MOULDINGS, the term in architecture for the decorative treatment given to projecting or receding features in stone, wood and other materials, by means of curved forms, whereby those features are accentuated and varied owing to the play of light and shade on the surfaces. The principal characteristics of all the European styles are to be found in the mouldings employed in them and in their ornamental decoration. In some of the earlier styles, such as the Assyrian and The Persian, there are no mouldings: coloured bands in brick, enamelled tiles or beton, were deemed sufficient to mark the divisions of their storeys or to decorate their buildings. The Egyptians employed two mouldings only, the cavetto (fig. I), a deep moulding sometimes of great dimensions which crowned their pylons, temples and decorative shrines, and the torus, a semi-circular projecting moulding which was carried above the architrave and down the quoins of their buildings. The Greeks were the first to recognize, in their temples, the special value possessed by mouldings which, occupying an intermediate position between the ornamental sculptures and the simple architectural lines of the main structure, gave a richly decorative effect to the latter without interference with the beauty of the former.

The Classic mouldings may be divided into two classes, simple and compound; to the former belong the cavetto (of small dimensions when compared with the Egyptian cavetto) and the Scotia (fig. 2), employed for the bases of columns, which are seen below the eye, both concave mouldings, whilst the ovolo or echinus. ore or quart de rand(figs. 3 and 4) and the torus are convex mouldings. The compound mouldings are those composed of curves of contrary flexure, such as the cymarecta or cymatium (fig. 5), of which the upper part is concave and the lower convex, a moulding constantly employed for the upper member of the cornice, and the cyma-reversa or ogee (fig. 6)Fr. talonin which the upper portion is convex.

The Greeks sometimes varied the ogee moulding, the upper portion of which is turned back and the lower portion brought forward, and to this the term quirked ogee (fig. 7)is given. Another Greek moulding of compound form is the bird's beak (fig. 8), employed as a drip moulding above the corona. Of smaller dimensions is the astragal (fig. 9), a moulding invariably carved with the bead and reel, -which in Greek work is constantly used in conjunction with the enriched echinus and cyma-reversa mouldings (figs. 18, 20) and below the necking of Ionic capitals; and the listel or fillet, employed chiefly in the separation of curved mouldings one from the other; in the cymatium constituting its upper termination (fig. 5), and in the Scotia (fig. 2) its upper and lower border.

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