Articles --> Ziemia Kwidzyńska

Detail

The analysis of the architectural detail will embrace the window and door carpentry and the endings of rafters, Strips covering the corners of logs and all the forms of decorations found on tops of the houses.
The oldest preserved door carpentry is again connected with the homestead at Mątowskie Pastwiska (il. 57). This is a one-wing, bipartite door. Both parts have been build by way of connecting two thick planks from inside with a pair of pegs. On the inside, it has been provided four strips which imitate door panels. In the middle, there are strips arranged to the shape of a rhombus. All the strips have been fastened with horseshoe nails. This type of carpentry must have been relatively popular in the 18th century. A similar arrangement, but with a door featuring profiled dogs in the header, could be seen in the longer existing homestead of Franz of Zwanzigerweide (il.58). The bipartite door form described above come from 1827, but they have been made as a frame and panel structure. This structure would dominate throughout the 19th century. Its most popular from was a three-panel system, with the middle panel somewhat smaller. The versatility of forms is rich, there were also four-panel doors with all panels of the same size and three-panel doors with the middle panel bigger than the other two (il. 59). The internal doors at Mątowskie Pastwiska 30 also had a structure of two planks connected with pegs, but without feathers on the outside zewnętrznej. Made as frame and panels, they were of a rather modest character (usually with two equal-size panels), however not lacking decorative elements. The door between the big room and the chamber of elders in Mątowskie Pastwiska even had hunting scenes painted on it.
All the identified windows are of a frame structure, although the structure of the stiles and rails and the setting thereof in the frame were subject to modifications. Also in this case the oldest type of a window can be found in the homestead Mątowskie Pastwiska 30. The windows providing light to the hall and larder were somewhat smaller than those in the chambers, although both forms only had a stile. The stile was made of four strips connected by a pinned, going-through tenon (il. 60). They had no forged hinges. The window panes were framed in lead. They also had wind braces. Also, the form of the shutters does not have analogies. They were built of two planks connected with a pair of tenons. They were fixed from inside of the building, over the window. They were connected with the window frame with hinges fixed on the tenons, when they were open, they were hung under the ceiling (il. 61). In case of bigger windows in chambers, the structure and fixing of the casing and window panes could be similar, where only the classical shutters were placed on the outside on both sides. The windows in the discussed homestead have been partly replaced. They still only had a stile. In the big chamber there survived windows with panes fixed with putty, connected with the frame with decorative hinges (il. 62). The shutters were of a plank and tenon structure, but with a classical fixing on the external side (il. 63). In the second half of the age, in the windows there appears a window cross (il. 64). The frame-and-panel shutters usually have two or three panels of different size. Also the headers which appeared in the 1st quarter of the 19th century in the form of a triangle strip, started, at the end of the 19th century, to acquire openwork forms connected with the new inspirations spreading in the architecture (il. 65).
Elements which have not only a decorative but also utility significance are strips covering the log corners. They acquire various forms, from ordinary fixed planks, through stylized classic patterns or even an imitation of rustication (il. 39).
Elements connected with decoration will also include the profiling of the ends of joists and rafters. The oldest examples of ceiling joist endings have a profile of one roll. Rafters are connected with the beam with a tenon. A characteristic solution is a system of a beam profiled as a roll-set-off-groove. On it, there lies a longitudinal beam ( a kind of a rafter plate) with the same profile. Only on it rafters are set (il.49). In the second half of the century the most popular solution becomes the setting of rafters on the rafter plate. The protruding part of the rafters is profiled.
A frequently met decorative elements were also pazdurs (vertical decorative elements placed on the roof ridge over the gable walls). They acquired the form of a spear or zoo-morphic presentations (il. 66). They could be placed both on the gable of the residential and farming part. (il. 24,43) Unfortunately, they have not been found today. Another popular form of decoration of gables in the past were wind vanes. They often showed the date of construction of the building.
A separate decorative element also were inscriptions always placed on the headers of the entry doors. Unfortunately, only few survived. The oldest one in Mątowskie Pastwiska (il. 67) has got the following inscription: Anno 1779 AVBH I HR BM⁸⁷. In homestead Bronisławowo 28 (il. 68), of which the header has been cut off, only the fragment Anno1830 den...Juli has survived. In Bronisławowo 10, only a fragment of the inscription can be read: BH Martin Willert BM/...1847 ..18ten.... It is still worse in case of the house for workers at Mątowskie Pastwiska, where only the date of construction has survived (il.69).

⁸⁷ BH (Bau Herr) refers to the investor, while BM (Bau Meister) stands for the initials of the carpenter.