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Jack Handscombe

@the.capriccio

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beautiful and curious things
@jackhandscombe for my work in architectural carving and sculpture
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Nice clear illustration of the purpose of a cornice taken in Tempio di Antonino e Faustina by @the.capriccio
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3 months ago
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Ed: "What is this place?" Linda: "Macon Heights. " Ed: "Macon Heights is not supposed to be here." Linda: "Did that apple cake taste imaginary? Do those kids look imaginary? It exists, Ed, you just don't want to believe it can exist. Cos it makes you happy, and you're not used to being happy. Maybe this is the world as it should be. Cigarette? Maybe this is the world that you need." Poundbury used as the filming location for the 2017 TV adaptation of Phillip K Dick's 'The Commuter'. Timothy Spall plays Ed, a train station employee, alarmed to discover that a number of commuters are taking the train to a town that shouldnt exist. Intruiged, Ed takes the train to "Macon Heights" (an anagram of 'Ghost Machine') where he follows a number of passengers who jump off the moving train and walk to an idyllic town where the pains and struggles of their real lives are erased Macon heights and Poundbury become entanged as an uncanny 'Utopia' in a literal sense of the word in a really intruiging translation of the text to the location. taken in Poundbury by @the.capriccio
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3 months ago
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The Tempio Canoviano and BMW Z3 Coupé, 2025 Parthenon and Delage Grand-Sport - Le Corbusier’s Vers une Architecture, 1923 taken in Tempio Di Antonio Canova - Possagno (Tv) by @the.capriccio
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3 months ago
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Composite Doric Console Capitals Composite capitals are usually of the more exhuberant hybrid of Ionic and Corinthian, but maybe there's a case for a different blend Fragments from the Throne of Apollo at Amyklea, possibly sketched by C R Cockerell and later excavated from the 1890s through to the 1920 by German Archeologists. @johnsimpsonarchitects used this intruiging capital in their Eton college redevelopment for a bridging link, as well as in a brilliant and characteristically John Simpson stair which wraps around the column shaft at the Royal College of Music. Its not impossible that W D Caroë had heard news of the excavations when designing 1 Millbank, the Church Commissioners in Westminster, but equally there's so much going on in the building that its quite possible a console bracket and a capital could have collided quite organically in the design process A third example is that of a shop frontage on the Chiswick High Road which is a clever somewhat mannerist play of forms. Sketched with equal column diameters for comparison by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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The knapped flint base of Herbert Baker's Church House(1937-1940), is probably the element more than anything else that distinguishes the otherwise rather unassuming block as above this level the paired back office building eschews rich palimpsest of ecclesiastical architecture. The flint base, peppered with heraldry, and the odd pointed arch, is evocative of the churches that dot the countryside and serves as a physical as well as metaphorical foundation on which a modern building is built. On one corner the building is built on medieval structure, Baker elabourates on this to provide a basis for the whole scheme. What I find interesting in an otherwise fairly unremarkable building is down the Tufton street facade were fragments of worked stone lie on their edge, showing the abstracted cross section of mouldings only even intended for the mason to see, I wondered if these fragments were fanciful bits of design or indeed 'spoliate' pieces of gothic tracery. Bakers book on Church House provides the answer (7) noting that these fragments were found in the 'mud of the abbey ditch' and used as 'through stones' to give structural strenght to expanses of the flint faced wall. This explains the nessecity for this sort of chequered look found in the work of other contemporary architects. I love a bit of spolia, so I think it's a wonderful way of displaying and recycling the old masonry that would otherwise be mouldering away somewhere Here on Tufton street we have Baker and Lutyens side by side once again. Bakers 'Church House' sits next to Lutyen's 'Faith House', a fraction of the size but perfectly formed. Church house seems to exhibit some disappearing pilasters too... taken in Church House Westminster by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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Semi-attached villas of Chiswick taken in Chiswick by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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Glass block Gothic, St. Catherine’s Argyle Church, Edinburgh Glass pan tiles, East Lothian (windows 1898) by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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Palladio's manipulation of the entabulature to create balcony brackets. I first noticed this manipulation of the entabulature in Palladio's Palazzo Barbarano, (1-3). It's a subtle move that works rather elegantly. For a good while I was unsure of this features origins - is it an enlarged modillion? or a derivation of the Triglyph as end of a beam? after some searching I came across the curious entabulature on the upper story of the colosseum I hadn't paid much attention to before (4) . here, there is a large block projecting from the frieze, cut with a moulding. this feature has typically been called a 'Block Modillion'. in this case these blocks echo the corbels below which would have supported the wooden masts that held the vast awning. perhaps then, here as in palladio, the blocks serve to strengthen the cornice for its other functional purpose, in the colosseum as a socket for the masts and in palladio as a balcony. The feature can be found again in Palladio's Palazzo Valmarana, (5,6) where the idea is taken to