Cardboard thoughts in The Art of Architectural Modelling in Paper by T. A. Richardson

Given that this book was published in London by John Weale in 1859 one might say my review is a bit late, but I say better late than never :-)

The title tells all: it’s a manual on how to make models of buildings out of paper. The target audience is architects and their assistants, so it’s for professionals whose goal is to use the models to help clients better understand the various aspects of the designs they’re buying. As well, the models are meant to be competitive marketing tools, as the author notes in the Introduction:

With many clients, even “perspectives” are poorly understood, which seldom fails to cause slight dissatisfaction on their part when they see too late certain things that the eye would have detected in the model and corrected in the outset. Models are becoming very general, where buildings are subjects of competition; and as this course of procedure and honourable encounter bids fair (when weeded of some of its present objections) to open up a good and honourable system, whereby the “race may be to the swift”, the importance of the following brief and simple Treatise on the subject, becomes double clear.

I usually stay away from this genre of model making books because hobbyists and folk artists have different goals, which in turn drive different modelling techniques. But, in this case I make an exception because of the book’s publication date, which I think makes it one of the earliest books on creating model buildings from paper and cardboard, if not the earliest. Later in the Introduction Richardson comes around to suggesting that the book might be of interest to those outside the profession as well as architect's assistants:

To a large and increasing body, the architectural assistants, it is hoped that this little hand-book will prove to be acceptable; and though written principally for the professional man, it is hoped it may not prove utterly useless or uninteresting to others, who though not members of the architectural profession may yet possess sufficient taste and skill to wish to perpetuate

A DESIGN IN PAPER.

One thing I found rather curious about this book is that although the title says it’s about modelling in paper, the author uses a specific type of paper to make his own cardboard from which the main parts of the models are built. The cardboard is made by pasting together layers of paper, and Richardson describes at length how to make a press for laying up the cardboard as well as mixing the paste. 

The paper I use, and have always found the best for all purposes, has a surface similar to that of Whatman’s double-elephant drawing paper, and is, I believe, sold under the name of Crayon paper: a specimen is bound with this book, forming the next page*; it is of a pale cream-colour, bearing a strong semblance in tint to Bath-stone, but I have procured it from this to the shades necessary for the roofs of models. It is firm, though not hard, in texture, and not being too spongy, does not absorb to too great a degree the paste used in fastening together the sheets for the various thicknesses required, thus ensuring their firmness, a matter of the highest importance, otherwise in thin strips consisting of four, five, or more thicknesses of paper, upon their being cut each would part and defeat the desired end. 

It’s not like Bristol board didn’t exist at the time (it was invented in the early 1800s, so it had been around for awhile when this book was published in 1859), but Richardson notes:

I have constructed several models in pure white Bristol board, but it is a tedious hard material to work in, though the result is very fine.

I wonder if the composition of today’s Bristol board is different from that of the past, or maybe it’s a question of suitable cutting and shaping tools that were available. It’s interesting that commercially available Bristol board is pooh-poohed in favour of homebrew cardboard. I’m curious to see if I can find anything about miniature building construction in Bristol board dating from say the early 1800's to the 1850's.

*I’ve only seen a scan of the book, never a physical copy. Scans always leave me feeling like I’m missing something. I know the scan provides replicas of the document's words and pictures, but the physical book gives me more. Maybe it’s just higher resolution, or the feel of the paper quality, or marks from who owned it or where it had been. In this case it sounds like a physical copy of this book might provide me a sample of Crayon paper if the sample hadn’t been pulled out all those years ago.