Abaluster (/ˈbæləstər/ ⓘ) is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, orlathe-turned form found instairways,parapets, and other architectural features. Infurniture construction it is known as aspindle. Common materials used in its construction are wood, stone, and less frequently metal and ceramic. A group of balusters supporting ahandrail,coping, or ornamental detail is known as abalustrade.[1][2]
The termbaluster shaft is used to describe forms such as a candlestick, upright furniture support, and the stem of a brass chandelier.[citation needed]
The termbanister (also bannister) refers to a baluster or to the system of balusters andhandrail of a stairway.[3] It may be used to include its supporting structures, such as a supportingnewel post.[4]
In the UK, there are different height requirements for domestic and commercial balustrades, as outlined in Approved Document K.[5]
According to theOxford English Dictionary, "baluster" is derived through theFrench:balustre, fromItalian:balaustro, frombalaustra, "pomegranate flower" [from a resemblance to the swelling form of the half-open flower (illustration, below right)],[6][7] fromLatinbalaustrium, fromGreek βαλαύστριον (balaustrion).
The earliest examples of balusters are those shown in thebas-reliefs representing theAssyrian palaces, where they were employed as functional window balustrades and apparently hadIonic capitals.[1] As an architectural element alone the balustrade did not seem to have been known to either theGreeks or theRomans,[1][8] but baluster forms are familiar in the legs of chairs and tables represented in Roman bas-reliefs,[9] 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 toQuattrocento designers.
The application to architecture was a feature of the earlyRenaissance architecture: late fifteenth-century examples are found in the balconies of palaces atVenice andVerona. These quattrocento balustrades are likely to be following yet-unidentifiedGothic precedents. They form balustrades ofcolonettes[10] as an alternative to miniature arcading.
Rudolf Wittkower withheld judgement as to the inventor of the baluster[11] and creditedGiuliano da Sangallo with using it consistently as early as the balustrade on theterrace and stairs at theMedici villa atPoggio a Caiano (c 1480),[12] and used balustrades in his reconstructions of antique structures. Sangallo passed the motif toBramante (hisTempietto, 1502) andMichelangelo, through whom balustrades gained wide currency in the 16th century.
Wittkower distinguished two types, one symmetrical in profile that inverted one bulbous vase-shape over another, separating them with a cushionliketorus or a concave ring, and the other a simple vase shape, whose employment by Michelangelo at theCampidoglio steps (c 1546), noted by Wittkower, was preceded by very early vasiform balusters in a balustrade round the drum ofSanta Maria delle Grazie (c 1482), and railings in the cathedrals ofAquileia (c 1495) andParma, in the cortile of San Damaso, Vatican, andAntonio da Sangallo's crowning balustrade on theSanta Casa at Loreto installed in 1535, and liberally in his model for theBasilica of Saint Peter.[13] Because of its lowcenter of gravity, this "vase-baluster" may be given the modern term "dropped baluster".[14]
Balusters may be made ofcarved stone,cast stone,plaster,polymer,polyurethane/polystyrene,polyvinyl chloride (PVC),precast concrete,wood, orwrought iron. Cast-stone balusters were a development of the 18th century in Great Britain (seeCoade stone), andcast iron balusters a development largely of the 1840s.[citation needed] As balusters and balustrades have evolved, they can now be made from various materials with a few popular choices being timber, glass and stainless steel.[citation needed]
The baluster, being aturned structure, tends to follow design precedents that were set in woodworking and ceramic practices, where theturner's lathe and thepotter's wheel are ancient tools. The profile a baluster takes is often diagnostic of a particular style of architecture or furniture, and may offer a rough guide to date of a design, though not of a particular example.
Some complicatedMannerist baluster forms can be read as a vase set upon another vase. The high shoulders and bold, rhythmic shapes of theBaroque vase and baluster forms are distinctly different from the sober baluster forms ofNeoclassicism, which look to other precedents, like Greekamphoras. The distinctive twist-turned designs of balusters in oak and walnut English and Dutch[16] seventeenth-century furniture, which took as their prototype theSolomonic column that was given prominence byBernini, fell out of style after the 1710s.
Once it had been taken from the lathe, a turned wood baluster could be split and applied to an architectural surface, or to one in which architectonic themes were more freely treated, as on cabinets made in Italy, Spain and Northern Europe from the sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries.[17] Modern baluster design is also in use for example in designs influenced by theArts and Crafts movement in a 1905 row of houses in Etchingham Park Road Finchley London England.
Outside Europe, the baluster column appeared as a new motif inMughal architecture, introduced inShah Jahan's interventions in two of the three great fortress-palaces, theRed Fort of Agra andDelhi,[18] in the early seventeenth century. Foliate baluster columns with naturalistic foliate capitals, unexampled in previous Indo-Islamic architecture according toEbba Koch, rapidly became one of the most widely used forms of supporting shaft in Northern and Central India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[19]
The modern termbaluster shaft is applied to the shaft dividing a window inSaxon architecture. In the south transept ofthe Abbey in St Albans, England, are some of these shafts, supposed to have been taken from the old Saxon church.Norman bases and capitals have been added, together with plain cylindrical Norman shafts.[1]
Balusters are normally separated by at least the same measurement as the size of the square bottom section. Placing balusters too far apart diminishes their aesthetic appeal, and the structural integrity of the balustrade they form. Balustrades normally terminate in heavynewel posts, columns, and building walls for structural support.
Balusters may be formed in several ways. Wood and stone can be shaped on the lathe, wood can be cut from square or rectangular section boards, while concrete, plaster, iron, and plastics are usually formed by molding and casting. Turned patterns or old examples are used for the molds.
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Baluster".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 297.| Shared rooms | |
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