Custom Projects > Art Nouveau Staircase railing
Art Nouveau Custom Interior Staircase Railing
While working on a stair project for a residential house in Austin, Texas, I didn't have a clear idea of what the finished entryway interior would look like. I had an idea about it only in general terms, so when I brought the railing for installation, it was a surprise for me that the pattern of the railing was superimposed on the pattern of black lines of window frames, equal both in color and thickness, and therefore actively included in the pattern of the stairs. It was also a surprise to me to see the rather white walls of the interior which took away the shape of the work and left a silhouette. Having an idea about this in advance, I would try to avoid such a high degree of contrast by making the railing lighter colored. However, all these conditions created a completely new visual and highly decorative effect that destroyed the volume and brought this work closer to a white paper sheet with the lines drawn by black inks.
The client chose to make most of the railing with simple vertical balusters and decorate only the transition and ending nodes with ornamental three-dimensional details, which created a very good composition of high contrast between very calm and tense vertical strings and music or waves, born from these strings at key compositional nodes. In the composition, a very important role plays the connection of the details of the stairs with the steps, they obviously either grow out of the steps or hold on to them very tightly, which creates a feeling of the reliability of the structure for the person ascending the stairs, despite the feeling of lightness and subtlety created by an elegant pattern.
Steel. Forging.
2021