Flitch beam wooden beams, and have been largely supplanted by more recent technology. “Flitch” originally referred to a slab of bacon, which was cut into strips lengthwise. Similarly, a wooden beam was flitched by cutting it lengthwise; one half was then rotated 180 degrees both longitudinally and laterally to ensure that any defects were separated. In the 18 century, before the availability of steel beams, pine beams were flitched with hardwood such as oak. With the availability of affordable steel, flitch beams became a way to strengthen long-span wooden beams cost-effectively while taking up less space than solid wood. An 1883 article
What is a Masterpiece? confluence of memories and emotions forming a single idea", that it has "a power of recreating traditional forms so that they become expressive of an artist's own epoch and yet keep a relationship to the past". The highest masterpieces are said to be "illustrations of great themes." Clark also implicitly excluded the erotic from considerations of what constituted a masterpiece, based on his perspective that a necessary condition is the balance between sense and form (works that are too sensual are, therefore, unbalanced and not to be categorised at masterpiece level). What is a Masterpiece? What is a Masterpiece? is