Gadrooning

Gadrooning is a decorative motif consisting of convex curves in a series. In furniture and other decorative arts, it is an ornamental carved band of tapered, curving and sometimes alternating concave and convex sections, usually diverging obliquely either side of a central point, often with rounded ends vaguely reminiscent of flower petals. Gadrooning, derived from Roman sarcophagi (illustration) and other antiquities, was widely used during the Italian Renaissance, and in the classicising phases of 18th- and 19th-century design.

In medieval European metalwork gadroons on circular dishes are often tapering, ending in a point on a central circular zone, and run diagonally across the surface in a spiral. Similar, but typically not tapered, designs were popular in Rococo porcelain and metalwork. In Renaissance or Neoclassical works they are normally thinner and straighter.

The term may also be applied to spiraling stop-fluting running up a classical column.

  • Three Renaissance goblets decorated with gadroonings, 1520-1525
  • Italian late 16th-century enameled copper footed bowl, with several registers of gadrooning (Walters Art Museum)
  • Walnut cassone in the form of an Antique sarcophagus, Rome, 16th century (Walters Art Museum)
  • American railroad holloware creamer jug with gadrooning on the lower body, in Regency taste, early 20th century

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