Coffer
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A coffer (or coffering) in architecture, is a sunken panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.[1] A series of these sunken panels were used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called caissons, or lacunaria, while a coffered ceiling was sometime called a lacunar. The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks and Romans are the earliest surviving examples. Wooden coffers were first made by the crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaus of the early Renaissance. [2]
Experimentation with the possible shapes of coffering, which solve problems of mathematical tiling, or tessellation, were a feature of Renaissance architecture. The more complicated problems of diminishing the scale of the individual coffers were presented by the requirements of curved surfaces of vaults and domes.
A prominent example of Roman coffering, employed to lighten the weight of the dome, can be found in the ceiling of the rotunda dome in the Pantheon, Rome.
 Gilded coffering on a barrel vault of the apsis in Nazaré, Portugal |
 Giuliano da Sangallo's flat caisson ceiling, Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome |
 Problems arising where vaults intersect are not always successfully solved (Commerce Court, Toronto) |
 Painted coffering in octagons and squares at Fontainebleau |
 Coffered ceiling with 39 painted panels in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy |
 15th-century flat coffered ceiling, Duomo of Pisa |
 Inside Pisa's Duomo |
 Neoclassical coffered dome of James Wyatt's Pantheon, London |
[edit] See also
- Dome
- Dropped ceiling
- Luminous ceiliing
- Cove ceiling
- Beam ceiling
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links
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