IONIC FLUTED

Ionic Fluted

IONIC PLAIN

TUSCAN

Tuscan

Since man first stood up two vertical columns of stone or wood and put a third one across them to make an entrance to his home he has striven to enhance and decorate them.

This desire to make pillars and columns objects of art reached its zenith during the Renaissance with complex fluted pillars and highly ornate capitals and bases. It was a sixteenth century architect by the name of Giacomo Barozzio da Vignola who brought some order into the debate when he published his “Canon for the Five Orders of Architecture”. In it he divided the multitude of styles into five main orders, Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite.

He laid out in minute detail the relative proportions of the diameter of a column shaft to its length and its relationship to the height and width of its capital and base. The book became the standard text for architects, the world over, for the next three centuries and is still the accepted standard today.

As devotees of da Vignola’s, we have painstakingly reproduced a line of pillars from two of the five orders – the Tuscan and the Ionic.

We chose the Tuscan for its sturdy simplicity, the shaft is never fluted and the capital and the base is unadorned. This robust pillar gives the impression that it can carry great loads and is very popular in new as well as old world architecture.

The proportions of the Ionic style give it a more slender and graceful appearance. The shaft of the Ionic pillar is often decorated with twenty four semi-circular flutes and the Classical Ionic capital is easily recognised by its spiral volutes. This ornate Ionic capital is interchangeable with an elegant Plain Ionic capital.

All our pillars come with the capital and the base seperate from the shaft for adjustability and ease of installation. We have 10 different sizes between the two styles giving us the most comprehensive range of classically correct reproduction pillars in Ireland.

The pillars are made from non load bearing GRP which makes them light weight and strong for internal and external use.