'%$ "j^am^?^' ^^S!5? THE BOOK OF )EGORATIVE FURNITURE mi^ ^Mi ^ i ^ i iSM ^ i^ ' ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY New York State Colleges OF Agriculture and Home Economics AT Cornell University Cornell University Library NK 2270.F6 " The book of decorative furniture, its for 3 1924 014 063 808 <€^ x^^^ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014063808 THE BOOK OF DECORATIVE FURNITURE !=> O Q a < W m o ^ X f^ w H THE BOOK OF DECORATIVE FURNITURE ITS FORM, COLOUR, & HISTORY BY EDWIN FOLEY FELLOW OF THE INSTITUTE OF DESIGNERS Author of "Some Old Woodwork," "Our Household Gods: their Design and Designers,'' &c. &c. With One Hundred Reproductions in Full-Colour Facsimile of Drawings by the Author, and One Thousand Text Illustrations ; Correlated Charts of British Woodwork Styles and Contemporaries ; Decorative Furnishing Accessories ; Principal Trees ; &c. &c. IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME L NEW YORK P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1911 PREFACE A SURVEY of the world's beautiful woodwork is before us. My first desire is, as artist, to express gratitude to owners, in this country and abroad, for their assent to the illustration of their choicest heirlooms ; and, as author, to add thanks for infor- mation — often from family chronicles and necessitating* considerable research — relative to these examples, which has materially increased the interest of the colour plates. Quite one of the most delightful features in the preparation of The Book of Decorative Furniture has been the opportunity of meeting conservators of old work, and of gauging the wealth of fine furniture remaining in this country. Though it should be superfluous, one must not omit to point out that the consent of owners to the publication of examples from their private collections is an act of courtesy to the public, and does not indicate that the collection is open to public inspection. In expressing obligations, home and foreign state authorities are included. Without the exceptional facilities accorded, certain important and previously little-known specimens must have been omitted. Whilst, with diffidence, • deliberately dissenting at times from a few accepted conclusions, I have been greatly helped by some of the works — old and new — upon various aspects of decorative woodwork history. I trust my obligations have been fully acknowledged in the classified Biblio- graphy forming part of this publication ; but when one has been studying a subject for a considerable time, it is obviously impossible to trace the possible source of every detail or idea. If, therefore, every ii DECORATIVE FURNITURE such source is not included, this general acknowledgment will, I hope, be accepted in lieu thereof. The term Furniture, originally implying a store or supply of any- thing (as is obvious if its origin is the old High German Frummen, to accomplish) is here employed in its more restricted popular sense to signify movable articles, almost invariably of wood, used in the home for personal rest, work, and pleasure, or for the storing of house- hold requisites and ornaments. In many cases, however, for the better presentation of a style, I have not scrupled to include typical examples of fixed woodwork, such as panellings and chimney-pieces among the illustrations. Chronological sequence has been adhered to in the arrangement of the plates and matter ; with the obvious exceptions of the chapters on the evolution and history of particular pieces or phases in furniture history, which, since they cover many periods, are equally in or out of order wherever inserted. Catholicity of taste has been aimed at in the selection of the examples for the colour plates ; with an equal breadth of outlook and sympathy of interpretation even when treating of periods towards which one suspects oneself temperamentally antagonistic. An endeavour has been made to show each example with con- temporary accessories and environment. When of equal beauty, preference has been given to less -known specimens, or those not previously illustrated in colour ; though this has involved the elimina- tion of deservedly favourite pieces, the result, it is believed, has been to add to the value and interest. Loving labour has been expended upon the colour illustrations, in the hope of achieving the happy mean between an insistence upon detail, so exacting as to destroy the real appearance of the example, and an impressionist sketch expressing details so vaguely as to be void of informative value. I have been led to compile the charts of styles and accessories PREFACE 111 owing largely to the great difficulty experienced in obtaining promptly the information these charts embody. So far as I am aware, no attempt has been made hitherto to present such a mass of informa- tion upon decorative woodwork styles in systematised form, and, though the artistic temperament is usually in sympathy with the Chelsea Sage's ironic statement that "scarcely a fragment of man's body, soul, and possessions but has been probed and distilled," the value of this scaffolding of historic facts will, I venture to believe, be immediately recognised. Traditions cluster round old woodwork, as round old buildings ; but, granting that "the Golden Guess is Morning Star to the full round of Truth," its value to the would-be stater of facts is problem- atical. Romance and fact have their jocular habit of personating each other. To hold the balance between the lover of romance and the scientific appraiser of certainties is a task seldom performed to satisfaction ; for to exclude everything unattested by affidavit of actual eye-witnesses were as faulty as to include every "fairy tale" or local legend, such as that attached to the seventeenth-century chair preserved in Lutterworth Church, Leicestershire, in which Wyclif is actually stated to have died —in 1384 ! Neither can one imitate to advantage the frank dogmatism of the inscription upon another old chair, that ascribed to William Penn (the founder of Pennsylvania), and treasured by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I know not where, I know not when, But in this chair sat William Penn. Whilst one cannot vouch the truth of every piece of alleged history, only such have been included as appear to the author's non-legal mind to present a strong prima facie case ; the crucible of probability has, it is hoped, served us well. Study of a subject so many -faceted as that of Decorative iv DECORATIVE FURNITURE Furniture should at least yield knowledge of ignorance upon that subject ; no claim is therefore made to having explored every cranny or examined every flower in the prolific field. One realises also that words are too usually but the froth of thought, justified only by the hope of recondensation in the reader's mind into the essential mental elixir : a concluding aphorism to assist the continuance of Sir Joshua Reynolds' dislike of " talking artists." EDWIN FOLEY "No furniture so charming as Books," says Sydney Smith: if this Book but approach, in beauty and interest, the Furniture illustrated, it will have amply justified the aims of its projectors. THE VISTA THERE are two ways of knowing a piece of furniture. One, utilitarian, prosaic, superficial, and withal dreary, as a mere detail, tool, or item of existence — a table at which to eat, a chair to sit upon, "only this and nothing more." The other way is to know it as a whole, not only its purpose, but its evolution, history, and romance ; the origin of this piece of ornament, the reason of that previously unconsidered shape, its beauties as well as its defects. The latter is the vitalising, interesting method, and my aim and hope will be to infuse its spirit into our book of furniture modes ; by its aid we see that the furniture of bygone days often significantly mirrors the political, social, and ethical ideas of its time. There are pieces of furniture so fine as to convey a sense of almost human personality. Some remind one of Haydn's simple melodies, some of the bravuras of the old Italian school, whilst the austere formal beauty of fugues or church music, seems to emanate from others. How often in a room does one feel that some fine piece of old work stands solitary and disdainful of its modern companions ; or, if the odds be with the old nobility of woodwork, that a coalition has been formed by them, to overawe an incongruous novelty of present- day woodwork thrust among them. vi DECORATIVE FURNITURE Every change in the forms of woodwork, from the crude stool of the semi-barbarian to the stately throne of a Lorenzo il Magnifico, from the rough dug-out trunk to the Boule Goffret de Manage, has been dictated by some requirement of use or beauty. Furniture, then, has its story for us. If we will but learn its language, and care to decipher its message, we may at least catch somewhat of the spirit which inspired Balzac when he gaily decorated the walls of his garret with charcoal inscriptions, "Rose- wood panelling and Commode " here, " Gobelins Tapestry and Venetian Mirror" there, and a "Picture by Raffaelle" in the place of honour over the fireless grate ! The story of the genesis and development of Decorative Furniture will be unfolded with sufficient fulness, aided by the diagram of British Woodwork Styles, the auxiliary chart of Accessories and Decoration, and the time-table of Architectural Periods, to make evident that, though decorative styles arise and sink like bubbles on the waters, each has its characteristic note and leaves some legacy to progress. The significance of the art relations between races, their cross-fertilisations, attractions, and repulsions will also be suggested, and an attempt be made to trace the manner in which national temperaments have expressed themselves in form and colour, so that in their furniture the Italians have usually been architectural and refined, the Spaniards grandiose, the French picturesque and colour - loving, the Dutch cumbrous and stolid, and the English, homely, useful, and varied; whilst the rugged virility of the German, until tamed by professor and drill sergeant, has been as noticeable as the manner in which the stereotyped habit of thought induced by the ancestor- worship of the Celestial, has stamped itself on his household appointments. The Book of Decoratwe Furniture aims in particular at depicting the essential characteristics of: — 1. British Domestic Woodwork, from the period of the introduc- tion of the printing-press into England and the building up of the THE VISTA vii English home-life, to the commencement of the nineteenth century. It embraces, therefore, the woodwork eras of Oak, Walnut, and Mahogany, the late Gothic, Tudor, Stuart, Queen Anne, William and Mary, and Georgian periods, giving due prominence to the pro- ductions of the great eighteenth-century designers, Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and their contemporaries. Many of the examples are chosen from collections of colonial furniture in America. 2. French Woodwork, of the same period, with special preference to the masterpieces of the famous ehenistes and ciseleurs, who produced the sumptuous m.odes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 3. Italian, Flemish, German, Spanish, and Oriental Interior Woodwork. CONTENTS PEEFACE ... . . THE VISTA CHART OF BEITISH WOODWORK STYLES WITH FRENCH AND OTHER CONTINENTAL CORRELA- TIONS. DECORATIVE FURNITURE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1475 Prehistoric .... Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria . Egyptian Decorative Woodwork Babylonian and Assyrian Furniture Assyrian Tables and Couches . Hebrew Woodworkers Grecian Art in Woodwork Etruscan and Roman Furniture Byzantine and Romanesque Asiatic Arts .... DECORATIVE FURNITURE IN BRITAIN PRIOR TO 1475 Roman .... Saxon and Norman . Saxon Homes and Furniture The Gothic Styles . Our Colour-Loving Ancestors Close op the Middle Ages A TIME-TABLE OF ARCHITECTURAL STYLES THE LATE GOTHIC PERIOD IN BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNI- TURE, 1475-1509 Politics affecting Furniture Mediaeval and Tudor Woodworkers The Guild of Tapisers Church Influence upon Decorative Furniture .... Old Manuscript Illustrations . The Gothic Woodworker's Kit. Linenpold and Pahchemin Patterns page page i The Tudor Rose 49 "Romayne" Work and Gothic . 49 v The Mediaeval Hall . 50 Trestle Tables .... 51 The Table Dormant . 52 Cupboards, Credences, and Almeries 52 Chairs, Stools, and Benches 59 Chests and Coppers . 60 Woods ..... 61 1 Late Gothic — Conclusion . 61 1 5 5 8 9 10 14 16 21 24 25 25 26 29 34 37 37 41 42 42 43 43 44 47 48 48 THE TUDOR-RENAISSANCE PERIOD IN BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE, 1509-1603 The Renaissance in England Henry the Eighth and the Renaissance . Italian Designers in England Elizabethan " Architects " The Renaissance Screen and Choir Stalls at Cambridge Nonesuch Chests Edward the Sixth and Mary A Tudor Inventory . Elizabeth .... Foreign Influence on Elizabethan Woodwork . Panelling and Tapestry . The Tapiser and Upholder Internal Porches Tudor-Renaissance Details Romayne Work Elizabethan Grotesques . Inlaid Work . Tudor Jokers in Wood Old English Woodwork of the Oak Period .... Coffers and Cupboards Flanders Chests The Hustilement op the Great Hall Tudor Bedsteads Tudor Chairs . " Riving " . 63 64 65 65 66 66 69 70 71 71 73 77 78 79 80 81 81 82 82 86 89 93 97 100 102 105 X CONTENTS The Tudor Renaissance, etc. — continued Wainscoting .... Methods op Tudor Craftsmen . Polishing .... The Metal Worker . Woods and Forests . Tudor Houses .... CONTINENTAL CONTEMPORAEIES OF THE LATE GOTHIC AND TUDOE PERIODS. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY TO 1603 The Passing of the Gothic The Cinquecento in Decorative Wood work Florence the Font The Rival Cities The City op Pearl and Gold Fireplaces Seigneurial Seats Renaissance Tables Cabinets Cassoni Frames PAGE 106 107 107 107 108 109 Bellows The Stimulus of the Renaissance THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE TO 1589 Charles the Eighth . Francis the First The Loire ChIteaux Benvenuto Cellini . Henri Deux . . _ Schools of Decorative Furniture Early French Decorative Furniture huches and huohiers The Chair The Sellette, or Escabeau Bedsteads . Fireplaces Tables .... Woods .... Painting and Gilding THE RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL TO 1603 Moorish Influence . The Hapsburgs Plateresque Renaissance Chests Beds Vargueno Cabinets . 113 115 116 118 121 121 122 123 123 124 124 125 126 126 129 137 138 139 139 140 141 142 145 146 147 148 149 149 150 150 153 157 157 161 162 163 163 164 page Chairs .... 164 Imperial Toledo 165 PlETRO TORRIGIANO 166 Guadameciles . 166 Philip the Second . 169 THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY TO 1603 171 In Burgundy 171 The Netherlands 172 In Germany 174 Albert Durer . 174 Hans Holbein . 177 German Books of Design . 178 CHAPTER ON THE CHAIR 183 The Budstick . 184 Seats Oriental 184 Herbert Spencer on Chair-Comfort . 185 A FAMILY TREE FOR THE TREEN FAMILY. THE STUART PERIOD OF BRITISH DECORATIVE WOODWORK 1603-1688 .... 191 Stuart Furniture Divisions 192 The Stuarts .... 193 James the First 194 Iniqo Jones 195 Charles the First . 196 Commonwealth .... 197 "The Merry Monarch" . 198 Indo-Portuguese Furniture 201 Grinling Gibbon 202 Evelyn and Grinling Gibbon . 202 Sir Christopher Wren 204 Great Fire op London 204 Silver Furniture 205 James ii. . 206 The French Immigration . 207 The Barocco Influence on Englisb Chair Work 207 Woods ..... 207 Age op Walnut 208 Stuart Upholstery . 211 Allwood Chairs 212 Day-Beds ..... 215 Settles and Couches 216 Love Seats . . . - . 216 Stools and Tabourets 216 Beds ..... 217 Fireplaces .... 218 Stuart Tables .... 221 CONTENTS XI IN The Stuart Pebiod, etc. — continued "Gate-Leg" Tables . " Thousand-Legged " Tables Tea and Coffee Tables Cupboards Dressers .... Chests .... Stuart Decorative Details Inlaying .... "Otstering" "The Indian Taste" THE LATER RENAISSANCE FRANCE, 1589-1643 . Henri iv. and Louis xiii. . The Bed . . . . . Upholstery . . . . FIRST CHAPTER ON COLONIAL FURNITURE IN AMERICA, 1607-1783 Some Relevant Dates in Colonial Furniture History The Early English Settlements in Virginia and New England . Early Southern Settlements The "Mayflower" and New Eng- land ...... Maryland. ..... Pennsylvania ..... Houses in Early New England French and Spanish Settlements The Dutch Settlements upon the Hudson — New Amsterdam (1613- 1664), New York (1664^1776) The West India Company Captain Kidd . Chests .... Old English Court Cupboards Settles and Benches Seats .... Chairs .... LATE AND ZOPF RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY FROM 1603 . SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE DE- CORATIVE FURNITURE FROM 1603 ITALIAN DECORATIVE FURNITURE FROM 1603 .... DECORATIVE FURNITURE OF THE NETHERLANDS — HOLLAND AND FLANDERS, FROM 1603 . page 222 222 223 224 226 226 228 235 236 236 239 241 247 247 253 254 255 256 256 257 257 258 258 259 260 264 265 266 269 270 271 277 285 289 295 page Lac. Oriental and European . . 297 Crispin van den Passe . . .299 THE LOUIS XIV. PERIOD OF FRENCH DECORATIVE FURNITURE 1643- 1715 305 Versailles . . . . .306 The Royal Workshops . . .308 Bernini . . . . . .311 Colbert . . . . . .311 Le Bbun . . . . . .311 The le Pautres and Bkrain . .312 Elements op the Style . . 312 La Chinoiserih . . . .313 BOULLE ...... 314 „ Le Pere . . . .314 Ebony and Toetoiseshell . . .315 BouLLE Furniture Prices . . .317 Wood Inlays ..... 318 Beds 319 Louis xiv.'s State Bedroom . . 320 Audiences in Bed . . . .320 Other Fcjrniture . . . .323 Torcheres . . . . .324 Mirrors 325 The Galerie des Glaces . . .325 Le Roi Soleil ..... 326 The Style . .' . . .327 The Jones and Wallace Collections 328 BRITISH HOMES OF OTHER DAYS . 333 The House, the Hall, and the Hearth 333 The Norman Keep . . 334 "The Marsh" 335 Mobile Household Gods . . .336 The Wars op the Roses . . .337 The Elizabethan Manor House . 337 The Great Hall . . . .338 The Hearth ..... 339 The "Ingleneuk" . . . .341 The Curfew ..... 342 Coal versus Wood . . . .343 Hearth Tax 344 The English Dining-Room. . . 344 FINDS, FRAUDS, FACTS, AND FANCIES IN OLD FURNITURE : A CHAPTER ON COLLECTING . 349 The Collecting Proclivity . . 350 Collecting by Deputy . . .350 Collecting Personally . . .351 The "Knock Out" . . . .352 A Collector's Home . . . .352 Patina ...... 353 Xll CONTENTS PAGE PAGE Finds, Frauds, Facts, etc. — continued Lacquer .... . 411 Eestoring ..... 354 Chairs .... 414 Circular Saws in 1710 ! . 354 William and Anne Settees 417 Wooden Anachronisms 357 LT^pholstery — Dat-Beds 417 Finds ..... 357 Draught Chair 418 Secret Drawers 359 The Sofa .... 418 Frauds ..... 361 Chests op Drawers . 421 Enhancing the Value 361 Cabinets .... 423 Carving Up . . . 361 Corner Cupboards . 423 Inlaying and Veneering . 362 Beds .... 423 Imitating Adam, Hepplewhite, and Mirrors . 424 Sheraton .... 362 Tables .... 424 Painting ..... 362 High-Case Clocks 425 PsEUDo Pedigree 362 Summary .... 426 Wiles op the "Faker" . 363 The Worm-Eater 364 MODES OF ORNAMENT IN DECOR- Imitating Old Carved Oak 365 ATIVE FURNITURE . 387 Tools of the Old Craftsmen . 365 Relief and Flat Ornament 388 Some Notable Sale Prices 366 Relief Ornament Flat Ornament 388 389 THE WILLIAM AND ANNE PERIOL Carving .... 390 IN BEITISH DECORATIVE Reproductions by Mechanical Pro FURNITURE, 1688-1727 . 371 cesses of Carving and Modelling 392 Dutch Dominance in Design 373 Constructional Forms 392 Grinling Gibbon 375 Turnings, Mouldings, and otheb Sir Christopher Wren 376 Softenings op Constructional Craftsmen 380 Form .... 393 Woods ..... 381 Inlaying . 393 Inlaying or Marqueterie . 382 The Acanthus . 397 Characteristic Details 403 Veneering 398 The Cabriole .... 406 Inlaying in other Materials 398 Turnings .... 407 Certosina 401 Mouldings .... 408 Painting .... 401 Panelling .... 408 Lacquer .... 402 Wall Decorations . 411 Combined Relief and Flat Pro CESSES 403 Handles ..... 411 POKERWORK 403 LIST OF PLATES "'-^■'^ PAGE I. CHARACTERISTIC COLOURINGS AND GRAIN MARKINGS OF PRIN- CIPAL CONSTRUCTIONAL AND DECORATIVE WOODS USED IN EARLY TIMES ........ 3 II. FOURTEENTH-CENTURY BUTTRESSED COFFER . . . .11 III. MARRIAGE COFFER OR CASSONE. ITALIAN . . . .19 IV. LATE GOTHIC SCHRANK. GERMAN 27 V. OAK DOUBLE HUTCH . . . . . . .31 VI. CARVED OAK DRESSOIR— LOUIS XII. ..... 35 VII. INLAID MUNIMENT CHEST ....... 45 VIII. THE "KING'S ROOM," OXBURGH HALL ..... 53 IX. OAK PRESS, STRANGERS' HALL, NORWICH .... 57 X. THE PANELLED STUDY AT GROOMBRIDGE PLACE . . .67 XL THE LITTLECOTE BEDSTEAD ...... 75 XII. CARVED AND INLAID OAK COURT CUPBOARD . . . .83 XIIL INLAID NONESUCH CHEST ....... 95 CARVED "DRAWINGE" TABLE, SHIBDEN HALL . . . .95 CARVED CHIMNEYPIECE AT CHIDDENSTONE .... 95 EARLIEST ENGLISH WALL-PAPER, AT BORDEN HALL ... 95 XIV. OAK TRESTLE TABLE . . . . . . .103 "MINE HOSTS" CHAIR ....... 103 XV. UPHOLSTERED CHAIR AND COUCH WITH ADJUSTABLE ENDS . Ill XVI. CARVED OAK ARMOIRJE:, BEARING THE CIPHER OF LAMBERT SUAVIUS OF UtGK CARVED OAK TABLE . . . .119 XVII. PETITE CREDENCE, FRANQOIS I. . . . . • .127 xiii XIV LIST OF PLATES PAGE 131 131 143 151 PLATE XVIII. HENRI DEUX CARVED BAHUT ..•••• OAK SCREEN OF THE SAME FRENCH PERIOD . • • • XIX. CARVED BOURGOUIGNON CREDENCE . • • • • XX. OAK CABINET, WITH CIRCULAR CONVEX PANELS, INCISED ARABESQUE ORNAMENT ..•••• WALNUT CHAIR, WITH INTERLACED ORNAMENT . • .151 XXI. VARGUESO CABINET OF CHESTNUT, IVORY, ETC., PAINTED AND GILT WITH WROUGHT -IRON AND STEEL MOUNTS: UPON TWISTED, TURNED, AND CARVED STAND . . • .159 XXII. CARVED OAK BEDSTEAD OF JEANNE D'ALBRET . . .167 XXIIL WROUGHT STEEL CHAIR . . ■ ■ ■ • .175 XXIV. GROUP OF LATE SIXTEENTH - CENTURY CONTINENTAL FURNITURE : PORTUGUESE CABINET OF CHESTNUT, INLAID WITH IVORY, EBONY, AND COLOURED WOODS, SPIRAL TURNED ARM-CHAIR . 181 XXV. SOME CONSTRUCTIONAL AND DECORATIVE WOODS IN VOGUE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY XXVI. SHOVELBOARD TABLE IN THE HALL OF LITTLECOTE XXVII. COURT CUPBOARD BUFFET . . • • XXVIII. CARVED OAKEN STAIRWAY, GODINTON . XXIX. OAK WELSH DRESSER ..... XXX. CHIMNEYPIECE IN THE DOUBLE CUBE ROOM, WILTON HOUSE . 233 XXXI. A CABINET OF OAK AND WALNUT, WITH EBONY PANELS AND COLUMNS, INLAID WITH ROSEWOOD AND IVORY ENGRAVED . 243 XXXII. THE PUTNAM CUPBOARD OF ENGLISH OAK AND CEDAR . .251 CARVED SETTLE OF AMERICAN OAK . . . . .251 XXXIII. WALNUT KAS INLAID AND WITH PAINTED MEDALLIONS OF DELFT WARE ........ 261 XXXIV. AN EARLY VIRGINIAN COLONIST'S PARLOUR . . . .267 XXXV. THE "RUBENS" CABINET, WINDSOR CASTLE — OF EBONY CARVED. INTERIOR FITTINGS INLAID AND COLUMNS OF TORTOISESHELL 275 XXXVI. MIRROR, GUERIDONS, AND TABLE OVERLAID WITH SILVER PLAQUES ........ 283 189 199 209 219 229 LIST OF PLATES XV PLATE XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVII. XLVIII. XLIX. CHIMNEYPIECE IN COLOURED MOSAIC. FLOEENTINE . TABLE IN COLOUEED MOSAIC. FLOEENTINE .... CAEVED WALNUT BOMB^ AEMOIEE WITH CHASED MOUNTS . INLAID JEWEL CASKET OE WALNUT WOOD. PANELLED FEONT, SIDES, AND TOP ....... COFFEET DE MAEIAGE BOULLE ...... AEMOIEE IN EBONY WITH INLAYS OF ENGEAVED BRASS AND WHITE METAL. CHASP^D OEMOLU MOUNTINGS. THE EOYAL MONOGEAM OF L'S REVERSED WITHIN THE TURQUOISE BLUE OVAL MEDALLIONS. BOULLE. DESIGNED BY JEAN BEEAIN . KNEEHOLE WEITING TABLE IN EED TORTOISESHELL AND LACQUER STEEL TOP. BOULLE GILT FAUTEUILS, UPHOLSTERED IN TAPESTRY PANELLING, WITH GRINLING GIBBON CARVINGS MIRROR FRAME, WALNUT TABLE, WILLIAM AND MARY . WALNUT CHAIR, „ „ . . CHARLES WESLEY'S WALNUT HIGH-CASE CLOCK CARVED WALNUT DARBY AND JOAN SETTEE . INLAID WALNUT B0MB£ BUREAU-CABINET QUEEN ANNE'S BED .... CHEST OF DRAWERS UPON STAND WOODEN CANDELABRA .... WALNUT INLAID WRITING-TABLE RED AND GILT LACQUER DOUBLE CHEST OF DRAWEES BLACK LACQUEE SETTEE, CHAIES AND TABLE, RED LACQUER MIRROR ....... WALL-PAPER AT WOTTON-UNDER-EDGE . A GROUP OF EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FURNITURE WALNUT CABINET-TOP SCRUTOIRE INLAID SYCAMORE ("YELLOW") CLOCK . CARVED TABOURET ....•■ PAGE 293 293 303 309 321 331 345 345 355 355 355 355 355 369 377 385 385 385 395 399 409 409 419 419 419 419 DECORATIVE FURNITURE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1475 PREHISTORIC MOTHER Earth originally sufficed for bed, chair, table, and side- board; only after man had reached a stage in which his faculties were not exclusively required for self-preservation in its crudest aspect, when "Nature red in tooth and claw" no longer obsessed him, could the idea of making articles for his service and pleasure have occurred to him. To what extent man derives his liking for wood from the arboreal habits of his alleged ancestors it is outside the sufficiently wide field of Decorative Furniture to inquire ; but that, from the remotest ages to the present day, of all the materials applicable to the interior construction and adornment of the home, wood has been his first favourite and proven friend, admits of little doubt. Its study is consequently interwoven with that of the habits and beliefs of the past in a fascinating chapter of human history. Commencing with some unboasted of, though pre-Norman, forefather of ours, Carlyle's polysyllabic friend, the aboriginal anthropophagus, who, in the leisured ease of his cavern, first made rough incisions on club or stick to record his "bag," we may assume that the first artist was a carver, and that the birth of the technical, the mathematical, and the artistic faculties were due to the one impulse. Gradually becoming interested in his work as the tally became longer and 2 DECORATIVE FURNITURE the rudiments of order unfolded, our prehistoric ancestor arranged his notches in parallel lines. Next, as the sense of balance awoke, he placed his incisions diagonally and opposite to one another ; from the straight to the curve was an easy transition, and so step by > ^ step the elements of order and design were awakened within his mind and made visible. If this surmise be accurate, the ^ A first craftsman was a woodworker, and the seats, tables, and ^ ^ receptacles first constructed were dug, carved, or burnt \ ^ out of the solid log, after the fashion of the canoes of primitive races. The crude pieces of furniture thus made were the forerunners of the innumerable assemblage of articles which man has since constructed for his use in the home. It would be too fanciful to pursue this theory of the prehistoric stages of the woodworker's art through the ages which intervene until the civilisations of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria dimly loom upon the horizon of history, at a period at least 4700 years before Christ. ? More than average imagination is required to project I i oneself sympathetically into the life of an alien people at ^ so remote a period ; and to allow not only for the differences caused by modes of religious and other government, but for the equally powerful influence of temperature upon temperament. There is consequently some difficulty, increasing the more one travels east- ward, in understanding and appreciating the fittings of the homes of the ancient world. CARVED BOX FKOM THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. PLATE 1 The series of colour plates, showing the characteristic grain markings of thirty-six varieties of constructional and decorative woods, has been photographed from the actual woods, without manipulation or exaggera- tion of the distinctive features of the grain. The plates over-leaf show the principal woods used in early times: succeeding plates in Part V. show woods used for inlaying, etc., during the Stuart period mainly; in Part XII., some of the woods more especially in vogue during the eighteenth century ; and in Part XVI., some richly marked woods now at the disposal of the furniture designer. These plates manifest the versatility of Nature's own designs in fibres; and how little, after all, man has yet availed himself of her resources. In Parts XV. and XVI. will be found a Chapter on Woods, and a Chart tabulating the principal characteristics of thirty of the principal trees used in the production of decorative furniture. The few surviving examples of furniture used in the home prior to the fourteenth century are either too fragmentary in condition, too unimportant in character, or not sufficiently decorative, to justify inclusion in this series of one hundred colour plates, each of which has been taken from an actually existing piece. Equal care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the contemporary accessories shown upon each plate. inMrMWI^' EGYPT, BABYLON, AND ASSYRIA Renan's description of Egypt- ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TABLE. The Queen of Nations and the Boast of Time, Mother of Sciences and the House of Gods, as "a kind of lighthouse in the dark night of pro- found antiquity," appears especially apt when tracing the history of furniture ere Europe had emerged from savagery. Whilst the very name of Greece was unknown, the sun-baked fertile valley annually bathed by the Nile was peopled by communities, not only able to raise time-defying Sphinx and Pyramids, but also to express, in solid form and vivid colour, their native force, severity, and dignity in the furniture of the homes of their upper classes. EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE WOODWORK The climate of the land of the Pharaohs is so dry that a feminine wig some six thousand years old was discovered at Thebes, within the last century, little the worse for time. The absence of humidity, .Z"\Tc^:.':.or::Z. coupled with the faith of the people in the persistence s KEMAINS OF QUEEN HAT- SHEPSU'S THRONE. 6 DECORATIVE FURNITURE of personality after death, and the return of the spirit to the body (which led to burying models or actual pieces of furniture with the body), has preserved more records and specimens of this, the oldest civilisation, than we possess of others many centuries later. The throne of the Egyp- tian Queen Hatshepsu, in the DTLAiD STOOL. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN. British Museum, is probably the most ancient piece of furniture in the world. Bas-reliefs, papyri, and mural pointings almost invariably include representations of stools and couches, which, although shown in elevation, enable us to reconstruct the design. The woodworking tools, which were placed among other votive offerings of implements in the foundations of Babylonian temples, that the spirits resident therein might actively assist the craftsmen, afford further insight into the methods and appliances of Egyptian carving and other crafts. Folding stools, chairs, and , Piji i'j_l 1 T ANCIENT EGYPTIAN couches having seats of leather, plaited rushes or linen stool. cord (upon which at times were thrown cushions or the skins of panthers and other wild animals), footstools, flower-stands, tables and cabinets, cushions of woven cloth and mattresses, are all evidences that the homes of Egypt and Nineveh possessed more than the rudiments of material comfort and refinement, even when I\\ m judged by the standard of to-day. The craftsman \\ \ of Egypt stamped his stern, positive personality \\ >\ on all he touched. He possessed knowledge of carving, turning, painting, inlaying, veneering, and canework. Upon the solid wood blocks, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN. scarcely a foot high, which formed his bench he EGYPT, BABYLON, AND ASSYRIA fashioned works in ebony, ivory, cedar, acacia (sont) or sycamore, enriched with precious stones, gold, silver, or baser metals, and carved with the symbols of his race ; the legs of his pieces ending usually with lions' paws or the hoofs of bulls. Egyptian woodwork, as well as Egyptian scuId- PAINTED WOODEN SARCOPHA- OJ f w>ju.xjj Gus. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN, ture, appears to have been painted in colours which, to our grey-attuned eyesight, seem garish and wanting in subtlety. The wooden mummy cases, and sarcophagi generally, if we may include, as the Egyptians undoubtedly did, such coffers among decor- ative furniture, were often elaborately^ecor- ated, both inside and out, with figure subjects, the lotus flower, and other more or less appropriate ornament, including hieroglyphic inscriptions from the Book of the Dead, painted in red and yellow, black, brown, blue, and green. Bed ochre was used to express the swarthy complexions of the men, yellow ochre for the women or fair-skinned foreigners. The little carved wooden figures of minister- ing slaves (called usJiabitiu or answerers, which were also interred with the dead, that they might save him labour in his happier future life) were often of painted wood, as EGYPTIAN FURNITURE, also thc dellcato spoons for perfumes, and the long rectangular scribes' palettes with spaces sunk for pigments. Curious and interesting too, as examples of the woodworker's craft. AN EGYPTIAN THRONE, SUPPORTED BY FIGURES OF CAPTIVES. FRAGMENTS OF ANCIENT CARVING ON PORTABLE THRONE. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN. 8 DECORATIVE FURNITURE are the painted mechanical toys, such as crocodiles with movable jaws, and dolls, wooden also, with pellets of clay, strung upon thread to imitate hair: showing us that even the stern Egyptian unbent at home. The mirrors of ancient Egypt must have been of very highly polished metal, since one found at Thebes can, even now, be rubbed sufficiently to reflect. The Egyptian women always carried a metal mirror with them to their temples- -a practice followed by their Israelitish sisters, judging from the THE FORM passage in the Book of Exodus in which COLUMN. Bezaleel " made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of the looking-glasses of the women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." In the Biblical passages referring to mirrors the word esoptron is used, by which the Greeks invariably meant a mirror of polished metal, not of glass. BOTTLE IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MIKEOE OF POLISHED METAL. DIS- COVEEED AT THEBES. