Broad solid banding closes the design top and bottom — the upper band S-curving up to a crest at the centre joint, the lower one running straight — both set with applied four-petal rosettes inside a raised outline with clipped corners. The field between alternates turned balusters with narrow panels of tight C- and S-scrolls, and each leaf carries a scroll-filled ring around a lion's-head boss. Gloss black.
The ornament is layered rather than repeated. Rosettes stand proud of the top and bottom bands, the panel outline is raised again inside those, and the ring sits forward of the scroll panels behind it, so in raking light a leaf reads in three planes instead of one flat pattern. Of all that work, the lion’s-head boss at the hub of each ring is the only figure — everything else is geometry and curl.
Rosettes carry down the stiles as well as along the two bands, so ornament frames each leaf on all four sides while the middle of it stays open — grass and trees read straight through the balusters in every photograph here. Weight at the entrance without walling off the view is what the design is for, and the gloss finish is part of that: it holds a highlight along every curve, so a gate this size never flattens into a slab.
3 photos
Every angle
