Strap-work (Elizabethan).—An ornament representing strap-like fillets interlaced.
String-course.—A projecting horizontal (or occasionally sloping) band or line of mouldings.
Tabernacle Work.—The richly ornamented and carved work with which the smaller and more precious features of a church, e.g., the fittings of a choir, were adorned and made conspicuous.
Terminal (or Finial).—The ornamental top of a pinnacle, gable, &c.
Terra-cotta.—A fine kind of brick capable of being highly ornamented, and formed into blocks of some size.
Thrust.—The pressure exercised laterally by an arch or vault, or by the timbers of a roof on the abutments or supports.
Tie.—A beam of wood, bar of iron, or similar expedient employed to hold together the feet or sides of an arch, vault, or roof, and so counteract the thrust.
Torus.—A large convex moulding.
Tower.—A portion of a building rising conspicuously above the general mass, and obviously distinguished by its height from that mass. A detached building of which the height is great, relative to the width and breadth.
Tracery (Gothic).—The ornamental stonework formed by the curving and interlacing of bars of stone, and occupying the heads of windows, panels, and other situations where decoration and lightness have to be combined. The simplest and earliest tracery might be described as a combination of openings pierced through the stone head of an arch. Cusping and foliation (which see) are features of tracery. (See Figs. [18], [19], [55], and [57] in the text.)