AROUND HOME : Pillars and Columns

PILLARS provide grace and majesty as well as architectural support. They raise low ceilings, sustain dramatic arches and replace confining walls to provide spacious, integrated living areas. Pillars come in all sizes, shapes, materials and styles; echoing the style of pillars, low pedestals can be used as stands for plants or sculpture.

The most familiar are round or square classic wooden “plantation” pillars sold by Designer Resource and Raymond E. Enkeboll--plain, paneled, twisted, garlanded or fluted, with decorative bases and capitals. Classics are also made of look-alike aluminum.

Classic columns of Italian limestone are often hand-carved with opulent flowers and figures. Sculpture Design Imports connects eight of them with curved benches beneath a stained-glass dome, and also sells plinth-based end posts topped with hand-cut urns and flower baskets. La France Imports offers square pillars in rough-hewn or granite-polished, veined French limestone.

Designer Resource uses hand-cast concrete for hollow, molded columns. Concrete Inc. uses it for stylized and portrait-head pedestals. Beluchi Marble makes plain and fancy classic and contemporary columns of onyx, marble, travertine and granite--quarried in Afghanistan and carved in Italy--to support everything from ceilings to sinks.

International Terra Cotta uses natural, waxed and marble-glazed Italian terra cotta for classic and rococo columns and obelisks. Simple and lavishly decorated plaster columns, some with cherubs, are sold by Florentine Art Studios; square and round lucite columns are made by Plastic Mart.

Many of these companies also sell half-columns and big, ornamental capitals to support glass table tops. Some of Raphael Studios’ wooden pedestals are gold-leafed, others inlaid with Oriental mirror-chips. Its handmade stone figurine-pedestals depict lions, rams, eagles, griffins, Sphinxes, even the Statue of Liberty.

Pillars, columns and pedestals are sold by Designer Resource, Raphael Studios, Sculpture Design Imports, Beluchi Marble and International Terra Cotta in Los Angeles; Raymond E. Enkeboll in Carson; La France Imports in West Los Angeles and Costa Mesa; Concrete Inc. in Palm Desert; Florentine Art Studios in El Monte, and Plastic Mart in Santa Monica.

A 30-inch clear - glass fluted Greek column is available through mail order from Charles Keath; telephone (800) 241-1122.