their tools as emblems, or whether it was the thinkers who first used them to teach moral truths. In any case, they were understood; and the point here is that, thus early, the tools of the builder were teachers of wise and good and beautiful truth. Indeed, we need not go outside the Bible to find both the materials and working tools of the Mason so employed: [23]
For every house is builded by some man ”

“ In work of every kind we learn to avoid faults only by analysing and searching into their causes and ascertaining their effects. To become a good builder, therefore, it is not enough to familiarize one’s self with rules of construction, which cannot provide for all contingencies ”

“ For the builder, before he builds the house, is not in reality a builder, but has the faculty for building a house—in the same way as the materials for the house before it is being built are merely in potentiâ—but when the house has been built, he is the builder in reality, and his product must likewise be in actual existence. ”

“ A good builder with a reputation to lose shrinks from placing that reputation at the mercy of a pisé-builder, who is not recognised as a tradesman, and in whom, in consequence of this, a builder is likely to have little or no confidence. ”

“ The builder will introduce new, more convenient, healthier and prettier substances, and the young architect will become increasingly the intelligent student of novelty. The steam engine, the coal yard, and the tail chimney, and indeed all chimneys, will vanish quietly from our urban landscape. ”

“ In designating our paper, we use the word “Builder” in its most extended sense—instancing a house, or other edifice, we regard it from the procurement and preparation of the materials, to the fixing upon its site, and to its full completion for the residence, use, and enjoyment of man, and which includes the making of the design or plan, “breaking” ground, as it is termed ”

“ Each remodeler will have his own problem in connection with this, and by ingenuity and careful study must work it out to his own satisfaction. Remember always that the integral simplicity of the building must not be disturbed, and that whether it be sleeping-porch, veranda, or entrance portico, it must seem always a part of the original building, as if it were the conception of the master craftsman who erected the first timbers. ”

“ We would relieve the Working Builder from a double charge for matter less available to him in practice, as well as from the still greater evil, in many instances, of a dry magazine at home, and a well moistened newspaper at a public-house. We have an eye to the superior household and domestic economy which prevails, and which we would have still more constant in the Builder’s Circle. ”

“ But one fine day he walked in upon the principal builder, and told him to come next morning, to his garden, with the necessary workmen--stonemasons, hodmen, and so forth--and build him a house. The builder, of course, asked to see the plan, and was not a little astonished when Krespel said there was no plan and no occasion for one; every thing would go on all right without one. ”

“ He formed a definite conception of what he wished and was capable of conveying his desires lucidly by means of drawings or rough sketches to the head workman charged with the actual task of construction. As the average client was better informed and thought more clearly upon matters architectural than the client of later times, so, on the other hand, the master-carpenter of the eighteenth century was infinitely more capable than the average artisan of like rank to-day. ”

“ Thus the builder, considered as cause of the house which he builds, has been generated, i.e., he has acquired the art of building and the proper accessories; and he will be destroyed, i.e., he will lose his art, and its conditions of being exercised. ”

“ In other words, the builder always has before him structural and artistic problems which, aside from his wit in planning the inner conveniences and serviceableness of the house, depend largely upon the material he chooses to work in. To what extent does this material meet the structural requirements of strength, permanence, durability, and to what extent the artistic requirements of attractiveness, charm, beauty, are the main issues. ”

“ In one case an amateur may elect to be his own builder; in another there may be need to give a builder directions, and, perhaps, to watch over the work. One important condition of success, whatever be the mode of procedure, is that the amateur should have a clear idea of the sort of house required to suit the plants he intends to shelter in it. ”