Saturday, December 13, 2014

Architectural Word of the Day; 111 - 120


CROCKET, CROPSE

The regularly spaced buds or bunched foliage along the arrises of a Gothic pinnacle or gable. The blossoming crown terminating the peak is called a cropse.
  


PINNACLE

In Gothic architecture, pinnacles occur as groups of shafts at or above the roof line most often terminated with a pyramid, frequently but not universally enriched.
 

VOLUTE

A logarithmic spiral scroll, inspired by the unfurling of fauna as well as the growth patterns of horns and shells. This Art Deco example provides quite simply an embarrassment of riches!
 


SPIRE, BROACH

A slender, typically octagonal pyramid set atop a square tower. In church architecture it stands as the crowning element of the steeple.

The pyramidal transition between the spire and the tower is called the broach.


BOLSTER, PULVINUS

The roll resembling a cushion that connects the front and rear volutes of an Ionic capital. The Romans used the term"Pulvinus" because of the resemblance to the swelling of the stem at the base of a leaf.

The detailed hand tooling on this limestone example is quite amazing. 30 feet below the texture it creates with the refraction of light endows the work with depth and life.


TEMPUS FUGIT

"But meanwhile it flees: time flees irretrievably, while we wander around, prisoners of our love of detail." - Virgil
 


ORIEL

A bay window or, as in this example, a turret that is corbeled and projecting from the main structure. Its of old French origin thought to derive from the medieval Latin "oriolum" meaning porch, gallery.
 














Contributed by Patrick Webb

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