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Please choose a sub section and check the 'next page' button at the bottom.Carved Details
Robert Mills Architectural and Decorative Antiques (Reclamation and Salvage) always has in stock a wide range of reclaimed and antique carved details, including corbels, carved panels, pediments, overdoors and spandrels. Such details provide the finishing pieces to your interior or exterior design. Designs vary. In our stock you may find figure carvings of angels, Green Man, imps, lion heads, caryatids and harpies and many more. Designs vary from gothic to rococo to arcadian. Materials include wood, iron, plaster, stone and others.
Our reclaimed and antique corbels, carved panels, pediments, overdoors and spandrels are salvaged from various locations including commercial refurbishment projects, private mansions, public buildings and churches awaiting demolition. Often we manage to save the material at the very last minute before it goes to landfill or the bonfire.
In architecture a corbel (or console) is a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. A piece of timber projecting in the same way was called a "tassel" or a "bragger". The technique of corbelling, where rows of corbels support a projecting wall or parapet, has been used since Neolithic times. It is common in Medieval architecture and in the Scottish baronial style. The word "corbel" comes from Old French and derives from the Latin corbellus, a diminutive of corvus (a raven) which refers to the beak-like appearance. Similarly, the French refer to a corbel as corbeau (a crow) or as cul-de-lampe, Italians as mensola, the Germans as kragstein. 
A spandrel (less often spandril or splaundrel) is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure. There are four or five accepted and cognate meanings of spandrel in architectural and art history, mostly relating to the space between a curved figure and a rectangular boundary - such as the space between the curve of an arch and a rectilinear bounding moulding, or the wallspace bounded by adjacent arches in an arcade and the stringcourse or moulding above them, or the space between the central medallion of a carpet and its rectangular corners, or the space between the circular face of a clock and the corners of the square revealed by its hood. Also included is the space under a flight of stairs, if it is not occupied by another flight of stairs. This is a common location to find storage space in residential structures. In a building with more than one floor the term spandrel is also used to indicate the space between the top of the window in one story and the sill of the window in the story above. The term is typically employed when there is a sculpted panel or other decorative element in this space. The spandrels over doorways in Perpendicular work are generally richly decorated. At Magdalen College, Oxford, is one which is perforated, and has a most beautiful effect. The spandrel of doors is sometimes ornamented in the Decorated period, but seldom forms part of the composition of the doorway itself, being generally over the label. Because arches are commonly used in bridge construction, spandrels may also appear in those structures. Historically, most arch spans were solid-spandrel, meaning that the areas between arches were completely filled in — usually with stone — until the advent of steel and reinforced concrete in the 19th and 20th centuries. Open-spandrel bridges later became fairly common, where thin ribs were used to connect the upper deck to the bridge arches, resulting in a significant savings in material, weight, and therefore cost. Reinforced-concrete open-spandrel bridges were fairly common for crossing large distances in the 1920s and 1930s. Spandrels can also occur in the construction of domes, and are typical in grand architecture from the medieaval period onwards. Where a dome needed to rest on a square or rectangular base, the dome was raised above the level of the supporting pillars, with three-dimensional spandrels called pendentives taking the weight of the dome and concentrating it onto the pillars.
A pediment, also called a fronton, is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section, the "tympanum" or "thympanon", found above the horizontal structure (entablature), and supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding. The tympanum was often decorated with sculptures and reliefs demonstrating scenes of Greek and Roman mythology. The form of the pediment differs in each of the Classical orders.
The fronton is found in classical Greek temples and neo-classical architecture. The most prominent example is the Parthenon, where it served as a palette for beautiful, intricate sculptural detail. This architectural element was developed in the architecture of ancient Greece and applied in Ancient Rome, the Renaissance, and later architectural revivals. The element was commonly used to decorate mausoleums and memorial architecture. (see: Pere Lachaise Cemetery ) Pediments were also applied as a triangular or arched ornament above windows and doors, mounted above a pair of pilasters or brackets. The naiskos and aedicula is a "small dwelling" or shrine that may enclose the image of a diety, found at the entrance to a temple or simply covering a small niche in the wall of building. Another form is the open pediment where a segment is left open at the apex of the sloping cornice. The broken pediment is open along the base – often used in Georgian style architecture. The decorations in the tympanum can extend through these openings, enriched with "Alto-relievo" sculpture, "tondo" paintings, mirrors or windows. These forms were adopted in Mannerist architecture, and applied to furniture designed, or inspired, by Thomas Chippendale.
An " overdoor" (or "supraporte") is the name given to a painting, bas-relief or decorative panel, generally in a horizontal format, that is set within ornamental mouldings placed over a door in classicizing or Rococo interiors. The overdoor is usually architectural in form, but may take the form of a cartouche in Rococo settings, or it may be little more than a moulded shelf for the placement of ceramic vases, busts or curiosities. An overmantel serves a similar function above a chimneypiece.
From the end of the sixeenth century, at first in interiors such as the Palazzo Sampieri, Bologna, where Annibale Carracci provided overdoor paintings, overdoor paintings developed into a minor genre of their own, in which the trompe l'oeil representations of stone bas-reliefs, or vases of flowers, in which Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer specialized, were heightened by sotto in su perspective, in which the light was often painted to reproduce the light, diffused from below, that was entering the room from its windows. Overdoors of allegorical subjects were favoured through the end of the eighteenth century.
References & Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdoor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel