The scroll in art is an element of ornament and graphic design featuring spirals and rolling incomplete circle motifs, some of which resemble the edge-on view of a book or document in scroll form, though many types are plant-scrolls, which loosely represent plant forms such as vines, with leaves or flowers attached. Scrollwork is a term for some forms of decoration dominated by spiralling scrolls, today used in popular language for two-dimensional decorative flourishes and arabesques of all kinds, especially those with circular or spiralling shapes.
Band of running scroll decoration on the 12th-century Indian Hoysaleswara Temple
Chinese plate, Jingdezhen, 1271–1368, with three zones of scrolls with flowers
Austrian inhabited scroll frieze, 1890s
The "Tellus Panel" from the Ara Pacis, Rome, c. 27 AD. A spreading scrollwork panel below, scrolling forms coming off a straight stem in the side panels, and a border band of meanders below the figures.
In architecture and decorative art, ornament is decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornaments do not include human figures, and if present they are small compared to the overall scale. Architectural ornament can be carved from stone, wood or precious metals, formed with plaster or clay, or painted or impressed onto a surface as applied ornament; in other applied arts the main material of the object, or a different one such as paint or vitreous enamel may be used.
Rococo interior of the Wilhering Abbey (Wilhering, Austria), with a trompe-l'œil painted ceiling, surrounded by highly decorated stucco
Chinese flask decorated with a dragon, clouds and some waves, an example of Jingdezhen porcelain
Khmer lintel in Preah Ko, (east of Angkor, Cambodia) style, late 9th century, reminiscent of later European scrollwork styles
18th-century Rococo balcony, Bavaria. The form is itself ornamental, and further decorated in painted plasterwork