Tracing board
Tracing boards are painted or printed illustrations depicting the various emblems and symbols of Freemasonry. They can be used as teaching aids during the lectures that follow each of the three Masonic Degrees, when an experienced member explains the various concepts of Freemasonry to new members. They can also be used by experienced members as self-reminders of the concepts they learned as they went through their initiations.
History and development
The Masonic tracing board took several decades to develop into its pictorial form. Initially a drawing was made on the floor of the hired tavern room in which a Masonic Lodge had met, the work being executed either by the Tyler or Worshipful Master.[1] Evidence suggests that a simple boundary in the shape of a square, rectangle (or "double square"), or a cross was drawn first, with various Masonic symbols of a geometric type (e.g., circle, pentagram, etc.) were drawn later, the former possibly being drawn by the Tyler and the latter by the Master. Later various objects, such as a (ladder, beehive, etc.,) were added.[2]
By the second half of the eighteenth century the Masonic symbols were being painted on a variety of materials ranging from small marble slabs to canvas, though the various Grand Lodges were then generally hostile to the creation of physical representations of the Ritual and symbols of the Craft. Prior to the development of the upright-standing tracing board such as is used today a "floor cloth" displaying a degree's symbols was common.[3]
By the mid-nineteenth century tracing boards had become fairly common. They are now an accepted, though unofficial, part of Craft Freemasonry.[4] As different Masonic jurisdictions established official, or standard, degree rituals the creation of new tracing boards by Freemasons waned and has since all but entirely disappeared.
References
- ^
Dring, E.H. (1916). "The Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board". Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. 29. Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076: p. 243.
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Dring, E.H. (1916). "The Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board". Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. 29. Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076: p. 244.
{{cite journal}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^
Haunch, T.O. (1962). "Tracing Boards: Their Development and Designers". Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. 75. Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076: p. 24.
{{cite journal}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ "Tracing Boards from St. Andrews Lodge No. 1817". Phoenixmasonry, Inc. Retrieved 2009-02-23.
Publications
- Haunch, T.O. (April 2004). Tracing Boards - Their Development and Designers. QC Correspondence Circle Ltd. ISBN 0907655955.