Carnet de Villard de Honnecourt by Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, et al

Abstract

142 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Second, although practices such as permitting goods to be sold in heaped and shallow measures bespeak a malevolent class struggle in which lords cheated peasants and capitalist employers cheated the working class, Kula’s obsession with this traditional Marxist axiom tends to be overdone. One senses at times that societal fric­ tions and hatreds were the primary reason for metrological diversifi­ cation and proliferation. This simply was not the case for most of Europe’s metrological problems. True, Kula’s emphasis does eluci­ date a wide series of sociological phenomena, but metrological inequi­ ties were more of an economic impediment than a cultural impasse. Unfortunately, Kula does not explore this critical issue. Finally, more emphasis is needed on the scientific and technologi­ cal aspects of metrology and less on the sociological. Without explor­ ing this vital area of weights and measures development, the path to standardization reform, particularly evidenced in Kula’s treat­ ment of the French road to metric reform in part 3, cannot be under­ stood. This happens because Kula is interested in standardization not for the sake of scientific, technological, and economic progress but for the sake of social justice. These criticisms should not detract, however, from the fact that Kula presents us with a rich potpourri of metrological topics writ­ ten in an engrossing manner. The field of historical metrology is en­ riched by its publication, and English-language audiences are in­ debted to Richard Szreter of the Faculty of Education, the University of Birmingham, England, for providing us with a masterful, sensitive, and professional translation. Ronald Edward Zupko Dr. Zupko teaches in the Department of History at Marquette University. Carnet de Villard de Honnecourt. By Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, Régine Pernoud, Jean Gimpel, and Roland Bechmann. Paris: Edi­ tions Stock, 1986. Pp. 128; illustrations, bibliography. Frl30.00 (paper). It is good to have a paperback Villard. Here are the sixty-six plates of a Masonic lodge hook, the medieval French reprinted in an appendix with a good modern-French translation (although there are traps: tailler means to size a stone, implying the whole un­ derlying geometrical theory, rather than merely the mechanical act of cutting). The manuscript, from about 1235 and later, was first pub­ lished in France in 1858 and almost simultaneously republished in England in 1859 by Robert Willis, with his penetrating early commen­ tary. The critical edition is that of Hahnloser (Vienna, 1935, with a second edition—Graz, 1972). There are four short introductory articles in the present reprint: an introduction, and notes on the architecture and sculpture, on Vil­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 143 lard as an engineer, and on the technical drawings. Jean Gimpel, dis­ cussing the engineering implications, makes a plea for public recognition of Villard—why are no streets, or satellites, named after him? The answer is that Villard was merely a minor architect, like Vi­ truvius; they have in common that their precious manuscripts acci­ dentally survived. And even so there has been attrition; in the 15th century there were forty-one leaves of Villard, recto and verso— now there are thirty-three. What is clear (and this has been argued be­ yond all doubt by Paul Frankl in The Gothic) is the firm thread that ties Villard to Vitruvius—here, explicitly, are the toys (the eagle that turns its head to the deacon when he reads the Gospel) and, im­ plicitly, the rules of proportion. The fact that a building could be reduced to a set of numbers, in Vi­ truvius (and earlier) as in Gothic architecture, must be kept firmly in mind in looking at Villard’s plates. The ground plans are en­ tirely modern, and can be read instantly by a present-day architect— they even show, with the same modern convention, the traces of the ribs of the high vaults, essential information for the builder. From a ground plan the whole cathedral could be constructed; the di­ ameter of a pier was a certain proportion of the width of the nave, its height a specified multiple of its diameter, and so on for every other part. The great measure was physically established as a tim­ ber...