Art and Antique Information: Glossary of terms and definitions
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- Pad foot: A simple disk or oval shaped foot under a cabriole leg (See also: Dutch Foot).
- painterly: Describes a style of painting created by technique of applying areas or patches of color and not linear or outline drawing. Painterly image form edges have the propensity to merge into the background rather than separated by delineated outlines. Titian and Rembrandt are known to have used painterly approaches.
- palette: A thin panel utilized to hold and mix the paint for painting; also describes the range of colors actually used in a project.
- Palladian Style: Based on designs by mid-16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio whose style is still used in columns and windows today. Characterized by very dramatic and large cornices, pediments, and sculptural ornamentations of acanthus leaves, eagles, scallop shells, and similar motifs, created in a massive scale.
- Panel: Generally a board covering a large flat surface.
- Paper Mache: Material made from paper pulp, usually bonded with "wallpaper paste", modeled into products and painted when dry.
- Parquetry: Furniture inlaid with a mosaic of geometrical patterned designs (such as herringbone) similar to parquet floors made from woods of different colors or tones.
- Parsons table: Simple, squared edge tables with equal width apron and legs; from the Parsons School of Design during the 1950s.
- Particle Board: (..fiberboard or chip board) A composite of wood chips and resin or other binding agents compressed into panels resulting in a strong core material used under veneers or other unseen areas.
- pastel: A pigmented chalk drawing stick, the drawing made by pastel sticks, or the soft pale tinted shade of a color.
- Patina: The aging effect taken onto a surface's finish only thru age, use and care. The natural patina imparted to antique wood furniture surfaces is irreplaceable.
- Pecan: A type of hickory wood with strong graining patterns and usually stained medium dark in color.
- Pedestal table: A table supported by a single, central base pedestal.
- Pediment: The typically a triangular, sometimes scroll shaped, ornamental crest with moldings across the top of tall 18th century piece such as high boy, chest or other case goods. Some types are the Broken Pediment and Bonnet Top.
Piedmont, rosette and finial details - Pembroke Table: A type of drop leaf table with leaves that fold down almost to the floor.
- Pencil-post Bed: A bed of generally simple design with four slim posts rising six to eight feet; optionally topped with a canopy.
- Pendant: A hanging decoration, usually a form of turning.
- Pembroke: Small drop-leaf table, rectangular with a drawer, named from England's Earl of Pembroke (c. 1771).
- pentimenti: Italian term describing the underlying marks remaining from an artist's layout and corrections of a painting's development, adding expressive richness.
- perspective: A geometric technique for representing three-dimensional objects and spatial relationships on a two-dimensioned surface ( Types: atmospheric perspective, See also: one-point linear perspective, and two-point linear perspective).
- photomontage: (photo-montaj) A technique of combining photographs or parts into another image; often used by Surrealists such as Max Ernst in the 1920's.
- picture plane: The flat plane of the surface on which an image is painted, as a window into which the viewer looked into the painting's distance.
- Pickling: A process of rubbing white paint or chemicals into previously finished wood.
- Pine: A knotty, soft wood used as a solid wood on country or rustic furniture and construction.
- Piecrust Table: A round table top commonly set upon a three-legged pedestal base and ornamented with a scalloped raised edging that resembles a crimped pie crust.
Piecrust Tea Table top Chippendale - Pier Glass: A large mirror suspended window-height above a table.
- Piercing: Cutout decorative openwork detail carved as in chair splats, stretchers or other 18th century furniture.
- Pilaster: A flattened half-round or thin rectangular column decoration applied to vertical surfaces of furniture, bookcases, etc.
- Plinth: The lowest member of a column or chest resting squarely on the floor rather than on legs.
- Plywood: Layers of wood veneers binded with the grains crossing at right angles to each other for strength and resistance to warping.
- Polyurethane: Modern synthetic material available in varying degrees of density and hardness. In liquid form urethane is used as a tough and durable paint finish and, when foamed, as a cushion upholstery material.
- Prima Vera: A light colored wood also misnamed as white mahogany.
- printmaking: General category of fine art printing processes, includes: etching (metal plate), lithography (heavy stone), woodcut (wood or linoleum block), and silkscreen (thru screen-held patterns), in which multiple images are made printing inks.
- proportion: The relationship in scale and symmetry of one part to the whole; also refers to the relative sizes of compositional elements and their optimal positions for good design.
- Provincial: Furniture designs inspired by the major centers of a country yet crafted in a local area in adaption to use local materials, tastes, trades and ways of life.
- Pulls: handles, especially on case furniture.
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