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN FURNITURE ^wwwwwvv The climate and creeds of Babylon not being so favourable as those of Egypt, no complete example has been discovered of either Babylonian furniture, or of that used by their " conquerors in arms and docile pupils in arts," the Assyrians. Sculptures enable us, how- ever, to picture accurately the forms of furniture in vogue among both races, since it is a reasonable inference that ANCIENT EGYPTIAN THRONE WITH LOTUS ORNA- ,, . . Tilj_l "nl-l' MENT. ARMS FORMED BY wisos OF SACRED HAWK, thc Assypians adopted the Babylonian = W,V.V«! I- •••••••■jb EGYPT, BABYLON, AND ASSYRIA 9 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SEAT. furniture, in much the same way as the Romans adopted that of the Greeks whom they subdued. The statue of Gudea, King of Babylon, some 2500 years b.c, shows that monarch seated on a throne or chair. One would feel more grateful to the sculptor if he had given some indication of the manner in which the framing was put together. The design appears less suitable for wood than bronze ; a material, judging ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STOOL. from portlous stiU oxistiug of a bronze throne, the Babylonians were extremely expert in working. The legs of Babylonian and Assyrian furniture terminated usually in similar fashion to Egyptian, i.e. in lions' paws or bulls' hoofs, but the Assyrians also used square legs with a base of large inverted pine-cones. The designs of later Assyrian work show that the Assyrian race were unable to add accordant elements to the art of the conquered Babylonians. Under Assyrian rule a more massive frame- work was adopted for furniture. Monuments and rock tablets show at times, in common with Egyptian records, thrones curiously supported not only by lions, but by human figures, presumably intended to represent prisoners. ASSYRIAN TABLES AND COUCHES Tables and couches appear to have been practically identical in design with the seats, and, like the seats, to have favoured lions' heads when terminals to arms were required. An extremely complete representation of Assyrian furniture is shown on a sculptured slab, representing a king feasting with his queen in the palace gardens. The queen is seated upon a throne so high CARVING ON END OF EGYPTIAN POETABLE THEONE. 10 DECORATIVE FURNITURE as to require a footstool. His majesty rests on a couch, the head end of which is curved forward and forms a species of arm-rest. The legs and rails of the couch are square, and the feet (of the inverted cone- shape) are ornamented with human figures and lions, as well as moulded and scrolled. Between their majesties is shown a high table, upon which the fare for the feast is displayed, whilst by the king's side is a small lower table on which his bow, quiver, and sword are placed. These pieces of royal furniture were probably made of cedar, though ebony, ANCIENT ASSYRIAN COUCH, TABLES, AND CHAIRS. SCULP- ^g^^ aud WalUUt WCrO alSO Iffi- TURED SLAB REPRESENTING KING AND QUEEN ' FEASTING IN GARDEN. ported and used in conjunction with ivory and the precious metals for inlays. Though scarcely relevant, it is interesting to note that wooden instruments of three unequal facets were used in picture writing to produce the wedge-shaped strokes of cuneiform writing, which they found quicker and neater to employ than rounded forms, whether inscribing upon the wet clay tablets the innumerable contracts, hymns, and omens, or immortalis- ing on bricks, with reiteration's artless aid, the names, titles, and glories of their rulers. The Babylonians and Assyri- ans had an even greater fondness for clay as a constructive material than had the Egyptian taskmasters of the Hebrews. The compulsory training which the HEBREW WOODWORKERS underwent in Egypt probably taught them as much wood-working craft as they required to build the tabernacle, under the supervision BABILI (BABYLON) IN CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS. FROM INSCRIPTION ON THE BRICKS INSCRIBED WITH NAME AND TITLE OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR II. PLATE II FOURTEENTH-CENTURY BUTTRESSED COFFERS At Faveksham, Rainham, and S. John's Length, 5 ft. 3 in.; height, 3 ft.; Hospital, Cantekbuey depth, 2 ft. 3 in. Throughout the fascinating sequence of periods during which the English domestic hearth was gathering the sanctities, comforts, and privileges embodied in the word Home, the dug-out trunk, chest, or coflfer was its chief and most valued article of furniture ; serving as bedstead and table, as well as for the safe storage of valuables. Facts and legends galore cluster round the coflfer. In com- paratively modern days, that lugubriously associated with the "oak chest that had long lain hid," and recounted vocally at each Christmas ; in more far-oflf times, the coflfer preserved at Burgos which the valiant Cid filled with sand, and deposited as security for a loan by a Jew, — a feat recalling a confidence trickster rather than a hero of romance. Am ong the interesting stories of the ancient days of Grecian prosperity, is that of the famous carved and inlaid cedar chest, wherein Cypselos of Corinth lay successfully concealed, when his mother's relations sought to murder him, as the most eflScient method of preventing the fulfilment of the Delphic Oracle's forecast that he would live to work the ruin of their ruling party. He proved the accuracy of the prophecy, ultimately ruling Corinth for thirty years. Few ancient examples of pre-Gothic times exist in Britain. Our 12 DECORATIVE FURNITURE moist climate is probably more destructive to woodwork in a century than that of Egypt in twenty times that period. In the old MS. miniature sketches the coffer is almost invariably represented in bright colours ; sufficient traces yet remain of the colouring of the Faversham chest to permit of a colour representation of its probable original appearance. The fronts of such coffers, although buttressed, are not framed, but constructed of planks running lengthways upon which the buttresses are fixed, helping to fasten the structure together, by performing the functions of the iron strapwork and ornamented hinges of earlier examples. It is regrettable that the valuable Faversham relic should recently have been cruelly " restored," by its front and top only being retained, and fixed upon a cheap deal box. Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page PLATE III MARRIAGE COFFER OR CASSONE In the Victoria and Albert Museum, Carved, gilt, and painted : in front with the South Kensington. Italian (Florentine Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Death; probably). Circa 1560. Length, 6 ft. 7 in. ; and on the sides with Pyramus and Thisbe height, 3 ft. 1 J in. ; depth, 2 ft. 4 in, and Narcissus When Gremio, in the Taming of the Shrew, says — In ivory coffers I have stuffed my crowns. In cypress chests my arras counterpoints, Costly apparel, . . . he was but voicing the custom of the period. Until the wardrobe and the chest of drawers appeared, the coffer was the recognised piece of furniture for storage ; the marriage coffer naturally, from its associ- ations, being most treasured among the lares and penates of the housewife. In Holland, and other Continental countries where the bridal coffer is still retained, the zealous collector who desires to preserve peaceful relations with the goodwife, will do well to avoid offering to purchase her marriage or dower chest, for there is no surer way of aflfronting her. Cypress wood, of which Gremio's chest was made, was considered to particularly protect wearing apparel and other textiles against moths. The cassone gives striking evidence of the advanced state of Renaissance decorative furniture in Italy, at a period when the rest of the Continent was either frankly Gothic, or crudely grafting fragments of Renaissance detail upon the mediaeval forms. 19 20 DECORATIVE FURNITURE A characteristic of the Italian coffer is that it was usually gilt and painted, upon its long front panel, with pageants or allegories such as that shown on this example. One doubts if the modern bride would be grateful if presented with a chest, however beautiful, showing, a funeral car bearing Death with his scythe standing astride two coffins : the oxen yoked to the car are almost as " fabulous " as the two unicorns drawing the central car of Chastity (or Peace?), to which Cupid is ignominiously bound. A collection of wedding chests would be an epitome of decorative furniture ; for men have in all periods of its use felt especial pleasure in placing their finest craftsmanship upon the bridal chest. ANCIENT ROMAN AND BYZANTINE 21 Beds and Couches (general term, Ledus). — Early forms identical with those of Greece ; then varieties (usually entered from one side only) with foot-boards and sometimes head-boards. Later forms with step for entry. Pillow rest at head. The couch used at meals {Lectus tricliniaris) lower than bed, with ledge at head upon which the left arm rested. Later Accubita were still lower. Small couches were also used when writing. Sideboard Tables. — With tops of marble, silver, etc. Cupboards (Armaria). — Holding arms originally ; after- wards used for storage generally. During the latter days of the Roman Empire, gold and silver became so plentiful that they were used for the utensils for cooking and other household purposes ; small wonder, then, that rich booty should have rewarded Alaric when, with his hordes of Goths, he sacked the imperial city in 410 a.d. With the fall of Rome the Classic period of Art may be said to have practically come to an end. The panoramic conflicts of dynasties and races and the struggles of rival beliefs, resulting in the gradual formation of a fresh order of society, notably affected the furniture as well as the architecture of the Byzantine and succeeding periods. BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE The peaceful and refined arts associated with the furnishing of the home were little likely, even if flourishing, to survive amid the barbaric panorama of incessant war and religious persecution which lasted from the capture of Rome by the Goths in 410 a.d. until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The intervening centuries witnessed the rise of the Carlovingians, the conquest of Spain and of upper Africa by the Moors, the appearance and marvellously rapid accept- 22 DECORATIVE FURNITURE ance of Mahomet and his creed by the Arab races, the slower but finally even more far-reaching acceptance of Christianity by the European, and the resulting struggle of the rival creeds for Jeru- salem : the times were destructive rather than constructive of the applied arts and crafts. To the lover of vividly romantic history the period is fascinating beyond measure ; but the historian finds singularly little decorative furni- ture in existence to assist him in reconstructing the home equipments of Byzantine days. A throne known as the Chair of St. Peter — and CHAIR OF DAGOBERT. SEVENTH . CENTURY. MusEE DEs souvE- certaiuly proservod in the RAINS, PARIS. 1_ •!• basilica of that name at Rome, encased in a bronze covering by Bernini — was probably made between the fourth and sixth centuries. Tra- dition also alleges that it formed part nf -Unp fn-rni+nyo r>f EOME. OF WOOD, OVERLAID with 01 Tine mrniture ot ^y^^^ j^^^ ^^^^ 300 ^ j, ^^ the Senator Pudens, ^^■''- — that early convert who gave up his house to the Christians. The arcading of the back and other details of this chair show the Byzantine mingling of the Classic (European) Greek with the Asiatic Greek which borrowed the forms of the mono- tonously rich decorations of Persian art. In St. Mark's at Venice — that superb realisation of Byzantine symbolism and BYZANTINE "CHAIR OF ST. PETER, VIKING CHAIR. TENTH CENTURY. if somewhat " accidental architectural ideals— is another historic chair, part of the spoils taken ANCIENT ROMAN AND BYZANTINE 23 by the Latins at their capture of Constantinople, in the early part of the thirteenth century. The pressure of the Northern barbarians upon the Western Empire, of which Rome was still the chief city, caused an exodus of the wealthier inhabitants, who fled to Constantinople, the less harassed capital of the Eastern Empire, taking with them their most valued portable furniture and other possessions. From the reign of Constantine, Con- stantinople had grown in importance, and was, until its downfall, the centre of the arts associated with the home ; indeed, Byzantine furniture of the later period appears to have been quite unrestrained viking chair or stall, fourteenth in its luxurious materials and ornament. century. Many of the skilled artists and craftsmen of the Roman Empire, even before its division into East and West, wandered over Europe, seeking outlet for their arts and scattering seeds which, slowly fructifying through the Middle Ages, ripened into appreciation of the Renaissance movement. The debased treatment of Classic architecture and de- coration known as Roman- esque was evolving in Italy during the settlement of the Northern barbarians. ^ ^ From MEDIEVAL STOOL. ELEVENTH CENTURY. j^ arose the Gothic with its mediaeval STOOL. ELEVENTH CENTURY. pointed arch, but in Italy the Classic tradition, though emasculated, yet survived, and was comparatively less aflected by Gothic art until the Renaissance. The tenets of the Mohammedan faith, by their interdict of the human figure in art, gave rise to the Arabesque style, which, with 24 DECORATIVE FURNITURE its peculiar pointed arch and characteristic decoration, was carried into Spain as well as Constantinople, and developed, in the subject provinces of Egypt and Sicily, into the interesting style known as Saracenic. ASIATIC ARTS Of all the native crafts of the East, one of the most important is woodworking. Its antiquity is evidenced by the fact that many of the details of the most ancient stone architecture are obviously 13 copied from prior woodwork forms, a reversal of the European practice in later days of representing architectural forms in wood. The innate conservatism of Asiatic races, until forced into contact with Western ideas, has manifested itself in adherence to patterns handed down from remote generations, and also in such social systems as that of the Indian castes, whereby certain arts and crafts are strictly confined to a few families. CARVED CHAIR, 250 A.D., DUG UP FROM SAND- BURIED CITY IN CHINESE TURKESTAN. CARVED AND PAINTED WOODEN BOSSES. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL ROOF. DECORATIVE FURNITURE IN BRITAIN PRIOR TO 1475 O NE has a sense of added injury against the British climate when remembering the probabihty that its damp and corroding nature has had much to do with the scarcity of early l| examples of Furniture. MEDIAEVAL MANUSCRIPT. TENTH CENTURY. KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR SEATED ON A FOLDING CHAIR. ROMAN Perhaps the earliest furniture of at all a decorative character ceijTic ornament from ThTL^^mnTcIosT was brought over by the Romans the aber™o cross. A 25 26 DECORATIVE FURNITURE during their occupation of Britain. It was doubtless identical with that used in Rome, and described in the preceding chapter. CELTIC Though the Celts were clever art craftsmen in metal, and appear from the old romances to have made chests for their clothes, no relics of their early work remain. SAXON AND NORMAN Even when including the final furniture of mundane existence, we possess no indisputable pieces of woodwork before the seventh century. In Faversham and Chynnog churches, and at Wim- ^ borne Minster, are rude ark- THE " ARCHANGEL " SIDE OF INCISED COFFIN OF ST. CUTHBERT IN DURHAM CATHEDRAL. trunks bound with iron. The authenticity of the incised coffin of St. Cuthbert is trace- able throughout its disturbed existence. The saint's burial took place in 688 a.d., in the church which has become Durham Cathedral. The coffin was disinterred after a few years, to be deposited in a shrine frequently men- tioned by Norman writers. Opened by Henry the Eighth's Commissioners, it was next buried below a slab, around which may be seen the grooves worn by the knees of the many pilgrims who yearly visited the spot. Again opened in 1827, the remains were THE VENERABLE BEDE S VENERABLE CHAIR. PLATE IV LATE GOTHIC SCHRANK In the Bavarian National Museum, With Hanging Light (Leuchterweibschen), Munich from Albert Diirer's house at Nuremburg The Tyrolese appear to have taken full advantage of the natural resources and geographical position which combined to render their country one of the wealthiest in Europe towards the close of the Middle Ages. The silver mines were at their maximum of productiveness during the fifteenth century, enabUng the mediaeval magnates to supplement local arts, by retaining the most skilful of the many Flemish and German craftsmen who journeyed through the Alpine passes, on their return from apprenticeship in Italy. The Landsknechte also, those mercenaries who sold their swords to causes good, bad, or indifferent, with equal ardour, were at this period mainly Tyrolese, and agreeably combined the duty of adequately remunerating themselves, with that of showing remem- brance of stay-at-home kinsmen, by bringing home spoils and souvenirs of such wealth that, despite the gradual decline of Tyrolese prosperity, the country probably, until the period of the Napoleonic wars, rivalled in art treasures even the richest of the famed Italian States. In the Cupboard here shown the carved and pierced ornamental details, upon grounds painted red or blue, are of lime or linden — a wood which in Central Europe during the fifteenth century shared popularity with the slow-growing fir known as the Arhe or Zirve. 27 28 DECORATIVE FURNITURE The doors and other constructional framework are of ash, a banding of lime and palisander wood dividing the doors from the pilasters and friezes. Such pieces of craftsmanship as the Schrank strengthen one's conviction that the German temperament finds its most congenial expression in decorative furniture, through the medium of Gothic rather than of Renaissance ; the convolutions of late mediaeval leafage, affording scope for the Teutonic love of the intricate. The handles and escutcheons are less elaborated than is usual with German work of the period. The metalworkers of the Tyrol and the Netherlands, by the end of the fifteenth century, had taken their art as seriously as did their Spanish or French confreres, and, indeed, at times surpassed them in the consistent enrichment of their fashionings. The much abused adjective "quaint" may with truth be applied to the horned-mermaid hanging light {LeucMerweihschen), the original of which is to be seen in Albert Diirer's house at Nuremburg. No satisfactory evidence exists of its having been designed by Diirer, and such pieces may well be of somewhat earlier date. Seemingly made of plaster or clay, these pendant lights were frequently painted in many colours, the "wings," however, being invariably of horn. DECORATIVE FURNITURE IN BRITAIN PRIOR TO 1475 29 transferred to a new coffin, the old one being thrust away in a cupboard, where a few years ago in a state of semi-powder it was found and reconstructed by the skill and zeal of a local architect and antiquarian. The Venerable Bede's Chair, to which fuller reference will be found in the chapter, "Some Seats of the Mighty," may be classed among the oldest examples of British woodwork ; great an- coffer in pyx chapel, . 1 ' 1 t> re ' THOUGHT TO HAVE BELONGED tiquity is also claimed tor a treasure coner m to edwakd h. the Pyx Chapel, Westminster. SAXON HOMES AND FURNITURE In the description of Cedric the Thane's Aula (Ivanhoe), Sir Walter Scott's antiquarian accuracy appears for once to be as unimpeachable as his enthusiasm always. For about the quarter of the length of the apartment the floor was raised by a step, and this space, which was called the dais, was occupied only by the principal members of the family and visitors of distinction. A table, covered with scarlet cloth, was placed transversely across the platform, from the middle of which ran the longer and lower board, whereat the domestics and inferior persons fed. The plan resembled in form the letter T. Massive chairs and settles of carved oak were placed upon the dais, and over these seats and elevated tables was fastened a canopy of cloth, which served in some degree to protect the person- MEDI^VAL chair IN HOSPITAL *v Xixv^ix ov^x vv Q r i. OF ST. CROSS, WINCHESTER, ^^^g ^j^q occupiod that dlstiuguished station from the weather, and especially from the rain, which in some places found its way through the ill-constructed roof The wall of this upper end of the hall, as far as the dais extended, was covered with hangings, 30 DECORATIVE FURNITURE MEDIEVAL. A"PEECHE"0R wooden half-hoop upon which are hung a knight's shield, coat of mail, sword, and helmet, from illuminated ms. "le pelerinage de la vie humaine." / A ^ .^ .^ .V .^ .^V SEAT ON DAIS. and upon the floor there was a carpet. In the centre of the upper table were placed two chairs more elevated than the rest, for the master and mistress of the family. Anglo-Saxon tables were of circular or oblong plan — the latter shape usually having rounded corners — and are usually shown in the manu- script drawings covered with a cloth, but whilst abundant testimony exists in the old MS. to the forms of ancient English tables, the oldest surviving specimens — those at the neighbouring cathedrals of Salisbury and Win- chester — supremely interesting as they are historically, are of so archaic a type as to be valueless when regarded as pieces of decorative furniture. Norman decorative furniture appears to have much resem- blance to Saxon, but was more influenced by the debased Classic or Romanesque. We find, in both Saxon and Norman semi -circular seat of tenth oaxon ana xNorman century, from an old manu- times, that folding ^''^^^■ seats of the camp-stool order, with finials of animals' heads and terminals of claws, were used by the more wealthy. THE CORONATION CHAIR IN WEST- MINSTER ABBEY. PLATE V OAK DOUBLE HUTCH The Property of Guy Laking, Esq., M.V.O., Height, 4 ft. 7 in. ; width, 3 ft. 11 in. ; S. James's Palace depth, 1 ft. 4 in. The lover of old crafts and arts sings no praises, as such, of the Reformation or the Puritan ; he thinks with regret that England would probably possess to-day many an old armoire or hudie, similar to the over-leaf example, but for the iconoclastic zeal which found expression in the destruction of all that was valued by the old order. Its birthplace, assigned traditionally to France — Plessis-les-Tours ; some of its details indicate a later date than that architecturally gloomy pile. In all essentials it is as typical of English work of the sixteenth century, as of French during the latter part of the fifteenth. The double hutch was an early link in the long chain of evolution by which that modern symbol of man's prosperity and pomp, the sideboard, has been reached. Linenfold panelling — the pattern of which in this example varies in the lower panels — appears to have been inspired by, and to owe its widespread use during the domination of the Catholic creed to, the folds into which the chalice veil falls when covering the Host. During the Late Gothic and Tudor periods there is ample evidence of the continuance of English fondness for bright colours. Not only were clothes, embroideries, and textiles generally of 31 32 DECORATIVE FURNITURE strong primary and secondary colours ; but the wainscot panelling, which charms modern eyes chiefly by the natural beauty of the wood, was painted with vermilion, green, and yellow. Thus treated, the walls and tapestries form an excellent foil in colour to the oaken furniture, which, however, was often painted also. The ornament upon a cofifer at Newport in oils shows that medium to have been used by artistic monks in England more than a century before the period of Mr. Laking's hutch. Henry the Third, too, commanded his Sheriff of Wiltshire to wainscot "the King's lower room, to paint it of a green colour, to put a border to it, and to enrich this border with painted heads of queens and kings." DECORATIVE FURNITURE IN BRITAIN PRIOR TO 1475 33 CARVED OAK CHEST. ARUNDEL CHURCH. In the tenth century the seats were completely panelled with ckcular-headed pierced arches, followed (upon the advent of pointed architecture) by the high pediment, such as the Coronation Chair of Westminster Abbey, which was made, painted, and gilt about the end of the thirteenth century, but, as is shown in a succeeding chapter, has shared the fate of the chairs of Dagobert and St. Peter, in having later additions giving it the appear- ance of a Gothic and ecclesiastical stall. In mediaeval times the arts were the recreations of the cloisters, the monks themselves working and teaching. One feels sympathy and gratitude for those old illuminators and patient craftsmen who preserved the arts from extinction during the darkness of the Middle Ages. The art-craftsmen of early mediaeval days must have had a somewhat sorry time, for, unless in the service of the king or nobles, they were utterly dependent upon the monasteries and abbeys for employment and protection. It was therefore but natural that the car- penters and joiners, carvers and painters, should reproduce the ornaments in domestic decoration which they had been accustomed MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND. IRON-BOUND CHEST. BRAMPTON CHURCH. FOURTEENTH-CENTURY OAK CHEST IN CLIMPINQ CHURCH. to use for church purposes. DETAIL OF PANEL OAK CHEST IN CLIMPIN& CHURCH. In some respects, however, throughout the Middle Ages, Gothic, and Tudor days, craftsmen were allowed more freedom than 'is the workman of to-day, since the details of the work were largely left to their skUl and fancy. One of the resultmg charms is the absence of mechanical repetition. The decoration of panels almost invariably differs; the worker's personality was allowed free 5 34 DECORATIVE FURNITURE play, and more than compensated for any lack of the technical finish which his constant duplication of patterns might have engendered. THE GOTHIC STYLES Whilst it is not possible to compress the whole art and mystery of Gothic architecture and its attendant crafts, the furniture of mediaeval times is so strictly a reflection of contemporary ecclesi- A°A GOTHIC CARVING. FROM AMIENS. liANCET. FIRST POINTED OR EARLY ENGUSH SECOND POINTED OR DECORATIVE GOTHIC. astical architecture that a remembrance of the subjoined arch forms and dates of the divisions of English Gothic will be found serviceable in studying of Gothic decorative woodwork, as well as Gothic architecture. First Pointed or Early English Gothic, 1189-1307. Second Pointed or Decorated English Gothic, 1307-1377. Third Pointed, Late, or Perpendicular English Gothic, 1377-1509. TRANSITIONAL. FROM EARLY ENGLISH TO DECORATED ENGLISH GOTHIC. 'OGEE" CROCKETED: THIRD POINTED OR PERPENDICU- LAR ENGLISH GOTHIC. If DEPRESSED OR " TUDOR ": THIRD POINTED OR PER- PENDICULAR ENGLISH GOTHIC. PLATE VI CARVED OAK DRESSOIR— LOUIS XII In the Mus£e Cluny, Paris Height, 4 ft. 4 in. ; width, 3 ft. 10 in. Whilst in England medisevalism in the design of decorative furniture offered a prolonged, if waning, resistance to the "Romayne work," from its introduction at the end of the fifteenth until practically the close of the sixteenth century, in France, Flamboyant Gothic had exhausted itself amid the turmoil and alarms of the English invasions, and at their conclusion in 1453 — a period curiously coin- cident with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks — the canons of the Renaissance were examined, accepted, and adhered to for centuries. The reservation and blending with the older style, which characterised Tudor woodwork in England, is far less noticeable in French work, and lasted a much shorter period. Indeed, the dressoir over-leaf, though allotted by the authorities of the Musee Cluny, upon doubtless indisputable authority, to the times of the twelfth Louis, might, if judged solely upon the evidence of its crocketed uprights, have been made at least thirty years before, when the ambitions of the eleventh and craftiest of the Louis, conflicting with those of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, created such a picturesque chapter in French history. Dressoirs were not always of the modest proportions of this example; their sizes, indeed, grew until circumscribed by decree; but no such limitation could be placed upon those used by the king. Several are mentioned in contemporary MS. of truly regal 35 36 DECORATIVE FURNITURE proportions. An old chronicle describes one used, half a century before the period of the over-leaf example, at the wedding of Philip the Good of Burgundy to Isabella of Portugal. It is stated to have been "Twenty feet long, on a platform two feet high, and well enclosed by barriers three feet high, on one side of which was a little gate for entrance and exit. . . . The three upper tiers were covered and loaded with vessels of fine gold, and the two lower ones with many great vessels of silver gilt." Dressoirs throughout both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries proclaim their origin, by frankly presenting the appearance of chests raised on legs. The contemporary tapestry is also from that fascinating treasure house of French mediaeval and Renaissance art — the Hotel Cluny. Would that London possessed some noble mansion, forming as sympathetic architectural environment for our Tudor forefathers' furniture and household gods as is aflforded by both the Cluny and Carnavalet Museums of Paris. DECORATIVE FURNITURE IN BRITAIN PRIOR TO 1475 37 OUR COLOUR -LOVING ANCESTORS Judging from contemporary writings, and from the colour usually shown upon the furniture in manuscript drawings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the English were so passionately attached to colour, and cared so little for the natural wood, as to give ground for the state- ment, that " they painted everything they could afford, and whitewashed the rest." Indeed, one of the main objections of the citizens of London to the introduction of coal was that its smoke impaired the whiteness of their houses. Traces still exist upon some few old examples, such as the Faversham Coffer (Plate II.), show- ing that the work was usually painted, and that gilding was also resorted to at times, as in the case of the Coronation Chair. Until nearly the close of the Gothic period the woodwork branches of the applied arts were so subject to ecclesiasticism that it is little exaggeration to regard them as by the Church, of the Church, and for the Church. They are therefore outside our province. CARVED CHESTNUT COFFER-FEONT. FOURTEENTH CENTURY. CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES Towards the end of the fifteenth-century, clerical dominance was declining. Feudalism was upon its last legs, internal dissensions assisting its fall. By the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 the long-totteriiig and shrunken remnant of the once all-powerful Roman Empire received its death-blow. In the East the Crescent had triumphed over the Cross. 38 DECORATIVE FURNITURE The Middle Ages, with all their romantic vicissitudes and vi\dd contrasts, were coming to an end. It had been a period when the MEDIiEVAL DOUBLE BENCH WITH MOVABLE BACK RAIL, USED IN FRONT OF FIREPLACE. GOTHIC SQUARE FLOWER, sixpence often possessed more purchasing power than does the sovereign in present days ; when the trestle table could be laden, until it groaned, in a manner satisfy- ing the old-style novelist, with beef or pork at a cost of a halfpenny per pound, with mutton at three farthings, strong beer at one penny per gallon, and choicest foreign wines at eight- pence per gallon ; when tea, coffee, and tobacco were unheard of, and a lump of sugar a right royal luxury. But it had been a period also when man's life and physical freedom depended more on the power of his good right arm than on any protection of the laws ; when few outside the monastery or the castle could read, and fewer write ; when miserable hovels of mud were the homes of the mass of the people, and oiled cloth the "glazing" of the window openings of the rich. FORMS OF GOTHIC ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ couditious uuder which the FOLIATION, arts of the home were likely to flourish, and, A Y Y FORMS OF GOTHIC FOLIATION. DECORATIVE FURNITURE IN BRITAIN PRIOR TO 1475 39 profoundly interesting as are the examples of decorative furniture left us of the times, one is glad, as the common folk of those times would probably have been, to pass on to the succeeding periods, which witnessed the decrease of ecclesiasticism and practically the commencement of the use of decorative woodwork in the private homes of Britain, and which therefore offer more ample records and fuller scope for our narrative. FOUETEENTH-CENTURY SEAT. BRITISH. TIME-TABLE OF ARCHITECTURAL STYLES 41 A TIME-TABLE OF ARCHITECTURAL STYLES {Largely based upon the dwisions suggested by Messrs. Russell Sturgis and Banister Fletcher) 4700 B.C. 4700 B.C. 1900 B.C. 500 B.C. 400 B.C. 200 B.C. Egyptian (Pyramids). Babylonian (Monuments). Cyclopean. Persian. Chinese. Indian GREKCE— 600 B.C., First Temple. 600-500 B.C., Early Period to Persian Wars. ,, 500-400 B.C., Classic Period to decline of Athens. ,, 400-146 B.C., Late Period to conquest by Rome. ROME— To 146 B.C., Greeco-Etruscan. 