Newel Post Old Paint patina over teak wood 110x13x13cm. This antique Newel Post was salvaged from an old British Residency in Calcutta India. It is turned from teak wood and has traces of its original paint patina.It is solid and load bearing. Use it decoratively or functionally. Newel, also called Newel-post, upright post rising at the foot of a stairway at its landings, or at its top. These posts usually serve as anchors for handrails. Often the stringboards, which cover and connect the ends of the steps, are framed into the newels. Made of the same substance as the stairway itself—wood, stone, or metal—the newel may be simple and functional, as in most contemporary examples, or highly ornamental, as in the Elizabethan or Jacobean styles. Originally, a newel was the central post of a winding or circular stairway. If such a stairway has no central post, it is said to be of hollow-newel construction.
