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The term was suggested by Robert Willis, 1835, as belonging to ‘our own language’ and able to ‘express without circumlocution’ that the ‘shafts are placed in the nook or internal angle formed by the side and face of the two contiguous arches of a compound archway’. The rib they support is ‘not united to the contiguous wall; but, like its shaft, is nestled into the re-entering angle formed by the side and face of the neighbouring arches.’ (pages 36-7). They are, for Willis, characteristic of Italy.
He illustrates a single nook shaft from Sant’ Ambrogio in Milan:
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]