Decorated Gothic (also Second Pointed, often abbreviated to Dec) was the second phase of English Gothic architecture, in vogue from the mid-13th to mid-14th centuries. It was distinguished by a unification of all arts to form one elaborate whole, with traceried windows, ornate surface decoration, complex geometry and intricate vaulting. The style saw the introduction of new architectural forms: especially the traceried window, but also the ogee arch, the lierne vault and 'bubbly' foliage carving. It is notable for using forms ornamentally rather than structurally. Decorated Gothic can be divided into two phases: Geometrical Decorated (pre-c.1290) and Curvilinear (or Flowing) Decorated (post-c.1290). While the Decorated was primarily an architectural style for churches, it also covered secular buildings, furnishings, sculpture and elements of applied arts like metalwork and manuscript illumination.
History
Influences Early English Gothic
Gothic architecture was introduced to England from France in the 1170s. However, English cathedral masons took it in a very different direction to France: instead of aiming to create a prodigiously high building, lit by large windows and supported by flying buttresses, they remained content with the low proportions and thick walls that had characterised Norman architecture, instead using the Gothic as a new form of surface enrichment. This could be seen even in the earliest English Gothic buildings, like Lincoln, where columns were surrounded by shafts of Purbeck marble, solid walls were cloaked in layers of blind arcading, and vaults, while low, were elaborated from the simple quadripartite type into tierceron forms. Rayonnant
Meanwhile, in France, Gothic architecture was evolving new forms. At Reims Cathedral, around 1215, bar tracery had been developed. This had radical structural implications, for it meant that windows were not limited in size by the iron ferramenta holding the glazing, but only by how much wall it was necessary to retain to support the vault. A new architectural style was developed, starting at the royal mausoleum of Saint-Denis in 1231, taking the window mullion of bar tracery as its basic unit, and virtually eliminating the stone wall; this is now termed the Rayonnant.Bony 1979, pp.2-3 As well as window tracery, a significant difference with English Gothic was the continuation of the vault supports down to the ground, rather than terminating them with corbels halfway up the wall as at Salisbury. This change unified the elevation, where previously it consisted of a stack of superimposed tiers, and increased the verticality of the interior.Coldstream 1999 p.27 The new style was adopted at Louis IX's personal shrine of Sainte-Chapelle, consecrated in 1248, forming a jewel-like box glowing with stained glass.
Geometrical Decorated Westminster Abbey In 1245, Henry III of England determined to rebuild the outdated abbey church of Westminster, to form a more suitable venue for coronations and a fitting location for the shrine of Edward the Confessor. He employed a French-trained (if not French) master mason, Henry of Reyns. The result was a curious combination of French High Gothic, Rayonnant and Early English. The plan of the chevet was based on Reims, the French coronation church, but with the long nave and transepts of an English cathedral like Salisbury. Likewise, the elevations combine the simple bar-traceried aisle windows, cyclindrical columns with attached shafts and quadripartite vault of the Classic Gothic, the rose windows and carved angels of the Rayonnant, and the high tribune gallery, Purbeck marble shafting and surface ornamentation of the English Gothic. Nicola Coldstream summarised the building as "very French in an English context, but not very convincing in a French one."Coldstream 1999, p.24 The Rayonnant features appear to have been introduced by a new mason, Master Albericus.Bony 1979, pp.3-4 Buildings closely linked to Westminster also appeared at the cathedrals of Hereford (north transept, under the patronage of the Savoyard Peter of Aigueblanche) and Lichfield (nave). However, these ignored Westminster's French height, planning and pier forms.
Court Style in the mid-13th century The potential of bar tracery was gradually realised in works connected with the Court, particularly the choir of Old St Paul's (1250s, now only known from engravings) and the chapel of St Ethelreda in Ely Place.Bony 1979, pp.22-24 These used forms that were not part of orthodox French Gothic - the spherical triangle and Y-tracery. They also imported French forms from more up-to-date sources than Reims and the Sainte-Chapelle, such as the new transept ends of Notre Dame in Paris.Coldstream 1999, p. 31 The existence of an English 'Court' style has, however, been questioned by some historians, such as Nicola Coldstream, as at this time the king was still peripatetic, hindering masons and other artists from settling near royal projects.Coldstream 1999, pp. 186-188
Wider adoption The key motif of bar tracery soon spread across England (at this time including southern Wales), providing an opportunity to make churches lighter and to display the developing art of stained glass. A major early example was the Angel Choir at the east end of Lincoln Cathedral, with vast and rich bar-traceried windows creating a textured mass, as the thick walls and low proportions were continued from the Early English work. The clustered columns were also based on the Early English, though the forms were broader than a truly Early English building like Wells. Another important building was the cloister and chapter house of Salisbury (c.1280), virtually copied from Westminster.Coldstream 1999, p. 28
A major elevational change was the elimination of the gallery. This had been a prominent feature of greater English churches since Norman times, and was even used at Westminster, but these high, dark arches were seen as unsuited to the new aesthetic. In future (where not constrained by existing work), elevations would either be two-storeyed, as was already the norm for Cistercian abbey churches like Sweetheart and Tintern, or, where something grander was desired, they would have a thin triforium band in the French manner.Coldstream 1999, p. 35 At Exeter, the masons' thought process can be seen, as the presbytery was initially built with two storeys. This seems to have been unsatisfactory, for the slightly later choir was given a triforium, and then the already-built presbytery was remodelled to take a 'false' triforium, without a wall passage.Bony 1979, pp. 14-17 York became a surprising centre of Rayonnant orthodoxy, with its nave (begun in 1291) having the thin walls, linked triforium and clerestory, floor-to-ceiling vaulting shafts and drawn linearity of the French style.Bony 1979, pp. 7-8 However, by the time the York nave was begun, the first monuments of the Curvilinear were already under construction.
