Spiral turning is a form of decorative woodturning in which a leg, column or upright is shaped into a continuous twisting helix, rather like a stick of rope or a barley-sugar sweet. It may take the form of a single solid twist or of a more demanding open twist, where two or more separate strands spiral around an empty centre.
The technique reached England from the Continent in the mid seventeenth century and became a defining feature of Charles II and William and Mary furniture, appearing on the legs of tables, stands and stools, the uprights of chairs and the stretchers of cabinets. Because a lathe alone cannot produce a true spiral, early examples were marked out and finished by hand with rasps, chisels and files. The style was revived enthusiastically in the Victorian period and again in the 1920s and 1930s, when oak gateleg tables and chairs with barley-twist legs were made in great numbers by machine. Period pieces usually show slightly uneven, hand-cut twists and softened edges from long use, while reproductions tend to be crisply regular. Both have a place in traditional interiors.
