In interiors, the frieze of a room is the section of wall above the picture rail and under the crown moldings or cornice. By extension, a frieze is a long stretch of painted, sculpted or even calligraphic decoration in such a position, normally above eye-level. Frieze decorations may depict scenes in a sequence of discrete panels. The material of which the frieze is made may be plasterwork, carved wood or other decorative medium.[3]
More loosely, "frieze" is sometimes used for any continuous horizontal strip of decoration on a wall, containing figurative or ornamental motifs. In an example of an architectural frieze on the façade of a building, the octagonal Tower of the Winds in the Roman agora at Athens bears relief sculptures of the eight winds on its frieze.
A pulvinated frieze (or pulvino) is convex in section. Such friezes were typical of 17th-century Northern Mannerism, especially in subsidiary friezes, and much employed in interior architecture and in furniture.
