The practical builder or, Workman's general assistant : shewing the most approved and easy methods for drawing and working the whole or separate part of any building, as, the use of the tramel for groins, angle-brackets, niches, &c. : semi-circular arches on flewing jambs, the preparing and making their soffits : rules of carpentry : to find the length and backing of hips, strait or curved, trusses for roofs, domes, &c. : trussing of girders, sections of floors, &c. : the proportion of the five orders in their general and particular parts, gluing of columns, stair-cases with their ramp and twist rails, fixing the carriages, newels, &c. : frontispieces, chimney-pieces, ceilings, cornices, architraves, &c. in the newest taste : with plans and elevations of gentlemens and farm-houses, barns, &c.
A builder's pattern book by William Pain, issued in London in 1774 by publisher Isaac Taylor for carpenters, masons and workmen constructing houses and fittings. Its plates give measured working drawings of classical mouldings, capitals, and chimney-piece details in engraved line. A designer could take from them the clean geometry of profiles, scrolls and acanthus-style ornament suited to eighteenth-century interior trim.
