Antique Furniture Terms Explained
Find those specific definitions and illustrations here!
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- Gadrooning: A carved edge of repetitive shapes usually convex curved form.
- Gallery: "Fence" or balustrade surrounding the edge of a table or other furniture. Designed to keep objects from falling off a surface as well as for decoration.
- Gateleg table: The turned legs are hinged to central station supports, and can be extended like gates to support the fold-out leaves of the top of the table. Also called drop-leaf.
- Gesso: A sort of plaster composition or gunge, used as a base for applying gilding and usually moulded in has relief on mirror frames or furniture, rather as plaster was in the nineteenth century.
- Girandole looking-glass: Circular mirror with convex glass and attached sconces popular during the 19th century. Girandole comes from the French word for "branched candlestick".
- Gothic: A style which keeps reappearing but which is derived from Gothic architecture and was used on furniture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, again in the mid-eighteenth century, again in Regency times ('Strawberry Hill Gothic') and again in Victorian times by Pugin, etc. Characterised by curved pointed arches.
- Grisaille: Monochromatic painting in tones of gray. In America, used in New York on a group of kasten and cupboards.
