Illustrated Architecture Dictionary ....................... Illustrated FURNITURE Glossary .

Baluster
BAL a stir
Also called banister

Architecture

1. A turned or rectangular upright supporting a railing or handrail, a series of such being called a balustrade

2. The roll forming the side of an Ionic capital. Also known as a pulvinus.

Vase-shaped balusters (as in left illustration above) were introduced about 1650. The narrow section is referred to as the "sleeve," while the wider section is the "belly,"

Balusters may be straight, turned or pierced.

Balustrade (BAL a strade): A railing with supporting balusters

The balustrade is undoubtedly a Renaissance, especially 14th century Florence, invention.

Cast-stone balusters were a development of the eighteenth century in Great Britain; cast iron balusters a development largely of the 1840s.

Roof-top or roof-line balustrades are found in Neoclassical, , ..... Colonial Revival, , ..... Federal, , ..... Georgian Revival, , ..... Beaux Arts Classical,, ..... Italian Renaissance Revival styles

Found in derivatives of Classical Greek and Roman architecture - but not in Greek or Roman architecture - , including Beaux Arts Classicism, , ..... Federal, , ..... Georgian Revival, , ..... Greek Revival, , ..... Neoclassicism, , ..... Renaissance Revival, , ..... Second Empire

History:

Furniture

Used as a stretcher between chair legs, or part of a chair back.

Commonly an elongated urn or vase shape.

Applied split or half balusters used as ornamentation and in a vertical series on a chair back

"... baluster forms are familiar in the legs of chairs and tables represented in Roman bas-reliefs, where the original legs or the models for cast bronze ones were shaped on the lathe, or in Antique marble candelabra, formed as a series of stacked bulbous and disc-shaped elements, both kinds of sources familiar to Quattrocento designers." - Wikipedia: Baluster

Examples from Buffalo:

Examples from Buffalo:

Examples from Buffalo:

Other Examples, not in Buffalo:

Photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
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