The Coronation Chair is an ancient chair kept in Westminster Abbey, and used at the coronation of the sovereigns of England, all of whom have been crowned in it since Edward I. It is said to have been made for that king, and is architectural in design, having a high, upright, gabled, and crocketed back, with panels of tracery work, and rests on four carved lions. In a space beneath the seat is the famous Coronation Stone, the Scottish Lia Fail or 'Stone of Destiny', carried off to England by Edward I. It is said to have been originally brought from Ireland, and was used in the coronation of the Scottish kings at Scone. It is a block of red sandstone, derived, according to Skene, from the rocks near Scone. There is also a coronation chair for the consort, made for the coronation of Mary II, when she was crowned along with William III. Research Coronation Chair
The decorated style is a name given by some writers to the perfected English Gothicarchitecture also known as the second style of pointed architecture, which flourished from about 1300 to 1375 when it passed into the Perpendicular. Rickman used the term to describe the period between Early English and Perpendicular, occupying most of the 14th century, and based his definition mainly upon window designs, many of which made use of the then new art of bar tracery.
The decorated style is distinguished from the Early English, from which it was developed, by the more flowing or wavy lines of its tracery, especially of its windows, by the more graceful combinationsof its foliage, by the greater richness of the decorations of the capitals of its columns, and of the mouldings of its doorways and niches, finials, etc, and generally by a style of ornamentation more profuse and naturalistic, though perhaps somewhat florid. The most distinctive ornament of the style is the ball-flower, which is usually inserted in a hollow moulding.
The Decorated style has been divided into two periods: the Early or Geometrical Decorated period, in which geometrical figures are largely introduced in the ornamentation; and the Decorated style proper, in which the peculiar characteristics of the style are exhibited. To this latter period belong some of the finest monuments of British architecture. Research Decorated Style
In architecture fan tracery is the elaborate geometrical carved work, which spreads over the surface of a vaulting, rising from a Corbel and diverging like the folds of a fan. Fan-tracery vaulting is much used in the Perpendicular style, in which the vault is covered by ribs and veins of tracery, of which all the principal lines diverge from a point, as in Henry VII's chapel, at Westminster. Research Fan Tracery
Flamboyant is a term designating a style of Gothicarchitecture in use in France about the same period with the Perpendicular style in England, that is, from the 14th to the 16th century, having prevailed during the whole of the 15th century. It was distinguished by the waving and somewhat flame-like tracery of the windows, panels, etc. (hence the name), and is usually regarded as a decadent variety of the decorated Gothic. The mouldings in this style are often ill combined, some of the members being disproportionately large or small. The pillars are often cylindrical, either plain or with a few of the more prominent mouldings of the arches continued down them, with out any capital or impost intervening. This is so common that it may be regarded as a characteristic of the style. Mouldings also sometimes meet and interpenetrate each other. The arches are usually two-centred, sometimes semi-circular, and in later examples, elliptical. The foliage enrichments are usually well carved, but the effect is often lost from the
minuteness and intricacy of the parts. Research Flamboyant
In architecture an oillet is a small opening or loophole, sometimes circular, used in mediaeval fortifications from which defenders would shoot arrows at besiegers (see also arbalestena). The term is also used to describe a small circular opening, and ring of mouldings surrounding it, used in window tracery in Gothicarchitecture. Research Oillet
Abbreviations
Research Coronation Chair
