May 24, 2005

Obscure Architectural Term of the Day!

Or alternatively, a really cool name for an English rock band, or infantry company:

YORKSHIRE LIGHTS. In a mullioned window, a pair of lights, one fixed and the other sliding horizontally.

From the Penguin Dictionary of Architecture, Third Edition.

This being the Internet and all, it's not to hard to find an example of even the most obscure things--so, from our lovely friends at the BBC, a nice site with all sorts of Yorkshirey stuff, including the type of window in question (scroll all the way to the bottom).

UPDATE! An interested commentor, known only as Skinnydan, and not to be confused with Steely Dan, requests further informativeness, thusly: OK, I'll ask. What the heck is a mullioned window, besides a place to hold Yorkshire Lights?

As always, the staff of Possumblog stand ready to grab the Penguin Dictionary of Architecture, Third Edition, from the stack of manuals and books to the left of the editor's keyboard (and underneath the small harmon/kardon speaker), flip to the appropriate entries, and dispense further hearty draughts from the keg of architectural knowledge.

MULLION. A vertical post or other upright dividing a window or other opening into two or more LIGHTS.

LIGHTS. Openings between the MULLIONS of a window.

AND TO COMPLEATLY EXHAUST THE TOPIC:

MUNTIN. The vertical part in the framing of a door, screen, panelling, etc., butting into, or stopped by, the horizontal rails. See figure 41. [Which you are unable to do, since I don't have a scanner, but figure 41. looks almost like this picture. Ed.] In the U.S.A. a glazing bar or MULLION.

You are all very welcome.

And yes, I realize in the illustration the muntin is horizontal and not vertical. In common usage, there really is not distinction anymore between the verticals and horizontals, and at least in the stuff I do, I just call them either horizontal mullions or vertical mullions.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at May 24, 2005 10:34 AM
Comments

OK, I'll ask. What the heck is a mullioned window, besides a place to hold Yorkshire Lights?

Posted by: skinnydan at May 24, 2005 11:10 AM

It's also the past past past tense of "mull," as when you mull something over in your mind, you would tell someone that you've mullioned it.

Not really.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 24, 2005 11:49 AM

Just as long as it isn't a mullet window.

Posted by: Sarah G. at May 24, 2005 01:02 PM

But when the Yorkshire Lights were touring in '85, mullets were big! (In more ways than one.)

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 24, 2005 01:07 PM

Ah, yes, more of the deconstructionist silliness where the horizontal and the vertical are interchangeable, where western norms of "up" "down" and "sides" are replaced by arbitrary concepts of "Fred-ness."

The only deconstruction that should take place in this arena should involve crowbars & sledgehammers. Preferably with extreme prejudice.

Posted by: skinnydan at May 24, 2005 01:08 PM

You say Fred-ness like it's a BAD thing or something. When Fred Sharpestone began the Yorkshire Lights (along with Ian Shamsley and Fred Lookinshalls) in the parlor of his small flat in Knottingley in 1974, he changed music as we know it, and "Western Norms" was the one song that did it.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 24, 2005 01:23 PM

No wonder I can never remember whether those are called mullion or muntins -- it's both. Even the window guys don't know. They just call them all grids. Which seems silly, since they aren't always in a grid pattern.

Posted by: Jordana at May 24, 2005 02:02 PM

Part of the confusion is that The Grids came out of Staffordshire in 1972.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 24, 2005 02:23 PM

Glad somebody's using his degree in Creative Ethnomusicology.

Posted by: skinnydan at May 24, 2005 02:28 PM

And they said I'd never be able to use it!

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 24, 2005 02:31 PM

Thanks very much for the added information. All I can say now is "HUH??"... :)

Sure looks like a circular definition to me.

Posted by: David at May 25, 2005 12:14 PM

And, oddly enough, "Circular Definition" was the Yorkshire Lights' third album, released in 1976!

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 25, 2005 12:27 PM