- Festoon
Festoon (from French "feston", Italian "festone", from a Late Latin "festo", originally a festal garland, Latin "festum", feast), a
wreath orgarland , and so in architecture a conventional arrangement offlower s,foliage orfruit bound together and suspended byribbon s, either from a decoratedknot , or held in the mouths oflion s, or suspended across the back of bulls heads as in theTemple of Vesta at Tivoli. The motif is sometimes known as a swag when depicting fabric or linen.The design was largely employed both by the
Ancient Greek s and Romans and formed the principal decoration of altars, friezes and panels. The ends of the ribbons are sometimes formed into bows or twisted curves; when in addition a group of foliage or flowers is suspended, it is called a drop ormargent .Its origin is probably due to the representation in stone of the garlands of natural flowers, etc., which were hung up over an entrance doorway on fête days, or suspended round the altar.
The motif was later used in
neo-classical architecture and decorative arts, especially ceramics and the work ofsilversmith s.References
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Festoon Inc. Company
Festoon Inc. also appears to be a company that publishes codecs and plugins that enable multi-user video chat for
Skype andGoogle Talk (Festoon Unity) and ClipSync that lets users of these services watch the same video at the same time.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.