Development of Architectural Drawing and its Media
from Antiquity to the turn of the 18th century
A short essay in The History of Architecture
KTH Arkitektur åk 1, studio 3
Lauri Vaher, 2018-01-05
Introduction
The immediate catalyst for this essay was a bargain I made about two years ago in Antiekcentrum in
central Amsterdam - a ruling pen with ebony handle and hand-cut wing screw for adjusting the blades
and a brass variable proportional compass, both highly likely from late 18th century. At the time I did
neither know what they were called or how exactly used, nor that in a few years I would be pursuing a
degree in architecture. The second reason that made me choose the topic is my admiration for old
architectural drawings, beautifully rendered with watercolours and perfected with shadow casting using
ink washes. After reading Per Kallstenius and Lennart Ploom1 and a memorable visit to the Royal
Palace Archives2, where I saw the original drawings of Nicodemus Tessin the Younger from 1690´s, I
was inspired to take a closer look at the historical perspective of architectural drawing for this essay.
The first part of the essay looks briefly at the drafting tools and media used from Antiquity to
the turn of the 18th century. In the second part architectural drawings and their development in the
background to the technological advancements as well as the adjacent professions like engineering,
cartography, astronomy and maybe more widely liberal arts is in the focus. The question what I hope
to explore is how has the development of architects tools developed architectural drawing and vice
versa the architects intentions developed the specialised visualisation tools for drawing? It is important
for me to establish an overarching timeline of the developments from Antiquity to Baroque period for
myself for further study. Hopefully I will be able to continue in a similar line during the spring term to
study the same topic from year 1700 to 2000, after which Computer Aided Design spinned off to such
heights that it is hard to get a full grasp even for a insider (fully trained architect, designer or engineer).
Carpo, Scolari, Hambly, Piedmont-Palladino, Bergström and Young
Both Mario Carpo (2001) and Massimo Scolari (2012) text is accompanied by an extraordinary body of
reference, comprising more than third of the books, in which they amplify and often clarify the text, thus
offering an extensive, learned commentary on the text. Scolaris rich and well chosen illustrations make it
easier for a novice to get a grasp of the at times rather dense philosophical text, packed with erudite greek
and latin words.
Two exhibitions, exploring the architectural design process and the varied implements employed
in that practice, have resulted in publications that are valuable source of information for this essay:
1 Kallstenius, Per & Ploom, Lennart (2013). Stockholm - ett världsminne: stadens byggnader i ritningar 1713-1913.
Stockholm: Max Ström
2 A study visit to the Royal Palace Archives (Slottsarkivet) with The Royal Institute of Arts MejanArc course
Resatureringskonst led by prof. Kerstin Barup and Cecilia Sagren in January 2016. Website: https://riksarkivet.se/
royal-palace-archives
1) The 1982 exhibition mounted at the Heinz Gallery of the Royal Institute of British Architects´
(RIBA) Drawing Collection, titled Drawing Instruments: their History, Purpose and Use for Architectural
Drawings3.
2) The exhibition Tools of the Imagination4, held at the National Building Museum, Washington in 2005.
Prof. Anders Bergströms outstandingly well structured lectures in Architectural History at
KTH and the lectures in Descriptive Geometry by NY architect and educator Michael Young have also
served as inspirations and reference material.
Drafting Tools and Media
Liquid media such as ink, ink washes and watercolours as well as graphite pencils are the most
common materials used for architectural drawing for centuries. Carbon ink preceded the use of iron
gall ink as the primary writing ink. Various sources refer to the first use of carbon ink in circa 2500
B.C. A very early recipe for iron gall ink can be found in the Encyclopedia of Seven Free Arts by
Martianus Capella, who lived in Carthage in the fifth century. In it, Capella describes "Gallarum
gummeosque commixtio" as a writing ink. Although the exact date of the transition from carbon ink to iron
gall ink is not known, it can safely be stated that by the end of the late Middle Ages iron gall ink was
the primary ink. Iron gall ink was used well into the twentieth century, when synthetic dyes were
developed.5 Watercolor came to western artists in the late 1400´s and were used by German artists like
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and Hans Bol (1534–1593).
What was thoght to be black-lead, later proved to be graphite, was discovered in 1560 in
Barrowdale (Cumberland) England. Continuing throughout the eighteenth century, a porte-crayon (lead
holder) of brass or white metal was in general use. While lead holders were more common,
experiments with gluing black lead into wood cases began by the end of the seventeenth century.
