Balustrading is a term used to describe a series of balusters. A baluster is a moulded or lathe-turned shaft or square boxed post made from wood, stone or metal. It stands upon a unifying footing and is used to support the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. A series of such arrangements are correctly referred to as a balustrade, however commonly the term Balustrading is incorrectly used.

In 1911 the encyclopaedia Britannic documented that the earliest examples were from the Assyrian palaces. Such early examples found uses as window balustrades and had Ionic capitals. Surprisingly this architectural use of the balustrade was unknown to both the Greek and Roman civilisations, instead they were commonly found as the legs of furniture such as tables and chairs.

Their use in architecture was common place in the early Renaissance, example were found on balconies in Verona and Venice in the late fifteenth century. It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that balustrades became well known and used frequently. It was around this time that a distinction was made between the two main types of balustrades, the first been symmetrical in profile that inverted one bulbous vase shape to another but separating them with a cushion like torus, while the other just a simple vase shape, thus distinctions in Balustrading were required.