Placido Columbani was Italian architectural designer who worked chiefly in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in the latter part of the 18th century. He belonged to the school of the Adams and Pergolesi, and like them frequently designed the enrichments of furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...

. He was a prolific producer of chimney

Chimney

A chimney is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the...

-pieces, which are often mistaken for Adam work, of moulded frieze

Frieze

thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...

s, and painted plaques for cabinets and the like.

There can be no question that the English furniture designers of the end of the 18th century, and especially the Adams, Hepplewhite

George Hepplewhite

George Hepplewhite was a cabinetmaker. He is regarded as having been one of the "big three" English furniture makers of the 18th century, along with Thomas Sheraton and Thomas Chippendale...

 and Sheraton

Thomas Sheraton

Thomas Sheraton was a furniture designer, one of the "big three" English furniture makers of the 18th century, along with Thomas Chippendale and George Hepplewhite.-Biography:...

, owed much to his graceful, flowing and classical conceptions, although they are often inferior to those of Pergolesi

Michael Angelo Pergolesi

Michael Angelo Pergolesi was an Italian decorative artist from the 18th century who worked mainly in England.Biographical details are almost entirely lacking,foofofgofoon but like Cipriani he was brought, or attracted, to England by Robert Adam after his famous continental tour...

. His books are still a valuable store-house of sketches for internal architectural decoration.

Published works

His principal works are:

• Vases and Tripods (1770)
• A New Book of Ornaments, containing a variety of elegant designs for Modern Panels, commonly executed in Stucco
  Stucco
  Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
  
  , Wood or Painting, and used in decorating Principal Rooms
• A variety of Capitals, Friezes and Cornickes, and how to increase and decrease them, still retaining their proportions (1776)

He also assisted John Crunden

John Crunden

John Crunden was an English architectural and mobiliary designer.-Biography:Most of his early inspiration was drawn from Chippendale and his school, but he fell later under the influence of a bastard classicism...

in the production of The Chimneypiece Maker's Daily Assistant (1766).