Tuck pointing is a highly-skilled and refined method of pointing, or re-pointing, brickwork whereby a colored mortar joint is placed to match the brick and grooved while ‘green’ or fresh, to receive a separate, and carefully placed, lime putty: silver sand ribbon. The ribbon is then neatly trimmed to a smaller scale to form a precise, raised, profile. Its historical intention was originally to create the illusion of accurately laid, cut and rubbed and gauged brickwork, on a standard brickwork façade; constructed of, often-irregular, bricks. In the nineteenth century, however, it was often resorted to as a means to disguise inferior brickwork.
Generally until the nineteenth century the projecting ribbon was of a neutral, white or cream-coloured mortar, but subsequently a fashion for coloured ribbons, especially black, though occasionally red and sometimes brown were also used.
Today tuck pointing is rarely employed on newly constructed brickwork being, reserved mainly for re-pointing old brickwork known to have had tuck pointing as the original, or earlier, joint finish.