Scroll (art)

The scroll in art is an element of ornament and graphic design featuring spirals and rolling incomplete circle motifs, some of which resemble the edge-on view of a book or document in scroll form, though many types are plant-scrolls, which loosely represent plant forms such as vines, with leaves or flowers attached. Scrollwork is a term for some forms of decoration dominated by spiralling scrolls, today used in popular language for two-dimensional decorative flourishes and arabesques of all kinds, especially those with circular or spiralling shapes. Scroll decoration has been used for the decoration of a vast range of objects, in all Eurasian cultures, and most beyond. A lengthy evolution over the last two millennia has taken forms of plant-based scroll decoration from Greco-Roman architecture to Chinese pottery, and then back across Eurasia to Europe. They are very widespread in architectural decoration, woodcarving, painted ceramics, mosaic, and illuminated manuscripts (mostly for borders). In the usual artistic convention, scrolls "apparently do not succumb to gravitational forces, as garlands and festoons do, or oppose them, in the manner of vertically growing trees. This gives scrolls a relentless power. Even if attached to walls, they are more deeply embedded in the architectural order than the festoon, which are fictitiously hanging on them."

Terminology Typically in true scrolls the main "stem" lines do not cross over each other, or not significantly. When crossing stems become a dominant feature in the design, terms such as interlace or arabesque are used instead. Many scrolls run along a relatively narrow band, such as a frieze panel or the border of a carpet or piece of textile or ceramics, and so are often called "running scrolls", while others spread to cover wide areas, and are often infinitely expandible. Similar motifs made up of straight lines and right angles, such as the "Greek key", are more often called meanders. In art history, a "floriated" or "flower scroll" has flowers, often in the centre of the volutes, and a "foliated" or "leaf scroll" shows leaves in varying degrees of profusion along the stems. The Ara Pacis scrolls are foliated and sparingly floriated, whilst those in the Dome of the Rock mosaics are profusely foliated with thick leaves forming segments of the stems. As in arabesques, the "leaf" forms often spring directly from the stem without a leaf stalk in ways that few if any real plants do; these are generally derived from the ancient half-palmette motif, with the stem running along the bisected edge of the palmette. Although forms are often based on real plants, especially the acanthus, vine, lotus and paeony, faithful representation is rarely the point of the design, as of these four only the vine is actually the sort of climbing plant with many stems and tendrils that scrolls generally represent. Later Islamic and Chinese scroll decoration often included more flowers than European designs, whether classical or medieval (see below). Scroll-forms containing animals or human figures are said to be "inhabited"; more often than not the figures are wildly out of scale with the plant forms. Frequently, especially in spreading designs, an upright element imitating the main stem or flower-stalk of the plant appears as a central element protruding vertically from the base, again as in the Ara Pacis panel. This may be termed a "standard" but is not a necessary element; it gives the design a top and bottom, which may be appropriate for architecture or furniture, but many designs on textiles and pottery are intended to have no main orientation for the viewer. The standard was frequently depicted as a fanciful candelabra in grotesque designs, in which it is an important element, central to the composition. Scrollwork in its strict meaning is rather different; the scroll is imagined as the curling end of a strip or sheet of some flat and wide material. It develops from strapwork, as the ends of otherwise flat elements, loosely imitating leather, metal sheets, or broad leaves rather than plant tendrils. Rather than the "profile" view displaying the spiral, the forms are often shown front on with the width of the strip seen. It begins in the Renaissance, and becomes increasingly popular in Mannerist and Baroque ornament.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.