6r8eco-Roman,146 B.C. -300 A.D. Latin, 300 A.D.-800 A.D. Byzantine-Romanesque, 476 A.D. to Gothic. Moresque, 600 A.D. Anglo-Saxon, 449-1066. A.D. 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1460 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 England. Norman, 1066-1154. Transitional, 1154-1189. Early English or First Pointed Gothic, 1189-1307. Decorated or Middle Pointed Gothic, 1307-1377. Transitional. Perpendicular or Third Pointed Gothic, 1377-1509. Tudor (Tudor-Renaissance Elizabethan), 1509-1603. Stuart (Stuart-Renaissance Jacobean Commonwealth, Carolean), 1603-1688. William and Anne (William and Mary, Queen Anne, Early Georgian), 1689-1727. Georgian, 1714-1830 (Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, Furniture Periods). Italy. Romanesq^ue, Lombardic, Gothic. Dawn of the Renaissance, Early or Free. High or Classic Renaissance, 1500-1580. Renaissance Barocco (Rococo) and Decadenza. France. Romanesque (Second Epoch), 1000-1137. Romanesque (Third Epoch), 1137-1223. Gothic Ogival. Primaire, 1223-1314. Ogival. Rayonnant, 1223-1422. Ogival. Flamboyant, 1422-1453. Renaissance (First Period), 1453-1515. Renaissance (Second Period), 1515-1547. Renaissance (Third Period), 1547-1614. Louis xill. , 1614-1643. Louis XIV., 1643-1715. R6gence and Louis XV., 1715-1774. Louis XVI., 1774-1789. Directoire, and Consulate, 1795-1799. First Empire, 1804-1814. 41 Germany. Romanesque. Rhenish Romanesque Late Rhenish Romanesque. Romanesque Franco-Gothic. Gothic. Early Renaissance. Renaissance, Middle Period. Late Renaissance. "Zopf." Spain. Romanesque. Gothic. Mudejar Gothic. Mudejar. Early Renaissance and Plateresque. Plateresque, Middle Renaissance, Herrara. Late Renaissance, Churriguera. Churrigueresque. A.D. 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 THE LATE GOTHIC PERIOD IN BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE. THE last quarter of the fifteenth century witnessed political and social changes greatly affecting decorative furniture. Feudal England, monk-ridden, noble-ridden, and ever at war with her northern neighbour, ceased her long civil struggle to enter, bereft of continental possessions, upon an era under the Tudors in which the power of ^ monk and noble was to be diminished, that of the* monarch to increase, and the printing press, established practically by Caxton in 1475, to lay the foundations of a greater domination than king, priest, or noble had ever possessed. The marriage of Henry vii. with the heiress of the White Rose, by uniting the claims of York and Lancaster to the throne, terminated the internecine struggle of the Roses, and cleared the way for the pursuit of peaceful industries, and for the building-up of the British Constitution with its ideals of parliamentary supremacy and individual liberty. POLITICS AFFECTING FURNITURE At the end of the century the population of England was barely four millions; far less than that of present-day London alone. The middle classes appear to have quietly profited by the dissensions of the upper, making great advances in wealth and independence during the Civil War. They were no .longer content with furniture of severely utilitarian type; and it was part of the policy of the 42 BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— LATE GOTHIC 43 early Tudors to encourage the prosperity, the comfort, and even the luxury of the smaller gentry and citizens, as a counterpoise to the power of the nobles. Sanitation was a "sealed book"; except that the nobles moved from castle to castle in order that "the same might sweeten." The common people, having no such alternative, could not have found life always pleasant. The narrow, gloomy, and unsavoury streets were forcing beds for fevers and the plague, whilst medical methods were even more empirical and conflicting than those of to-day, if one may credit the statement that during one of the pestilences a certain practitioner cured more than any of his brethren by tying pickled herrings to the feet of his patients. MEDIEVAL AND TUDOR WOODWORKERS, In common with other craftsmen, did much of their work in the open air in front of their houses. They were confined to certain streets with their fellow-workmen of the same trade : a restriction which favoured esprit de corps and tended greatly to strengthen the trade guilds, whose power was more absolute but whose objects somewhat resembled those of the modern trade union, except that the technical improvement and honour of their craft was aimed at, not solely the raising of the wage standards. The various " gilds " had dis- tinguishing marks and privileges. A charter was granted in 1477 to THE GUILD OF TAPISERS, The mediaeval forerunners of the upholder and the upholsterer of our day; their guild must have existed before then, or why should Chaucer sing — 9n l^a&erliasijer anb a Carpenter, 9 Wtlfyt, a I9eser, anU a Capiitm Wjxt alU s clottjeli in a M^txt Oi a solempne anti grete {raternitie. 44 DECORATIVE FURNITURE For many a year the monks had been rivals as well as patrons to the craftsmen associated with the formative arts. The extent to which they practised until the dissolution of the monasteries may be gauged from the report upon one of the monastic houses, presented to Thomas Cromwell in Tudor days, "That there was not one religious person there, but that he could and did use either embrotherying, writing books with very fair hand, . . . carving, painting, or graffing." CHURCH INFLUENCE UPON DECORATIVE FURNITURE OAK LINENFOLD PATTERN. FIFTEENTH CENTURY. OAK LINENFOLD PATTERN. LATE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Under the rule of the Church a serious and unswerving devotional purpose had been imparted to architecture and the allied arts, imbuing them with the atmosphere of the cloister ; narrow but sincere, and tending, therefore, to the ex- pression of a dignified if ascetic creed ; bringing, one ventures to think, to many a brother in his cell peace and joy in work, which his pious meditations had mayhap been unable to yield. Throughout the civil wars which raged in England, churches were sanctuaries inviolate : well able until Cromwellian times to keep their own and other's valuables. We have therefore a far larger proportion of Church furniture than of the chattels of the nobles ; but after making due allowance for this, it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the Church was in England during the Middle Ages the chief patron as well as the chief repository of nearly all decorative woodwork. PLATE VII INLAID MUNIMENT CHEST Presented by Sie Hugh Offley, when Lord By permission of Canon Thompson, D.D. Mayor of London in 1556, to St. Mary Overie, Length, 6 ft. 6f in. ; height, 3 ft. 3J in. ; now St. Saviour's, Southwark Cathedral depth, 2 ft. 5^ in. Church authorities of the past appear to have been more tolerant of anachronisms, and less anxious to secure uniformity in matters of architecture and decoration, than are those of the present day. The donor of this singularly interesting chest must otherwise have needed all the weight of his official position to secure its welcome ; one would fancy the insertion of the newly arrived and alien flat Doric pilasters, pediments, and other Renaissance details, in a piece to be used in a purely Gothic church, would have sufficiently imperilled the prospects of its acceptance by the Church, without decorating it with the bright and secularly vivacious colours of marqueterie in which England was now attaining considerable proficiency. Is it on this account that many generations of vergers, imbued with reverence for their Gothic environment, and armed with varnish, beeswax, and turpentine, have apparently directed their effi^rts towards obliterating the hues of the inlays? The drawing is an endeavour to present the appearance of the chest prior to its encasing with polish. One can detect at least eight of the woods used : oak, cherry, yew, holly, ebony, ash, walnut, and rosewood ; whilst staining and shading were also resorted to, the inlayer having been particularly happy in his choice of holly knots to represent the stonework of the pedimented divisions. 45 46 DECORATIVE FURNITURE The Offley Chest would well repay for the unveiling of its surfaces, that one might more clearly see the richly ornamented armorial bearings, merchant's marks, and initials of its donor, as well as the arabesques, the conventional and floral work of its pilasters, and the simplified elevations of Nonesuch Palace which the inlayer has repre- sented on its panels. The piece is, with the exception of the drawers in the plinth, quite intact. Being devoid of ecclesiastical symbols and in keeping with secular surroundings, no apology is needed for placing the chest against a background showing part of the fine range of wainscoting taken fi-om an old house at Exeter of the same period. The carving of this typical Elizabethan wainscoting is of such unusual technical excellence that it has been attributed to foreign rather than English workmen, who, it must be confessed, were not their equals in deft craftsmanship. There seems some likelihood in the ascription to Flemish woodworkers, since they may have followed their cloth and wool-weaving countrymen, who at this period crossed the seas to avoid the persecutions of Alva, and settled in the west of England in considerable numbers. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— LATE GOTHIC 47 OLD MANUSCRIPT ILLUSTRATIONS Unta the Renaissance had become well rooted in England, the ideas and ideals of Gothic or Pointed architecture so determined and dominated furniture that some knowledge of its successive styles is requisite for the correct understanding and "placing" of the wood- work.' The representations of furniture in old manuscripts, whether romances, histories, or horae depicting contem- porary or prior events, are often, despite their archaic perspective, of great value when the date of the drawing can be ascertained, as the mediaeval artist invariably drew the furniture of his own times in his unper- turbed ignorance of those he is supposed to be illustrating. Ex- amples of this practice are common in old manuscripts ; in an amusing instance occurring in the Harleian manuscripts, David and his choir are represented seated on chests carved with Gothic tracery. We are now, however, approaching times of which actual examples are fortunately obtainable, and reliance upon old manuscripts becomes unnecessary. CAEVED OAK PARCHEMIN PANEL HAMPTON COURT. CAEVED OAK LINENFOLD PANEL. EYE HOUSE. ' See illustrations of Gothic details in preceding chapter. 48 DECORATIVE FURNITURE THE GOTHIC WOODWORKER'S KIT One would like to see a Gothic or Tudor woodworker's outfit; he certainly possessed no moulding planes equalling the modem kind, yet probably was frequently a skilful all-round craftsman; expert in the carving of such details as the ribbed and otherwise decorated mouldings with shaped ends, known as LINENFOLD AND PARGHEMIN PATTERNS, Which were introduced in panel decoration during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The Linenfold was based upon and emblematic of the veil covering the chaUce at the consecra- tion of the Host in Cathohc ritual : it ap- peared towards the con- clusion of the Gothic era in French architec- ture and Flemish furni- ture, and thence travelled THE LINENFOLD PATTERN ON MR. GUY LAKING'S double HUTCH. (Colour Plate 5, Part I.) LINENFOLD OAK PANELLING, COSTESSEY HALL, NORFOLK. to England. The Par- chemin pattern was de- rived from the parchment scrolls rolled upon a rod. Linenfold and parchment designs merge and blend in a somewhat confusing way, but the chief distinction between the two is the introduction of the rod round which the parchment scroll is wound. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— LATE GOTHIC 49 THE TUDOR ROSE The Tudor Rose, which flowered prolifically in decoration during the latter half of the fifteenth century, was at first coloured to suit the Lanca/Strian or Yorkish proclivities of its owners ; but after the mar- riage terminating the civil strife by uniting the parties, the roses were often de- corated in the formerly rival TXJDOR ROSE. colours. TUDOR ROSE. "ROMAYNE" WORK AND GOTHIC The last forms of Gothic inspiration, were succeeded a few years later by the first indications that the intellectual and art move- ment of the Renaissance of Italy was crossing the Channel, and that England would fall under its inspiring influence. An isolated forerunner — a carved oak hutch — bequeathed by Vicar Sudbury, vicar of Louth, to Louth Church, is the earliest instance extant of the English adaptation of the Renaissance detail known as "Romayne" work. The heads are stated to be portraits of Henry viii. and his consort, Elizabeth of York. The " fell pageny disease," to which the old Gothic was to succumb, made but little headway, and was, at most, but sporadic until Henry viii. was well seated upon his throne. 7 HUTCH PRESENTED BY VICAR SUDBURY TO LOUTH CHURCH NOT LATER THAN 1504. 50 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Gothic was still the model upon which men built and decorated, and it must be remembered that, cold and unsympathetic as many of the old Gothic churches and cathedrals often appear in these days, in pre-Puritan times they sang with the chorister, in untutored but not unpleasing colour upon their walls, ceilings, and windows. TTJDOR HOSE IX SPANDREL. THE MEDIAEVAL HALL The changes which were evolving in the political and social life influenced the home and its furniture. In the — more or less — ^merry mediseval days, master, mistress, man and maid sat together in the hall, the heart of the house ; all shared in the household events, the incidents of the daily comedy or drama were worked out in common : a domestic picture so pleasant to the idealist, that one's sympathies are with Piers the Plowman when, in the fourteenth century, commenting on the changes evolving, he complains that (BlmQz (i.e. lonely) ts tfjc \\BlU E&erg nag in tfje torfte, Eljerc tlje lorfi ne t!)c laUge Igftctl) not to sgttcj i^otn fjatlj ttiit a rule to raten fig fjintself In a prtijEE parlour. The Church objected to the withdrawal of the family from the hall, as contrary to the principle of the communal life, which was part of the monastic systenv A certain Bishop Grosseteste commanded the contin- uance of the old system, " Without peril of sychnesse and werynesse ete all of ye in the halle before your meyny " (i.e. menage). GOTHIC BRADISHING. SALISBURY. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— LATE GOTHIC 51 Although the change commenced in the fourteenth century, its progress was so slow that it had evidently not been adopted or acquiesced in, by the commencement of the sixteenth century, for among the Ordinances of Eltham in 1526 is one noticing with con- demnation that "sundrie noblemen and gentlemen and others doe much delight in corners and secret places." TABLES— THRESTULE AND DORMANT As long as the hall continued to be the central point of united household life, used not only for sitting and dining but also for recreations, it was desirable that its furnishings should be easily movable. As long as the cry was — Come, Musicians, play. A hall ! A hall ! Give room and foot it girls, More light, ye knaves ! — and turn the tables up ! SO long was the trestle - table the best possible form. The table of to-day is descended from the "board" of the Middle Ages. The old term survives not only in the sideboard, our "Boards" of Admiralty, Trade, and Health, but also in our school boarders and "board" wages, — a dozen meanings other than that to which usage now restricts the word were attached to the "table"; for example, a picture, a list, a game of backgammon, and many another object having a flat surface. TRESTLE TABLES The board of the Middle Ages was usually an easily removable top, supported on trestles (a corruption of the original threstule, for three-footed supports). The "trestle" and the stool were largely, in both name and purpose, identical. 52 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Trestle tables were not always crude carpenter's work, if one may credit Lydgate's BorKe at fgeian anti of ^faerg WO^ttt, A form of semi-trestle table was also employed in which shaped supports upheld the heavy top, whilst THE TABLE DORMANT Of mediaeval days was probably a great table on the dais at the upper end of the hall : " Beginning the table dormant," signifying taking the first place at the feast. Chaucer wished to emphasise the profuse hospitality of the Frankeleyn when he wrote — Hys table dormant in hys halle alway Stood redy covered al the longe day. In importance secondary only to the seats on the dais of the Middle OAK TABLE. PKOPEETY OF GEO. C. HAITfi, ESQ. Ages were the CUPBOARDS, CREDENCES, AND ALMERIES Until the fifteenth century the dressieur form of cupboard, in vogue upon the Continent and probably based upon the credence, reigned also in many an English hall, displaying plate upon its tiered shelving. It subsequently grew to such a height that steps were provided to enable the servant to reach the top shelves. The works of the gold and silver- smiths were, it must be confessed, more valued than those of the woodworker, jewellery and plate being GOTHIC CREDENCE. VIOLLET-LE-DUC. PLATE VIII THE "KING'S ROOM," OXBURGH HALL, NORFOLK The Property of With its furniture and accessories re-arranged to show Sir Henry Paston Bedingfield. its Court Cupboard, "Thrown" Chair, Linenfold Panelling, Bedstead, and other appointments The old brick mansion of Oxburgh Hall is a picture appealing to the artist-lover of our stately English homes, whether it be seen in the summer twilight when the lights begin to gleam from its many- latticed windows ; when the snow falls on turf and towers ; or the wind drives the autumn fleets of leaves down its broad moat. The King's room is a spaciously primitive chamber, dating its title from the visit of King Henry vii. to Oxburgh. Although one of the upper apartments, its floors are of yellow bricks, giving it to modern eyes a discomforting aspect. The furniture is of oak ; the bed, coverlet, and curtains being embroidered with curious devices of birds, beasts, and fishes, thoughtfully provided with labels such as "A Delphine," "A Leparde," "A Frogge," "A Daker Hen," "A Swalloe," by the modest artists to assist recognition. These embroideries are stated to have been jointly worked by Mary, Queen of Scots, and that feminine builder of great houses, Bess of Hardwicke, Countess of Shrewsbury, who was one of Mary's custodians. This somewhat enforced collaboration is claimed also for several pieces of needlework, in fine silks and gold thread, upon farthingale and other chairs, at Hardwicke Hall. The court cupboard, dating probably from the commencement of the sixteenth century, — though its super-imposed parts are char- 53 54 DECORATIVE FURNITURE acteristic of a somewhat earlier date, — bears evidence of the arbitrary blend of Gothic and Renaissance details ; the diapered posts with crocketed finials, reminding one of French Credences such as that at the Chateau de Pau, and of the Dressoir in the Hotel de Cluny, illustrated in our Colour Plate No. 6. The base of the cupboard has been restored, and the panels are, one fancies, more akin to the work of a continental than of an English carver. The turned chair is of a pattern originally Byzantine, but intro- duced into England upon their return by crusading Norman knights, and soldiers of the Varangian Guard. It is of somewhat later date than that sketched upon page 49, but the type continued to be made, with larger seats, until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Not only the principal pieces of furniture shown in Colour Plate, but all the accessories illustrated — from the fifteenth-century linen- panelling upon the walls to the tapestries behind the Court Cupboard — are part and parcel of the appointments of this singularly inter- esting apartment. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— LATE GOTHIC 55 easily portable valuables, and more readily convertible into wealth at times of stress. The cupboard was originally the cup-board, i.e. a "board" upon which to place "cups." Its open shelves were afterwards enclosed by doors to form a cupboard, in the present-day application of the term to any space in furniture enclosed by a door. The reason for enclosing was largely to guard against the theft of victuals by the servants, whose duty it was to distribute the remains of each meal to the poor ; for as long as "trenchers" were not always plates, but thick rounds of bread, there were considerable remains from each meal to place in this "almery" cupboard, which then became a gardeviance, and afterwards, when the food doles fell into disuse, was employed as a gardevin. The cellaret of the modern sideboard is thus a descendant carved oak panel. of the "gardeviance" of the fifteenth century. century.^^^^^^*'™ The earliest existing forms of cupboards in England were for the church ; they are consequently distinctly Gothic in style and usually embattled. Having been painted probably with "popish pictures" in similar fashion to those abroad, they have usually fallen victims of the iconoclast of the Reformation, or his Cromwellian prototype. Much ink has been spent over the vexed questions of the origins, functions, and re- lations of the various forms of cupboard. [II The writer longs to join in the fray, and indeed has composed, and destroyed, a most paet of oak door, probably from a cupboard or credence. excellent soporific on the subject, but will refrain from presenting more than the irreducible minimum necessary to understand the differences between these important pieces. 56 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Upon the domestication of decorative furniture, ecclesiastical types such as the credence and the almery were adopted generally in the home ; and when the Renaissance arrived its ornament was crudely grafted upon the Gothic construction of these pieces. By a curious twist of fate some of these secularised examples, such as that at Minehead, Sudbury's Hutch, and the somewhat later Muniment Chest at St. Saviour's, Southwark (shown in Colour Plate No. 8), are now found in churches, having been probably placed there for safe custody by their original owners. A simple domestic variant of the cupboard, entirely enclosed by a door and broad pilasters, and owing only its perforated Gothic tracery to church in- spiration, was used for food storage. It was the custom to attach coloured cloth behind this tracery, in order that the air might enter whilst the dust was kept out. One cannot forbear to notice a curious dust-collecting device upon several lock-plates fixed upon fifteenth and sixteenth century cupboards ; it consists of a V-shaped, flanged piece, in the centre of which was placed the key- hole ; the most probable reason for its popularity being that it assisted the solution of a difficulty not apparently restricted to modern times, that of "finding the keyhole." Its disuse may have been due to the representations of some mediaeval guild of jongleurs or comic artists anxious to hand down an unfailing font of humour to successors. This theory is confirmed by some continental lock - plates bearing crescent moons in the place of the V-shaped piece. GOTHIC THREE-TIER DRESSER. PLATE IX OAK PRESS, STRANGERS' HALL, NORWICH Wall Fresco Painting, West Stowe Length, 5 ft. 9 in. ; height, 7 ft. 6 in. Circa 1550 Evelyn and Macaulay have laid such stress upon the prosperous splendour of Norwich during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that one is somewhat disappointed not to find many such woodwork relics as the oak Armoire or Press, now preserved by the local Archaeological Society in the curious old Merchant's house known as Strangers' Hall, parts of which date from the fourteenth century. More than usual divergence of opinion legitimately exists upon the period of this piece, which is in one of the upper rooms, reached by an oak Tudor stairway. But it was probably the middle of the sixteenth century which witnessed the Flemish craftsmen, who had settled in considerable numbers in East Anglia, and are credited with the work, either making it entirely in the room in which it still stands or putting it together in the room, since its proportions are too large for its entering intact through the present door ; its height being 7 feet 6 inches and its width 5 feet 9 inches. The division and hingeing of each door in the centre is a convenient device, which might well be adopted more frequently in furniture nowadays : the inside fittings consist of three thick shelves. Owing in all probability largely to the surface not having been fed or protected by oil or wax, portions of the woodwork, especially at the corners of the panels, have " crumbled " and bleached. The ornamental hinges are such as we find were imported by the Hanseatic League in the reign of Henry viii., but it must be 8 57 58 DECORATIVE FURNITURE remembered that the ironwork upon a piece is often misleading, being frequently of earlier date as regards style than the woodwork: owing probably to stock patterns being used up, or to local smiths lagging somewhat behind in matters of pattern. A similar hinge is to be seen upon a door, otherwise of earlier seventeenth - century detail, at South Kensington. The details of the window are similar to some in the Strangers' Hall. We discover at least one argument in favour of the good old days, when we learn that at this period the Strangers' Hall paid rates amounting annually to threepence. The ill-used adjective "quaint" may, with more accuracy than usual, be applied to the figures of the wall-fresco painting of con- temporary date, conserved until recently behind old panelling at West Stowe, in what is now part of a farmhouse, but was once the palace hall of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law of Henry viii. and grandfather of Lady Jane Grey. The Elizabethan dandy with falcon ( ?) on wrist is labelled, " Thus doe I all the day " ; the lovers are inscribed, "Thus do I while I may." The next figure, presumably an older but not wiser man, regretfully remarks, "Thus did I when I might " ; whilst the old sage (whose proportions, however, have not shrunk with age, but the contrary) reflects per label, " Good Lord, will this world last for ever." The naive indication of age conveyed by the bent frame of this ancient, recalls the reply of another old Suffolk worthy to an inquiry concerning his health, "I'm well enow ; but me faculties is failing, 'specially me legs." Simon Memmi of Siena is credited in the Percy Anecdotes with the invention of such explanatory labels for his figures : one of his pictures, depicting the devil, faint from severe pursuit of a saint, having inscribed upon it, " Ohime 1 Ohime ! Non posso piu /—Oh ! Oh ! it's all over with me ! " BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— LATE GOTHIC 59 In the succeeding Tudor days we shall find greater variety and fuller references to the predecessors of the sideboard. THE DUNMOW CHAIR. CHAIRS, STOOLS, AND BENCHES Benches (bancs) and stools, the most common seats during late Gothic times, were almost entirely utilitarian. Joint stools, nowadays popularly supposed to have been made exclusively for supporting coffins, were used at the ends of the tables, and, instead of the heavy benches, in the scarcity of chairs. Many surviving chairs of the Gothic periods were obviously parts originally of Choir Stalls. One of these is the ex- tremely interesting example used to " chair " applicants for the Dunmow flitch of bacon, who emerged successfully from a mock trial ; having proved to the satisfaction of "the court" that never since they had become Married man and wife, By household broils or contentious strife, Or otherwise at bed or board, Had they offended each other in word or in deed. The Dunmow custom was instituted in the days of Henry iii. ; the chair being thirteenth - century Gothic, and probably made from some choir stalls belonging to the convent from which Dunmow Church was evolved. Chairs retained much of their stall - like character, being enclosed (close) and having lockers under, of which the seat formed the lid. The X-shaped or curule form, a descendant "thrown" (i.e. TURNED) CHAIR. 62 DECORATIVE FURNITURE The latter part of the fifteenth century witnessed the termina- tion of monastic rule in matters of furnishing. Tapestried hangings and wainscoting were more frequently applied to the walls ; halls were provided with screens ; glass was in greater use for windows, which were also enlarged and recessed ; chimneys were constructed more generally ; attention was even paid to the condition of the floors. The dawn of domestic comfort and luxury had come to England, THE TUDOR-RENAISSANCE PERIOD IN BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE^ (Tudor-Elizabethan : 1509-1603) AS the Renaissance inspiration practically commenced with the rule of Henry viii., and was continuous in growth until the close of Elizabeth's reign, our best course appears to be to group the whole period under the above heading. The term Tudor in woodwork is frequently restricted to that first part of the momentous period, 1509-1603, comprised in the reign of the eighth Henry ; whilst the title Elizabethan, though usually confined to the reign of the Virgin Queen, is at times vaguely extended to embrace the work during the days of the pre- ceding Tudor monarchs, when distinctly "Romayne" or Renaissance details are employed. The typical Englishman, if asked which era in his country's history he regards with most pride and pleasure, would probably choose the Tudor. Certainly few, if any, historical periods can compare in romantic interest with the days of King Hal and Queen Bess, during which the domestic hearth acquired the sanctities, comforts, and refinements embodied in the word Home. The formative arts in preceding periods of British history are but remote and conjectural, but from the period of Henry viii. accurate data supplant surmise, and actual examples exist in suffi- 1 The Charts of British Styles in Part I. and of Accessories in Fart XII., together with the Chapters on various pieces and phases of decorative furniture, will be found of interest and value in the study of the period. 63 64 DECORATIVE FURNITURE cient numbers to make the problem of the chronicler and artist rather what to omit than what to insert. THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND We have seen that decorative furniture during mediaeval times was, in England, as abroad, confined to the church, the castle, and the monastery, but that the balance of power was gradually being transferred from the sword of the noble to the well-filled coffer of the burgess ; with the result that luxury, even comfort, were no longer exclusive privileges of the monk and the baron, but were spreading among the citizens and the nation generally. Unheeded by Britain, engrossed in civil strife, for more than a century an inspiritive movement had been gathering force, and affecting the entire range of mental concepts so profoundly that the term Renaissance (from its analogy to mental rebirth) in no way exaggerates its influence upon the Western European races ; since it was not only a rebirth, but a development ultimately giving in- tellectual freedom from the torpor and tyranny of mediseval clericalism. Arising in Italy from the study of classic ideals and forms in art and government, the movement spread over France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the first faint manifestations of its art expression in England occur about the year 1487, in the interesting old piece known as Vicar Sudbury's Hutch, which we have included in the review of the preceding Late Gothic period. Though it is with the changes in decorative furniture arising out of the enlarged outlook of the Italian Renaissance that we are concerned, it is interesting to note that in England expansion of thought evidenced itself in a desire to break away from the mental outlook enjoined by the Romish Church, as far back as Wy cliffs time (1377 a.d.), long ere the Germans, led by Martin Luther in 1517, manifested the same tendency. