facture
(ˈfæktjʊə(r))
[a. F. facture, ad. L. factūra, f. facĕre to make. The popular Fr. form is faiture: see feature.]
1. Now rare. a. The action or process of making (a thing). Cf. manufacture.
| 1580 Baret Alv. M 50 The facture, or making of a thing. 1605 Bacon Adv. Learn. ii. 41 The facture or framing of the inward parts. 1661 Cowley Prop. Adv. Exp. Philos. ii, Professors Resident shall be bound to study and teach..the Facture of all Merchandizes. 1671 Maynwaring Anc. & Mod. Pract. Physick 15 There is no other way of progress..but this of preparation and manual facture. 1888 Whistler in Sat. Rev. 26 May 821 A new class who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of the sham. |
b. The result of the action or process; the thing made; creation.
| 1647 J. Mayer Comm. Eph. ii. 10 We are his facture, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. |
2. The manner or style of making (a thing); construction, make; workmanship. Now rare.
| 1423 Jas. I Kingis Q. l, Bountee, richesse, and wommanly facture. 1616 Chapman Homer's Hymns, To Vulcan (1858) 109 Vulcan..whom fame gives the prize For depth and facture of all forge-devise. 1860 Reade Cloister & H. I. 73, I thought not all the goldsmiths on earth had so much gold, silver, jewels, and craft of design and facture. 1883 Sat. Rev. 24 Nov. 667 The facture [of a literary work] of Mr. Lewis Morris..has been generally creditable. |
‖ 3. Comm. = invoice. A Fr. sense: perh. never used in Eng.
| 1858 in Simmonds Dict. Trade. 1864 in Webster. |
4. Painting. The quality of the execution of a picture, esp. of its surface. (A Gallicism.)
| 1887 Atlantic Monthly LX. 510/2 He was acquiring in the Louvre his laborious and rude facture of successive impasto. 1936 H. Read Surrealism 63 Dali's neat, tight Vermeerish facture has its aesthetic as well as Picasso's bold, plangent, viscous brushwork. 1961 Times 21 Mar. 16/5 He knows exactly what makes the facture of a French picture interesting. 1971 Listener 25 Feb. 254/3 Warhol's method depends..on misregistration and over⁓inking and (art facture-wise) smudging, lopping, blotching. |