Solomonic column

If these columns really were from one of the Temples in Jerusalem, the spiral pattern may have represented the oak tree which was the first Ark of the Covenant, mentioned in Joshua 24:26.

Such variety adding life to an arcade is combined with Cosmatesque spiralling inlays in the cloister of St. John Lateran.

The twisted S-curve shaft gives energy and dynamism to the traditional column form which fits these qualities that are characteristically Baroque.

Sculpted vines were sometimes carved into the spiralling cavetto of the twisting columns, or made of metal, such as gilt bronze.

In the 16th century Raphael depicted these columns in his tapestry cartoon The Healing of the Lame at the Beautiful Gate, and Anthony Blunt noticed them in Bagnocavallo's Circumcision at the Louvre and in some Roman altars, such as one in Santo Spirito in Sassia, but their full-scale use in actual architecture was rare: Giulio Romano employed a version as half-columns decoratively[4] superimposed against a wall in the Cortile della Cavallerizza of the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (1538-39).

The design was most infrequently used in Britain, the south porch of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, being the only exterior example found by Robert Durman,[3] and was still rare in English interior design, an example noted by Durman is the funerary monument for Helena, Lady Gorges (died 1635) at Salisbury perhaps the sole use.

After 1660, such twist-turned columns became a familiar feature in the legs of French, Dutch and English furniture, and on the glazed doors that protected the dials of late 17th- and early 18th-century bracket and longcase clocks.

English collectors and dealers sometimes call these twist-turned members "barley sugar twists" after the type of sweet traditionally sold in this shape.