Sunday, April 27, 2014

La Belle's Design

"Capturing the Curve: The underlying concepts 
in the design of La Belle (1684)"
Tangency Press Essay 1 
Taras Pevny


FIGURE 1. Isometric drawing of La Belle's hull remains with every third
frame depicted and battens positioned along the design marks.
(Illustration by T. Pevny)

Occasionally the archaeological ship reconstructor is fortunate enough to encounter the remains of a vessel on which shipwrights' design marks have been preserved. La Belle has the most extensive and complete set of such marks documented to date. The distinguishing features of the distribution, number, and placement of La Belle's surmarks associate it with a graphic design system of "geometric fairing with diagonals" which was in use in French shipbuilding in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries...  READ MORE

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