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 65 When the arts of the Renaissance, flowing from their source in Italy to France, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, finally came to this country, they reached a land which, if we except the furnishings imported for the use of the wealthy Romans during their occupation of Britain, had never seen the classic arts. Owing in part to the deep-rooted love of the perpendicular line which dominates Gothic work, and is so opposed to the horizontal line prevailing in Classic architecture, and in part also to the technically inferior condition of the artistic crafts in England, the use of the details of the Italian Renaissance, in combination with native Gothic forms, afiected the conceptions of structural design but slowly. HENRY THE EIGHTH AND THE RENAISSANCE The art of the Renaissance found in Henry viii. an admirer and patron, especially after his visit to Francis i. upon the magnificent Field of the Cloth of Gold, — that textile city of a day, yet costly as though built of marble. Left by his shrewd but greedy and suspicious father the heritage of undisputed succession and of enormous wealth, Henry showed during the first years of his reign a careless joyousness which found speedy response in his subjects. Young, brave, strong, and of imposing presence, not only was he accomplished in manly sports, but also in the arts of Italy and the new learning as interpreted by More and Colet. ITALIAN DESIGNERS IN ENGLAND Anxious to transplant the glories of the Renaissance to the English shores, the monument in Westminster Abbey to his father offered fitting opportunity, and, setting aside the Gothic designs pre- pared, he invited many Italian artists to this country, and entrusted the 66 DECORATIVE FURNITURE scheme to the Florentine Pietro Torrigiano. Torrigiano will perhaps owe immortality to his rival braggart Cellini mentioning him as boasting of having broken Michael Angelo's nose, and of his valiant feats among "those bears of Englishmen." He, Rovezzano, Toto del Nunziata, John of Padua, and Holbein, were the most distinguished of the many versatile foreign artists who were induced to visit the English shores. Holbein was not only a painter and "architect" but a designer of furniture, and John of Padua not only an " architect " but a musician. ELIZABETHAN " ARCHITECTS " It may be well to emphasise here that, though for convenience one speaks of "architects" of the Tudor era, the architect in the modern sense did not exist until much later times, even in name. His nearest equivalent in title was that of John Thorpe, "Devizor of the King's Buildings." A plan and rough idea of the suggested appearance rather than a drawing was prepared by a surveyor, and given to the masons, bricklayers, and other workers ; as far as we can judge, these artizans settled upon the precise ornamental and other details of their work. Much more appears to have been left to the workman's taste and knowledge of the traditions and current methods of his craft than is now the custom, though another element making for individuality occurred, through the owner of the building frequently taking a much more active part in its design and construction than is usual in our times. THE RENAISSANCE SCREEN AND CHOIR STALLS AT CAMBRIDGE, Executed during Henry viii.'s reign, display so much dignity and delicacy, and are so indisputably the finest works of the period in PLATE X THE PANELLED STUDY AT GROOMBRIDGE PLACE, KENT By permission of the Misses Saint. Not so large as Penshurst, Knole, Leeds Castle, or other of the treasure houses in Kent, Groombridge Place has an individuality and past history of equal interest ; in large measure owing to the fact that its owner, during Henry v/s French Wars, was Sir Richard Waller, who not only took the Duke of Orleans prisoner at Agincourt, and held him captive at Groombridge for twenty years ; but had in similar charge there, shortly after, the Duke's brother, the Count dAngouleme. The central carved panels over the mantel, which contain the Orleans and the Waller arms, are among the many ornamental details one finds at Groombridge, reminiscent of the enforced stay of these French princes. Evelyn mentions Groombridge ; indeed, it was during his time that the house was rebuilt upon the old site, its moat being retained, and the panelling and other fittings of the study, in common with that in other apartments, re-erected in its present position. The vertical lines of the linenfold pattern form such excellent foils for the distinctly Renaissance scroll-carving of the horizontal panels as to silence the purists who object to transitional work. The details of the cocksheaded S-shaped scrolls, as well as the repetition of the depressed line of the stonework arch by the wood- work above, are curiously similar to the woodwork mantel in the with- drawing room at Brenchley Parsonage House, which also is wainscoted with linenfold panelling of early sixteenth-century date. 67 BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 69 design and workmanship that, though of an ecclesiastical character, one cannot ignore them. Fuller says of the Screen and Choir Stalls, erected between 1531 and 1535 in King's College Chapel, Cambridge, "the stonework and woodwork contend which shall the most deserve admiration." Their purely Italian character is so unmistakable as to leave no doubt that both screen and stalls were the work of foreign artists and craftsmen (Sir Digby Wyatt attributes the design to Holbein), and not representative of either native design or craftsmanship. Indeed, in typical and native work until practically the con- clusion of Elizabeth's reign, the Renaissance details were used by Englishmen, rather for the sake of grafting upon the native construction than with any view of utilising either the Italian construction or the classic spirit. This is evident even in works of the imported Italians and their native en hloc copyists, such as the Christchurch Abbey Stalls and the fine woodwork at the Vine, Basingstoke, in Hampshire, which show further stages in the blending of Italian neo- Classic detail with the indigenous Gothic. OAK DEATTGHT CHAIR, OR GUfiRITE. NONESUCH CHESTS It is a curious commentary on Henry's masterpiece in building, that the wondrous Palace of Nonesuch owes the handing-down of its outlines largely to their being pictured in inlay on the pieces of decorative furniture known as Nonesuch Chests. One of these is illustrated in Colour Plate No. 13, with a summary of the chequered history of this royal palace, which was built at Cheam about 1541, chiefly from the designs of foreign artists ; since it is recorded that the King procured "excellent artificers, sculptors, and statuaries, as 70 DECORATIVE FURNITURE well Italian, French, and Dutch as native." Toto del Nunziata appears to have been the principal designer of Nonesuch Palace. Evelyn vouches for its beauty and variety of the building, one of whose chief glories was a room panelled in deal, then valued in this country as a much more unusual wood than oak. During Henry viii.'s reign the treatment of Italian ornament adopted in England, was largely akin to that in the contemporary interpretations of the Renaissance prevailing in France under his brother monarch, Francis the First. Henry viii., throughout the troubled times which followed the many developments of his uncurbed egotism, remained faithful to his encouragement of the arts. At his death the Italian and other foreign artists and craftsmen departed. They had never acquired much popularity, being suspected of "heathenish" ways. One of the first to arrive, indeed, was always known by the name of "Pageny." EDWARD THE SIXTH AND MARY Edward vi.'s reign was but nominal, whilst Queen Mary, poor woman, had little use for wood in her Rome-ruled, husband-deserted life, save for faggots at Smithfield. One relic of her melancholy marriage with Philip of Spain is preserved in Winchester Cathedral — the K shaped chair used at the ceremony. Harrison, in his much -quoted but curiously little-read account of the England of his days, gives the words of a Spaniard in Queen Mary's time, who reports of the poorer people's homes in QUEEx MARY'S WEDDING ^^^^ P^^^^ ^f the couutry, that " their houses are cHAiE. m^diQ of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly as well as the king." Harrison's commentary on this is, "Whereof it appeareth that he liked better of our good fare in such coarse BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE- TUDOR 71 cabins, than of their own diet in their prince-like habitations and palaces." A TUDOR INVENTORY An interesting inventory of the Tudor Mary's times tabulates, among the appointments of an evidently well-furnished privee par- lour, " one jointed bedstead covered with a counterpoint of emigrie works with cortayns of greene and red serge," "long damaske sylke chussings," " one table, one joined forme," "trussels," "thrown chayres," "joined stools," "one great pay re of andirons," and " one Flanders chest " ; whilst in other m ii v^ ^1y^^ 1(^1 MZm It. yI j| « Im l\v^ Vl lISv 31- /p HUIMk. 3|:(Jfe 1^ BEFOEE MARRIAGE. OAK f i -i , ji i /?ii cAEviNQ IN spROT- lists as late as the end oi the BROUGH CHURCH. sixteenth century, we find bed- steads, still apparently usual items in parlour equipments. AFTER MARRIAGE. OAK CARVING IN SPROTBROUGH CHURCH. ELIZABETH The Catholic reaction in Mary's reign was but an interlude, and great were the rejoicings when the daughter of Anne Boleyn was crowned to commence that long, romantic, unparalleled reign, which has inspired the abler pens of so many Englishmen. The younger sister was destined to defy successfully the power of Rome, to head the conflict between the old faith and the new, and to avenge Philip of Spain's marriage of Mary for policy, and his desertion through dislike. An age so virile, receptive, and colour-loving as that of Raleigh, Drake, and Howard of Effingham, naturally sought vigorously to 72 DECORATIVE FURNITURE im^mS rSTCFS' NEWEL AT ASTON HALL. express its temperament in its domestic penates. We consequently find the reign of Queen Elizabeth almost as remarkable in architecture, and its allied arts of decorative furniture, as in poetry or politics. Freedom from civil war caused security against foes, hitherto the main object of the building, to be superseded by the study of dignity and comfort, and the rivalry of the sword was superseded by friendly emulation in building and equipping the home The development of the family life is involved in the development of the home. It was now practicable to concede the rights of womanhood and childhood to a higher standard of comfort and privacy. Much improvement in the condition of the people had doubtless been effected by the abolition of feudalism and other reforms, but the most uncompromising advocate of the "good old times" would not venture to call the state of England entirely satisfactory, in face of the fact that during Henry viii.'s reign some two thousand people were hung annually for theft .alone. Though under Elizabeth that number was quickly reduced to four hundred, the figures show that Sir Henry Wotton was uttering an a propos aphorism when declaring that "hanging was the worst use one could put a man to," a phrase as incisively ambiguous as his better-known hon mot, "an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country" which grieved the "wisest fool" in Christendom so much, from its author being His Majesty's ambassador at Venice, — whence by the way he constantly sent home choice examples of the arts of the republic of the seas. This same Sir Henry Wotton was an agreeable and noble figure in the later Elizabethan band of versatile, scholarly statesmen; in his Elements BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 73 nOQ of Architecture, published in 1624, he sum- marises with equal felicity the views upon building which prevailed in his days, declar- ing that " Every Man's proper Mansion-house and home being the Theatre of his Hospit- ality, the Seate of his Selfe-fruition, the Com- fortablest part of his own life ; the noblest of his Son's Inheritance ; a kind of Private Princedom : may well deserve by these Attri- butes, according to the degree of the Master, to be Delightfully Adorned." FOREIGN INFLUENCE ON ELIZABETHAN WOODWORK The distinctive developments of decor- ative furniture which " delightfully adorned " the interior of the Elizabethan home were assisted by the arrival of Flemings and Germans. With their aid, and under the sobering influence of a growing English con- ception of a national interpretation of the new style, such truly proper mansion-houses and homes as Burghley and Charlecote, were built in designs far more congenial to the national temperament and needs than would have been the purer classic works of imported Italians — who in Clough's words Loved not fancies just betrayed, And artful tricks of light and shade, But pure form nakedly displayed, PILASTER FROM OAK PANELLING FORMERLY IN A HOUSE AT EXETER. lO r<5[^( And aU things absolutely made. Though the Renaissance detail was em- houseatexetee! PILASTER FROM OAK PANELLING FORMERLY IN A 74 DECORATIVE FURNITURE ployed during the days of Elizabeth, the treatment was entirely different from that of Italy, and continued to be so until the works of Inigo Jones forced upon England, in Stuart days, a recognition of the beauty of purer classic work. That Italian visitors to this country did not regard the Elizabethan building as a satisfactory interpretation of their Renais- sance is shown by the criticism of Prince Cosmo in 1669. Speaking of Audley End, a typical example of the Tudor style, he says : " The architecture of the place, though it was built but sixty years ago, is nevertheless not regular, but inclines to the Gothic, mixed with a little of the Doric and Ionic." In tracing the evolution of the cabinet- maker's art it would be futile to attempt to ignore the indebtedness, until the eighteenth century, of decorative woodwork to contem- porary architecture for form and ornament. Fortunately, pieces of Tudor Renaissance decorative woodwork have survived to these days in greater numbers than have Late Gothic examples, whilst the contemporary chronicles assist us greatly in understanding the equipment of the Tudor home. Though more plentiful than during the preceding period, furniture was still scarce, compared with the crowded rooms of the present day ; OAK PANELLING au amouut 01 floor space was consequentlv FORMERLY IN , A M J HOUSE AT EXETER, left, of much value artistically. 1 I I I L^ lit nit PILASTER FROM PILASTER FROM OAK PANELLING FORMERLY IN A HOUSE AT EXETER. PLATE XI THE LITTLECOTE BEDSTEAD The Property of Height, 7 ft. 11 ins. ; width, 6 ft. ; depth, 8 ft. Vincent Robinson, Esquire, F.S.A., (Cornice sizes) Parnham, Dorset Fine as is this example of the Tudor four-poster, from a decorative standpoint, it derives much additional interest from having been formerly in the "Haunted Room" at Littlecote Hall in which was committed the murder recounted by the following narrative, endorsed by Sir Walter Scott, Aubrey the historian, and the records of the Popham family. An old village nurse, dozing by her cottage fire, was awakened at midnight and commanded to attend upon a lady of high rank ; blindfolded and seated upon a pillion, she rode behind the messenger across country, until the clattering of the horse's hoofs told her that they had entered a courtyard. She was hurried to a room containing a four-post bed upon which lay a masked lady. Her midwifery services were no sooner performed than "a, man of ferocious aspect" tore the new-born boy from her, and, stabbing it to the heart, flung its body upon a fire blazing in the ante-chamber, heedless of the shrieks of the women. Blindfolded, the nurse was conducted home and rewarded with twenty -five guineas ; but, as the old tale puts it, " she knew no peace until she had laid bare " the events of the night to a magistrate. Suspicion at once fell upon "Wild Darrel of Littlecote, as the midwife had not only counted the stairs, but, unobserved, had snipped out a piece of the blue bedhangings, which was found to tally 75 76 DECORATIVE FURNITURE with that in the room now known as the "Haunted Bedroom." Local tradition tallies with Aubrey's version that Darrel " was brought to his try all" before Judge Popham, "and, to be short, this judge had this noble house, parks, and manor ... for a bribe to save his life." Unfortunately for the credibility of the tale. Sir John Popham, whose descendants own Littlecote to this day, was not made a judge until after the trial, and although the estates afterwards became his property, he may well have earned them in a more legitimate manner, being Barrel's legal adviser. He it was (to continue a pardonable diversion from the legitimate paths of decorative furniture) who tried Sir Walter Raleigh and Guy Fawkes, and, as Speaker of the House of Commons, replied to Queen Elizabeth's query, "What hath passed in the Commons House?" "If it please your Majesty, seven weeks." The author cannot aver his personal cognisance of either the spectral mother in her long night robe bitterly bewailing her child in the haunted room ; nor of that other apparition, — the Wild Huntsman, the last of the Barrels and the reputed murderer of the child, ^ dashing through the glades of Littlecote; which also lingers in local legends. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR n CHIMNEY-PIECE, OLD DINING-ROOM. MONTACUTE HOUSE. PANELLING AND TAPESTRY The chief rooms were oak-panelled or hung with tapestry, with a frieze and ceiling above of moulded plaster ; the chimney-piece usually was the dominating feature of the room, being carried up to the ceiling, whilst the bay windows were frequently continued to the roof Towards the delightful adornment of the Tudor home, with its long galleries and deeply recessed bay windows, beautiful woodwork was the main contributor, both in the actual furniture and in the wall panelling, which forms so peculiarly fitting an environment for the equipments of the Tudor periods. The four carved pilasters of the panelling, forming the back- ground of the Muniment Chest shown in Colour Plate No. 8, represent a somewhat stricter adherence to Italian conceptions, than was usual on the part of either the English or of the Flemish craftsman, who probably carved these pilasters at the end of the sixteenth or the commencement of the seventeenth century. Is it too frivolous to point out that had Hamlet's mother's apart- ment been panelled, instead of being hung with arras, the unfortunate eavesdropping which resulted in the death of Polonius might never have been, and Hamlet, guiltless of the blood of Ophelia's father, might have overcome his revengeful feehngs, married Ophelia amid the orthodox accompaniments of wedding bells and orange blossom? Whether this be regarded as a preferable conclusion to that chosen by the dramatist, depends upon the intensity of the reader's love of the happy ending. 78 DECORATIVE FURNITURE THE TAPISER AND UPHOLDER In large houses a servant was kept whose special duty it was to attend to arras cloths and other tapestries. He was called the upholder, beifig the descendant of the tapiser, and the ancestor of the upholsterer. The constant references by Elizabethan poets, evidence the im- portance and the beauty of old textile hangings, in the decoration of the home of other days. Spenser tells us that "The rooms of Castle Joyous were roundabout apparalled with costly cloths of Arras and of Tours " ; Shakespeare, that Imogen's bed-chamber was "hanged with tapestry of silk and silver," and that Sir John Falstaff had his pockets rifled at the inn, when he fell asleep behind the arras. Fine examples of needlecraft and loom- work have survived, yet none equalling in realism that mentioned by the Duke of Wiirtemburg's secretary in 1592, in a description of the tapestried hall at Theo- balds, which, if one may credit his nar- sTRAPwoEK, AUDLEY END. Tatlvc, was decoratcd with trees bearing birds'-nests and fruit so convincingly pictured that " when the steward opened the windows the birds flew in, perched upon the trees and began to sing," — possibly in delirium at the unusual conjunction of the seasons shown by the nests and fruit ! Inlay, which was, as will be seen, much in favour after Elizabeth's accession for decorative furniture, was at times also used with delightful effect for the enrichment of panelling, as in the apartment from Sizergh Castle, Westmoreland, now to be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 79 INTERNAL PORCHES In the Sizergh Castle room is also one of those picturesque Tudor- Renaissance internal porches, which project into the apartment and form three sides of an octagon with the door occupying the centre. They were of Continental origin — probably Flemish. Similar porches are to be seen at the Red House, Bristol, Bradfield, and some mansions in Devonshire. At Broughton Castle is a fine example, bearing a carved motto which may be translated : "Of what used to be, the memory pleases but little." There is some difference of opinion whether one should regard this as an expression of regret for a former owner's activity in the civil dissensions of his times, or of pre- ference for this doorway over its pre- decessor ; which may too literally have fulfilled the old definition of a healthful door as one "a, dog could creep under the bottom of, and a fowl fly over the top." Had the days of Elizabeth and James merely brought forth the fine staircases of easy tread, stoutly timbered newels, and balusters carved with many a quaint device, they would have earned a niche in the temple of the formative arts. In decorative woodwork the pointed arch survived during the reign of Henry viii. and even into Mary's reign, when the round arch was employed. DOORWAY AND PANELLING, SIZERGH CASTLE. SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM. 80 DECORATIVE FURNITURE TUDOR -RENAISSANCE DETAILS Dolphins (the device of the Dauphin) were used in England after Francis i. and Henry viii. met at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, as a symbol of the early sixteenth - century entente coi-diale ; the Guilloche being another favoured adaptation from Continental sources. The carving upon Eliza- bethan woodwork is rough but vigorous. The linen pattern was little used, strap- work and arabesques taking THE DOLPHIN FROM FRENCH KINGS' SHIELDS. Its place upou the friezBS and GUILLOCHE. pilasters, whilst fruit and flowers were combined with a grotesque treatment (intentional or unintentional) of human and animal forms. The Elizabethan strap-carving introduced from the Low Countries — in common with most of the details used during the Elizabethan interpreta- tion of the Renaissance — is usually interesting in its dis- tinctly English modification of foreign ornament. An explanation of the finer technical finish seen at times in the carving of old pieces is, that it may often have been convenient to employ native craftsmen for cabinet-making, and a foreign EARLY "ROMAYNE WORK," FROM AN OLD HOUSE AT WALTHAM. carver for its enrichment. EARLY "EOMAYNE WORK" FROM AN OLD HOUSE AT WALTHAM. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 81 ROMAYNE WORK The typical characteristic early Tudor ornament, of heads in medallions known as "romayne" work continued to be used, more or less, throughout the period. English carvers were, however, more indebted to the German " pattern book " of designs. So far from being of modern invention, these books are quite of ancient lineage : the Germans published the weird grotesques of the De Vries and Wendel Dietterlin, — the latter a veritable Poe in German ornament, who greatly needed the curb which was applied by the sober Elizabethan craftsmen. ELIZABETHAN GROTESQUES Teutonic versions, painful to the severe classicist, of the Erech- theum and other beautiful Greek caryatidce, were the probable sources of the pedestal pilasters, capped by human busts or bodies, sup- posedly representing some heathen gods or goddesses, which supplanted the angels and saints of pre-Renaissance days. Painting and gilding de- corative furniture fell into disuse soon after Henry viii.'s accession to the throne ; but the hereditary English of colour could not love EAELY "ROMAYNE WORK," FROM _ _ i.- £ 1 •X.'U AN OLD HOUSE AT wALTHAM. romalu entirely satisfied witn S SCROLL STBAPWORK, FROM WOOD PILASTER, SOUTH WRAXALL. a scheme in which furniture and background were of the same hue, and from about the middle of the century a growing partiality for II 82 DECORATIVE FURNITURE INLAID WORK Is traceable. Holly, ebony, pear, yew, cherry, and other woods, contrasting with the oak framework were freely employed both upon furniture such as the Offley Chest in Southwark Cathedral, shown in Colour Plate No. 8, and the remarkable table made for "Building Bess" of Hardwicke, to commemorate her mar- riage to her fourth hus- band, the Earl of Shrews- bury in 1568, and the marriage of her son and daughter with a daughter and son of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Lutes, re- becks, viols, cyterrnes, sackbuts, nude figures, the arms of the Talbots, Cavendishs, and Hard- FOUR PANELS OF "EOMAYNE WORK" EEPRESENTING TWO WOMEN IN WickeS, StrapWOrk, CtC, COIFFED HEAD-DRESSES, AND TWO MERCHANTS WEARING LOOPED-UP T, j. i? 1 BIRETTAS, FURRED AMICES, AND SHORT RUFFS. FROM CARVED OAK QXQ DUt SOUie 01 the PANELLING OF TUDOR PERIOD DISCOVERED IN AN OLD HOUSE IN „ J • J. J • THE HIGH STREET, SALISBURY, OCCUPIED BY MR. FEED. SUTTON. maUy lOrmS dCpiCted lU coloured woods upon this interesting table. A greater use of Renaissance constructional features is very observable in decorative furniture of this more elaborate type. TUDOR JOKERS IN WOOD The humorist of the pre-Punch period, denied the wide publicity of the modern press, would at times perpetrate his conceits in the PLATE XII CARVED AND INLAID OAK COURT CUPBOARD The Property of Mrs. Henry Branston, Length, 6 ft. 3 in. ; height, 6 ft. 1 in. ; The Friary, Newark depth, 2 ft. 1 in. Though bearing the date 1605, and thus — to be chronologically exact — just on the Stuart side of the style-boundary, this cupboard is, save in this respect and in its twist-turned posts, so typical of the Late Tudor period, that its inclusion thereunder needs little apology. The craftsmanship shown in the construction is evidence of the technical improvement which English joinery by the end of Elizabeth's reign exhibits ; not a joint has given. The doors are rule-jointed, i.e. rounded at their junctions with the end posts, which are hollowed out for their reception. The stringing and other inlays are of box and holly (slightly stained, one is inclined to think, when the piece was made), the black wood is not ebony, but is also stained in imitation of that wood, as are the turned posts : a comforting precedent for almost all-sham modern days. The oak is of exceptionally rich shade; no wood being more responsive in colour variations to the vicissitudes of its existence. 83 BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 85 more enduring materials of wood and stone. He often availed him- self of the opportunity of a play upon his client's name, such as a carved barrel or tun fastened to a wall : a rebus requiring no prodigious mental effort to decipher as Walton ; whilst the tun, if lengthened, as easily reads for Langton — as in Bishop Langton's Chantry at Winchester ; the addition of the domestic fowl transforming the carved jest into Henton. The same elementary humour caused the Gothic workmen to represent the effigies of their spiritual teachers and craft rivals, the monks, in unseemly attitudes and with absurd accessories on corbels and misereres ! indeed, the mixture of a simplicity almost childish, with wealth of conception, elevated and s;^;: vivifying thought, is equally apparent in building and furni- ture until the Commonwealth. Mansions were erected whose plans were based upon their owner's initials, or the letters H and E, the latter in com- pliment to their Virgin Queen. John Thorpe, the Elizabethan "Devizor" whose drawings form a valuable record of building procedure of the period, did not scruple to add explanatory poetry "BUILDING BESS" TABLE. to his plans : — These two lettere I and T Joyned together, as you sec, Is ment for a dwelUng house for me John Thorpe. Queen Elizabeth, on her part, did not deem it beneath her royal dignity to call her great officers of state by such pet names as 86 DECORATIVE FURNITURE " Lyddes," " Moon," " Sheep/' " Spirit " ; and even the great poet Spenser built the aerial castles in his Faerie Queen upon whimsical "quad- rates based on three and nine." The well-preserved and service- able state of the bulk of surviving old oak furniture is remarkable : it is probably that from the more substantial construction of the earlier styles, at least as large a proportion of examples of those styles has survived, as of the later periods. One cannot but regret, from an insular point of view, that so much really old furniture has made its way across the Atlantic during the last decade or more, in consequence of the old oak collecting hobby so prevalent in the United States ; accompanied, one sardonically reflects, by many a semi-antique and wholly modern ■.-.,. j_ A INLAID PEARWOOD CABINET OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY. imitation, sold to innocent Amer- design, attributed to holbein. ican tourists from dust-ridden and apparently guileless " old curiosity " shops in our cathedral and county towns. OLD ENGLISH WOODWORK OF THE OAK PERIOD One cause of the charm of Old English woodwork is its sturdy, simple honesty of construction. The pieces are pegged with wooden pins and innocent of screws. Had the old workmen used screws the rust of three centuries would long ere now have played havoc with BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 87 many a fine old piece we still have intact. When examining wood- work of the sixteenth century one is impressed with its sound and substantial condition after daily usage, often of a rough character, for some hundreds of years. After making every allowance for the action of the "survival of the fittest," it seems certain that the simple methods of construction employed by our ancestors might be reverted to with advantage; that glue, French nails, and "halving in" are but poor substitutes, if durability be required, for the well- made mortice and tenon, and the dowel. In this connection is it too impertinent a divergence into philo- sophy to ask if aesthetics and ethics may not have more points of contact than are usually accepted ? Honesty and truth, or the reverse, in the making and materials of the silent surroundings of the home, surely influence the thoughts of its residents : surely the home which is furnished with pretentious shams and wooden falsehoods reacts maleficently upon the character of its owners. The work of Tudor times, as the succeeding chapter will further evidence, exhibits such a picturesque, unstilted, and frank adaptation of materials and ornament, to conditions and requirements, that in these less robust days it is singularly attractive. THE TUDOR-RENAISSANCE PERIOD IN BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE, 1509-1603 (Concluded) GOFFERS AND CUPBOARDS THAT the terms coffer, armoire, cupboard, credence, huche, almery, and buffet are at times employed indifferently and loosely by old and modern writers, when referring to the various forms of storage furniture, which were merging and evolving during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, is scarcely remarkable considering the difiiculties of satisfactory definition. It is, however, a source of confusion, and in this work an endeavour has been made to use each term in accord- ance with the views expressed in the following pages. The idea of making the movable piece of furniture known as a cupboard, may have originated from the covering-in of a recess in the wall, by placing curtains in front, but the name favours the theory that such pieces were originally open framework, in raised stages of boards, on which cups and plates were placed, — literally cup-boards. Afterwards, when enclosed by doors, the space thus formed was called after the piece of furniture in which they formed part, as court cupboard, livery cupboard, dole and standing cup- boards. Almeries, or dole cupboards, were originally lockers in which broken victuals, bread, and other food for doles or alms were placed. 12 89 90 DECORATIVE FURNITURE They were usually pierced for the admission of air, and were also frequently employed for domestic storage, especially as the custom of giving doles fell into comparative disuse. The term will recall to Anglo-Indians the Ahnirah of the East. Livery Cupboards {Livrer, to deliver) were, judging from their derivation of name, used for holding food and other requisites for delivery ; at times restricted to the servants' allowance or " livery," but also employed for the portions allotted to those who, requiring food between the evening meal at 5 p.m. and the morning meal at 10 a^m. had their "livery" supper of cakes and spiced wine delivered to them each night in their bedrooms. Livery cupboards were less ornamented than the court cupboard. If one accepts the definition supplied by the extant contract for building Hengrave Hall — ^e cobaris tijeg 6e matrc g^ fecgon of Umcrs gt is to'tout Iioorg — the livery cupboard was an open shelved piece of furniture of the simplest modern dinner wagon type. In old country farms and cottages, fortunate enough to still retain and value these relics of bygone days, they are known as bread and cheese cupboards, the tradition of their original use thus surviving. Court Cupboards, which made their d^but in Elizabethan days, were simply short cupboards in the genesis of the term (from French court = short), and were so called to distinguish them from the con- tinental "standing" cupboards of the dressoir type. They were orig- TUDOR-jAcoBEAN OAK COURT CUPBOARD. lually made lu two divlsious and BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 91 usually, at first, enclosed in both, as in the Newark example shown in Colour Plate No. 12 ; the upper division was recessed, its cornice being supported by a turned column. This column was, in later varieties, reduced to a turned pendant or "drop," frequently of acorn shape ; a structural peculiarity causing the cornice, which was almost invariably friezed, to overhang sufficiently to make a secret hiding-place. The functions of the court cupboards were originally to store the wines, food, and candles required by the family, and a cloth to cover 'the top was always used. In another characteristic design, consisting of open shelving below, the actual cupboard in the upper part was formed by small square doors, frequently canted back at each end, as in Sir Theodore Fry's court cupboard, forming Colour Plate No. 27. The ample shelf thus obtained was used for garnishing with plate. The term was, however, and is still employed to describe a piece of furniture (of Welsh origin usually) in which a third stage is superimposed on the old form of the court cupboard, to hold plates and mugs. Though both the Caterham and the Newark court cupboards are of Stuart date, their construction is as typical of Elizabethan as of Stuart furniture. When the lower cup- board is omitted, as in Sir Theodore Fry's example, the piece may with equal accuracy be described as a Beaufette, Beaufait, Bofet, Bonfet, OR Buffet. — A freedom from "the letter that killeth" is shown in the many English methods of spelling this GaUic synonym for our side-table. As great freedom has TUDOE-JACOBEAN DOUBLE-TIEK'D BUFFET, been shown in applying the term to any paenham. piece of furniture used for standing plate or other articles upon, required in dining. The term "Beefeaters," as applied to the yeomen of the royal guard, is a corruption of Buffetiers, i.e. atten- 92 DECORATIVE FURNITURE lfS!S'/,r:SkT:,W^SmYitl^mmmiSi dants at a bufet or sideboard. Their costume has been little changed, and conveys a good idea of that worn by men during Tudor times. Credences. — The term credence, which one prefers to restrict to continental pieces, such as those in Colour Plates Nos. -17 and 19, is often, but with doubtful accuracy, used to describe old furniture of the cupboard or hu^et types — forerunners of the modern sideboard — chests on legs, to which a shelf was usually attached near the foot. Such pieces were employed to carve meats upon after the steward or taster had fulfilled his doubtfully pleasant function of eating a portion, to detect poison, before it was served to the family. Originally for church use, credences were subsequently used and developed for domestic purposes, and, upon the Continent, grew to several stages in height. The shelves of many credences are obviously too high for carving upon. The Table or Degrees. — England does not appear to have observed so strictly as did France, the mediaeval ordinances decreeing the number of stages or "steps'' in these forerunners of the upper part of our high-backed modern sideboards. The prescribed numbers in the Table of Degrees were : — FEONT OF CARVED ELIZABETHAN HANGING CUPBOARD, IN A COTTAGE NEAR CAL- VEKTON. 