Curvilinear Decorated
The Eleanor Crosses In 1290, Eleanor of Castile, queen of Edward I, died in Nottinghamshire. To commemorate her, Edward commissioned crosses to be erected at each point where her body rested on its journey to London. Of these, those at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross survive. These elaborately-sculpted monuments are densely coated in niches of exotic form, a concept termed micro-architecture. In addition, they used complex plan geometry, being based on hexagons and triangles. Another feature was the split, or Kentish, cusp, which broke the order of Geometrical tracery, leading to flowing tracery.Bony 1979, pp. 21-22 The earliest example of the split cusp appears to be the arch-and-gable tomb of Bishop John de Bradfield (d.1283) at Rochester Cathedral.Coldstream 1999, p. 40 These new tracery forms started to subtly disrupt the logical patterns of arches and circles, before abandoning them altogether in favour of rippling concoctions of mouchettes and daggers. St Stephen's Chapel These features were also seen at the much-delayed royal chapel of St Stephen in Westminster Palace (begun in 1292), intended to be an English answer to Sainte-Chapelle. As well as royal patronage, a link between the two is the master mason Michael of Canterbury, who designed the Cheapside cross. Like that building, it stood above a lower chapel, but it differed in its use of ornament with ogee arches and split cusps, in its flat east end, and especially in its clerestory under the vault.Bony 1979, p. 23 The window mullions were carried down over the façade in an unusual manner that was not taken up again until the 1330s, when construction of the chapel resumed.
Wider adoption By the early 14th century, the Curvilinear style was in general use across cathedral architecture, from Carlisle to Canterbury. Its gradual adoption can be seen in the nave at Exeter, where the traceries get freer towards the west of the building.Clifton-Taylor 1970, pp.147-155 The Curvilinear style was especially prominent along the east coast, where elaborate regional schools of tracery can be found around Canterbury and Norwich as well as in Lincolnshire, and around Bristol, where there was bold experimentation with polygonal plans and flying vaults, as well as a preference for ballflower ornamentation. The south-west also saw the use of the 'Berkeley arch', a Persian-inspired polygonal form with radiating inverted arches that was used at Bristol Cathedral (then still an abbey), St Mary Redcliffe and Berkeley Castle.Coldstream 1999, p. 147
A slightly later development (c.1310) was the 'nodding' ogee, in which the arch leans forwards, entirely divorced from structural concerns, as at Ely Cathedral's Lady Chapel. The Ely works exemplified the unification of the arts in the later Decorated, with a variety of techniques being combined to form an elaborate interior.Coldstream 1999, p. 54 Another example is at the north-east window of Dorchester Abbey, where the Tree of Jesse is depicted in stained glass and stone sculpture, and the message uniquely reinforced by the branching forms of the underlying window tracery. As a whole, the style was one of illusions, made possible by the coating of all structural materials with paint and gilding, so that the timber vaults over the Octagon at Ely appear to be stone (a structural impossibility) and the sculpted angelic musicians at Exeter appeared to make music (due to a concealed gallery for real musicians behind).Coldstream 1999, p. 53 Things not being what they seemed reinforced the sense of religious mystery and wonder, preparing the worshipper for the mystery of the sacrament.
Unlike the Geometrical, the Curvilinear was seldom used in Scotland, seemingly due to the Wars of Independence after 1296. The wars both halted major building activity in the early 14th century, and made Scottish patrons reluctant to copy English architecture. However, an exception is the refectory of Dunfermline Abbey (c.1329), patronised by the Bruce dynasty and featuring an elaborate reticulated window in the surviving gable end. Replacement by Perpendicular