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Baluster
A baluster (/ˈbæləstər/ ⓘ) is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its construction are wood, stone, and less frequently metal and ceramic. A group of balusters supporting a guard railing, coping, or ornamental detail is known as a balustrade.
The term baluster shaft is used to describe forms such as a candlestick, upright furniture support, and the stem of a brass chandelier.[citation needed]
The term banister (also bannister) refers to a baluster or to the system of balusters and handrail of a stairway. It may be used to include its supporting structures, such as a supporting newel post.
In the UK, there are different height requirements for domestic and commercial balustrades, as outlined in Approved Document K.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "baluster" is derived through the French: balustre, from Italian: balaustro, from balaustra, "pomegranate flower" [from a resemblance to the swelling form of the half-open flower (illustration, below right)], from Latin balaustrium, from Greek βαλαύστριον (balaustrion).
The earliest examples of balusters are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing the Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as functional window balustrades and apparently had Ionic capitals. As an architectural element alone the balustrade did not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans, but 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.
The application to architecture was a feature of the early Renaissance architecture: late fifteenth-century examples are found in the balconies of palaces at Venice and Verona. These quattrocento balustrades are likely to be following yet-unidentified Gothic precedents. They form balustrades of colonettes as an alternative to miniature arcading.
Rudolf Wittkower withheld judgement as to the inventor of the baluster and credited Giuliano da Sangallo with using it consistently as early as the balustrade on the terrace and stairs at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano (c 1480), and used balustrades in his reconstructions of antique structures. Sangallo passed the motif to Bramante (his Tempietto, 1502) and Michelangelo, through whom balustrades gained wide currency in the 16th century.
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Baluster
A baluster (/ˈbæləstər/ ⓘ) is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its construction are wood, stone, and less frequently metal and ceramic. A group of balusters supporting a guard railing, coping, or ornamental detail is known as a balustrade.
The term baluster shaft is used to describe forms such as a candlestick, upright furniture support, and the stem of a brass chandelier.[citation needed]
The term banister (also bannister) refers to a baluster or to the system of balusters and handrail of a stairway. It may be used to include its supporting structures, such as a supporting newel post.
In the UK, there are different height requirements for domestic and commercial balustrades, as outlined in Approved Document K.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "baluster" is derived through the French: balustre, from Italian: balaustro, from balaustra, "pomegranate flower" [from a resemblance to the swelling form of the half-open flower (illustration, below right)], from Latin balaustrium, from Greek βαλαύστριον (balaustrion).
The earliest examples of balusters are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing the Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as functional window balustrades and apparently had Ionic capitals. As an architectural element alone the balustrade did not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans, but 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.
The application to architecture was a feature of the early Renaissance architecture: late fifteenth-century examples are found in the balconies of palaces at Venice and Verona. These quattrocento balustrades are likely to be following yet-unidentified Gothic precedents. They form balustrades of colonettes as an alternative to miniature arcading.
Rudolf Wittkower withheld judgement as to the inventor of the baluster and credited Giuliano da Sangallo with using it consistently as early as the balustrade on the terrace and stairs at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano (c 1480), and used balustrades in his reconstructions of antique structures. Sangallo passed the motif to Bramante (his Tempietto, 1502) and Michelangelo, through whom balustrades gained wide currency in the 16th century.