Openwork

Openwork basket, English Bow porcelain, c. 1754–1755

Ancient Roman gold bracelet from the Hoxne Hoard. JULIANE is spelled out in opus interrasile openwork.

Intricate jalis from the Sidi Saiyyed mosque in Ahmedabad, India. From the inside

In art history, architecture, and related fields, openwork or open-work is any decorative technique that creates holes, piercings, or gaps through a solid material such as metal, wood, stone, pottery, cloth, leather, or ivory. Such techniques have been very widely used in a great number of cultures.

The term is rather flexible, and used both for additive techniques that build up the design, as for example most large features in architecture, and those that take a plain material and make cuts or holes in it. Equally techniques such as casting using moulds create the whole design in a single stage, and are common in openwork. Though much openwork relies for its effect on the viewer seeing right through the object, some pieces place a different material behind the openwork as a background.