Friedrich Staedtler, a German carpenter who founded a pencil-making empire, cut black lead into a
square and glued it inside two halves of wood in 1662. For example, Henry Peacham’s Art of Drawing
(1607) described as essential “black lead sharpened finelie [sic] and put fast into quils.” As PiedmontPalladino notes, Peacham (1606) recommended the use of black lead quills “for rude and first draught”
and Robertson in the next century wrote that “black-lead pencil is useful to describe the first drought
of drawing, before it is marked with ink; because any false strokes, or superfluous lines, may be rubb´d
out with a handkerchief or a piece of bread”6. Using bread was common “dry cleaning” method for art
conservators still used in Eastern Europe during the 1980´s.
3 This resulted in a book Drawing Instruments 1580-1980 by architect Maya Hambly, who was the key figure behind the
exhibition.
4 Tools of the Imagination: Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
[Elektronisk resurs]. (2006). Princeton Architectural Press, NY. (edited by Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino)
5 Elmer Eusman (1998), https://irongallink.org/igi_index8a92.html, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands,
accessed 2017-11-26
Sumerians draw on clay but also on vellum, that had been used already in the Ancient Egypt as a
complement to papyrus. From the Hellenistic to late Mediaval period the common media for the
ground or base on which to write and/or draw were specially prepared skins - parchment or more
strictly vellum (Latin vitulus/vitellus) meaning calf skins. Romans used also wax tablets, as cheaper
material compared to vellum, that is easy to write on with a stylus, erase and rewrite, but it was not
resistant for neither heat nor time. Although the first European paper mills appeared in the Iberian
Peninsula as early as 1085, in France by 1190 and in Italy by 12767, the paper truly becomes common
during the Quattrocento. This was not the wood pulp paper that was introduced much later (1840´s), but
cotton based rag paper. Usage of vellum continued parallely with rag paper for some time. Many of the
Renaissance manuscript and notebooks are written on vellum.
Many of the tools used by architects around year 1700 have their origins in the Antiquity.
Artists, architects, engineers, mathematicians and other scientists have used similar tools and similar
media to record their ideas and work with for example geometrical proof. Some of the tools used in the
hellenistic world, still remain on the architects work desk - straight line, set squares and compasses for
example. Iron gall, the ink of kings, monks and poets, known already during the Classical period, was
surprisingly still in use in official documents of the German government until 19748. This is evidenced
in artefacts as well as in the literary evidence. Before the invention of protractor for measuring angles
around 1801 compass was one of the most used tool by the hellenistic, roman, medieval and
renaissance architects. The Romans are known to have used a form of drawing pen, stylus, from first
century AD onwards and they had similarly to the Renaissance models a heavy sliding ring to adjust the
thickness of the line drawn (effective, but not as reliable and effective as a screw). Sepia and ferro-gallic
inks were used with these9. Drawing pen, the the usual name it went by in the 18th century, was later
also called ruling pen. A simpler version of a drawing pen, “Penna per tirare Linee” without an adjusting
screw for the blades, appears on an engraved plate dated 1599 from Giovanni Pomodoro´s Geometria
prattica (1722 edn)10. The drawing pen was according to Piedmont-Palladino perfected with an adjusting
screw around year 1700. Elliptical trammel, simplest of the ellipse tools is invented around 1600 (the
basis for lates ellipsograph). Pantograph for enlarging and reducing is invented in 1603. In1669 Sir
Christopher Wren invents a perspectograph. Ionic volutes ever constructed with a regular compass
according to Palladios description until the invention of volute compass in 1760 and the volutor in
1857.
6 Tools of the Imagination: Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
[Elektronisk resurs]. (2006). Princeton Architectural Press, NY. (edited by Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino), pp. 43-44.
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_Europe, accessed 2017-12-29.
8 Elmer Eusman (1998), https://irongallink.org/igi_index8a92.html, accessed 2017-11-26
9 Hambly, Maya (1988). Drawing instruments: 1580-1980. London: Sotheby's Publications, pp.57
10 Ibid., p.34-35
Architectural Drawing
The physical experience of marking ink/pencil on vellum/paper becomes the basis for imagining
possibilities for building through drawing. The “grammar” of the drawings is pretty much the same as
Vitruvius was describeing in his De architettura.
In a lecture on Descriptive Geometry by Michael Young I caught a quote from Vitruvius: “…design is
the apt placement of things, and the elegant effect obtained by their arrangement according to the
nature of the work. The species of design, which are called ideai in Greek, are these: ichnography,
orthography, and scenography.” 11 While ichonographia referred to plan and orthographia to elevation,
scenographia was a bit unclear, meaning possibly perspextive (front plus side view?). Daniele Barbaros
translation of Vitruvius translates the term to scionraphia - shadow drawing, shaded contour, profile,
section. Did the ancients draw in that way is unclear to me, but it seems that the establishing of
elevation and section beside plan during the Renaissance had at least its theoretical beginnings in the
Antique period. According to Young the plan was used as early as c. 2200 BC (e.g. plan of Ur), elevation
from around 1300´s and section from c. 1500´s onwards. As an interesting sidenote, Young illustrated
the development of using section in architectural drawing with interesting examples: Guliano Sangallos
“hammeded out” or “broken” proto-section c. 1500 and Antonio Sangallos section from c. 1538 that
has already the same grammar as our modern section does — quick development in just a few decennia.
