Fluting (architecture)
Fluting in architecture and the decorative arts consists of shallow grooves running along a surface. The term typically refers to the curved grooves running vertically on a column shaft or a pilaster, but is not restricted to those two applications. If the scoops taken out of the material meet in a sharp ridge, the ridge is called an arris. If the raised ridge between two flutes appears flat, the ridge is a. Fluted columns are common in the tradition of classical architecture but were not invented by the ancient Greeks, but rather passed down or learned from the Mycenaeans or the Egyptians.
Especially in stone architecture, fluting distinguishes the column shafts and pilasters visually from plain masonry walls behind. Fluting promotes a play of light on a column which helps the column appear more perfectly round than a smooth column. As a strong vertical element it also has the visual effect of minimizing any horizontal joints. Greek architects viewed rhythm as an important design element. As such, fluting was often used on buildings and temples to increase the sense of rhythm. It may also be incorporated in columns to make them look thinner, lighter, and more elegant.
File:Roma 111.jpg|thumb|St Peter's Basilica, Rome, with cable-fluted pilasters and fluted columns
It is generally agreed that fluting was used on wooden columns before it was used on stone; with a curved adze applying concave fluting to wooden columns made from tree trunks would have been relatively easy. Convex fluting was probably intended to imitate plant forms. Minoan and Mycenaean architecture used both, but Greek and Roman architecture used the concave style almost exclusively.
Fluting was very common in formal ancient Greek architecture, and compulsory in the Greek Doric order. It was optional for the Ionic and Corinthian orders. In Roman architecture it was used a good deal less, and effectively disappeared in European medieval architecture. It was revived in Renaissance architecture, without becoming usual, but in Neoclassical architecture once again became very common in larger buildings. Throughout all this, fluting was used in several of the decorative arts in various media.
Cabled fluting
If the flutes are partly re-filled with moulding, this form of decorated fluting is cabled fluting, ribbed fluting, rudenture, stopped fluting or stop-fluting. Cabling refers to this or cable molding.When this occurs in columns, it is on roughly the lower third of the grooves. This decorative element is not used in Doric order columns. Cabled fluting may have been used to prevent wear and damage to the sharp edges of the flutes along the bottom part of the column.
Image:Apamea Cardo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Very untypical spiral fluted columns in the Great Colonnade at Apamea in Syria
Spiral fluting
Spiral fluting is a rather rare style in Roman architecture, and even rarer in the later classical tradition. However, it was in fashion in the Eastern Roman Empire between about 100 and 250 AD.What is in effect horizontal "fluting" is sometimes applied, in particular to parts of the bases of columns. It tends to be called "banding".
Applications
Fluted columns in the Doric order of classical architecture have 20 flutes. Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite columns traditionally have 24. Fluting is never used on Tuscan order columns. Flat-faced pilasters generally have between five and seven flutes.Fluting is always applied exclusively to the shaft of the column, and may run either the entire shaft length from the base to the capital, or with the lower third of the column shaft filled. The latter application is used to complement the entasis of the column, which begins one third of the way up from the bottom of the shaft.
Fluting might be applied to freestanding, structural columns, as well as engaged columns and decorative pilasters.
By period
Egyptian architecture
used fluting in many buildings; most often the flutes are convex rather than concave, so the effect is the inverse of Greek fluting. Fluting is generally with the intention of making the column look like a bundle of plant stems, and the "papyriform column" is one of several types, which did not become standardized into "orders" in the Greek way. Often vertical fluting is interrupted by horizontal bands, suggesting binding holding a group of stems together.One of the earliest remaining examples of fluting in limestone columns can be seen at Djoser's necropolis in Saqqara, built by Imhotep in the 27th century BC. The Temple of Luxor, mostly about 1400 BC, has different types in different areas. In some types only part of the shaft is fluted; some columns at Luxor have five different zones of vertical fluting or horizontal banding.
Some of the smaller columns at the Temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahari, Egypt, 1470 BC bear a considerable resemblance to the Greek Doric column, although the capitals are plain square blocks. The columns taper slightly and have broad flutes that disappear into the floor. It has been suggested that columns of this type influenced the Greeks.
