orders

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The Architecture of Furniture

The orders are not just for buildings. They are also used on furniture to bring its structure to life, to give it meaning, and to give it status. On the most formal pieces, the order is fully developed. Here, for example, is a highly articulated French Renaissance buffet with composite entablatures at each story, slightly modified […]

Passau Cathedral
(Photo by Aidan McRae Thomson)

The Church Building and the Garden of Eden

Turning again now to St. Germanus, Archbishop of Constantinople, he states in the opening section of his Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation: The church is an earthly heaven in which the super-celestial God dwells and walks about. It represents the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Christ: it is glorified more than the tabernacle of the […]

The Doric capital at Grand Central Station, New York City, shows sculpted leaves where the ancient Greeks would have painted.

On the Origin of the Doric Species – The Missing Link

The typical explanation for the origin of the Doric order starts with the idea, depicted below by Sir William Chambers, that the ancient Greeks had developed traditions of joinery which were later commemorated in stone (once they were capable of building monumentally). Optical refinements were added to the forms originating in joinery, so the theory […]