strapwork

Or strap-work

[strap-wurk]

noun

Architecture.

1. a type of ornamentation imitating pierced and interlaced straps or bands, usually forming a geometric pattern.

Word History and Origins

Origin of strapwork¹

First recorded in 1750–60; strap ( def. ) + work ( def. )

Example Sentences

The vase was respected not for Höroldt’s mastery of polychrome enamels or the blue and gold interlacing strapwork and foliage, but for Uncle Clem, and the lives he had saved, the river he had crossed at midnight, and his death just a week before the Armistice.

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Just a little patch of strapwork in the middle of the waste.

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The chief characteristics of Elizabethan architecture are: windows of great size both in the plane of the wall and deeply embayed, ceilings very richly decorated in relief, galleries of great length, very tall and highly-decorated chimneys, as well as a profuse use of ornamental strapwork in the parapets, window-heads, &c.

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In 1568 we find the first edition of the “Bishops’” Bible adorned with an engraved titlepage in the centre of which, in an oval, is a not unpleasing portrait of the Queen, holding sceptre and orb, set in a mass of strapwork, amid which are seated Charity and Faith with the royal arms between them, while below the portrait a lion and dragon support a cartouche enclosing a text.

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His most noted productions were a flagon and salver, with figures, emblems, marks, and strapwork.

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