DECORATION XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET 321

and describing the arcs marked by the dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting a small triangular cavity between them, we shall leave its ridges somewhat rudely representative of four leaves, as at 8, which is the section and front view of one of the Venetian stone cornices described above, Chap. XIV., § 4, the figure 8 being here put in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put on the outer lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5; but being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and always rich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently expanded to the width of fig. 9.

§ 7. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described, so in this,-we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we shall get the Northern type. If we make the original pyramid, somewhat steeper, and instead of lightly incising, cut it through, so as to have the leaves held only by their points to the base, we shall have the English dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its piquancy, when compared with French mouldings of a similar kind.* It occurs, I think, on one house in Venice, in the Campo St. Polo;¹ but the ordinary moulding, with light incisions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the roof cornices.

§ 8. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid, fig. 10, from the refectory of Wenlock Abbey,² is an example of the simplest decoration of the recesses or inward angles between the pyramids; that is to say, of a simple hacked edge like one of those in fig. 2, the cuts being taken up and decorated instead of the points. Each is worked into a small trefoiled arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and another slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first cutting. I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a zigzag: in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed, but with the easiest and roughest work;

* Vide the Seven Lamps, Chap. IV., § 31. [Vol. VIII. p. 172.]

¹ [See, for this house, Stones of Venice, vol. iii., Venetian Index, s. “Polo, Square of St.”]

² [Cf. above, ch. vi. § 9, p. 98.]

IX. X

[Version 0.04: March 2008]