Michelangelo started to draw clearly connected elevation on top of a plan around 1525, a new tradition
that is also seen on Antonio Sangallos drawing of Santa Maria de Montemoro c.1530´s. The full “set
convention” (plan, elevation, section) emerged in Palladio´s sketchbooks c.1550´s and the Publication of
Palladio’s Quattro Libri 1570.
Academic Institution is marked by the establishment of French Academy (Blondel) in 1671.
The Middle Ages was the age of manuscripts, often written on vellum. Contrastingly, Carpo calls
the Renaissance the age of printing, marked by the invention of printing press in Germany in
Stonemasons had their guild secrecy and as far as we know passed down knowledge in oral tradition
rather than writing manuscripts or treaties on architecture, engineering and building craft. As Hambly
(1988) points out, the so called “dead drawing” had its beginnings in the Roman period. Master builder
Villard de Honnecourts´ sketchbook from c.1235 as well as some of the surviving designs in the logdge
books of later medieval architects were prepared using this method: filling the incised/scored lines with
ink12. This practice continued also with early hand-made paper. Andrea Palladio used both incised lines
and lines drawn with ruling pen and ink. As pointed out by Young ink on vellum has been used for
example on the Benedictine monastery St. Gall floor plan (c. 825-830) and on Bramantes plan of St.
Peters (1505).
Xylography or woodcut printing — first on fabric then on paper — began to spread in Europe
toward the end of the 14th century. Followed by Guthenberg´s invention of the press around 1440,
many of the illustrations in books and treaties from that time are woodcuts, even though the so called
old master prints — engravings on copper printing plates — was already common in Germany from
1430´s onwards.
11 Lectures on Decriptive Geometry by Michael Young. He referred to Vitruvius Ten Books on Architecture c. 20-30 BC.
12 Hambly, Maya (1988). Drawing instruments: 1580-1980. London: Sotheby's Publications, p. 11
According to Anders Bergström Renaissance was born in Florence, the time marker being the
construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. From
1400´s onwards architect was distinguished from the craftsmen and masons in Italy. By 1500´s
architecture reached a new theoretical level, largely inaugurated by Leon Battista Alberti (De re
Aedificatoria, 1452) and the publication of Vitruvius translations (e.g. Daniele Barbaro, 1569) as well as
the treaties by Andrea Palladio, Sebastiao Serlio and their contemporaries. The professionalisation of
architects continued during the 17th century and imbued all of Europe.
While Carpo covers a lot from the architectural drawing in the age of its mechanical reproduction
to the decline and fall of typographic architecture (all´antica), Scolari develops his arguments on
another alley. Namely looking at the history of anti-perspective, the oblique drawings, he states that
perspective, with its beginnings in Pompeiian paintings and fully constructed during the Renaissance, is
not the only correct way for representation and even is so bold to say that central perspective is
probably not the best. This is all set into historical context and illustrated with in Scolaris great opus,
the collection and elaboration of his earlier essays on axonometry and oblique.
An important point that Young makes in his lectures is that ship building drafting offices were a hot
spot of developing the theory and practical tools for advanced curves especially splines (for further
study look at Mathew Bakers Shipwright’s Drawing Office Manuscript 1586).
Even though the post post-modern digital era architecture is computer based, many of the
specialised tools were still in use not that long - like for example pantograph, a copying device,
originally invented in 1603 and produced up to mid 1900´s — it could still be ordered from W.F.
Stanley´s catalogue as late as in 196013.
As Gordon Higgot points out in his review, Hambly overlooks Scamozzi´s important description of
designing techniques including the use of an ivory or ebony stylus for scoring (L´idea della architecture
universale, Venice, 1615)14.
Bartolomé Estebán Murillos The Origin of Painting, c. 1660-1665 (National da Arta, Bucharest) oil
on canvas, is great example of how shadow casting was adopted from painting and applied on technical
drawing. Later during Gaspard Monge (…) and his contemporaries exact methods for measuring
shadow-cast were developed.
Nicodemus Tessin the Younger drawing of Stockholms Royal Palace from 1690´s are a great local
example of how architectural drawing looked like in the end of 17th century. He uses hatching with
very very fine lines and what I believe are ink washes, occasionally even white pigment (gouasche?), but
not watercolours.
