coffer

A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.

A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called ''caissons'' ("boxes"), or ''lacunaria'' ("spaces, openings"), so that a coffered ceiling can be called a ''lacunar'' ceiling: the strength of the structure is in the framework of the coffers.

History

The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks and Romans are the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BC Etruscan chamber tomb in the necropolis of San Giuliano, which is cut in soft tufa-like stone reproduces a ceiling with beams and cross-beams lying on them, with flat panels filling the ''lacunae''. For centuries, it was thought that wooden coffers were first made by crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaux of the early Renaissance. In 2012, however, archaeologists working under the Packard Humanities Institute at the House of the Telephus in Herculaneum discovered that wooden coffered ceilings were constructed in Roman times. Experimentation with the possible shapes in coffering, which solve problems of mathematical tiling, or tessellation, were a feature of Islamic as well as 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.

Asian architecture

In ancient Chinese wooden architecture, coffering is known as ''zaojing'' ().

Gallery

File:7530vik Wawel. Foto Barbara Maliszewska.jpg, Coffered plafond at Wawel Castle, Kraków, Poland
File:Palazzo Vecchio - Sala dell'Udienza - ceilings.jpg, Coffered ceiling of the Sala dell'Udienza, in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence
File:Chapelle Expiatoire 1, Paris 2010.jpg, Chapelle Expiatoire, Paris
File:Ceiling SM Maggiore.jpg, Giuliano da Sangallo's flat caisson ceiling from Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome
File:Coffered ceilings of Mir Castle.jpg, Coffered ceilings of Mir Castle, Belarus
File:Chancel ceiling, Church of the Good Shepherd.jpg, Chancel ceiling, Church of the Good Shepherd (Rosemont, Pennsylvania)
File:L'Enfant Plaza station from north mezzanine, March 2019.jpg, Coffered ceiling typical of stations on the Washington Metro (Washington, DC)

See also

* Dome
* Dropped ceiling
* Cove ceiling
* Beam ceiling

Footnotes

External links

U.S. National Capitol

{{Authority control

Ceilings
Architectural elements