2 "steps" or "stages'' for the wife of a knight-banneret •^ » ^> „ countess. 4 " 5J „ princess. K ^ " jj „ queen. Dressers— ^mAom— were of somewhat similar construction to the credences, but were originally cupboarded fixtures with tiers of BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE-TUDOR 93 shelves. They gradually became lighter in construction and with greater table accommodation, whilst upright cupboards were added to the upper part. About the end of Henry viii.'s reign the dressoir seems to have fallen into disuse, until the "Welsh dresser" of the succeeding period arrived, with its ample table part of convenient height, and its picturesquely homely rows of plates and mugs. The name Armoires was derived probably from Armarium. If so, it may be safely assumed that their original use was to keep valuables, arms, and armour free from dust and rust. Upon the disuse of armour they became cupboards in which to hang other dress equipments, and thus were the fore- runners of the wardrobe. The use of the term Bahut was originally confined in France to leathern travellingtrunks. Its usage was gradually extended to strong coffers, boxes, or chests intended A EELIC OF THE ARMADA. TREASURE CHEST BELONG- for travellcrs, and even to ING TO THE CORPORATION OF WEYMOUTH. cupboards and armoires. Hutches {huches), though simple varieties of the coffers and chests of the mediaeval home, were of somewhat better type than the bin or trough to which the term hutch is now applied. Their makers were originally called huchiers, and gradually became identified with joiners and carpenters. By the end of Henry viii.'s reign the old coffer type of chest, the front of which was formed by one piece or block, frequently iron- bound, was being supplanted by the panelled, i.e. framed-up, front. LEATHER COVERED CHEST SIMILAR TO THAT USED BY KATHERINE PARR. FLANDERS CHESTS All chests were raised at their bases at least a few inches above the ground, that they might be freer from damp ; at first by continuing 94 DECORATIVE FURNITURE AN ELIZABETHAN CHEST WITH PUNCHED GROUND, NATIONAL COLLECTION. the end posts, and, at a later period when mouldings were used, by the addition of turned balls or "buns." Very typical, and among the richest in design of the "Flanders Chests" in this country, is that at East Dereham. It is divided into seven niches or panels, separated by turned and ornamented buttresses of Frangois lere type, the ends being similarly treated : the whole piece is Renaissance in detail, save that the lock plate is of flamboyant Gothic design. A smaller but extremely interesting and rich chest is that belonging to Mr. Seymour Lucas, R.A. The Late Gothic linen and parchewin panels of the preceding period were now superseded upon chests by the Italianate Romayne work, of med- allioned panels with profiled heads of warriors, women, and merchants. A more architectural construction, based on the Renaissance fagade, followed — as in the Offley Chest in Colour Plate No. 8 — by pilasters, caryatides, and carved and inlaid panels. Inlay, indeed, was now in some instances deemed sufficiently ornamental, as in theNonesuch Chest belonging to Pro- -pokekwokk" chest, e. radeoko. es,. fessor Darwin, shown in Colour Plate No. 13. The more usual treatment of let-in woods during Elizabethan days was, however, in bands or simple geometrical forms, to strengthen by colour the carved decoration. PLATE XIII INLAID NONESUCH CHEST The Property of Length, 4 ft. 1 iu. ; height, 1 ft. llj in. ; Feancis Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., Cambridge depth, 1 ft. llj in. Circa 1580 CARVED "DRAWINGE" TABLE, SHIBDEN HALL The Property of J. Listee, Esq. Length opened, 9 ft. ; height, 2 ft. 10 in. ; width of top, 2 ft. 10 in. Circa 1600 CARVED CHIMNEYPIECE AT CHIDDENSTONE, KENT Circa 1600 EARLIEST ENGLISH WALLPAPER, AT BORDEN HALL Circa 1580 The examples of late sixteenth century woodwork illustrated in this plate show the real diversity of woodwork design, at a period one is apt to superficially regard as confined to crude graftings upon the Gothic oak, of primitive English concepts of Renaissance detail. The Nonesuch chest, a well-preserved specimen of the inlaid coffers, whose decorative raison d'etre seems to have been to hand down to posterity the outlines of the wonderful Palace of Nonesuch built by Henry viii. (who supplemented native craftsmen by Italian, French, and Dutch sculptors and artificers), in rivalry of the archi- tectural splendours promoted by Francis i. Erected from the designs of the Italian architect-painter, Toto del Nunziata, who made England his home for nearly twenty years, the history of Nonesuch was as picturesque as the sky outline which, from the middle of the sixteenth century until the end of the seventeenth, it reared in the royal park at Cheam, near Ewell in Surrey. Bought from the Crown, and completed by Lord Arundel after Henry viii.'s death, it was repurchased and occupied by Queen Elizabeth as a hunting lodge. It was the scene of the downfall of the Earl of Essex when, upon hearing of his Queen's displeasure, he left his command in Ireland without leave, and rushed "besmeared with dust and sweat'' into her bedchamber. Upon its gift, with the title of Baroness of Nonesuch, by Charles ii. to Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, that delectable lady promptly sold the building 95 96 DECORATIVE FURNITURE materials of which it was composed, and thus ignominiously closured an existence mentioned by both Evelyn and Pepys in their works. The name of Nonesuch was also— it may be remembered— given to the wooden building imported from Holland, and erected at the end of old London Bridge. The woods used in the marqueterie of the chest appear to be ebony, holly, yew, ash, rosewood, box, and walnut, upon oak; they have acquired exceptionally mellow tones, without detracting materially from the clearness of the details. The mechanical excellence of the " Drawinge " Table is so evident that one wonders at its disuse, and the popularity of the modern extending - screw table; its name was derived from an ingenious arrangement enabling the top to be drawn out at each end so that its normal length is nearly doubled. Gallon measures such as that upon the " drawinge " table were made of bronze, and in use through- out Tudor times; the notches at the top regulating the precise capacity, which is found to be the same as the present standard. During the restoration of the fifteenth - century timber -built Kentish house known as Borden Hall, portions of the wallpaper shown were discovered behind wainscot and battening in one of the rooms ; the tough paper has been nailed with flat-headed nails to the "daubing" or plaster filling the space between the timber uprights. The design, as restored by Mr. Lindsay Butterfield, suggests Indian influence ; possibly the blocks were cut for cotton printings, and the impressions struck ofl" on paper were deemed so satisfactory that sufl&cient was printed for the apartment at Borden Hall. The chimneypiece, though devoid of exceptional features, is inter- estingly typical of the wooden mantels which, before the conclusion of Elizabeth's reign, had supplanted the hooded stone structures necessary with the inferior draught and consequent tendency to smoke of the lower chimneys of earlier times. Extending from floor to ceiling, the Elizabethan chimneypiece, by its importance artistically, as well as by its functions and associations, dominated the apart- ment. The peaceful reigns of Henry viii. and Elizabeth encouraged the English deification of the fireside embodied in Longfellow's lines : — Each man's Chimney is his Golden Milestone, Is the central point from which he measures every distance Through the Gateways of the world around him. In his farthest wanderings, still he sees it, Hears the talking flame, the answering night wind, As he heard them when he sat with those who were but are not. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 97 THE HUSTILEMENT OF THE GREAT HALL For some time after the end of the Middle Ages the convenient trestle table continued in use. It was usually covered with an embroidered linen cloth, and was removed as soon as the good fare spread upon its board had been partaken of As the Bohe of Curtasye puts it : — JKaij^ne tijcg ijabe Snassijcn antr grace is saglie, atoag \z taftes at a ftragie, ajjoglies t!jc borUe into tfje flare, tJTase aijjag tije trestles tijat \^z Seen so store. The floor was thus freed for dance or frolic, for, solemn as is the typical Englishman in modern days, his forefathers' folk-songs and dancing were famous over the whole of Western Europe. When, upon the decline of vassalage, the lord and lady no longer dined in the hall, lengthy tables were not so much in demand. Trestle tables similar to that shown in Colour Plate No. 14, and those whose tops were supported by turned posts with four square brackets above and below, were therefore consequently superseded by the "joyned," i.e. solid, table with fixed top and framed lower part. The times having become more settled, men also began to feel it safe to dine without literally having their backs to the wall. The tables were therefore Uiicxi Kia,\^a.a uu vxxv^ CARVED OAK TABLE, FROM set more in the centre of the room, the family "queen mary's audi- <». ■o*si'^-o)S^^^a» .: li Tfiil ■ ■ /Tt mini 11 .o ENCE CHAMBER," HOLY- and guests sat vis-a-vis, instead of upon one side only rood palace. of the board, the servants waiting upon them, as in present days, from behind the chair, instead of passing the viands from the other side of the table. Width of board now became desirable, and with the increased seating capacity the length could be lessened. In the succeeding reign the proportions were altered in accordance. The Draw-Table. — The draw or drawinge-table (such as that 13 98 DECORATIVE FURNITURE "iirirsrtf^r^sssstcJtTWfe) illustrated in Colour Plate No. 34) was introduced into England not long after the middle of the sixteenth century. Its principle is so effective that one regrets that the extension screw tables have ousted it from popularity. Briefly stated, the object of the drawinge- table is to double the length and con- sequent dining accommodation of the table. This it achieves by LATE TUDOE DEAw-TABLE. mcaus of two sholvcs, sHdiug under the central top, but so arranged that upon their being drawn out, the upper top falls into their place, thus f ^^^v;^v^v^^>^ ^;^*A^^^^ ^ forming a level surface. The tops of the long tables were often made so thick, that their weight alone would have sufficed to keep them in place. The length of some old refectory tables is surprising. One ™v j^ . exists at Penshurst nearly thirty feet long, ^ jit ) requiring many of the "carpets" which were fflnnWrPTFT^ used to cover the table tops during this and the oak table in lord daenley's , audience chambee, holyrood next period. Two tables sold from the historic palace. mansion of Holme Lacy for 340 guineas and 200 guineas, were 23 feet and 20 feet long respectively, and at Cefn Mably is an even finer example, over 40 feet in length by 4^ inches thick, with every appearance of being made from one single plank : a truly noble board, upheld by fourteen legs. The draw-table at Leeds Castle is so deservedly well known an example of the Elizabethan bulb-leg, that one regrets it should not be an entirely satisfactory piece, the legs of one table having evidently been clumsily added to the frame of another. DEAW-TABLE, LEEDS CASTLE. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 99 EARLY JACOBEAN TABLE. (.Property of Dr. Guihbie.) whilst the Greek fret, though used in the Italian Renaissance, is not typical of the English adaptation of the style. As, however, both the tables from which this one has apparently been constructed were, it appears certain, of the same period, and the legs are so fine, the whole table may well be regarded as a valuable example of the draw - table. The rails on these framed tables, raised an inch or two from the ground, have probably helped to preserve many from the rotting effect of the damp, rush - strewn floors, and were doubtless appreciated by sitters be- cause they could, by placing their feet on them, avoid the draught as well as the moisture. The enormous bulbs so characteristic of the period were frequently built up, even in olden times, of pieces fastened round the leg and carved. The shovelboard table shown in the Colour Plate of Little- cote Hall (No. 26), and the Shibden Hall table in Colour Plate No. 13, illustrate other typical tables of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Harrison, in his book on the England mA _-=m^ fl ^^ ^^^ Elizabethan days, mentions, among ^ other instances of the spread of domestic comfort, that the use of costly furniture had descended "even into the inferior artificers and many farmers . . . who had learned to garnish their joyned beds with tapestrie and silk hangings, whereas our fathers, yea and we ourselves, have lain full oft upon straw pallets . . . and a good round log for a pillow." "MELON BULB" TABLE. PARNHAM COLLECTION. 100 DECORATIVE FURNITURE TUDOR BEDSTEADS Though dates anterior to Elizabethan times are claimed for many bedsteads, there are few, if any, existing unaltered examples of Henry viii/s period. The four-poster is the typical early Tudor bed. Its heavy wooden canopy (the tester) is supported by bulbous turned posts. Richly carved cherubs and angels (afterwards degenerating into the heathen satyrs, gods, and goddesses) presided over it, no doubt as a protection to the sleeper, hence the quaint doggerel of our nursery days — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on ; Four corners to my bed, Four angels round my head. In Elizabethan times the head-end of the bedstead was filled, in with panelling up to the underside of the tester, the turned posts being then required only for the foot- end, as in the Littlecote Bed- stead in Colour Plate No. 11. A hiding place was sometimes contrived in the tester, by means of double panelling, whilst part of the panelling of the head-end at times formed a door, com- municating with a "priest's hole" — a small secret chamber or passage for escape. As a further means of hiding pro- perty, recesses were arranged in the heavy bases which support the posts. The wealth of carving upon ELIZABETHAN BEDSTEAD, ENCLOSED AT HEAD-END. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 101 the tester, the head-ends, and the bulbous posts of the bedsteads of the period, have offered irresistible temptations to the producers of spurious antiques. Old carved oak bedsteads could, in the early days of the vogue of old oak, usually be bought cheaply, as they occupy too much room to appeal to the collector with limited floor-space. The carved oak overmantel craze is responsible for the destruction of many a tester and panelled head-end. The enriched posts are readily convertible into "Elizabethan" table legs and other appreciated in- gredients in the concoction of woodwork ''antiques." Though more cheerful and hygienic than the contemporary and box-like bed of Brittany, Flanders, and Germany, the four-poster, with its heavy dark "ceiling" or "tester," is apt upon occupation to prove more depressive than impressive, more uncomfortable than stately. Henry the Eighth, according to an old inventory of furniture at Hampton Court Palace, possessed a bed 11 feet square, whilst the Great Bed of Ware mentioned in the haeison brass. Twelfth Night, a monstrous piece of furniture, is stated to have sleeping accommodation for twenty - four ! It was apparently at one time painted, but is of the sixteenth century, despite its being inscribed in modern days with the date 1463. It has earned a goodly harvest for its owners from Bank-holiday connoisseurs of old woodwork. The "sixteen post" is another characteristic form of Tudor days, consisting of four openwork bases, with columns at each of the four square corners, upon which the posts rest. An interesting old brass, copied herewith, in memory of Alice Harison, is to be seen in St. Nicholas Church, near Twyford, Berks. It indicates a tester fourpost bedstead with lockers or drawers underneath. Bedsteads were much valued during Tudor times, as may be 102 DECORATIVE FURNITURE judged from their frequently having names given them. The modern value of many old pieces is inflated by the belief that Queen Elizabeth slept in them ; but they are so numerous that, to have done so, she must have spent a great portion of her long reign in travelling daily from one bed to another. The history of the bed in all ages and countries forms a fascinating commentary on humanity's ways : the reader will therefore find much of interest in the special chapter on "The Bed." Surviving equipments, other than bedsteads, evidence little study of comfort or luxury in the bed- room during Tudor days. Much as one regrets to attack the hardy legends providing picturesque per- sonalities with decorative furniture, one must point out that such toilet glasses, as that alleged to have TEEN pos't" ^®®^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ Queen of Scots, did not appear until nearly a century after her execution. ONE OF THE OF A " SIXTEEN POST BED. TUDOR CHAIRS Chairs which were either (1) Folding X-shape or curule in form, (2) thrown, i.e. turned, or (3) "seeled" "close," i.e. enclosed by panels, as in Colour Plate No. 14, did not become plentiful until the succeeding period : very gradually between the times of Henry viii.'s accession, and of that of James ii., they won their way to recognition as necessities of household comfort. "Close" Chairs.— When with the termination of the Civil Wars came the disuse of heavy armour, the necessity no longer existed for strong and heavy seats, and the " close," enclosed or " seeled " chairs, such as that shown on Plate 14, which were survivals of the church 'stall, gradually gave way to more open or unpanelled types. The necessity of space for the puffed trunk hose and the farthingale soon rendered PLATE XIV OAK TRESTLE TABLE The Property of Walter Withall, Esq. Total length, 9 ft. 7 in. ; height, 2 ft. 9 in. ; width of top, 2 ft. 9 in. Circa 1570 "MINE HOST'S" CHAIR Formerly the Property of Dr. Abel Circa 1540 Until the beginning of the sixteenth century a "table" meant a list, or picture, a backgammon or chess board, the palm of the hand, and many other more or less plane-surfaced objects, — but was not used to signify the piece of furniture which we understand by the word. The Trestle Table consisted of a long board — sometimes hinged in the middle for greater portability — supported by "trestles" or " threstules " ; the whole being readily separated and placed upright against the wall when the meal was finished ("more light ye knaves, and turn the tables up"), leaving the floor space clear for dance or other sport. The "threstule" was usually made of three shaped brackets, extending from top to bottom. The bulb-leg "heart of oak" central post of Mr. "Walter Withall's table is an interesting late variant. The table originally came from Cumberland and had been painted white, probably by some nineteenth - century barbarian. It possesses an alternative shorter top, and is fashioned with that happy disregard of precise repetition which is, one suspects, part of the secret charm of old Tudor work. After the middle of the sixteenth century the making of fixed- 103 104 DECORATIVE FURNITURE top tables is said to have entirely supplanted that of the "trestle" table, but one would greatly doubt the accuracy of the allegation, so obviously useful must the type have been, even had we not the evidence of the " table herewith illustrated, the details of which appear to the writer to savour rather of the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Moreover, we have proof of the continued use of the trestle table, if not of the continued making of the type, in more than one passage in contemporary writings ; for instance, Velasco, Constable of Castile, a Spanish envoy who came to England at the commencement of the seventeenth century, was evidently present at a royal banquet at which a trestle table was used, when he wrote that after the cloth had been removed "they placed the top on the floor, and their majesties standing upon it washed their hands, which is said to be an ancient custom." One sees at times upon the edges of old tables, cuts made by the knives of those days ; when food was often eaten jfrom the table without even the interposition of the piece of the bread then called a "trencher." The "Mine Host's" Chau- is of the "close" (enclosed) \early form evolved from the stall: the "Romayne" work in the three canted panels forming the back, and that upon the front panel of the " locker," together with the linen patterning of the side panels, fixing the date as not later than 1540. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 105 it advisable to leave open the spaces at the sides underneath the chair arms ; for fashions in dress often dictate the forms of furniture. Neither the Elizabethan nor the Jacobean chair was easily moved with one hand. Comparatively light chairs, known as Coquetoire, Cacqtteteuse, Conversation, or Chaise de FemTne, with high and narrow backs, were in use on the Continent during the sixteenth century, and a few were imported to this country, but English chair- makers were far in the rear of their continental brethren until a much later period in the century. Tudor chairs were also somewhat lower than those of present times. The decorative reward of frank obedience to special requirements is evidenced by the distinctive design known as OniGINAL GLASTON- The Glastonbury Chair, from its use by the abbots bury chair. of that Abbey during the times of Henry viii. Its peculiar feature is the shape of the arms, which are so designed that the vestment, worn by the priest, may rest in their " dips " in the neck of the occupant, thus avoiding tiie unpleasant and undignified ."riding up." The projecting pegs fastening the cross-pieces and arm-pieces are also unusual. " RIVING " Should the writer ever have the psychical opportunity afforded him of conversing with the shade of a sixteenth century wood- worker, foremost among the many queries upon which he would desire enlightenment, would be the method adopted for cutting panels in those days. Apart from the surface splashes which are observable in these old panels, a distinctly different surface is observable, not, in the writer's opinion, to be. accounted for by the action of time, and not producible by any existing tools. When, in addition to these variations in the surface, we find at times one side of the panel to be wedge-like in section, and shaved-off 14 106 DECORATIVE FURNITURE at one edge in order to fit into the groove of the framing, a distinct case seems to be made out for the use by the old craftsmen of some now-lost tool or method. It has been suggested, with much apparent reason, that the wood was "riven" with an adze, or some similar tool now extinct. Carriage, coach, and boat-builders use the adze largely, and accomplish their best work with it, afl&rming usually that riven wood retains much more "life" and spring than sawn wood. Riving is nowadays practically a lost art as far as the cabinetmaker is concerned. The adze is not part of his kit, the music of the machine saw having now arrived to proclaim the sympathy of Orpheus with the modern wood- worker. Indeed, the machine, in its many ingenious forms, reigns supreme, and with plane and sand-paper speedily reduces surfaces to the modern ideal of glassy smoothness. The subtle variations in the surface, resulting from the old technique, can be felt by the tips of sensitive fingers when passed over old panelling, and doubtless give much of the charm of the old oaken panelling of Tudor days. WAINSCOTING It must not be forgotten, however, that the greater part of this characteristic variation of surface was the result of cutting the planks at an angle to a line drawn through the centre, in the manner indicated by (A). Oak being plentiful, the old workers dis- regarded economy for the sake of obtaining the diagonal splashes or markings which, being cellular, do not shrink with the rest of the wood, and are consequently percept- ible to touch, as well as appearing lighter or darker in colour than the rest of the surface, according to the positions in which they are viewed, and whether varnished or left untreated. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 107 The modern cutting (B) is admittedly the more economical, the amount of "waste" (indicated in black) being much less, but the distinctive " figure " of the old method is not obtained. METHODS OF TUDOR CRAFTSMEN Another custom of the old workmen, to which some of the attractive character of Tudor Renaissance decorative furniture may be owing, is that of trusting to the eye when repeating details rather than to rule or callipers. The Tudor cabinetmaker appears to have been innocent of the use of oiled or other tracing paper. Is it too traitorous to the designer to suggest that much of the picturesque "unexpectedness" and charm of sixteenth century work may be due to this absence of mechanical accuracy in the details, and to the lack of a professional architect and designer? "POLISHING" Much early Tudor oak decorative furniture has suffered, in common with late Gothic woodwork, from a species of surface decay in con- sequence of neither wax, oil or other polish being used. When the surface of wood in decorative furniture was touched at all, it was apparently wax-polished or oiled. Varnish, previously unknown in England, was introduced during Elizabethan days from the Continent, but was of a poor quality compared with that in contemporary use in Spain and in Italy. THE METAL WORKER Was generally behind in style. When his work was pierced, scarlet cloth was frequently placed behind, both in England and on the Continent, a method of decoration which is said to have originated 108 DECORATIVE FURNITURE in the gruesome custom of fixing the flayed skins of enemies to the doors of buildings by iron hinges of scrolls. Judging by the size of the doors and window-openings and other evidence, there is little doubt that pieces of furniture were at times made in the actual rooms they were intended to furnish, and of wood grown upon the estate of their owners. It may be well to reiterate here, in explanation of the apparent peculiarity one sometimes encounters of pieces of old oak furniture decorated with linen-fold patterns at the sides, while the front panels are plain, that the front panels probably were originally painted with some religious design, which it was dangerous to, or repugnant to the opinions of, succeeding owners to retain. How much decorative furniture was imported into this country we have no means of gauging. Probably the demand for Flemish furniture was assisted by the similarity of the countries, creeds, ideals, trading proclivities, and the common struggle of both for political and religious freedom. WOODS AND FORESTS Danske and Estriche oak had for centuries been purchased from the Continent. When, in Elizabethan days, the com- parative scarcity of oak began to seriously alarm the more thoughtful people, Harrison laments the destruction of English woods, one man having, he says, "turned sixty woods (trees?) into one paire of breeches." Walnut was planted again, but practically no steps were taken to ensure to succeeding generations of Englishmen the natural wealth of their national wood. Even in later times, so little were the forests valued, that in order to deprive the robbers who infested the Chiltern Hills of cover, the woods which clothed its slopes were cut down ! Had England but realised in the past the WOOD CARVING, MONTACUTE HOUSE. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— TUDOR 109 value of afforestation, as promptly as did continental peoples, the enormous sums which have left this country in exchange for the inferior oak of the New World would have been saved. Vestiges of the druidical veneration for the oak survive in the Englishman's mind. He is rightly so accustomed to identify the national wood with the past rise and power of his native land, that it comes almost as a shock to learn that the Elizabethans, much as they valued the oak for shipbuilding, were glad to use walnut when they could obtain it for the finest furniture. Some few pieces have survived. Indeed, judging from inventories of the sixteenth century, the new wood was in greater use during Elizabeth's reign than is usually thought ; an apparently authentic record of his chattels, taken on the Earl of Leicester's death, enumerating thirty-five carved bedsteads, of which thirty are of walnut wood. TUDOR HOUSES The eighteenth century witnessed the destruction, refacement, and defacement of scores of magnificent Tudor houses of the picturesque half-timbered, "black and white" type, and of brick or stone ; usually superseded by classic erections having fa9ade8 adapted almost en hloc from the Greek temple. When the temple is placed in the midst of an English park it usually looks alien. One gladly condones the absence of academical correctness in the picturesque halls of the Tudor Renaissance period, for the sake of their spontaneity and natural growth, as part and parcel of the English landscape. Tudor Renaissance, in both its exterior and interior ex- pression, has been well summarised as an attempt on the part of the English builders "to translate Italian ideas into their own vernacular." Perhaps the summary of the Elizabethan era best suited to no DECORATIVE FURNITURE the twentieth century, is that of Dodsley the publisher — to whom Johnson is said to have been indebted for the idea of his English Dictionary : — "Her ministers were just, her counsellors were sage, her captains were bold, and her maids of honour ate beefsteaks for breakfast." PLATE XV UPHOLSTERED CHAIR AND COUCH WITH ADJUSTABLE ENDS The Property of Lokd Sackville, Couch sizes : 3 ft. 6 in. high ; 5 ft. 9 in. long. Knole Park Circa 1600 Until the conclusion of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the branch of the upholsterer's craft which encloses stuffing in fabrics fixed to the wooden framework of seats, was unpractised, if not unknown, in England and Scotland. The discomfort of the upright back and hard seat had, however, for the preceding half-century been minimised by the provision of loose "Quysshons," three or four sets being frequently bequeathed in contemporary wills ; the favourite colours appear to have been either blue or of a shade of crimson, known in those days as "cremyson," "cramosie," or "incarnadine." The beginning of the seventeenth century witnessed the intro- duction of the French and Italian fixed upholstery ; whilst the decoration of woven material by embroidery (one of the few art crafts in which British fingers were as deft as those of the Continent) gradually gave place to the rich loom products of Genoa and Venice. If there were a dearth of food for melancholic reflections on the fleeting nature of human works, a visit to the stately storehouses of early upholstered furniture, such as Penshurst, Knole, or Holy- rood, might supply the want, for it must be confessed that the mellow dignity with which oak furniture generally ages is seldom III 112 DECORATIVE FURNITURE the lot of textiles ; the velvet becomes moth-corrupted, the tinsel trimmings tarnished. The lover of old furniture, if, as is usually the case, a lover of nature also, will not readily forget a visit to Knole Park, with its leafy avenues, its deer park, its royal, noble, and ambassadorial associ- ations. Apart from the unique specimens of pathetically time-worn early Jacobean beds, couches, double seats, stools, and tabourets, its galleries are famed for late sixteenth and seventeenth-century wood-'' work. Not the least interesting is the curious wooden-bedded billiard table, said to have been the first used in England, and, even if not early Stuart, made before the close of the style. Early billiards apparently were played with central croquet hoops, and resembled table croquet somewhat. The chair is that shown in Mytens' almost contemporary portrait of James i. ; whilst the couch has appeared in modern painting, having been depicted in Marcus Stone's picture, "The Stolen Keys." The pieces are shown as they probably appeared before time had dimmed their freshness, in an apartment similar to the Organ Room at Knole, whilst the details of the panelling are from other parts of the building. CONTINENTAL CONTEMPORARIES OF THE LATE GOTHIC AND TUDOR PERIODS. