Tracery, in architecture, originally was the framework of light ornamental stone bars dividing a large window into smaller areas so that the stained glass could be easily placed and supported. Usually tracery took the form of tall, narrow, arched divisions below, with circles, cusps, and other shapes filling the upper part of the window. Later, these shapes were used to decorate wall panels, buttresses, vaulting, and furniture.
Builders first used tracery in the late 1100’s, when church windows grew too large to be glazed in one unbroken area. Tracery developed rapidly in delicacy and became a marked feature of nearly all Gothic architecture.
The earliest tracery was called plate tracery, because the upper circles were pierced through a plate of stone in the upper part of the main window arch. Geometric tracery, a complete pattern of thin stone bars, later replaced this pierced “plate.” In it, all the openings between the bars are simple geometric forms. Still later, flowing and flamboyant tracery was used, so called because of its flowing and swaying flamelike shapes. In the late 1300’s and the 1400’s in England, perpendicular tracery was the rule. In it, the vertical bars between the lower openings are carried up the whole height of the window, making small vertical panels.
