Dictionary

polescreen en · NOUN

Etymology

From pole + screen.

Meanings

1. (historical) A screen mounted on a pole.
   • The engravings, by J.-M. Delattre, were framed to make an attractive pair of Neoclassical shield-shaped pole-screens (sold by Sotheby's 18 May 1990, lot 202) around 1785. 1992, Malise Forbes Adam, Mary Mauchline, edited by Wendy Wassyng Roworth, Angelica Kauffman, Reaktion Books, published 1992, page 130:
   • The most prized of the furnishings perhaps is the polescreen in the front parlor, whose needlepoint is dated the second half of the seventeenth century . 1949, The Antiquarian, page 8:
   • His eyes rested absently on an embroidered polescreen, as if his mind had passed on to quite different matters. 2013, Tim Jeal, A Marriage of Convenience:
2. A style of firescreen consisting of sliding panels mounted on upright poles.
   • The eighteenth-century designer Thomas Sheraton once qualified the purpose of a polescreen or firescreen as " a piece of furniture to shelter the face or legs from the fire . " 1995, Joan Barzilay Freund, Masterpieces of Americana, page 33:
   • The polescreen, with a sliding screen on a turned upright pole, four to five feet tall, supported on a tripod base, was also known as a screenstick in the late 17th century. 1997, Joanna Banham, Encyclopedia of Interior Design:

Forms