Guilloché

Guilloché (French: [ɡijɔʃe]), or guilloche (/ɡɪˈloʊʃ/), is a decorative technique in which a very precise, intricate and repetitive pattern is mechanically engraved into an underlying material via engine turning, which uses a machine of the same name.

[2] The term guilloche is also used more generally for repetitive architectural patterns of intersecting or overlapping spirals or other shapes, as used in the Ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome and neo-classical architecture, and Early Medieval interlace decoration in Anglo-Saxon art and elsewhere.

Medieval Cosmatesque stone inlay designs with two ribbons winding around a series of regular central points are very often called guilloche.

Individuals continue the craft of making these elegant machines, but in limited quantities.

[15] In consequence of the nature of the design, which is usually a series of lines that are, or look very much like they are interwoven into one another, any design engraved on metal, printed, or otherwise erected on surfaces such as wood or stone, that go in a similar style of constant wriggling that interlock – or look like they are interlocking – with one another, is referred to as guilloché.