Even though according to Piedmont-Palladino modified drawing pen (later called ruling pen)
emerged at the turn of 18th century, looking at the evenness and the weights of the lines on Tessins
drawings one wanders if they are not already made with a drawing pen modified with adjusting screw,
allowing any variety of desired line weights.
13 Tools of the Imagination: Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present [Elektronisk
resurs]. (2006), p.81.
14 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 1990), pp.111-112 [electronic resource].
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians. Stable URL: http://
www.jstor.org/stable/990507 Accessed: 28-12-2017
The evolution of drawing technique and theoretical texts of 16th and 17th century set the ground for
later developments of descriptive geometry in the works of Girard Desargues (1591-1661) and
Gaspard Monge (1746 - 1818).
Some time markers and innovations of the 1700´s and 1800´s
Some important time markers and technical innovations emerged during the 1700´s are: screwadjustable ruling pens (ca.1700), scissor-jointed parallel rule (ca. 1700), T-square (1720´s), London
becomes center of mathematical- and drawinginstrument making
(mid-1700´s), volute compass also called heliograph (1760), founding of the pencil makers Faber-Castell
(1761), portable perspectograph (1765), first use of gum rubber (1767), rolling parallel rule
(1771), ellipsograph (1790-1810), process for hardening graphite by adding clay (1795)15.
The 1800´s give birth to a row new inventions16 that further change the practice of architectural
drawing. Such tools are for example The emergence of blueprint in the second half of the 19th century
(ref). Eidograph for making 1:1 copies for engraving, was a type of pantograph and which was more
accurate than other pantographs, is not mentioned by Piedmont-Palladino. Hambly on the the other
hand documents the history of this eidograph from its invention in 1821 by the Scottish mathematician
William Wallace to the last made models advertised in the Stanley 1960 catalogue17.
The birth of digital Computer Aided Design (ref) a hundred years later opened up for a whole new
trajectory of developments in the field of architectural drawing and design.
CONCLUSION
The evolution of architectural drawing has been a two millennia long process, where the Renaissance
theorists and humanists play an important role. Every generation of building experts has passed on their
knowledge, during the middle ages largely orally and in the guild system, later in sketchbooks, treaties
and in the form mechanical reproductions of drawings. As it seems to me, architectural drawing and
drafting tools have developed parallely with adjacent professions like engineers, astronomers,
cartographers and other scientists as well as creative artists through centuries. At times it has been the
technological developments that have offered new possibilities and spurred the quality of drawing - for
example the invention of elliptical trammel (1600) revolutionised Baroque architectural drawing or the
using of paper instead of vellum, that has slightly other capillary qualities, and helped the drawings to
dray quicker. Sometimes it has been the other way around, that the drafters need for improvement - e.g.
application of regulation screw for drawing pen. Until the invention of volute compass and volutor—
to simplify the drawing of rather complicated curves — ionic volutes were drawn with simpler tool like
regular comapss. The often misleading thought of oblique being a stepping-stone and the central
perspective as more advanced or a superior form of representation has been refuted by Scolari. This
shot essay has not only helped me to learn about the history and development of drafting, but also get a
clearer grasp on different representation methods. I am utterly amazed how much effort the architects
of the past must have put into training the muscle memory to master their tools for drafting.
15 Tools of the Imagination : Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
[Elektronisk resurs]. (2006). Princeton Architectural Press, NY. (edited by Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino), pp.4.
16 Ibid., pp.4-5.
17 Hambly, Maya (1988). Drawing instruments: 1580-1980. London: Sotheby's Publications, pp.132-133.
Notes [Harvard]
Books:
Carpo, Mario (2001). Architecture in the age of printing: orality, writing, typography, and printed images in
the history of architectural theory. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Heather, J. F. (1880). Drawing and measuring instruments. London: Crosby Lockwood
Hambly, Maya (1988). Drawing instruments: 1580-1980. London: Sotheby's Publications Scolari, Massimo
(2012). Oblique drawing: a history of anti-perspective.
Articles & Reviews:
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 1990), pp.111-112 [electronic
resource]. Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990507 Accessed: 28-12-2017
Electronical resources:
Tools of the Imagination : Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
[Elektronisk resurs]. (2006). Princeton Architectural Press, NY.
(edited by Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_drawing_tool
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_Europe, accessed 2017-12-29. https://
irongallink.org/igi_index8a92.html, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, accessed
2017-11-26
Elmer Eusman (1998), https://irongallink.org/igi_index8a92.html, The Cultural Heritage Agency of the
Netherlands, accessed 2017-11-26
Other sources:
Notes from Prof. Anders Bergströms lectures in Architectural History, KTH autumn 2017. Notes from
Michael Young’s lectures on Descriptive Geometry, KTH in autumn 2017.