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY (Reference to the Style Chart in Part I., and to the Time-table of Architectural Styles in Part II., will be found of material assistance.) FROM time to time the formative arts, stirred by and voicing the aspirations of their day, flower into some new phase of beauty, to be nurtured in its native soil, and thence trans- planted to other lands, whose national characteristics evolve variants of the type. Such a response to the time-spirit was the intellectual and artistic movement known as the Renaissance, that* great revival or rebirth of interest in, and of insight into. Art, Letters, and Life, which was in full flower when, in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, decorative furniture began to be introduced into private English homes. Born in Italy more than a century before it became supreme in France, vitalising the architecture and applied arts of that country, the movement spread to Germany, where it took a religious aspect, and stimulated the Reformation ; to Spain, inspiring Columbus to set forth on a voyage which added a continent to the known world, so coincidently with this period of equally memorable intel- lectual expansion; and at last, as we have seen, to England, there, under Henry the Eighth, impelling such men as Linacre, Colet, and More IS "3 114 ^"■'■■■•MJ J DECORATIVE FURNITURE 7 EOMAN DORIC ORDER. to give "this wholesome \ ^f^'^^^^^^^i^f''' ^'>'c^'^'>^ ferment of men's minds" a trend towards learning, some years before the applied-art forms of Renaissance obtained ac- ceptance in the decorative wood- work of the country. We have seen that classic Greece, long ere the Christian era, had reached a degree of art and culture far in advance of any of her con- temporaries ; that her craftsmen and artists, when she fell before the all - conquering Romans, had transplanted their arts into Italy ; adding — with the aid of their con- querors in war and students in the peaceful arts — to the Hellenic Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, the two additional orders of Tuscan and Composite ; together with the arch and dome. These classic modes — Greek and Roman — prevailed in Italy until displaced towards the fourth century A.D., upon the removal of the seat of empire by Constantine to Byzan- tium, by a wave of Eastern influences and forces leading to the blend of Classic and Asiatic Greek known as Byzantine, and to Romanesque; - the latter in turn yielding to the 3. TYPICAL RENAISSANCEADAPT- Pointed or Gothic styles, national ^'T^°^''*'**^'^°'''''°°''°'^^ ■' ' (Prom an example hy Soamozzi.) THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 115 ©Mq) -^ interpretations of which prevailed throughout Western and Middle Europe, with the exception of '. such parts of Spain as felt the j domination of the Moslem arts long after they had freed them- selves from the Moors. Save in Italy, the grandeur and the gloom, the silence and the strength, of the Gothic architectural environment yielded but sullenly and with compromises to the graceful vivacity of the new in- terpretation of classic forms ; indeed, in parts of France and Flanders the new gospel appears to have been adopted in decorative wood- work before its acceptance in architecture ; nor is this a matter for wonder when one realises that the art of the Renaissance was, upon the Continent as in England, as truly the child of the home as that of the Middle Ages had been /^ 'the child of the Church. KOMAN IONIC ORDEE. THE PASSING OF THE GOTHIC Gothic had never obtained in ■ --^ Rome ; indeed, in Italy generally the Gothic spirit has never held typical kenaissance ad- , , T J 1 '1 ^ APTATION OF ROMAN IONIC. the undisputed sway it possessed (From an exampU by PALLADio.) 1 DECORATIVE FURNITURE over other lands. The first stages of the evolution of modem, from mediaeval modes, are traceable as far back as the middle of the four- teenth century, a hundred years before the fall of Constantinople caused Greek scholars and artists to migrate into Italy. THE CINQUECENTO IN DECORATIVE WOODWORK JI».J»UU> JUL AlMMJit.MJt. »V i iiii m i i i iiiH satnmr 7 magnificent outcome in TYPICAL EENAISSANCE AD- APTATION OF CORISTHIAX ORDER, {^"Prtym an example hy Scamozzi.) The beautiful woodwork commencing about the middle of the fourteenth century, was in full flower during the fifteenth and culminated in the sixteenth century, when the intervals of peace from the inroads of French, Swiss, Germans, and Spaniards were utilised by the nobles and merchant princes, to embody architecturally the spirit of the Renaissance as interpreted by the great Palladio, and to adorn the galleries and salons of the new palaces with frescoes by the glorious school of artists who had arisen in those, the days of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Cellini, and del Andrea Sarto. The walls were covered with gorgeous tapestries, EOMAN CORINTHIAN ORDER. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 117 stamped velvets, and gilded leathers, or with magnificent inlaid panelling ; though the finest examples of the inlayers' art — made by the cloistered intardatori — were to be seen in the churches. The floors were also inlaid with the rich marbles characteristic of Italian taste from the days of ancient Rome. The whole formed a magnificent setting for the stately pieces of gilt, painted, carved, or otherwise decorated furniture. A peculiarly delightful patina of blond or pale gold has been imparted by time to the Italian walnut and chestnut, which, with oak, cypress, and soft woods, were chiefly used in the construction of Renaissance woodwork ; supplemented and supplanted towards the end of the century by " facings " of ebony inlaid with ivory. The love of bright colour is so ingrained in the Latin race that the Italian woodworkers appear to have been somewhat ashamed of exhibiting the wood composing their furniture, and to have directed their skill towards entirely concealing it by a coating of adhesive plaster (gesso) which they coloured, gilded, and frequently decorated — as in the cassone or marriage chest shown in the third colour plate of Part I. — with allegories and subjects such as Petrarch, Dante Alighieri, and Boccaccio, the advance guard of modern literature, had taught their countrymen to appreciate. Such subjects breathed anew the spirit of ancient Greece and Rome. The triumph of Christianity had been the doom of many a "heathen" legend in which some profound truth was embedded : the corn was sacrificed with the chaff: winnowing being usually too slow and irksome a task for the destructive bigot, or the zealous convert. Italy led Europe from the mediaeval to the modern conception of life and learning, and Florence under the Medici led Italy. PANEL OF PILASTEE, ITALIAN EENAISSANCE. 118 DECORATIVE FURNITURE FLORENCE THE FONT From the clays of Giotto until the sixteenth century Florence was the font from which the inspiration of the new Art was chiefly drawn by the sister cities of Etruria. Indeed, the northern cities long retained as distinct a school in their furniture as in their pictures. Florence, the city of its birth, continued true to its dignified yet vivacious treatment of classic details, was least affected by eccentricities, and held out longest against the decay of taste through- out Italy. Despite the degree of quickened sensibility and the essentially civil nature of the movement, Floren- tine workmen were accorded, under the Renaissance, no such licence as that given to the mediaeval craftsmen. The designer, artist or architect, appears to have pro- vided the details and insisted upon their precise execution. As the style progressed, archi- tecture dominated the design of ITALIAN MIRROR FRAME. NATIONAL COLLECTION. the furniture increasingly. In the cabinets made in imitation of temples and palaces the fittings tend to be copies in miniature of the details of architectural interiors, even to the imitation of perspective effects. This is especially noticeable in the next period. A sense of line and proportion is innate in the Florentine school. Even colour was subordinated to form, and pure line was sought for PLATE XVI CARVED OAK ARMOIRE, bearing the Cipher or Lambert SuAvius OF Liege, and Dated 1540 In the Royal Scottish Museum, Length, 4 ft. 5 in. ; height, 6 ft. 1 in. ; Edinburgh depth, 2 ft. CARVED OAK TABLE In the Mus£e Caenavalet, Paris One's appreciation of the Li^ge hahut, armoire, or meuble a deux corps is tempered by a sense of familiarity with its details, belonging as it does to a type of carved decorative design for which Belgian and English makers of the spurious antique have evinced their predilections by cheap imitation. Its cornice also is disproportionately heavy ; never- theless, it is an example possessing much interest, of a period when Li^ge had a population far exceeding that of contemporary London, and had quite recovered from Charles the Bold's ferocious punishment of its revolt at the instigation of Louis xi. It is instructive to compare the crude shaping of the primitive solid trestle which upheld the equally primitive board with such a vigorously carved emanation of Sambin or Du Cerceau's pencil, as is the table from the Carnavalet Museum ; I have preferred to show in these pieces the natural present-day colouring of the wood, though inclined to the belief that, in common with perhaps the majority, certainly a large proportion of decorative furniture prior to the reign of Louis xiii., they may have been painted in strong colours ; a con- 119 120 DECORATIVE FURNITURE tinuance of ancient Classic and Gothic practices which would afflict our aesthetic sense almost as sorely as the sight of the naturalistically painted Greek statues — so accustomed are we to the mellow tones, sombre warmth, and grain-play of the natural woods. The tapestry shown is sketched from the fine piece in the Pierpont Morgan Collection. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 121 D'YVON COU/ECTION, (Property of Sir Oeorsb Dohaliboh.) ITALIAN CARVED CHAIRS, SIXTEENTH CENTURY. DTtou Collection. its abstract beauty, not for its " message." The picturesque irregularity which is the charm of pointed architecture never appealed to the Italian as it did to the French, German, and English builders : he loved the horizontal line too much. THE RIVAL CITIES Though to Florence belongs so much of the glory of the Renaissance, Pisa, Bologna, Siena, and the other chief cities of Etruria shared with Rome in the glories of the movement ; indeed, Siena may fairly claim priority for its carving and inlaying, whilst the decorative furni- ture made by the artists and craftsmen of Venice, — THE CITY OF PEARL AND GOLD, — shows their sensuous and colour-loving prodigality, late fifteenth cen- . • j_l -VT j_' i_ 1 TUEY CHAIR. FROM The florid Venetian mirror, the Venetian ornamental the strozzi palace. i6 122 DECORATIVE FURNITURE glass, and Venetian carved furniture of to-day, whether of soft wood gilt or of walnut, are survivals of the Venice of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, ere she ceased to be the commercial centre of the world, and the chief factor in transporting the products of the Levant to the nations of the West. To inhabitants of a country whose climate permits of living chiefly in the open air, the warmth of the ingle has but little attractions in comparison with its appeal to the dwellers in less sunny lands. The Italian winter being but short at FLORENTINE FOLDING CHAIR, its worst, FIREPLACES are not necessarily the all-important pieces oi stationary furniture ; nor is comfort the first consideration. Never- theless, the Italian chimney-piece of marble or stone, with its deep frieze and architectural treatment, character- istic of the sixteenth century, frequently dominates the apartment, attracting by its refined simplicity more than do the heavily hooded French chimney-pieces. Italian decorative furnishing was pre-eminently da jpompa, the apprecia- tion of classic form and brilliant colour being little disturbed by considerations of comfort in the modern sense of the chimney-piece, from drawing by seeoo. the term until a much later period. 11"^^^ °^ ^^^^ ™ bas-relief on back of ■L CHIMNEY, THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 123 SEIGNEURIAL SEATS For instance, the antique X forms of seats resigned their position as appanages of dignity in favour of stiff and stately high-backed s&igneurial and state seats, such as that of Lorenzo de Medici ; almost identical in its structural design with the stalls erected during the period at the Certosa Pavia, Monza, Perugia, the Cathedral (Monte Alveto Maggiore), Siena, and many others of the Italian churches which demonstrate to-day the technical skill of the carver or inlayer as well as the prolific beauty of the style he worked in. The earliest Italian chairs other than X are of the type illustrated in the two sketches shown on page 121 of pieces from the D'Yvon collection ; virtually stools to which backs have been added, the seat being upheld at the front and back by solid shaped pieces splaying STALLS, ALTARE MAGGIOEE, outwards. s. metro, perugia. RENAISSANCE TABLES The typical centre table of the Italian Renaissance is of oblong proportions, supported at each end by a solid carved and shaped "console," or by linked posts (such as that in the Carna valet table shown in Colour Plate No. 16), these end supports being usually united by a stretcher and arcade with smaller columns. The period is singularly rich in variants of this form. 124 DECORATIVE FUKNITUKE CABINETS, Which demand fuller reference at a later period when they become supreme as the daintiest expressions of the art of woodwork, were ennobled descendants of the chests, coffers, and cassoni, dating from about the sixteenth century. In its early forms the Cabinet is practically a chest, raised from the floor and disguised by the Italian artists by a surface decoration imitating the architectural details of temples, gateways, and palaces. It was not only arcaded, pilastered, — and '' porticoed," if one may use such a term, — but inlaid in perspective wooden imitation of the geometrical floor patterns of the palaces. TYPICAL ITALIAN RENAISSANCE TABLE. SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHESTNUT TABLE. SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM. CASSONI The form of the ancient sarcophagi inspired the design of the cassoni or coffers, the lineal descendants of the m.edi8eval chests, whose function it was to store plate, clothes, and other valuables of the home. When em- ployed to hold the Italian brides' trousseaux it was customary to use cypress (or camphor) woods, as their aroma was considered a protection against the moth, and to line them with rich fabrics or skins. The Venetians in particular THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 125 favoured elaborate carved work upon their coffers, with scrolls reminiscent of Raphael, and displaying the arms of the bride's family. In generous contrast to the Eastern marriage custom of ceremoniously presenting to the bride a magnificent casket (containing a few- sweets usually) which etiquette demanded should be returned to the giver, the Italians gave the cassone itself as well as its contents. The merchant or noble from earlier days stored his wealth in the form of plate or jewel- lery, and consequently required (and had a real affection for) the cassoni ; frequently placing several in one room, and retaining them as decorative pieces of furniture long Italian coffer, MUSfiE DU LOUVRE, SIXTEENTH CENTURY. after he had discarded them as receptacles in favour of armidi or sideboards, whereon his treasures could be more effectively displayed. Indeed, the Italians of the Renaissance lavished the whole re- sources of their ornament upon the adornment of the cassoni, — a degree of zeal which has led to their frequently being broken up in modern days, that their painted, carved, or inlaid panels may be adapted to other pieces of decorative furniture, or hung upon the walls in frank recognition of their pictorial art value. FRAMES Equally important as decorative assets to the Italian designer were the mirror and other frames. Though the Venetians were justly famed for their glass manufactures, the " looking-glass," to employ a Hibernian- ism, was still of burnished metal, decorated upon each side, and frequently made with a base that it might be readily moved from room to room. 126 DECORATIVE FURNITURE CAKVED GILT ITALIAN MIRROR FRAME. SIXTEENTH CENTURV. It is difficult , to speak of exquisite pieces of craftsmanship and design, as are many of the carved frames of the Italian Renaissance, without appearing to entertain an exaggerated impression of their art value ; but to the writer it is in such charming mirror frames as that shown upon page 118 that the woodwork of the Renaissance can be most appreciated. BEDS From an interesting inventory of the contents of the Medici Palace at this period, one ex- tracts the impres- sion that most of the apartments were equipped with two bedsteads — one a " four- poster" upon a dais, the other a species of combined couch-bed and wardrobe. BELLOWS It is characteristic of the loving thorough- ness of artists and craftsmen of the Renaissance in Italy and France, that an equal amount of decoration was lavished upon even such homely and utilitarian articles as the bellows. They were carved and gilt; grotesques, masks, and allusions to St. Michael being a favourite form of decoration. Probably its maker did not receive one farthing for each of thp fonr ^^"^J-o^s, sixteenth centuey. O xi v^A vu.^ XUUi D'YVON COLLECTION. PLATE XVII PETITE CREDENCE, FRANgOIS I Mus^K DE Cluny, Paris Length, 3 ft. 10 in. ; height, 4 ft. 9 in. ; depth, 1 ft. 7 in. Circa 1520 Though doubtless the official ascription of this piece to the days of Francis the First is accurate, yet in the spacing of the carving, the bold projection of the busts, and their semicircular-headed enclosure, its details are quite as reminiscent of the style associated with that monarch's predecessor Louis the Twelfth. The contrast between the richness of the ornament bedecking the exteriors of those colossal caprices, the chateaux which sprang up in the valley of the Loire, and the gaunt severity of the stone walls of their interiors, testifies that the almost feverish haste in execution prevented the working out of the new classic inspiration with the completeness usually characteristic of the Italian. The foil given by the grim stone to the decorative woodwork is, however, not without a picturesque charm ; absent when — as at Fontainebleau — such masters as Primaticcio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto provide sumptuous backgrounds. The sixteenth century witnessed in France the full flood of the Renaissance ; and furniture assumed its proper decorative importance in the adornment of the home. 127 THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 129 hundred and fifty guineas which were recently paid at a sale for a bellows thus ornamented, but the materialist wastes his pity on him whose work brings "Eden to the craftsman's brain" in reward for devotion to his crafb. Under the inspiration of the Renaissance, learning and riches increased conjointly. Art being no longer the servant of the Church or the monopoly of the monk, sculptors and painters joyously designed vivacious house decoration for the lords of the purse, the merchant princes, and wealthy burghers. SHIELDS DESIGNED BY SEELIO OF BOLOGNA. THE STIMULUS OF THE RENAISSANCE Was so widely varied in its influences and appeal that when architects think of the movement in Italy they usually regard Brunelleschi as its author ; painters or sculptors refer it to Orcagna or Giotto ; with literary men the credit is ascribed to Dante, Petrarch, or Boccaccio ; whilst the decorative wood-worker attributes to such men as the Majani or the Da San Gallo some small share of the glory of the art manifestations of the Renaissance. In these days of specialism and the human machine one is especially pleased to notice the versatility of the great artists of the Renaissance ; that they were not only painters, sculptors, and archi- tects, but were goldsmiths and silversmiths, engravers, glass painters, V designers of furniture and fabrics. Such men as recreations became poets, historians, and musicians ; whilst their frequent selection 17 130 DECORATIVE FURNITURE by their rulers to fulfil the duties of statesmen and ambassadors, further vouches for the breadth of their intellects and outlook upon life. The picture painter's brush and the sculptor's chisel were not the alpha and omega of art until later ; it does not appear to have occurred to the artist of the Renaissance, who applied himself to sculpture, painting, and architecture as opportunity or inspiration dictated, that he desecrated his genius by giving it expression in the design or carving of wood ; that was a discovery reserved for the artists of the nineteenth century. The artistic impulse of the Italian Renaissance to invest every place and variety of work with the forms of art was so powerful that the very entremets served at banquets were modelled to represent historic scenes; and Andrea del Sarto did not disdain to design viands in the form of the Baptistery at Florence : whilst both sexes studied the art of dress, and chose that which best suited them in all seriousness, as a duty they owed to art and society, rather than to themselves. That little was produced in Italy between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, which is not instinct with art expres- sion, is the more remarkable when it is remembered that the Italian peninsula was fully as much the cock-pit of Europe during a great part of the period as was Belgium in later days. Not only France and Spain, but England joined the Holy Roman Empire ("neither Holy nor Roman nor Empire") in the spoliation and intrigues against the Italian republics, and combined with the Pope to destroy the power of Venice in the League of Cambrai. It is generally conceded that the Italian Renaissance ranks in its stimulus and importance with the finest period of ancient Grecian art. Our legacy of Greek woodwork is but small, but of decorative furniture of the Italian Renaissance from the Cinquecento we possess PLATE XVIII HENRI DEUX CARVED COFFER, OR BAHUT Donation Sauvageot, Length, 4 ft. 7 J in. ; height, 2 ft. 10 in. ; Mus^E DD Louvre, Paris depth, 1 ft. 9 in. Circa 1555 OAK SCREEN OF THE SAME FRENCH PERIOD Victoria and Albert Museum, London With a surface condition and colour as delightful as that of an old Italian bronze, this exquisitely carved coffer, or hahut, to use the conveniently elastic French term, represents Gallic craftsmanship of the sixteenth century at its best. Probably fashioned when France was finishing in defeat her waste of blood and treasure in fighting more powerful Spain, receiving in return for her alliance with Florence the afflatus of the Renaissance movement in Italy ; when Henri Deux was king, and Catherine de Medicis, his bigoted Queen, was preparing the tortuous policy which during her three sons' reigns so fanned the strife between Calvinistic Huguenots and papal Catholicism. What scenes may not this piece have witnessed from its Louvre home, in far-off days when that Royal Palace seemed little likely to reach the prosaic calm of a national museum? Was it from the window near by that Charles ix. fiired at the fleeing Huguenots at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew? Could Jean Goujon, the greatest of French carvers, have been seen calmly at work on the opposite fa9ade until he received the fatal shot? — a 131 132 DECORATIVE FURNITURE shot perhaps intended for another, for his religious views do not appear to have been prominent ; unlike those of the Du Cerceau, a Protestant, the probable designer of this piece who, being fore- warned by friends at court, safely "studied" in Italy during this crisis. Of the numerous "schools" which flourished in France at the time, either that of Lyons, or (much less probably) the Burgundian, may be credited with the manufacture of this piece. The Openwork Screen is of the same date — or possibly some few years earlier — and of the Lyons school ; it is now in the British national collection at South Kensington, as is the Biheron shown upon it, of that rare Henri Deux china formerly supposed to have been made at Oiron, but now believed to have had St. Porchaire as its birthplace. As much as £750 has been paid for a small candle- stick of this ware. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 133 ACANTHUS SPINOSUS, NATURAL LEAF. EENAISSANCE TREATMENT OF ACANTHUS LEAF. ACANTHUS LEAF, RENAISSANCE TREATMENT OF ACANTHUS LEAF. ample remains to warrant the statement that if it derived in large measure its ornamental forms from the ancient Hellenic race, it breathed colour and warmth, craved for by the more western peoples, into the cold beauty of Grecian design. As one visits the treasure houses and State museums of England and the Continent, and reflects that only a fraction of the furniture can have survived the ravages of wear and war, one knows not whether to marvel most at the perfection of graceful beauty shown in the work, or at its relatively enormous output during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One need not depreciate the culture and the arts of the Middle Ages in order to appreciate this mighty Italian movement, which, despite vagaries and the sensuous character of some of its chief patrons, did so much for human progress and the peaceful arts. Upon its aesthetic side the Renaissance movement was an n 1 1 n 1 1 n THE ENRICHED BEAD. 134 DECORATIVE FURNITURE THE GUILLOCHE. THE PALMETTE BAND. endeavour to revive the interrupted architectural practice of the purest art age of the world, but (as was inevitable from the changed conditions) this apparently conservative idea became the root whence sprang probably the greatest innovation in art history. Its success is the more noteworthy since, emanating as it did not from the crude "inspirations" of the people, but from the enthusiasm of the studious and cultured, on the one hand the people had to be educated to the level of its precepts, and on the other the priestly authority had to be encountered, overcome, or conciliated. The shrewd rulers of the papal Church, however, recognised in the Renaissance an instrument ready to hand where- with to aid the Counter-Reformation against the inroads of austere Protestantism. This necessarily brief survey of the Renaissance in Italy until the conclusion of the sixteenth century is also necessarily incomplete. "The Renaissance was," in the words of John Addington Symonds, •"so dazzling by its brilliancy, so confusing by its changes, that moral distinctions were obliterated in a blaze of splendour, an outcome of THE ECHINUS, OK EGG AND TONGUE. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 135 new life, . . . the national genius attaining its fullest development simultaneously with the decay of faith, the extinction of political liberty, and the anarchy of ethics." It must therefore obviously be impossible to render its complex and conflicting phases into small compass. STATE SEAT OF LOKENZO DE MEDICI. CONTINENTAL CONTEMPORARIES OF LATE GOTHIC AND TUDOR PERIOD, 1475-1603 The Renaissance in France during the Sixteenth Century THE varied, virile, and vivacious productions of French orna- mental woodwork, from the decline of the Flamboyant Gothic to the end of Louis xvi/s reign, fall somewhat naturally into two broad divisions. This, the first in point of time and not the second in fascination, practically com- mencing with the whole-hearted adoption of the Renaissance upon the return of Charles viii. from his brief but memorable Italian expedition in 1494, occupies the whole of the sixteenth century, and terminates with the advent of Louis le Grand in 1643. We reserve the last half- century of this first division for our study of Continental art during Stuart times. If Italy produced the Renaissance, France christened it, rendered its decor- ative canons and forms into flexible terms adapted to the every-day needs and afl&nities of more utilitarian peoples, and thus did much to ensure its acceptance by other European nations. i8 OAK PANEL. CIRCA 1350. 138 DECORATIVE FURNITURE DOOR PANELL- ING. FRENCH. • VICTORIA AND ALBERT MU- SEUM. CHARLES THE EIGHTH When the French under Charles viii. crossed the Alps and be- held the gorgeous works of the Renaissance in Italy, they weve conquered, as the Crusader had been conquered by the Byzantine arts, and the Roman by those of Greece. In the words of its audacious contemporary, Rabelais : " From this thick Gothic night our eyes were opened to the signal torch of the Sun." Nor Avere the consequences of Charles the Eighth's invasion confined to Italy and France ; Spain, Germany, and Switzerland were awakened to the glories and wealth of the Italian cities, and commenced those raids and interventions which were largely responsible for the ex- tinction of Italian freedom and the spread of Italian arts. By the beginning of the sixteenth century France was absorbing the dominating impulse of the Re- naissance : Charles viii. brought back Italian artists to Paris ; his successor, Louis xii., to Touraine ; and Francis i., to Fontainebleau ; — whilst the example of the Cardinal d'Amboise, who also succeeded in obtaining the services of Renaissance craftsmen to decorate his palace at Gaillon, was quickly followed by the great nobles and dignitaries of the kingdom. That France, in common with other nations of Europe, needed the refining influence which the Renaissance undoubtedly exercised, is evident to the most cursory student of her history. One reads, for example, that it was the custom, when criminals were broken upon the wheel, to place little children in the front line of spectators, as a warning to abstain from evil courses I CARVED AEM-CHAIR. FRENCH. CIRCA 1560. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 139 CHAIR. FEANgOIS l''"^. Responding to the stimulus, the French very soon dis- played every whit as virile a conception of the new light as their Italian in- structors ; indeed, French decorative woodwork from the middle of the reign of Francis i., inspired by such men as Philibert de TOrme, Androuet du Cerceau, Hugues Sambin, and Jean Goujon (all of whom studied in Italy), is, if less brilliant in colour than that of Italy, far more picturesque, flex- ible, and useful. The humanistic light of the new movement shone upon art, literature, politics, and social life : even the wars in which FRANCIS THE FIRST became involved, increased the prestige of the Re- naissance. Upon his return from captivity he induced Cellini, II Rosso, Andrea del Sarto, and other Italian artists to visit France, and rouse by national rivalry the native architects, artists, and craftsmen. CAKVED CUrBOAED. FRANgOIS 1^=^. PAENHAM. THE LOIRE CHATEAUX Blois, Chenon9eaux, Chambord, and the other great chateawc which sprang up in the valley of the Loire, though mainly built 140 DECORATIVE FURNITURE by a peripatetic company of Italians, are achievements absolutely outside anything in Italy : their crude but piquant coating of the Renaissance detail upon Gothic forms soon evinced a growing desire for beauty and proportion, while retaining the vitality of the Gothic. Probably the craftsmen em- ployed in producing decorative woodwork for the palaces in the Loire Valley were for awhile in advance of their Parisian brethren, but the sack of Rome in 1527, incidentally assisted the development of the Re- naissance in France, as many artists were glad to find homes and welcome in Paris. Among the Italians employed by Francis I. in the decoration of Fontaine- bleau were II Rosso, Vignola, Primaticcio, Serlio, Andrea del Sarto, and possibly Leonardo da BED OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI, CHENOKQEAUX. VlUCi. Yet WheU FraUCiS TO" solved to make the Louvre his Paris palace he chose Pierre Lescot, a Frenchman, as his architect to build the south-west wing, and another Frenchman, Jean Goujon, to execute the magnificent carving thereon. These are the days of the versatile BENVENUTO CELLINI the Florentine, whose autobiography gives so forcible a picture of the practice of the decorative arts in Italy and France at this period, and is so entrancing a revelation of his quarrelsome person- ality, that one wiUingly adds novelist, braggart, and fighter to his THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 141 laurels as engineer, musician, designer, and sculptor. Either Cellini's life was a romance, or his " Life " a romance. Its main events are, fortunately, corroborated from other sources, whilst other incidents are so manifestly of the Munchausen order of truth that they deceive no one. During the reign of Francis' successor HENRI DEUX, the Renaissance was first established in its classical entirety : his marriage with Catherine de Medici assisting to fix the Italian concept, whilst Diana of Poitiers was also a friend of the new arts. Virtually, the mode of Henry ii. lasted until henei deux chair. musiSe . , 1 p J 1 • 1 11 , CAENAVALET, PAEIS. the end or the sixteenth century. Probably owing to the domination of the author of the Mas- sacre of St. Bartholomew, the bigoted Queen-Mother, Henri ii.'s three sons, Fran9ois ii., Charles ix., and Henri in., during their PILASTER. brief and but nominal reigns were conspicuous exceptions to the interest which the kings of France, however diversely moulded in other respects, have almost invariably displayed for the arts : an interest rendering the nomenclature of the style-divisions by the name of the reign- ing sovereign more apposite in French art than in that of any other country. Unfortunately, at best such labels are apt to mislead, since the personality, tastes, and means of the ruler may be no cue to the national character or domestic condition of his subjects. The most distinguished of the native artists c^ms PILASTEE- Du cERCEAu. aud craftsmou were Philibert de I'Orme, Hugues du cEECEAtr. 