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The rustication of Bramante's "House of Raphael" is reinterpreted by Playfair for a courtyard in the Old College, University of Edinburgh, 1817.

Rustication is an architectural term that contrasts with ashlar, smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces. Rusticated masonry is squared-off and left with a more or less rough surface, with a deep "V" or square joint or with finished flanking corners that emphasize the edges of each block. Rustication gives a texture which contrasts with smooth ashlar masonry. Rustication is often used to give visual weight to the ground floor in contrast to smooth ashlar above.

In variations of rustication the stone is left with a rough external surface, or rough shapes are drilled or chiselled in the somewhat smoothed face in a technique called "vermiculation" (vermiculate rustication). If the deep joints are applied only to the horizontal joints, with the appearance of the vertical joints being minimised, this produces an effect known as banded rustication. In prismatic rustication, the blocks are dressed at an angle top and bottom and at each end, giving the effect of a prism.

Facade of the Palazzo del Te clearly showing rusticated stonework between the pilasters.

Although rustication is known from a few buildings of Roman Antiquity, the method first became popular during the Renaissance, when the stone work of lower floors, and sometimes entire facades, of buildings were finished in this manner. Donato Bramante's Palazzo Caprini ("House of Raphael") in Rome provided a standard model, where the obvious strength of a blind arcade with emphatic voussoirs on the basement level gave reassuring support to the upper storey's paired columns standing on rusticated piers. The Palazzo del Te, Mantua (illustration, right), and the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, are examples in which the entire facade is rusticated. In his Banqueting House, Whitehall, London (1619), Inigo Jones gave a lightly rusticated surface texture to emphasize the blocks on both storeys, and to unify them behind his orders of pilasters and columns.

Serlio, rusticated doorway, 1537

The Mannerist architect Sebastiano Serlio and others of his generation enjoyed the play between rusticated and finished architectural elements. In the woodcut of a doorway from Serlio's 1537 treatise (illustration, left), the banded rustication of the wall is carried right across the attached column and the moldings of the doorway surround, binding together all the elements.

Sicilian Baroque: at Catania University rusticated pilasters against a smooth background reverse the usual expectations.

During the 18th century following the Palladian revival, rustication was widely used on the ground floors of large buildings, as its contrived appearance of simplicity and solidity contrasted well to the carved ornamental stonework and columns of the floors above. A ground floor with rustication, especially in an English mansion such as Kedleston Hall is sometimes referred to as the "rustic floor", in order to distinguish it from the piano nobile above.

Massive effects of contrasting rustications typify the "Richardsonian Romanesque" style exemplified in the 1870s and 80s by the first American architect to have European influence, H. H. Richardson.

Look up rustication in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Rusticated
• Examples of Rustication
• The vermiculated ashlar