The tracery in windows is usually divided into two sections, plate tracery and rib or bar tracery, the latter rising out of the former, and entirely superseding it in the geometrical, flowing and rectilineal designs.
Among the most glorious features in the Gothic architecture of France, England and Spain are the immense rose windows which were introduced, generally speaking, in the transepts of the cathedrals; the tracery of these follows on the lines of those of the windows, changing from geometrical to Decorated and afterwards to flamboyant.
The tracery decorating the vault of Gothic work began on the introduction of the fan vault at Gloucester (see Vault); it was only a surface decoration, both rib and web being cut out of the same block of stone, and it received further development in the various phases which followed.
Tracery came gradually to be used also for ornamenting buttresses, gables, spires, interior walls, and choir screens.
The French developed that type into the elaborate, flamboyant tracery of the 15th cent., which produced windows and architectural adornment of amazing lightness and intricacy, as in the cathedral at Rouen and in the wood choir stalls of Amiens.
the severe tracery of the Perpendicular style, with its closely spaced verticals, was dominant in both windows and wall adornment, providing a contrast to the elaborate fan vaulting, as in the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster and King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
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