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Columbia Encyclopedia entry: molding

Molding, in architecture, furniture, and decorative objects, a surface or group of surfaces of projecting or receding contours. A molding may serve as a defining element, terminating a unit or an entire composition (e.g., in the cap of a column or the crowning cornice of a building) or establishing a boundary or transition between portions of a design. One of the primary considerations in the design of a molding is the type of shadow it will cast. The shape of a molding is termed its profile or section. Moldings formed an important part of most past styles; in Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, however, their place was taken by flat ceramic enrichments in color. In Egypt, moldings were limited to the cove, or cavetto, and the half round, or torus, which, used together, formed the cornices for the walls of temple or pylon. Moldings were an essential feature of Greek orders and buildings. The Greek profiles form the basic molding vocabulary for classic types such as the fillet and the fascia, flat vertical surfaces; the ovolo, of an egglike convex outline; the bead and the torus, both convex, three fourths of a circle and one half, respectively; the cavetto, a quarter circle, and the scotia, of elliptical curvature, both concave; and the cyma recta and the cyma reversa, both of compound curvature, being half concave and half convex. The ovolo was carved with the alternating egg and dart; the acanthus leaf and the anthemion were used for the cyma recta, or ogee, and the water leaf for the cyma reversa. Roman designers, substituting simple segments of circles for the elliptical and parabolic curvatures, never attained the beauty of Greek forms, although in ornament they added numberless innovations. In Byzantine architecture the tendency was to flatten the classic outlines, transforming them into bands of pierced enrichment. Romanesque moldings were chiefly simple segments of a circle, as in the especially characteristic boltel, or three-quarter round. Moldings changed with the development of Gothic architecture. Cornices, jambs, archivolts, and capitals show a richly varied interplay between projecting rounds and deep concavities. In the late Gothic (15th cent.) of France and Germany there were ingenious combinations of differing elements to produce broken, merging, and interpenetrating moldings. In developed Gothic a rich assortment of naturalistic forms appeared, e.g., flowers and intertwining vines. The Renaissance return to purely Roman forms was followed in the baroque by heavier, projecting moldings, which cast dramatic shadows. Later a wide variety of styles was employed, but since the 19th cent., decorative molding has been little used in modern architecture.

Columbia Encyclopedia search results: molding

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mold
Mold, name for certain multicellular organisms of the various classes of the kingdom Fungi, characteristically having bodies composed of a cottony mycelium. The colors of molds are caused by t...
Molde
Molde, town (1995 pop. 22,892), capital of Møre og Romsdal co., W Norway, on the Moldefjord (an arm of the Romsdalfjord). Commanding a panoramic view of the snowcapped Romsdal Mts., it is a fa...
leaf mold
Leaf mold, crumbly brown humus typical of forest floors. It is composed of decayed leaves and other plant material mixed with soil.
slime mold
Slime mold or slime fungus, a heterotrophic organism once regarded as a fungus but later classified with the Protista. In a recent system of classification based on analysis of nucleic acid (g...
water mold
Water mold, common name for a group of multinucleated organisms that superficially resemble fungi but are now recognized as having an independent evolutionary lineage and are placed in the kin...
plaster casting
Plaster casting, as a sculpture process, is of three kinds. One employs a waste mold, another a piece mold (both plaster of paris), and the third a gelatin mold; all reproduce the original cla...
casting
Casting or founding, shaping of metal by melting and pouring into a mold. Most castings, especially large ones, are made in sand molds. Sand, mixed with a binder to hold it together, is presse...
plasmodium
Plasmodium, name for a stage in the life cycle of a slime mold. Also, Plasmodium is the name given to the genus of the protozoan parasite that causes malaria.
abacus, in architecture
Abacus, in architecture, flat slab forming the top member of a capital. In classical orders it varies from a square form having unmolded sides in the Greek Doric, to thinner proportions and ov...
clubroot
Clubroot, disease of cabbages, turnips, radishes, and other plants belonging to the family Cruciferae (mustard family). It is induced by a plasmodial slime mold that attacks the roots, causing...

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