Louis XV Giltwood Centre Table, 19th Century

• Frieze - An architectural term denoting the flat, shaped or convex horizontal surface of furniture, between the architrave and the cornice, usually found on a cabinet or bookcase, or on desks and tables where it may include drawers, the area between the top and the legs. In ceramics, the term refers to the banding, of usually a repeating pattern, on the rims of plates and vases.
• Guilloche - A form of classical decoration consisting of a repeating ornament of interlacing curved bands, sometimes forming circles, and further decorated with rosettes or other flower forms.
  
  The name is derived from the inventor, French engineer Guillot, who invented a mechanical method of inscribing fine repeating patterns on to metallic surfaces.
  
  On enamelled items with guilloche decoration, the surface is firstly engraved with the repeating pattern, and then covered with several layers of enamel, each of which is fired.
  
  Where the item has not been enamelled the form of decoration is usually called "engine turned".
• Turning - Any part of a piece of furniture that has been turned and shaped with chisels on a lathe. Turned sections include legs, columns, feet, finials, pedestals, stretchers, spindles etc. There have been many varieties and fashions over the centuries: baluster, melon, barley-sugar, bobbin, cotton-reel, rope-twist, and so on. Split turning implies a turned section that has been cut in half lengthwise and applied to a cabinet front as a false decorative support.
• Fluting - A form of decoration found on many pieces of furniture, as well as ceramics, silver and clocks, in which round-bottomed grooves, of varying width and depth, are let into columns, pilasters, legs. As a general rule, flutes are cut in the vertical, though they may follow a turned leg in a spiral pattern. In cross-section, they may be described as a series of 'U' shapes, rising and narrowing at each end of the groove. Fluting is the opposite of reeding, with which fluting is often associated.
• Giltwood - Giltwood is used to describe a gold finish on furniture and other decorative wooden items, whereby a thin sheet of gold metal, called gold leaf, is applied to the surface for decorative purposes.
  
  Unlike gilding, where the gold leaf is applied over a coating of gesso, with giltwood the gold leaf is applied direct to the surface, or over a coat of linseed oil gold leaf adhesive.
  
  Most gold-finished mirrors will be gilded, whereas furniture with gold highlights will have the gold applied through the giltwood method.
• Foliate - Decorated with leaves or leaf-like forms.
• Pierced Decoration - Ornamental woodwork with part of the background cut through and removed to produce an open-work pattern.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• tables, French - French, centre and supper 147
• tables, purpose or type - centre 576