mullion

mullion, in architecture, a slender vertical division between adjacent lights or subdivisions in a window or between windows in a group. Mullions appear with the invention of tracery and are particularly characteristic of Gothic architecture and early Renaissance architecture in northern and western Europe.

In traceried windows, mullions are chamfered or beveled on the edges and sometimes decorated in addition with a colonnette. In late Gothic work, more elaborate moldings are common. In the rectangular window groups common in late Gothic and early Renaissance secular work, the face of the mullion is usually set back from the face of the wall so that one molding or series of moldings runs unbroken around the entire group.

The mullion itself is usually molded or chamferred, and this molding or chamfer is continued around the top and sides of each light. In windows whose tracery subdivides the whole into more than three lights, mullions may be of different sections, with certain mullions increased in size, or may carry an additonal molding. The entire group is systematized into subdivisions of two or three lights each, the larger mullions enclosing each subdivision.