gadroon

Gadrooning is a decorative motif consisting of convex curves in a series. In furniture and other decorative arts, it is an ornamental carved band of tapered, curving and sometimes alternating concave and convex sections, usually diverging obliquely either side of a central point, often with rounded ends vaguely reminiscent of flower petals. Gadrooning, derived from Roman sarcophagi (illustration) and other antiquities, was widely used during the Italian Renaissance, and in the classicising phases of 18th- and 19th-century design.

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