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Rustication / Sunk Joints
- treatment of masonry
in a way which emphasises particular parts of a building.
This can take
the form of a natural looking roughness as the term implies, which gives an impression of strength and is frequently
used at the base of buildings, a practice common during the Renaissance and
in Georgian architecture. Nowadays,
and this seems a strange use of the term, rustication more usually describes the form of neat V - shaped (sometimes
square) grooving of the joints which emphasises the face of the block. Sometimes simply referred to as "sunk
joints". Banded rustication occurs when only the horizontal joints are treated in this way.