polescreen

plural polescreens · alternative pole-screen

1. historicalA screen mounted on a pole.First known use 18th c.

   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 more examples

   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

   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

2. A style of firescreen consisting of sliding panels mounted on upright poles.

   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

   1 more example

   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