Fluting
The fluting ( Latin canna = pipe; French cannelure = channel, furrow, groove) is the hollowing of an object, usually a column , a pillar or a pilaster with concave furrows. It can be found above all in ancient architecture and in its tradition as a vertical furrow. They were also adopted as a decorative motif in furniture construction, handicrafts and metalworking.
The fluting serves to visually structure the shaft, emphasizes the striving up of the column and overwrites the horizontal joints between the individual column drums to make the shaft appear monolithic . It has no structural function.
Doric columns usually have 20 flat fluting, which intersect in ridges, therefore also called ridge fluting. Columns of the Ionic and Corinthian order, on the other hand - at least since classical times - usually have 24 fluting, which are separated from one another by a narrow web ( stria ). They are semicircular in cross-section and are also closed semicircular at the top and bottom. So the ends form a quarter of a ball. In archaic times, however, Ionic columns had flat fluting in varying numbers of up to 48, which were separated by only very narrow webs or sometimes even touched in ridges like on Doric columns.
Since the Hellenism , columns were sometimes only fluted from a certain height, also known as partially fluted columns or partial fluted columns. In the lower area, the column shafts can be left smooth or worked in facets which, in contrast to fluting, have the shape of flat strips. In Roman architecture , the fluting in the lower part of the column shaft was sometimes filled with narrow round rods, so-called pipes , in a similar way . This division of the shaft, which runs counter to the original emphasis on the vertical, creates a horizontal structure of a column front.
In metal processing (e.g. for gun barrels ) it is used to reduce weight with high stability (stiffening by the remaining material) and to enlarge the surface for better heat dissipation.
In the scarf joint serves to fix the shaft at the fluted tip.
literature
- Detlev Wannagat : Pillar and context. Pedestals and partial fluting in Greek architecture. Biering & Brinkmann, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-930609-07-X (also: Bochum, University, dissertation, 1990).