142 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Sambin, Androuet Du Cerceau, Pierre Lescot, Bachelier of Toulouse, and the great carver Jean Goujon, who is credited with having actually executed much of the decorative furniture which he designed for the royal palaces, and with meeting his death by the shot of an arquebuse at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, whilst at work on the front of the Louvre ; a fate from which his distinguished and more fortunate rival Androuet du Cerceau, engraver, architect, and Protestant, escaped, having good grounds in the conversations of friends among the favourites of Charles ix. for suspecting the danger to which he was exposed, in common with his co-religionists, he thought it wise to journey to Turin, returning only after the death of Charles ix. He remained in the employment of the French court until retirement in 1584 Though France in her first enthusiasm imported Italian furni- ture from Italy, throughout the provinces different. PILASTER- DU CERCEAU. PILASTEE- DTJ CEKCEAU. PANEL FROM A DRESSOIR, FRENChI CHAMPAGNE SCHOOL. SCHOOLS OF DECORATIVE FURNITURE quickly sprang up, varying widely in their acceptance and treatment of the new move- ment. The chief were those of the He de France — owing its inspiration in design to Jacques Androuet du Cerceau— and that of Burgundy, under the mastership of Hugues Sambin, the pupil and friend of Michael Angelo. The southern workers of Lyons, PLATE XIX CARVED BOURGOUIGNON CREDENCE Donation Sauvageot, Length, 3 ft. 10 in. ; height, 4 ft. 8 in. ; MusfiE DU Louvre, Paeis depth, 1 ft. 7 in. Circa 15-50-1575 Those latter-day levellers, travel, competition, and the printing press, in France as elsewhere, have destroyed the conditions under which decorative woodworkers flourished during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries in Normandy, Champagne, Auvergne, the Lyonnais, Burgundy, and the Ile-de-France — the latter corresponding to our home counties, — forming schools which retained their traditions of technique and infused distinctive local conceptions into all their productions, remote from such assistance as would have been afforded by comparison or intercourse with each other. Of the colonies of carvers in France and its subject provinces, the Burgundian appears to have been the oldest and most virile ; its carved work, the counterpart in wood, of the robust realism which distinguished Burgundian figure sculpture of the period, maintained its individuality for at least two hundred and fifty years ; the dressoir or credence here illustrated is stamped with this individuality of treatment. It is, in all probability, from a design of Hugues Sambin, who, with the first of the Androuets du Cerceau, gave the canons of the Italian Renaissance a form congenial to the Gallic taste. At the period to which this dresser belongs (1560-80) the grotesque com- binations of limbs of the four-legged animal with parts of human and 143 144 DECORATIVE FURNITURE feathered bipeds, — which placed dos-a-dos form the supports and panels of the piece, — are cut with masterly skill. A somewhat similar credence of more formal design, but evidently emanating from the same school, is in the Cluny Museum, but is credited to the Ile-de-France by M. Bonaffe. If refinement and restraint cannot be claimed for the carving of this credence, it is singularly picturesque and in accord with our modern concepts of the spirit of its times. Some pieces of old furniture such as this acquire with their patina an odour of romance so powerful that one wishes their mute eloquence might find tongue and appease our curiosity. One finds oneself musing upon historic scenes of revelries, gallantries, and cruelties of which it may have been a silent witness. Is it necessary to again note that much French Renaissance decorative furniture appears to have been both gilt and painted? The colours were probably too primitive for later owners, who had the paint removed and the natural beauty of the wood brought out by a little polish and much "elbow grease.'' A gueux or foot-warmer of the period is shown upon the plinth shelf, whilst the two copper and brass chimerical monsters upon the top (somewhat earlier in date of execution) are aiguieres or ewers fi-om the Cluny. The details of the wall panelling are taken from an apartment in the Chateau de Beauregard, pres de Blois. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 145 Toulouse, and Auvergne, from their affinity and proximity, were naturally the more Italian in feeling ; whilst the Gothic tradition lingered longest, as one would surmise, in conservative Brittany, where the blending . of the new detail was both belated and coarse. In Burgundy, on the other hand, owing largely no doubt to the famous school of sculptors which had existed there for a century, the acceptance was more prompt, though free from servility in its choice and treatment of details, and generally akin to the Flemish ; Burgundy, having indeed been joined to the Netherlands until the death of Charles the Bold in 1473. Hugues Sambin and Androuet du Cerceau published portfolios of designs for decorative furniture, and to them is due the distinction of selecting and evolving features from the Renaissance most akin to the French temperament. SIXTEENTH-CENTURY BURGUNDIAN SEAT. EARLY FRENCH DE- CORATIVE FURNITURE Until the fifteenth century all articles of furniture in other than royal palaces or ecclesiastical in- stitutions were roughly made and few in number. The small rooms at the tops of the castle towers contained a bed, a faldstool, and a clothes chest. The stone walls were either left untouched, or whitewashed and hung with pennons and armour. In the halls of the more 19 CHEST (ABC). MUSfiE DE CLUNY. 146 DECORATIVE FURNITURE important castles, however, the walls were hung with tapestries picturing hunting scenes or episodes from the romawnis. The poet perhaps conveys too flattering an impression of the floor covering of the earlier part of the period when he tells us that ^U '^tx^tn anH flotoers, fragraunt, fegre anU %\atit, TOere strabjeH in ijalles anlr Ia2U nxcatx tljcgr itiz. The openings for light and air were sometimes protected by frames "glazed" with thin horn or oiled paper. The furnishing arrangements of the great hall in France were similar to those of England, i.e. oaken trestle tables with the benches at the sides, and at the head the seigneurial chair, which was frequently canopied with cloth of gold. ^^^^^^^^^^^B^ HUGHES AND HUGHIERS In France — as in England — during the Middle Ages, hutches, coffers, or chests were practically the sole pieces of furniture in use, serving for storage, travelling trunks, seats, cupboards, and tables. CofFre tres beau, cofFre mignon CofFre du dressoir compagnon. If the sofa has had its English songster, the huche or coffer inspired a French poet, Gilles Corrozet, in 1539, to voice in some thirty couplets of his Blasons Domestiques, such as the above, its many types and virtues. Corrozet's muse at a later date was also moved to apostrophise the dressoir and the chair. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 147 So important was the huche that the skilled woodworkers of France were called huchiers and enrolled in guilds. The sizes and general designs were prescribed, and the huchier was not allowed to set up in business until he had served his appointed years as apprentice, and more- over had satisfied the heads of his craft of his technical ability. He was enjoined under penalties to produce nought but good work. Although in modern French parlance the use OI I/Ue Derm OanUZ carved walnut coffee, early sixteenth century. FRENCH. is generally reserved ^'^^^^ '^^ louvre. for trunks, the word formerly connoted almost any piece of storage furniture : for preference, high coffers, such as the fine example of Henri Deux period shown in our Colour Plate No. XVIII., and that at Chantilly herewith sketched. THE CHAIR Though during the sixteenth cen- tury the chair lost its sacrosanct character as an appanage of authority, ^, its varieties and numbers increased greatly. To quote again from Gilles Corrozet, the veritable poet-laureate of contemporary furniture, who, possibly realising how threadbare his craft had devolving chair. EARLY SIXTEENTH, wom the moro usual and century chair. MUSfiE DU LOUVRE. LATE SIXTEENTH Un- CENTURY. MUSEE DU LOUVRE. {COLLEC- substantial fabrics of their dreams, tics daviluer.) 148 DECORATIVE FURNITURE found adequate scope for his muse in cataloguing the sohd results of man's ingenuity in decorative woodwork. Chaire couverte a chapitaux Chaire garnie d'escripteaux Dignes de la langue et de la bouche, Chaire compaigne de la couche. Chaire pres du lict approchee Pour deviser a Faccouchee Chaire faicte pour reposer, Pour cacqueter et pour causer, Chaire de Thomme grand soulas Quand il est travaille et las. Chaire belle, chaire gentile, Chaire de fa^on tressutile, Tu es propre en toute saison Pour bien parer une maison. FRENCH HIGH-BACKED CHAIR. SIXTEENTH CENTURY. MUS:6e DU LOUVRE. The chair a haut dossier, or high-backed chair, such as is herewith illustrated, was still reserved for the seigneur or chief guest, and escabeaux and bancs were still in general use. The Prie Dieu chair was further elaborated in form, and one is somewhat surprised to encounter in inventories of sixteenth- century date, as well as in museums, the revolving chair, or chaire tournante. THE SELLETTE, OR ESGABEAU, also known as the selle or scabelle, was the French equivalent of the simplest form of stool. Cot- CENTURY. FRENCH, grave, in his almost contemporary dictionary, even goes to the drastic length of defining such pieces as "any ill-favoured ordinary or country stoole of a cheaper sort than the joyned or buffet-stoole." STOOL. SIXTEENTH ESCABEAU, OR SELLETTE. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 149 BED. ANDEOUET DU CERCEAU. 1575. BEDSTEADS Bedsteads such as that ascribed to Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henri rv., from the Chateau de Pau (shown in Colour Plate No. XXII.), mark the transition from the enclosed form of bed built into the wall to more open and hygienic types of bed- stead, in which four posts uphold the tester or ceil. The Du Cerceaus give several designs for " four-posters," but the bed at Chenon9eaux tradi- tionally associated with Catherine de Medicis, on page 140, is an actual survival and of the greater interest. The couchette was a forerunner of the present-day bed. FIREPLACES The massive hooded chimneypieces of stone, which dominated so many halls of the fifteenth century, were largely supplanted by carved wooden fire- places of distinctly architectural detail during the succeeding century. COUCHETTE (DATE 1583). CHABKlfeEES-AKLfiS COLLECTION. 150 DECORATIVE FURNITURE TABLES About 1560 the table a mllonge, from which our British draw- table was evolved, was introduced into France; the French table, however, usually had a colonnade placed upon the central "tread bar or plinth connecting the end supports. Tables which previously in France, as in other lands, had been mainly of boards and trestles — readily dismantled and stowed away after ase — in the sixteenth century become complete and framed pieces of decorative woodwork. The supporting ends of such tables as that in Colom- Plate No. XVI. with the Li%e armoire, are so enriched that one scarcely realises immediately their direct descent from the threstule. WALNUT CENTRE TABLE. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTOEY. FRENCH. WOODS Though, upon French soil, forests yet flourished and coal was un- known, one finds much the same fear lest the wooden wealth should give out, in France as in England, during the sixteenth century. For example, the potter, Bernard Palissy, says : " If ever I be lord of such land that is devoid of wood, I would compel all of my tenants to sow at least some portion of it. I have even wished to make a list of arts which would cease if there were no longer any wood, but when I had written down a large number of them I found that there would be no end to the enumeration, and after due consideration I came to the conclusion that there was not even one trade which could be carried on without wood." Since that day the discovery of coal has PLATE XX OAK CABINET, with Circular Convex Panels, having Incised Arabesque Ornament filled in with Black Composition Royal Scottish Museum, Height, 4 ft. 2 in. ; length, 4 ft. 6 in, ; Edinburgh depth, 1 ft. 9 in. WALNUT CHAIR {chaise sans bras), with Interlaced Floral Ornament on the Back ViCTOKIA AND AlBERT MuSEUM, London The group illustrated is composed of French decorative equipments made during the reign of Henri Deux or of his three sons, — Fran9ois ii., Charles ix., and Henri iii. The incised cabinet is apparently the work of one of the woodwork " schools " of Central or Northern France, and not later than the middle of the century. It formed part of the Peyre Collection until purchased for the British nation, and is a singularly happy conjunction of the serviceable and the artistic ; a sturdy yet refined piece of design and craftsmanship, in excellent preservation. The carved chair is attributed to the Lyons school, and one judges it to be the product of a craftsman of the days of Fran9ois ii., or Charles ix. Owing in some measure to its having been left untouched by oil or polish, the chair has so crumbled from exposure and worm that it is now deemed prudent to preserve it in a glazed case. 152 DECORATIVE FURNITURE That the panelling (from the Louvre) is of Henri Deux period is shown by the moon device of the Valois, which Henri adopted in signification that, as the moon displays its full glory when at the full, so the full valour of the Valois would be manifest only when possessed of his entire kingdom. The embroidery (formerly in the Collection Sauvageot) was part of a bed valance of Henri Deux days. The probable original colouring is shown in preference to its present scarcely discernible hues. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 153 rendered man somewhat more independent of wood, yet in the main the statement still holds good. In the north of France, as in Burgundy, though much deal and cedar was used, oak was chiefly employed: chestnut and walnut supplanting it as the style progressed. In the south these latter woods, being more easily procured and of finer grain, were used somewhat earlier ; yielding as they do more readily to the woodworker's chisels, they assisted to widen the distinctions in woodwork between the schools of Northern and Southern France. The secret of the delightful patina, or surface condition, at times like that of old Italian bronzes on many early French pieces, was the Gallic recognition of elbow grease as the best polish : their workshop recipe for good work has been much polishing with little "polish," the grain of the wood never being, in the best French polishing of whatever period, choked and obscured by thick layers of gummy chemicals, but repeatedly and gently rubbed down. CAKVED WALNUT TABLE. FRENCH. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. PAINTING AND GILDING Whilst it should be fully recognised that remains of painting appear on some few pieces of early French Renaissance furniture, confirming the belief in the continuance of the mediaeval and Italian Renaissance practice of painting, — the paint being removed by a later generation who appreciated their ancestors' design -forms but were unable to tolerate their childish colourings, — the writer disagrees with those authorities who, mainly upon this evidence, base the statement that the practice of painting or gilding was universal at this period. 20 154 DECORATIVE FURNITURE The remains of paint or evidence of "pickling off" would, in his opinion, be found in a far greater number of pieces had the custom been invariable or even usual. One is, by custom, so habituated to the mellow, sombre gradations of the natural woods that it would necessitate a reconstruction of the aesthetic faculty to appreciate the fine French pro- ductions of the early Renaissance in their painted garb. Remembering the convulsions through QUiRIDON. CAEVED TORTOISES AND , -n i i -if. SERPENTS. which France has passed, the survival oi so many pieces of her decorative furniture of this era is even more re- markable than that of the contemporary chateaux, of whose equipment they formed part. It is also noticeable that whilst the French craftsmen adopted the ornamental motives of the Italian Renaissance, they adhered to their old methods of expression, preferring carving to painted panels ' or coloured marqueterie ; with the reservation that the use of inlays of precious metals, ivory, mother-o'-pearl, and of' polished marble, lapis lazuli, porphyry, and other decora- tive stones, which under the title of Pietra - Dura was a characteristic of Italian cab- inets from the middle of the sixteenth century, spread to France towards the con- clusion of Henry ii.'s reign, and continued until that of Louis XIV. TABLE. ANDEOUET DU CEECEAU. Though England possesses in her Wallace collection a series of mobiliary masterpieces from the period of Louis xiv., admitted by THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE 155 French connoisseurs to surpass those in their national collections, the United Kingdom is not so fortunate in its examples of French Renaissance decorative woodwork. To those English lovers of fine furniture who associate the French genius in woodwork design ex- clusively with the " Louis " styles of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, it is a revelation indeed to visit the woodwork collections housed in the old-time royal palace and present-day Mus^e du Louvre, or even better, in the grim old Gothic home of the Abbe of Cluny, now the Mus^e Cluny, and in Pierre Lescot's H6tel Carnavalet. The most patriotic of Britons must concede that the continental craftsmen were as much superior in the exterior technique of their furniture to their English brethren during the sixteenth century, as were they in the seven- teenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth centuries ; still, — ascribe it as one may to CARVED BOOK PANEL. NIMES. insularity, heredity, or what not, — to the writer there is an appeal in the bold, free domesticity of English decorative woodwork which is not found in the more formal work of SILHOUETTE. ORNAMENT BY DU CERCEAU. the ContineUt. As previously mentioned, the more Italianate modes of Henri Quatre and Louis Treize days which covered the last half-century 156 DECORATIVE FURNITURE of this broad first division of French decorative furniture will be considered in our studies of the continental contemporaries of our English Stuart times. CHIMNEY-riECE. ru CEECEAU. CONTINENTAL CONTEMPORARIES OF LATE GOTHIC AND TUDOR PERIODS, 1475-1603 The Renaissance in Spain and Portugal TO Spain, the land of old romance and legend, with its rival races of Jews, Christians, and Moors in unloving contact, the Re- naissance was first introduced in the latter half of the fifteenth century, after Ferdinand and Isabella had con- solidated the Peninsular units of the mighty empire ruled by the far- flung sceptre of Charles the Fifth of Germany and First of Spain. The practical commencement of the picturesque Spanish Renaissance dates, however, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, after the reconquest of Granada. MOORISH INFLUENCE The Moslem occupation had con- tinued so long, its Saracenic art had become so ingrained in the Spanish temperament, that it aroused no sense of incongi'uity when mixed with Gothic bracket op choir stall, san maecos. leon. 157 158 DECORATIVE FURNITURE ornament, and furnished a precedent for grafting the new interpretation of classic ornament upon the Mudejar-Gothic. Whilst recognising the tendency to unduly emphasise Moorish influence upon the Spanish taste, one must not disregard the fact that the Christians manifested their appreciation of the Moorish architecture, upon their reconquest of the cities which had been subject to Arab rule, by utilising the Moorish mosques as churches and employing Moorish architects and craftsmen in erecting and furnishing new buildings ; unlike the Moors, whom temperament and religion alike prohibited from using the sumptuous furnishings employed by the Christians in Spain. As one might expect from these Moslem art aflSnities, the Spaniards, ere the Netherlands fell under the Hapsburg dynasty in 1477, had been attracted by the florid intricacy and patient elaboration of the Flemish and German Gothic carvers, and when the three countries became fellow-subjects under Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles the Fifth, many craftsmen of both the Netherlands and Germany appear to have migrated to the Peninsula. Though they saw the ornament of the Renaissance long before it penetrated into England, the Spaniards appear to have been almost as leisurely as ourselves in accepting it ; indeed, it may be doubted if the Spaniard ever cared for the pure line and refined form which was the message of the great Italian movement. Woodwork plays so interesting and important a part in the chronicles of ancient Spain, that one would gladly exchange the sober task of endeavouring to show the evolution of Spanish furniture in more modern days, for that of following the fortunes of the Visigothic ark-chest in which the heroic Pelayo, the saviour of the Spanish nation, was placed by his mother ; or of unravelling the design of the curiously wrought casket, forced open — to his own undoing — by the unfaithful Roderic, after his marriage to the beauteous Moorish maid who had been cast ashore. Perhaps the most wonderful of all the Spanish legends associated with decorative woodwork, however, is that PLATE XXI VARGUERO cabinet of chestnut, ivory, Etc., Painted AND Gilt with Wrought-iiion and Steel Mounts : upon twisted, TURNED, AND CARVED StAND „ _ Height, 2 ft. 7 in. ; total height, 5 ft. 4 in. ; Parnham Collection f , „ ~ ^ . , ,,n.. length, 3 ft. 9 in. ; depth, 1 ft. 4 m. The art of the Moor survived and strongly influenced Spanish work long after Saracenic rule had been broken and the Moors stripped of their possessions on the Peninsula ; indeed, so interwoven had Arab art become with Spanish tastes that Moorish craftsmen were allowed, even encouraged, to remain that they might build and ornament their Spanish conquerors' homes and public buildings. Prominent amid the Hispano-Moresque decorative woodwork pro- bably made by these Moorish craftsmen is the vargueho : a box with a door in front, evolved from the chest or huche, and mounted on a stand, such as the specimen herewith illustrated from Parnham — that treasure-house of good things in wood, stone, and metal. Characteristically devoid in its upper part of mouldings, the Parnham piece is yet extremely decorative, its vivacious if bizarre colouring enabling it to bravely assert itself against even a background of rich painted and gilt guadamacillas, the leathern wall hangings which Spain manufactured with skill equal to the finest productions of Venice. Shod at its edges with pierced ironwork and enriched with hinge plates — also pierced with arabesque patterns — the vargueno is largely indebted to the smith's art. The lock plate is a typical piece of Spanish metalcraft, consisting of balustered columns, the central baluster 159 160 DECORATIVE FURNITURE covering the hasp. The chestnut and other brown woods of the interior fittings are almost entirely hidden by ivory spindles, whilst gilding and vermilion add to the vivacity of this picturesque bit of old Spain. It has been reasonably conjectured that the vargueno cabinet took its title from the small town of Vargas, near Toledo. In the Cluny Museum of Paris is a vargueno cabinet of somewhat similar design to that in the Parnham Collection, mounted upon a stand of identical design, though in the writer's opinion ot somewhat later date than the chest itself The design of the stand indeed, is traditional, and common to several existing vargueiios. RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 161 of the table of Solomon, fashioned by genii from a single emerald, and so finely ornamented with jewels that "never did human behold anything comparable with it" upon a stand, one of whose golden (or emerald !) legs was sawn off by the Arab General Tarik, and pro- duced by him at the psychological moment for the undoing of a rival commander who claimed to have discovered the table. Love of the decorative arts was one of the few traits held in common by the mighty men whom nature in the momentous sixteenth century seems to have delighted to place upon the European stage. It is but seldom that such monarchs as Charles i. of Spain, Suleyman the Magnificent, Francis i., and Henry viii. simultaneously appear ; dwarfing even Csesar Borgia and Pope Alexander vi., whose vices would at any other time have earned them a more prominent niche in the historian's chamber of horrors. Hand in hand with the personal gratification in the applied arts of these great continental rulers and the nobles who were patrons of the Renaissance, there is good ground to suspect that they knowingly concentrated the movement upon the more abstract literary and art aspects in order to minimise the results of its stimulus upon the politics and religions of their days. THE HAPSBURGS The political grandeur of a monarch whose realms included Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Sardinia ; who had, moreover, in conjunction with Portugal, received the largest present ever made — that of the Continent of America, from its presumptive or pre- sumptuous "owner," Pope Alexander vi., — and who was, through Cortez and Pizarro, to receive the rich treasures of this New World, made the art patronage of Charles of supreme import in the develop- ment of the Renaissance. 162 DECORATIVE FURNITURE PLATERESQUE RENAISSANCE, A term chosen from a supposed resemblance of its details to engraved chased metal work — although they appear really more suggestive of lace — was in vogue until the retirement of Charles v. from the throne. Spain refused, as did the other countries upon the introduction of the Renaissance, to straightway abandon her ancient art traditions, preferring to merge such features of the new style as appealed to her into her own piquant and, indeed to the writer, singularly attractive tracery, such as that in the chapel at Santiago, near the monument to the Constable. This tomb was originally equipped with life-sized mechanical figures, rising and kneeling at the celebration of the Mass ! a tour de force which must have been dangerously disconcerting to the nervous, unwarned devotee. At the summit of her grandeur and wealth Spain expended the treasures of the New World upon the arts of the Renaissance ; indeed, the precious metals and stones were employed so lavishly that a document (awesomely named a pragmatic sumptuary), enacting that no cabinets, desks, coffers, bronzes, etc. shall be made of silver, was issued towards the close of the sixteenth century; by which time ivory, ebony, tortoise-shell, and various "fancy" woods from the Indies had been added to the resources of the Hispano-Moorish craftsmen when decorating their favourite chestnut or walnut woods. SPANISH GOTHIC TKACEKY. RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 163 CHESTS The caja de novia, or bride's chest, was popular with both Moor and Christian. Large boxes or chests ip/rcones) seem to have been in Spain, as elsewhere, the most usual articles / > of furniture, and to 4 / n • have been popular _ from earliest times until the days of the _ baroque modes. The _ most primitive form is that in Burgos Cathedral, reputed to 1 be the identical coffer which the Cid — that Bayard of Spain — filled with sand and deposited as security for a loan of six hundred marks from a Jew. It is fitted with rings for carriage upon the backs of sumpter horses. COFFER OF THE CID, BURGOS CATHEDRAL. BEDS The bed grew larger and more and more sumptuous during the later Gothic times. Hangings of satin, brocade, and rich skins were used in conjunction with gold and silver embroidery, whilst a triptych or driptych containing the sacred images was placed at the head-end ; balustrades of wood heavily silvered were set around it, and steps of silver were provided in order that it might be entered without loss of dignity. These beds were usually placed in one corner of the apartment ; in an opposite corner was the writing and dining-table, laid out with 164 DECORATIVE FURNITURE napery including mandihdas (or "jaw-wipers," as the napkin was bluntly called), plates, dishes, cups, and spoons. VARGUE^O CABINETS The peculiarly typical Spanish cabinet of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century, known as a vargueno, —of which an example is shown in our Colour Plate No. XXI.,— is assumed to have received its name from its first place of manufacture having been the village of Vargas, near Toledo. It is obviously a chest mounted upon a stand, and its details almost invariably show Moorish influence of the Alhambra type as strongly as that of the Renaissance. The Spaniard has never been credited with an obsessing affection for work ; he was a soldier at his best, and in this the period of his highest national fortune appears to have entrusted the making of his household gods and the adorn- ment of his home to the Moor, the Jew, and the foreigner generally — importing much furniture from the Netherlands and Germany as well as from Italy. CHAIRS Of the type of the example on the next page, with minute geometrical inlays known as certosina work, were the more usual seats of the wealthy, but as might be antici- EENAISSANCE BED-POST, pated from so grand — and grandiose a Spanish variant of the x-chaik. — a nation, the seigneurial chair played an important part of the room's equipment ; whilst smaller chairs with loosely tacked-on velvet coverings RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 165 at the back were provided for visitors ; ladies using low stools. Members and friends of the household reclined upon the carpeted floor. The craft of the woodworker was under strict surveillance and regulation. For instance, it was made compulsory to use the hides of horses, mares, and mules for the covering of chests ; that of cows or calves being found to quickly become moth-eaten. It is impossible to ignore the chefs d'oeuvres of Spanish woodwork — the Spanish choir stalls, surpassing those of Italy in richness of detail, unbridled by the sense of repose and breadth usually exhibited by the Italian work. Among the finest in Spain are those at Burgos, Leon, and Plasencia: the latter, by Rodrigo Aleman, perfect in their carving, depicting a number of scenes from convent life ; some being, it must be confessed to the dishonour of the carver, of a Rabelaisian rather than a religious character. IMPERIAL TOLEDO, CHAIR, CEETOSINA WORK. TOLEDO. WOOD SCULPTURE. S. THERESA. " The crown of Spain, the light of the World," possesses in its walnutwood choir stalls the acknowledged masterpieces of Spanish decorative woodwork ; the lower tier, by Maese Rodrigo, dates from 1495, and commemorates the re-conquest of Granada by their Catholic WOOD SCULPTURE. ST. PETER NATANO. 