Persian architecture
s do not follow the Classical orders, but were developed during the Achaemenid Empire in ancient Persia, over roughly the same period that Doric temples developed in Greece. The ruins of Persepolis, Iran, where examples can be most clearly be seen, are probably mostly from the 6th century BC. In grand settings the columns are usually fluted, with tall capitals featuring two highly decorated animals, and column bases of various types.The flutes are shallow, with arrises, like the Greek Doric, but they are more numerous, and therefore narrower. The large columns at Persepolis have as many as 40 or 48 flutes, with smaller columns elsewhere 32; the width of a flute is kept fairly constant, so the number of flutes increases with the girth of the column, in contrast to the Greek practice of keeping the number of flutes on a column constant and varying the width of the flute. The early Doric temples seem to have had a similar principle, before 20 flutes became the convention.
Fluting is also found in other parts of the classical Persian column. The bases are often fluted, and the "bell" part of the capital has stylized plant ornament that comes close to fluting. Above this there is usually a tall section with four flat fluted volutes.
Classical architecture
Fluting was used in both Greek and Roman architecture, especially for temples, but then became rare in Byzantine architecture, where the emphasis was on fine coloured stone, and the architecture of the Middle Ages in the West.Greek architecture
Columns in buildings of the Doric order were almost always fluted; the unfluted columns of the temple of Segesta in Sicily are one of the reasons that archaeologists believe the temple was never completed, probably because of war. They demonstrate that the plain columns, made of several circular "drums", were put into place before the flutes were carved, so ensuring the grooves matched up perfectly.But the flutes of the top and bottom drums appear to have been started, to give a guide for the rest. A now isolated Ionic column at the Temple of Apollo, Didyma shows this; only part of the top drum has been fluted. Another unfinished Ionic drum section in the agora at Kos has been marked up for fluting, which never took place. In both of these examples there are rather wide margins outside the fluting to the roughly finished surface. There has been considerable modern exploration of the mathematical techniques used to create models of templates for fluting. The practical problems for the masons were increased by the variable girth of the shafts, which both tapered overall and had the entasis swelling in the middle.
Greek masons had also to allow for the various refinements, or subtle departures from the apparent geometry of the design, that Greek architects introduced. These include entasis, swelling in the middle part of the shaft, tapering at the top of the shaft, and a slight slant to the whole column. In the Parthenon the depth of the flutes increases towards the top of the shafts.
In the earliest Doric examples the columns are rather slim, and often only have 16 flutes. By the mid-6th century BC shafts were thicker, and 20 became settled as the number of flutes, thereafter very rarely deviated from when using the Doric order. This fixing of the number seems to have happened while "Temple C" at Selinus was being built, around 550 BC, as there is a mixture of 16 and 20 flutes.
In some buildings, especially secular stoas and the like, the bottom of the shaft might be left smooth up to about the height of a man. Greek Doric columns had no base, and this prevented the flutes, which ended in a sharp arris, being worn down by people brushing past. The flutes continue right down to the base of the column, and at the top usually pass through three very narrow bands cut into the stone before reaching the base of the capital, where the shaft swells slightly. The flutes were carved by making an initial narrow cut to the appropriate depth in the centre of each flute, then shaping the curved sides. By the time of the second Heraion of Samos, perhaps around 550 BC, lathes were being used.
Fluting is treated as optional in Ionic and Corinthian buildings, or perhaps was sometimes left for later if money was running short; in some buildings the fluting was probably carved long after the initial "completion".
The fluting used for the Ionic and Corinthian orders was slightly different, normally with fillets between the flutes, that may appear flat, but actually follow the curvature of the column. Despite Ionic columns of a given height being slimmer than Doric ones, they have more flutes, with 24 being settled on as the standard, after early experiments. These took the number as high as 48 in some columns in the second building of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Turkey, one of the earliest "really large Greek temples", of about 550 BC.
Ionic and Corinthian flutes are also deeper, some approaching a semi-circle, and are usually terminated at the top and bottom by a semi-circular scoop, followed by a small distance where the column has its full circular profile, or indeed swells. These orders always have a base to the columns, often an elaborate one.