an extreme, as it is no longer a series of brackets, but the entire the frieze projects for almost the full length of one side. (7) the inner court of Scamozzi's palazzo Trissino provides an interesting alternative where the brackets projects out of the cornice. personally I feel this is less successful. What is strong about using the frieze goes back to my initial confusion. Despite not being employed in a Doric order here, the blocks relate to the structural logic of the triglyph as a beam that rests on the architrave supporting the structure above. the idea of a triglyph as a corbel can be seen in other examples, local vernacular which often employs brackets carved to echo a triglph entirely independant of an order (8), and the balcony of Palladio's Capitaniato is another example (9) finally, the guttae of a similarly articulated portal (10) bear witness to the triglyph idea. one of things I've been thinking about off of the back of a wonderful week in Vicenza with @intbauitalia @intbau. Palladios inventiveness is easy to miss as so much of his work is so elegantly integrated and comprehensively adopted #classicalarchitecture #palladio taken in Vicenza, Italy by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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Jumpers round their waist columns Portal to the Church of Santi Nazaro e Celso, Verona, Antonio Saletti, 1688 @spectacular.vernacular Wooly Jumpers on columns Palazzo Te, Mantova, Guilio Romano, 1525 - 1535 interestingly these rusticated columns are pretty much the only natural stone on used architecturally in Palazzo Te - with the rest being stucco. similar rusticated columns feature on the ground floor entrance of Palazzo Thiene, begun by Gulio Romano, executed and modified by Palladio by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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Sv Benedikt, Stranjah One of Plečnik's later works and the first I had the pleasure to visit and draw last week with @studio.zurich severely damaged in the war, when German forces converted the church into a bunker, pouring a concrete slab dividing the church in two horizontally. Plečnik's 1947-8 work consists of repairs to the war damage, replacing the destroyed internal fixtures, the addition of a slender portico, and of most interest to me, this beguiling colonade to the south of the church. the conjoined forms that support the colonnade are particularly wonderful neither Column nor Baluster, alien yet entirely at home in their context. such things I find exciting as they illustrate that there is so much untapped life in (broadly) classical forms and mouldings but more than being formally alluring they also have an interesting origin. Later, opening a book (Universum Plečnik) in the @plecnikova_hisa I noticed a technical illustration of this colonnade (10) the caption of which mentioned the handwritten notes detail the reuse of balustrades. I asked the incredibly knowledgable staff if they could shed some light on what precisely was written in Slovenian and I was told that the text explains that this inventive feature is in actuality comprised of two different sets of Balustrades, recycled from other projects, and stacked together This origin of happenstance and economy, only serves to heighten my admiration for these wonderful things! #plečnik #jozeplecnik #plecnik #jozeplecnik by @the.capriccio
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a year ago
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Leon Krier, 1946-2025 Krier was my gateway to so much of what I am today. The 'Ideograms' (2-7) which I, like many others first encountered are brilliant little didactic tools. Simple cartoons that convey, with wit and charm, fundamental and complex ideas with a dazzling clarity. Through the ideograms and lectures, the relationships between social, economic, urban, and aesthetic, unfolded in a new ways before me. These pictorial parables illustrate a sensitivity to the urban environment, one that tries to find balance between the classical and the vernacular, public and private, and scales of all kinds. Sometimes close to the wire, they are always memorable. Krier, however, was no paper architect. He leaves a distinct mark on the world, one which is instantly recognisable as if his cartoons come to life. A great illustration of his character is Citta Nuova (8-9) In Alessandria, where one can see his idiosyncratic urban arrangements challenging the grid it sits within. It is the striking originality of his architecture that I think is also so important to celebrate. The Perez Architecture Centre (10) a wild baroque arch topped with three obelisks in Guatemala (11) the Krier House at Seaside (12) and the Windsor Village Hall, Florida (1, 13, 14). All of these buildings are wonderful and beautiful things, yet entirely novel. relatively simple forms and materials combine in fantastic and joyful ways that breathe life into what can feel like a stationary or regressive world. His pedestal (15) in poundbury is a great thing, with a bench running around the edge and lights hidden in the balls! Being marooned in a roundabout, it isn't the social centre of piazza he would have hoped, but I feel his social implication of design apparent here. I'm unsure of his direct hand elsewhere, as his more idiosyncratic centrepieces seem to have been cut (16) but the proliferation of loggias and roof terraces atop many of the buildings, bear his distinct touch, which to my minds elevates it from being a solely historicist project Leon Krier was a true humanist, artist, and visionary, he showed me there's still blood pumping in classicism, and for that, he shall live on by @the.capriccio
2
a year ago
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Westminster Cathedral, John Francis Bentley, 1895–1903 A masterpiece in striped brick and stone with a lavishly rich interior clad in polychrome marbles. The unfinished ceiling of structural brick blackened by soot looms above, further emphasising the opulence of the marble below. Stations of the Cross, carved by Eric Gill, perfectly suit the early Christian associations of the byzantine inspired church. I particularly liked the winged triglpyhs (pentaglyphs?) And the complementary urban context taken in Westminster Cathedral by @the.capriccio
7
a year ago
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