This was not the earliest use of a lathe to help form ornamented objects. It is reported that Phidias, before the fifth century B.C., at times used the lathe for the primary shaping of materials and then, with consummate skill, added additional decoration and embellishment to create some of the artistic pieces for which he became famous. From the earliest use of the lathe, however, until the nineteenth century, the basic means for embellishing a turned piece did not change: surface embellishment could not be applied while the ivory was on the revolving lathe; the pieces had to be removed and decorated by hand. Not until after the Holtzapffels perfected the ornamental turning lathe in the nineteenth century could the ornamentally decorated pieces be completed while still on the lathe.

Ornamental turnery is the decoration or embellishment of plain-turned objects, usually of wood or ivory, with designs that elevate them from merely utilitarian objects to bring them into the realm of the decorative arts. Decorative arts have traditionally been created in such media as glass and ceramics, which lend themselves to surface embellishment during the formation of an object. Although many materials may be used for ornamental turning, including metal, some types of rock, and plastic, the two primary materials used are wood and ivory. Neither of these is as malleable as such materials as blown glass or clay and therefore do not easily allow surface decoration during the forming or turning process. Therefore, some technique for applying surface decoration of ivory and wood during the turning process had to be developed.

This problem was overcome with the development of the ornamental-turning lathe, with its supplement of complex subsidiary tools and apparatuses. A plate, chalice, vase, candlestick, or other object may be turned on an ordinary lathe and become a thing of beauty by virtue of its material, form, and craftsmanship, despite its plain shape. The same object, turned on an ornamental lathe, may become even more beautiful by virtue of the surface decoration imparted by the equipment and tools.

Ornamental turnery as practiced by the medievel turners largely ceased to exist with the passing of the medieval period, but it was not completely forgotten. Although examples of the craft can be seen in many of the world's museums, it is almost impossible to find a specimen in even the finest art and antique shops for purchase by contemporary collectors. Practically all such existing work is either in museums or in the hands of private collectors. The work may still be seen in such places as the Pitti Palace of the Museo degli' Argenti in Florence, the Bayer isches Museum of Munich, the Musee du Con servatoire des Artes et Metiers in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Rosenbourg Castle in Copenhagen. For the most part, these are ivory works created by European craftsmen who lived in southern Germany, particularly Nuremberg, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

The incredible techniques that were developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These pieces were not truly ornamental turnings because they were done partly on the lathe commonly used at the time and partly by hand decoration after the piece had left the lathe. Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works by Moxon and IJArt du Tourner by Plumier, as well as Diderot's encyclopedia, show numerous pictures of the apparatuses they used, none of which are as complete as the later Holtzapffel lathe. Moxon, in particular, not only shows pictures of these lathes, but describes them in great detail, discussing the pole lathe, the great wheel lathe, the treadle lathe, and the string lathe, as well as the use of these lathes in the turning of exotic pieces such as globes or balls, balls within one another, balls with a solid ball in the center, globes with several loose spheres in them, cubes within a hollow globe, oval shapes, and other such pieces.

One such special lathe used during this time was known as the swash plate lathe. A predecessor of the rose engine lathe, it had an attachment that moved the work back and forth along its axis with each turn of the lathe. This movement produced work somewhat like that from the rose engine lathe, except that the variations in cuts were tilted right and left horizontally along the axis of the work rather than toward and away from the central point of the work as it revolved in a perpendicular plane. Holtzapffel and other nineteenth-century lathe makers produced rose engine lathes but, so far as we know, did not make swash plate lathes.

The apparatus for ornamental turnery underwent much refinement in the nineteenth century, as will be discussed in more detail in later chapters. Although the craft declined with the coming of industrialization in the late 1800s, it is still practiced today by devoted enthusiasts. Anyone who has done only plain turning will be amazed by the creativity possible in ornamental turning. The ornamental-turning lathe is one important element in this increased creativity, but just as important is the turner himself. Without some sense of design, without a devotion to perfection of workmanship, without an affinity to creative development, all the equipment in the world will not produce acceptable results.

The development of this form of the creative arts opened the door to almost endless possibilities for embellishment and decoration of the surfaces of the object, sometimes with results that are wonderfully beautiful, sometimes unbelievably bizarre. Some turners decorate every bit of the surface merely because the instrument makes it possible to do so. More often than not this clutters the surface so much that the viewer has no opportunity to put the design into perspective. The possibilities of decorative patterns, using the bewildering variety of chisels, chucks, drives, and other attachments that have been developed for the ornamental turner, make it only too easy to overdo the embellishment of the surface. It is the responsibility of the craftsman to prevent overdesign. If the craftsman has any real sense of design and art appreciation, he or she can devote years to the lathe and never overdo a design.

Today there are no professional ornamental turners as the craft is too little known. Few if any ornamental turners have grown up with the craft as was the case of the craftsmen of the Renaissance period who learned ornamental turnery as youthful apprentices. Because ornamental turners are not professionals, there are no established standards by which to measure skill and performance. The amateur of today can measure his performance only by generally accepted standards of the creative arts and the performance of his peers.

Just as one original painting, however modest, carries something of the artist's spirit, so any handmade object brings with it something of the delight of its maker. For the ornamental turner, there is no enemy other than time; life is all too short for learning the job and doing it well. He cannot start too early nor live too long.

This article was copied from the 1986 work Ornamental Turnery by Frank M. Knox (see the Bibliography for more information). I modified it a bit to read a little better and hypertextize it. The actual book has many very nice illustrations which I didn't reproduce here -- in fact, I deleted references to the figures so you wouldn't go looking for them. They can all be found in the book.