Illustrated Etymology: Wainscot

You know you've heard the term wainscot thrown around on those decorating shows and you may have wondered what in the heck they're talking about.  Even as a designer and art historian, this term confuses me.  Is it spelled "wainscoat" and pronounced "wainscot".... or is it spelled "wainscot" and pronounced "wainscoat"?  It's just one of those things I've never gotten straight in my head.  So I figured it was time to shed a little light on the term.

Wainscot or wainscotting is a type of paneling that is used on the lower portion of a wall between the baseboard and chair rail.  Now a chair rail is pretty straight forward; it's there to protect your wall from chairs and other waist-height objects.  Wainscotting's original purpose was to cover the lower part of walls, not so much from nicks and scratches but from dampness oozing up from the ground. With the advent of various water barriers and damp proof courses of brick, wainscotting became more decorative than functional.

Various types of wainscot paneling.

Originally wainscot paneling started off as a type of tongue and groove vertical paneling similar to bead board (in fact the original term wainscot referred specifically to a type of high-quality quarter-sawn oak that was used for that purpose).  However, nowadays wainscot can be made of vertical panels, raised or recessed panels and moldings or even just flat moldings applied to a sheetrock wall to give an effect.  Wainscotting is typically around 30-36 inches high but can often be made lower or higher to change the proportions of a room.  In the photo above, often in craftsman style houses, the wainscot is raised to give a sense of warmth and to create a plate rail higher up on the wall.  And, some of the houses we are considering have a low wainscot in the dining room and I love how it makes the ceilings feel higher.  Hmm... even if the house we buy doesn't have wainscotting, it could be a great DIY project.

What do you think?  To wainscot or not to wainscot? High, low or in between? Recessed, raised or beaded?

Illustrated Etymology: Espalier

Here we go with the second post in my Illustrated Etymology series.  In the last post I discussed the origins of the word "Enfilade".  Today's word is "Espalier".

Espalier refers to the gardening and agricultural practice of training a tree or bush to grow in a flat plane by pruning and tying branches to a frame.  I remembered the first time I encountered the term, not in a gardening book or dictionary but actually when I moved to Boston and came to know about the award winning restaurant L'Espalier.  I figured it was a culinary term, and while it's more of a gardening word, the moniker befits the restaurant since espalier is a practice that is used to make fruit easily accessible.  Espaliering is often used in formal gardens and done in formal patterns, such as diamond, square or chandelier type arrangements.  Usually it is done against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis and is very useful when a narrow bed restricts the depth of planting.  Interestingly, in researching the term further for this post, I found out that there are a few more benefits to espalier than just the spatial and the aesthetic.  If planted next to a wall, the wall can serve to reflect more sunlight and retain heat overnight or if trained to be parallel to the equator the tree or shrub can receive maximum sunlight exposure. These two facts allow the growing and maturing period of the fruit to be extended.  Here is an example of a formal espaliered fruit tree against a whitewashed wall (courtesy of Wikipedia):

I'm eager to try this in our New Jersey garden, although it seems like it could be a lengthy and arduous process.  Any requests for the next term for Illustrated Etymology?

New Series: Illustrated Etymology: Enfilade

Today I'm starting a new series called Illustrated Etymology where I take a architectural, decor, or design term and tell you about the meaning, provenance and give you a little illustration to go along with it. A little snapshot of some of the things you learn in school but more fun than sitting through a lecture.  Today's word is "Enfilade".

Enfilade refers to a series of rooms or "salons", as they were referred to back in the day, that are  formally aligned with one another. The use of enfilade begain in the Baroque period and was continually used in classical European architecture, especially in the grand palaces and governmental buildings of France and Italy.  Not only are the rooms themselves aligned one after the other on a long central axis, but the doors entering each room are also aligned on this same axis, providing an expansive view through the entire series of rooms. The use of enfilade creates a sense of grandeur and procession and is often an architectural device found in museums and public buildings, easing the movement of large numbers of people from one space into another.Here is an example of enfilade at Versailles.

Can you think of any spaces that you've been in recently that employ this technique?