page_title: Rustication (architecture)
section_title: Variations
hierarchical_section_title: Rustication (architecture) / Variations
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Vermiculures sur la Porte Saint-Martin, Paris.
context_page_description: Rustication is a range of masonry techniques used in classical architecture giving visible surfaces a finish texture that contrasts in with smooth, squared-block masonry called ashlar. The visible face of each individual block is cut back around the edges to make its size and placing very clear. In addition the central part of the face of each block may be given a deliberately rough or patterned surface.
  Rusticated masonry is usually "dressed", or squared off neatly, on all sides of the stones except the face that will be visible when the stone is put in place. This is given wide joints that emphasize the edges of each block, by angling the edges, or dropping them back a little. The main part of the exposed face may be worked flat and smooth or left with, or worked, to give a more or less rough or patterned surface. Rustication is often used to give visual weight to the ground floor in contrast to smooth ashlar above. Though intended to convey a "rustic" simplicity, the finish is highly artificial, and the faces of the stones often carefully worked to achieve an appearance of a coarse finish.
context_section_description: The most common variation of rustication is the smooth-faced, where the external face of the block is smooth, as in ashlar, and differs from that only by the cutting in at the joints; this became increasingly popular, and is now the most commonly seen type.  If deeply cut-back edges are worked only to the horizontal joints, with the appearance of the vertical joints being minimised, the resulting effect is known as banded rustication, mostly seen on the lowest levels of very large buildings like the Palace of Versailles or the main Foreign Office building in London.  As at Versailles, the bands may be "elbowed", dipping diagonally around arches to join up with and emphasize the voussoirs.  Banded rustication is mostly seen with smooth-faced stones, and has remained popular in Stripped Classicism and other contemporary versions of classical styles.  In this style, the bands are sometimes several feet apart, making it apparent that stone facings are being used.
  When the stone is left with a rough external surface, rough shapes may be drilled or chiselled in the somewhat smoothed face in a technique called "vermiculation" (vermiculate rustication or vermicular rustication), so called from the Latin vermiculus meaning "little worm", because the shapes resemble worms, worm-casts or worm tracks in mud or wet sand.  Carved vermiculation requires a good deal of careful mason's work, and is mostly used over limited areas to highlight them. Disparities between individual blocks are often seen, presumably as different carvers interpreted their patterns slightly differently, or had different levels of skill.  The small Turner Mausoleum at Kirkleatham by James Gibbs (1740) has an unusually large area vermiculated, over half of the main level.  When the shapes join up to form a network, the style is called "reticulated".
  Often, especially from the Baroque onwards, the roughly flattened central areas of stones are indented in regular, but not too regular, patterns called "pecked" or "picked-work", and various other ways of patterning them may be found.  In garden architecture, where water was to flow over or near the surface, a vertically oriented pattern evoking hanging pond-weed or algae, or icicles ("frost-work") is sometimes used.  Also associated with gardens is "cyclopian" rustication, where the blocks are very large and irregular, as though placed by giants, and "rock-work", where surfaces are built up of rough rocks not placed in regular courses at all.  This last goes beyond rustication, and is found in fountains and follies, and later rockeries for planting.
  In prismatic rustication the blocks are dressed at an angle near each edge, giving a prism-like shape.  Where the faces rise to a single point, this is often known by terms using "diamond", and is covered below. They may also, usually in blocks that are oblong rather than square, rise to a ridge in the centre.  Both types are illustrated, with several others, by Serlio.
caption: Two adjacent vermiculated blocks showing rather different interpretations of the pattern.
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