fret, in decorative art and architecture, any one of several types of running or repeated ornament, consisting of lengths of straight lines or narrow bands, usually connected and at right angles to each other in T, L, or square-cornered G shapes, so arranged that the spaces between the lines or bands are approximately equal to the width of the bands. Occasionally the system is arranged so that the lines intersect or interlace, as in the common swastika fret. Because the fret is one of the simplest and most natural of decorative forms, it is one of the most widely spread, found from early times in most art forms and on all continents. Thus, it was a favourite decoration, during and after the 4th dynasty, for the ceilings of tombs in Egypt, where in later examples it was combined with rosettes, scarabs, and the lotus into patterns of great richness.
In America the design has been found in early Peruvian textiles, on extant sculpture and architecture of the Mayan and Aztec cultures in Mesoamerica, and as a universal pottery decoration among American Indians. Highly developed by both the Chinese and the Japanese for textiles as well as for architectural ornament, the fret occurs not only as a band but also as a complicated allover pattern, sometimes with acute and obtuse angles instead of the more usual right angles. Its most important development, however, came at the hands of the Greeks (hence the common name Greek fret or Greek key), who used it for pottery and for painted decoration of architectural members, such as the abaci of capitals, where it was later carved.
Like so many Greek motifs, the fret was widely used by the Romans, particularly in Syria (e.g., the propylaea at Damascus and the great temple at Baalbek), and it occurs in Byzantine and Romanesque work.
Fretwork, either painted or carved, is the most often used of any small-scale repeated ornament in which geometrical forms occur.