166 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Majesties. Upon the upper tier Berruguete and Philip of Burgundy, surnamed Vigarni, half a century later contended against each other in illustrating scenes from the Testaments. In the prison at Seville expired during this period a greater artist and sculptor than Vigarni or Berruguete, PIETRO TORRIGIANO, The Florentine sculptor, woodwork designer, and architect, who is credited with the most active part in the development of the Italian Renaissance in England. That he was an admirable artist is evidenced by Henry vii.'s tomb ; that he was a man of ungovernable temper his alleged breaking of Michael Angelo's nose, if proven, would make equally evident ; and that he paid with his life for a want of self- control upon settling in Spain seems certain. He fell into the power of the Inquisition for impiously breaking into pieces a life-size Madonna and Child, upon discovering that the Spanish grandee, for whom he had carved it, was attempting to trick him of due payment by sending bags filled with brass maravedi instead of ducats. Torrigiano was condemned to torture and death, and, though respited, went mad through fear of his sentence. GUADAMEGILES The Spaniards' walls were hung with tapestries, silks, and with the famed painted and gilt leathers, known as guadamedles after their source, Guadames, a town in Africa. Woodwork contributed largely to the gorgeous Uzarrerie of the wealthy Spaniards' homes during the early phases of Spanish Renaissance— which, however incorrect in an academic sense, from their mingling of Gothic, Renaissance, and Moorish details, possessed a charm lacking in the later classic formalism of Herrara, a pupil of Michael Angelo who commenced to build the gloomy Escorial in 1567. PLATE XXII CARVED OAK BEDSTEAD OF JEANNE D'ALBRET, Dated 1562 From the Chateau de Pau, Length, 7 ft. 4 in. ; height, 9 ft. 9 in. ; MoBiLiER National de France depth, 4 ft. 2 in. Until almost the days of Jeanne d'Albret, the mistress of a large castle possessed her own bedroom high up in the walls, and with windows opening on court or hall, frequently with small storage recesses. She virtually lived in this her bower or ladies' chamber. It was furnished with a stout bench on either side of the fire- place, and a cushioned dossier reserved for her lord near the bed, a simple table ever covered by a cloth, possibly a double huche or credence such as are shown in Colour Plates V. and XVII., to contain a few manuscript volumes, covered in leather and with clasps, which were the only "books" of those days, and probably more than one chest or coffer for clothes and cloths. Its chief equipment was, however, a carved or painted bedstead, the whole of which might be movable, except the heavy tester or ceil from which the curtains were hung. This bed of the noble dame, who was Henri Quatre's mother, is an early form, but not the first of decorative royal couches. The important part played by the lit in French Court ceremonial will be found noted in the chapter on The Bed. From the far-off seventh century, when the rois faineants of France, her Merwing sluggard kings appear to have perambulated their nominal domains in their chariot-beds, French kings and queens, whatever their 167 168 DECORATIVE FURNITURE remissness in other respects, at least did tlieir utmost to ensure the pre-eminence of their country in the furniture of repose. England possesses nothing corresponding to the curious, elabor- ately wrought example of the French or Flemish Renaissance here- with illustrated. The carvings and many -mitred mouldings of this bed have retained their crispness to a remarkable extent. Whether it be the real and veritable bed which belonged to and was in constant use by Jeanne d'Albret, its date 1562, carved on the lower moulding of the cornice, precludes the possibility of the picturesque and joyous original known to history as Henry of Navarre — and destined to play so important a role in the civil strife between Protestant and Catholic — having first seen the light from its protection, as he was then nine years of age. The semi-enclosed bedstead marks the transit from the earlier panelled beds, lits clos, even nowadays found in some few remote Breton, Flemish, and German homes, and the open four-post beds familiar to English eyes. The interior of the chateau has been so restored and altered that one can feel little certitude that much of the wall decorations of the days of Jeanne d'Albret yet remains. Pau, so full of reminiscences of the kings of Navarre, derived its name from the "pale" (in Langue d'Oc, "pau") or palisade which surrounded the older castle, on whose site the present chateau was built as far back as in 1363. Curious as is the Gothic coffer— alleged to have come from Jeru- salem, and fine as are the carved stone chimney-pieces in the Chamhre de Souverains and the Salon de Famille— the most interesting pieces of furniture in the castle are this bed, which tradition persists in acclaiming as that in which Henry of Navarre was born, and the bergeau of tortoiseshell in which he was placed during infancy. RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 169 Decorative Spanish furniture reached its apogee during the reign of PHILIP THE SECOND, The gloomy devotee who is as exclusively associated in the English mind with the Armada and the Inquisition as his spouse, Mary of England, was with " popery " ; each were victims of their creed and concepts. Mary, it is true, from her marriage when thirty-nine, was also a victim to love for the cold bigot who at twenty-seven married her as a move in his high chess game for the advancement of Spain and Catholicism ; a crime which England, under Mary's sister, Elizabeth, incidentally punished when they destroyed the Armada, and hastened Philip's retirement to a royal conception of the monastic cell, whose furnishings have been so carefully preserved. TABLE. SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL. CONTINENTAL CONTEMPORARIES OF LATE GOTHIC AND TUDOR. THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY IN a more altruistic age — of which few signs are, it must be con- fessed, at present discernible — princes and people will perchance, in consideration of the trouble they cast upon posterity paying them the compliment of trying to understand their history, refrain from the complicated changes involved in yielding to national ambitions and evolutionary instincts. The many states now composing the German Empire, together with Flanders, Holland the Netherlands, and Burgundy, have been specially culpable in this way. This is the more regrettable since the decorative furniture of these lands was frequently in advance of both French and German work. PANEL BT WENDEL DIETTEBUK. IN BURGUNDY the art of the hmhier, the forerunner of our present-day cabinet- maker, had been stimulated at the commencement of our period by 172 DECORATIVE FURNITURE the luxurious appointments and lavish display of the Court. One of the English visitors present at the marriage of his countrywoman, Margaret of York, to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a nominal vassal of France, and the real ruler over the greater part of this region, writes — " I herd never of nowt lyek it, save King Artourj's cort." Upon Charles' death without issue, in 1477, his duchy was annexed to France by the Eleventh and craftiest of the Louis, whilst THE NETHERLANDS proper passed (in 1516), by the marriage of Charles' daughter to the Archduke Maxmilian of Austria, to their grandson Charles v. of Germany and First of Spain (who was born and bred in the Netherlands), and thus formed part of the enormous domains of the Hapsburg Empire. Revolting from the rigours of Philip ii.'s bigoted rule, the heroic struggle of the Netherlands with the Spaniards, which ended in independence, was in progress through- FLEMISH FOLDING TABLE. PAKNHAM. , 4.1 ^ i„i, j. /? •■,-,■,■■, out the latter part of our period: doubtless exercising a disturbing effect upon the manufactures and arts of the country. Nevertheless, the population of Bruges and Ghent were each greater than that of London in the fifteenth century, and by the middle of the sixteenth century Antwerp had- outstripped Venice as a commercial centre for over- GEEMAN TABLE, SIXTEENTH CENTURY. PAENHAM. RENAISSANCE IN NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY 173 OAK TABLE INLAID WITH EBONY. HAAELEM. seas produce: "Venice is surpassed," wrote the Venetian Ambassador on visiting Antwerp in 1550. The wealthy burghers of these cities, with increasing prosperity, were indeed fully alive to the lucrative ad- vantages of combining art and commerce, and encouraged the immigration of all who were skilled in the new industries with a view to breaking down Italian monopolies in several branches of art craftsmanship. It is interesting to note that among those thus attracted to Ant- werp was Christopher Plantin, the founder of the celebrated house wherein now is the museum of decorative and historic furniture. From the Middle Ages the manufacturers of Flanders and of England were in constant communication and exchange of their wares ; the more so since the religious and political aspirations of the two countries were also largely identical from the days of the Reformation. The tide of the Renaissance would appear to have reached the Netherlands somewhat before its arrival in Germany, but the influx was gradual, and almost half a century elapsed ere the national genius had assimilated the new style, and given it independent house with its "stepped" gable, Netherlands architecture, held its ground with the addition of a species of strap ornament adopted from the Renaissance, binding and accentuating the "steps" and yielding a sky-outline both marked and pleasing. BANC. FLEMISH. BONAFFfi COLLECTION. character. The narrow Gothic so well-known a feature of 174 DECORATIVE FURNITURE During the sixteenth century the materials and treatment of Flemish decorative furniture were so akin to that of France generally, and Burgundy in particular, that the review of Gallic contemporary woodwork will be found almost to suffice in conjunction with these notes, which must not close, however, without recognition of the absolute equality, technically and artistically, of Netherlands wood- work with that of France. Such tours de force of Flemish work as the carved chimneypiece in Bruges Town Hall, erected in commemoration of the battle of Pavia and the peace of Cambrai are, however (as is the disappointing habit of chefs d'ceuvres), less charming to behold than to read about : its life-size figures being gigantic but inartistic. A peculiarity of Flemish figure carving is the occasional realistically coloured painting of the faces. IN GERMANY Slowly filtering through Flanders and the then wealthy Tyrol, the Renaissance made its entry — almost as late as to England — into the combination of states then under the rule of Charles v. of Germany and the First of Spain; striking even deeper chords in the metaphysical Teuton than the sensuous Italian ; stimulating the religious Reformation in the person of its great protagonist, CHILD'S cHAiK. ^artiu Luther, and inspiring Albert Diirer to design GERMAN. among his woodcuts (the " concentrated homely treasures of his heart "), those exposing the abuses of the Church. ALBERT DtJRER The influence of Diirer as designer, painter, sculptor, architect, engraver, with his noble power of austere line, was paramount in the evolution of the German Renaissance. Decorative rather PLATE XXIII WROUGHT STEEL CHAIR The Property of Earl Radnor, Height, 4 ft. 9 in. ; width of seat, 2 ft. Longford Castle 3 in. ; depth, 1 ft. lOJ in. Constructed of wrought steel, and therefore practically impervious to the attacks of time, this historic chair possesses at least one other claim to especial notice, being probably the most minutely elaborated example of decorative farniture in existence. The German love of detail has for once given itself full scope : scarcely a quarter of an inch is left plain, with the exception of the mouldings. Each of the hundred and thirty-six cartouches, or panels, which decorate the four sides of the angle-set posts contains some half dozen minute figures : each cartouche is supported by two figures. The largest pediment panel (depicting a Caesarian triumphal pro- cession) holds nearly forty horse and foot soldiers. The total number of figures on the chair is therefore considerably over a thousand. Each of these figures — often less than half an inch in height — is chased and modelled, whilst the frames of the cartouches and other ornaments are equally minute. Only a series of full-size drawings could present the whole of the details ; fortunately, the outline and proportions of this chef d'ceume in steel are sufficiently decorative to justify its inclusion, apart from its minute decoration. The authenticity of the following record of its history is incon- testable. The chair was presented by the city of Augsburg, whose Arms are at the top of the back, to the Emperor of Germany, 175 176 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Rudolphus II., whose bust is also immediately underneath the City's Arms. When the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus plundered the city of Prague, they promptly annexed the chair and removed it to Sweden. It remained in the possession of the ancestors of Mr. Gustavus Brander until brought to England by that gentleman at the close of the eighteenth century, when it was at once purchased by the then Earl of Radnor. Its home for the last century has been Longford Castle, that curious triangular Trinitarian conceit in stone, with a tower at each angle, which John Thorpe planned at the end of the sixteenth century : a testimony that the craving for the quaint is not an exclusively modern phase. The artist's name, Thomas Ruker, is signed on a plaque under the seat, and dated 1574. The subject on the left-hand side of the lower, inset panel in the pediment (flanked by fluted pilasters) is Nabuchad- nezzar asleep, and the subject-matter of his dream — the statue — stands beside the bed: on the right-hand side the King is shown^ on his throne, with Daniel before him expounding the true inward- ness of the royal nightmare. That exposition contains (is the reminder needless?) a prefigura- tion of the four great world empires: the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman; the relevance of the subject lies in the fact that the Emperors of Germany claimed to be .the heads of the latter Empire. In further compliment to Rudolphus, remarkable leading events in Roman history are depicted in the hundred and thirty- six cartouches on the four sides of the posts. Rudolphus, whom history represents as an anti-Protestant bigot, and a credulous seeker after the philosopher's stone rather than a triumphant warrior, appears to have received a more than usual amount of flattery, for in the RoyaL Collection at Windsor is a high bronze relief depicting him as a conqueror surrounded by Hercules, Philosophy, and the Sister Arts. RENAISSANCE IN NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY 177 than pictorial (as indeed all the great masters have been), he was doubtless imbued, when apprenticed to painter Wolgemut, the founder of the great Nuremburg school of carvers, with the traditions of that school. His outlook was eminently Gothic and fantastic, and he returned from his wanderschaft — ^that essential part of the German artist's training — after glorying in the warmth and colour of Italy, to his Nuremburg home, to practise his art amid the domestic unhappiness so sen- sitively depicted in Leopold Schefer's book. The Artist's Married Life. He received scant recognition from the burghers of his own town, but was honoured in Courts, and presented by Raphael with sketches, to "show him his hand." EARLY SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TABLE. FROM ALBERT DURER. HANS HOLBEIN Second only to Diirer, Hans Holbein, born in Augsburg, whither Italian architectural ideals had permeated, was far more in touch with classic culture. Holbein has been credited with much wood- work design upon somewhat slender evidence. He, however, found so little encouragement at home that, after illustrating Luther's Testament, he came to England, illustrated More's Utopia and Erasmus' Praise of Folly, and was appointed Court painter to his Tudor Majesty, Henry viii. CHAnt. HANS HOLBETN. TESTAMENT." •ALTEM 23 178 DECORATIVE FURNITURE GERMAN BOOKS OF DESIGN German artists and designers — as befits the land of Gutenberg — ^promptly availed themselves of the art of printing to publish their designs ; the German pattern book being responsible, as we have seen, for much of the detail used during Elizabethan and James i.'s days, — in particular for the crude, meaningless grotesques which debased much of the English carved work. In addition to Diirer, Holbein and Burgkmair, Jost Amman, Vriedeman de Vries, Wendel Dietterlin CHAIR. DE vEiEs. — thc Du Cerceau of the German Renaissance, as De Vries was of the Flemish — and Peter Flotner, are among the contributors to these pattern books. Frequently their designs took the form of title pages, and these were culled from, without thought of relevancy, by the Elizabethan and Jacobean carvers. Much decorative furniture found in Germany, and attributed to this period, bears every indication of •^ •' SIXTKENTH-CENTtJRY ... . Flemish inspiration ; indeed, when exer- °=^^- °^ ^^^^• / ^"^ X cised without allowance for the borrowing habit between near neighbours, dogmatism relative to the parentage of decorative furniture at this period peculiarly justifies Sidney Smith's definition as "grown up puppyism." The civil and Napoleonic wars in which Germany engaged during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nine- STOOL. PETER CANDID, i. x.-t i_ • . -, .,, ,„. teenth centuries were carried on with so much ferocity, and the destruction of the enemy's goods and chattels was deemed so essential to their proper conduct, that Germany has probably RENAISSANCE E!^ NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY 179 suffered more loss of her national woodwork than any other nation of Western Europe. One feature of German woodwork of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries deserved especial mention : the iron mounts — locks, handles, and hinges — which were more developed, and continued until a later period than in any other country. Much ironwork and some furniture was exported to England and other countries by the Han- seatic League ; a union of free German cities for protection and the promotion of com- merce, which had now grown so strong that it could wage successful wars and almost command the seas. The rugged vigour of the German manifested itself in his selection from the Re- naissance of the harsh, the grotesque, and the laboriously intricate, rather than the beautiful. The Gothic forms have always appeared to the writer more sympa- thetic media than the classic for the expression of Teutonic traits, and such old pieces as the schrank, shown in Colour Plate IV., Part I., to embody the national temperament more attractively than the productions of a century later. FLEMISH CEEDENCE. SIXTEENTH CENTURY. PLATE XXIV GROUP OF LATE SIXTEENTH - CENTURY CONTINENTAL FURNITURE: PORTUGUESE CABINET OF CHESTNUT, INLAID WITH IVORY, EBONY, AND COLOURED WOODS, SPIRAL TURNED ARM-CHAIR WITH SILVER FINIALS AND NAILS The Property of SiE Geoege Donaldson Though Portugal was less affected by Moorish arts than Spain, Portuguese decorative furniture, represented by the inlaid cabinet shown in this Plate, is in other respects — as might be expected from the geographical and historical intimacy of the two countries — almost identical in its trend of taste with that of Spain. Both nations used chestnut largely as a constructional wood ; both were partial to inlaid work in ivory, bone, and stained green woods. Another feature common to both countries was the introduction, in a species of simplified landscape, of animals, birds, and plants. An extreme instance of this treatment is afforded by a piece in the national collection at South Kensington depicting the embarkation of Noah's charges in a distinctly humorous manner. Sir George Donaldson's cabinet of chestnut, ivory, ebony, and variously coloured woods and bone is in a more restrained and pleasing vein. Its drawer panels show a hunting scene with hares and dogs as the chief actors. The colouring of the inlays is not dissimilar to that of the English Nonesuch chests. i8i 182 DECORATIVE FURNITURE Twisted {i.e. spiral) work, used upon both the chair and the cabinet, was introduced into Europe from the East : upon its arrival on the Spanish peninsula it found prompt acceptance. It was probably little known in England until the marriage of Charles ii. to Catherine of Braganza, when the Queen imported into this country the coloured and gilded leathers, the twist-turned spiral furniture, and other decorative equipment of her own land. The vigorously carved heraldic animal occupying the foreground doubtless once surmounted a newel, but, deposed from its high estate, now serves with equal efficiency as a doorstop. A CHAPTER ON THE CHAIR THE mists of antiquity envelop the beginnings of the seat : indeed, it may be somewhat outside our present polite province to inquire minutely whether man's predilection for the seat of wood, as for other furniture of that material, is an added proof of his Simian ancestry, with its arboreal habits. After the tree the ground may well have appeared to lack the dignity conferred by altitude, for who can say at what stage man began to assimilate conceit and realise the value of the high seat as an effective, if adventitious, aid toward the recognition of his superiority over his fellows? The early Greeks, we are told, regarded, as have other races in their primitive days, trees as seats of the gods. It is of a stage in furniture evolution but httle more advanced, though chronologically later, that Cowper sings — Joint stools were then created ; on three legs Upborne they stood: a massy slab, in fashion square or round. Supporting, as shown in old manuscripts, even such noble ladies as Constantia, wife of John of Gaunt, until — At length a generation more refined Improved the simple plan, made three legs four, Gave them a twisted form vermicular, And o'er the seat, with plenteous wadding stuffed. Induced a splendid cover, green and blue, Yellow and red of tapestry, rich wrought And woven close. Such were the tabourets of Louis xiv.'s Court which, though seats without backs, yet were emblems of precedence for whose occupancy 183 184 DECORATIVE FURNITURE noble ladies fought in fashion masculine. The survival of the expression dear to our public life, "To take the Chair," is evidence that, though ostensibly for rest and ease, the seat (until the sixteenth century), whether stool, chair, or throne, was formerly regarded as an emblem of the pomp and circumstance of state authority or private position. Those of the master and mistress of the house often bore their coats-of-arms or other device. The seat is the symbol of nearly all public and vested dignity: the occupant of the most imposing seat, whether it be the Monarch on the throne, the Lord Chancellor on the woolsack, or the Speaker in the chair, is the head and front of the assembly. When kings, bishops, or nobles travelled, their folding chairs {faldisterium) were essential parts of their equipages. Mary of Scotland prepared to receive sentence of death "seated on an armchair." THE BUDSTICK Further evidence of the widespread regard for the chair as the symbol of authority is given by the custom in Norway, until ahnost present days, of placing the budstick (a hollowed piece of wood in which letters upon urgent public affairs were enclosed for conveniently carrying from house to house upon the mountains by relays of messengers) upon the "housefather's great chair by the fireside" if the family were away from home. SEATS ORIENTAL Among the Oriental races the raised seat is still regarded solely as an emblem of honour or dignity, and is sat upon cross-legged, the greater rest to the joints and muscles of the legs afforded by the Western seat being quite ignored. The Great Throne of Persia and the State Chairs of Indian A CHAPTER ON THE CHAHl 185 potentates are instances of cross-legged seats. Indeed, the Eastern affection for the cross-legged position is so ingrained that, when suites of European furniture are purchased and installed in reception rooms for the edification and impressing of visitors, their owners frequently prefer to sit upon the floor in front. Man, having discovered in his march towards civilization and effeminacy, that it was unpleasant to rest long upon a hard surface, had resource to resilient and soft materials, — to skins, cane, cushions, and upholstery. The successive stages in the chronicle of the seat, whether stool, stall, throne, or chair, from the diphros of the Egyptian to the cacqueteuse of sixteenth - century France, having been treated under their appropriate periods, we may now accept distinguished help in a search for the first principles of the ideal chair. Premising that the chair is — or should be — more comfortable than the stool, because of the addition of a back, and that the arms should add to the comfort, HERBERT SPENCER, in one of those rare moments when philosophers condescend to be practical, lays down guiding principles for designing the truly easy chair. In his Essays on Sociology he says : " Ease is to be gained by making the shapes and relative inclinations of the seat and back such as will evenly distribute the weight of the trunk and limbs over the widest possible supporting surface, and with the least straining of the parts out of their natural attitudes, and yet only now, after these thousands of years of civOization, are there being reached, and that not rationally, but empirically, approxima- tions of the structure required." Applying these principles we find : to be comfortable on sitting down, one's feet must just touch the ground, so that the most fitting 24 186 DECORATIVE FURNITURE height for the seat is between fifteen and eighteen inches. The next consideration is the ease of the back ; that will be partly attained if the seat slopes downwards towards its back, assisting to throw the vertebral column out of the perpendicular, as in Fig. 2. One must indeed be tired to be rested by a chair of the type of Fig. 1, built in evident disregard of the axiom that to obtain rest the form of the chair-back must be adapted to the vertebral curve, so that it may slope and be equally in contact at all points. Fig. 3 will, for these reasons, be more comfortable than Fig. 2, and Fig. 2 more so than Fig. 1. The depth of the seat (2>J must be regulated also by these considera- tions : the lower the seat the greater the depth, and the more necessary the slope of the seat and back. The chair represented in profile upon Fig. 4 will be the acme of discomfort despite the depth of the seat, but this discomfort will be considerably minimised if the seat be widened and canted towards its back, as indicated by the dotted lines ; and will be further reduced if the back 'slopes backwards (Fig. 5), and practically ®^ abolished if the seat be slightly raised in front and adapted in its back to the vertebral curve as in Fig. 6. The discomfort of seats with insufficient depth, and backs absolutely at right angles to the seat, is exemplified in the average church pew ; and is, of course justifiably, indeed admirably, designed for penitential and anti-soporific purposes. The curve of the ribs must also be con- sidered in the rails of a chair back : they also should be curved, — the departure from abstract constructional principles is justified by the necessity. If arms are added they should not be more than A CHAPTER ON THE CHAIR 187 ten inches above the seat, and, though the farthingale chair need not be literally copied, courtesy may be shown by making allowances for the (at times) ample skirts of the gentler sex by setting back the support of the chair arm. Akin to these considerations is the hygiene of attitude in sitting. It is curious that in the formidable literature now provided by medical writers for the enjoyment of the nervous, the many dyspeptic troubles traceable to the relaxed position in which average humanity sits have not received due attention ; from the health point of view, the nearly perpendicular back for occasional spinal discipline has much to recommend it. Among the sacrosanct paradoxes which trade tradition has evolved is that permitting to the typical dining-room chair a stretcher or under rails connecting the legs, whilst denying this strengthening to the more lightly built drawing-room chair. One of the two reasons dictating the provision of a stretcher {i.e. that the sitter might elevate his feet from the damp or draughty floor) has now practically ceased to exist, the other remains in full force. Though men no longer wear armour and are more gentle than in Tudor times, it is still quite necessary to secure strength and rigidity in the front legs of the chair. The legs of most modern chairs rely entirely upon their strength at one (the upper) end, whereas the legs of the sixteenth century chair were secured at both top and bottom ; and as the stretcher rails connecting the legs act as both struts and ties, the chair was prepared for any accident or jar, such as its being suddenly overturned. The old wainscot chairs were extremely heavy. It is not a bad rule to remember that the heavier the underframing of a chair, the earlier its probable period. It appears possible that in his quest of the comfortable, man — measured by the advanced upholsterer for his easy-chair as for his clothes — will be required in addition to submit to being weighed, 188 DECORATIVE FURNITURE and the incidence of his adipose tissue noted, that the necessary resilience may be calculated with greater exactitude than by present empirical methods ; after which it were but an easy stage to the adoption of the humorist's suggestion that a cast should be taken of the luxury-lover in his desired attitude, and the chair designed to accord. CUPBOARD THE CABINET^' CUR10,CHINA. MU&lC,ETC. ^ -CABINET5 J WITH tOOI/5 AfAMny Tdec — rOR THETRERN • FAMUy- Missing Page PLATE XXV SOME CONSTRUCTIONAL AND DECORATIVE WOODS IN VOGUE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY This, the second of the series of four colour plates showing the characteristic grain-markings of thirty-six varieties of constructional and decorative woods, has, in common with the rest of the series, been photographed from the actual woods without exaggeration or manipula- tion in any way of the distinctive features of the grain. The plate overleaf represents woods which, in addition to some of those. illustrated in Colour Plate No. I., were more particularly in demand during the Stuart period and the days of William the Stadtholder. Further plates of woods appear in Parts XII. and XVI., whilst in the latter number and Part XV. will be found a chapter on woods and a chart tabulating the chief characteristics of thirty of the principal trees used in the production of furniture. ge 189 T 1 ^^^^^1 ^^^H^^KS^ ' ^^^^1 '■J E ,^^^H' /'' ' ^H W t ^^^■4'.^ ^B n s ^i^^''':-| o '.'''■■ o ^^^^H D '"^^'' ' ^^1 f THE STUART PERIOD OF BRITISH DECORATIVE WOODWORK, 1603-1688 Jacobean, Cromwellian, Carolean WE now move forward to the era of the art-loving Stuarts, who^ much preferring pictures to politics, poetry to Puritanism, were but ill-equipped for the great conflict with their Parliament, which turned men's activities from the gentle arts to brutal forces, and formed the central issue in English life during the seven- teenth century, as the Wars of the Roses had been in the fifteenth. The lover of decorative furniture will find the Stuart period peculiarly rich in picturesque and rapidly evolving woodwork design. He will, however, miss from this chapter somewhat of the note of sturdy national growth traceable through Tudor days of Britain's crude but vigorous adaptation of the ornament of the Italian Renaissance : that movement which in art, almost as much as in letters, revolutionised the outlook, substituted reason 191 CHARLES I. "wall-papkr" lining of a bible-box. (Property of dr. Guthrie.) 192 DECORATIVE FURNITURE for authority, examination for acceptance, and abstract beauty for ^symbolism and parable. With Inigo Jones as interpreter during the earlier, and Sir Chris- topher Wren during the latter part of our period, England, gradually laying aside her Elizabethan tastes, conunenced an architectural flirtation, rudely interrupted by the Civil War and Commonwealth, with purer phases of the classic revival. The period is conveniently divisible in the styles of its furniture — as well as architecturally and politically — into three sections : — I. 1603-1649, i.e. from the commencement of the reign of James i. of England until the end of Charles i., — the period to which the term Jacobean is often restricted, and during which the furniture which we regard as typically Jacobean was produced. 1649-1660. The period of the Commonwealth. 1660-1688. From the arrival of Charles ii. to the arrival of William of Orange. STUART FURNITURE DIVISIONS FACSIMILE SKETCHES OF PANELS BY INIGO JONES, One does well, when desirous to speak concisely of the furniture in vogue from 1603 to 1688, to describe it as Jacobean if made during the reigns of James i. and Charles i. ; Commonwealth or Cromwellian, if of the days of the Lord Protector ; and Carolean, or Charles ii., when of the "Merrie Monarch's" period. The decorative furniture characteristic of these BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 193 :M gu.^ ^H M ¥ 1 1 i 9 1 three periods is almost as radically dissimilar as were the rulers whose names are used as style-labels to the pieces. A right-royally upholstered chair of early Jacobean days bears as much resemblance to a leathern Commonwealth chair as did James i. to the only Cromwell who counted in seventeenth - century politics. A parti-coloured inlaid cupboard bedecked with many woods, a sofa or day-bed, of Charles ii.'s days, was as like a typical Cromwellian cupboard or settle, as were the gay dandies of the Court to the grim Roundheads of the Parliament. The merging of Elizabethan into early Stuart was so gradual that for many years after Inigo Jones' advent the old style was practised without any substantial alterations. THE STUARTS Around the Stuarts — Steuarts or Stewards — whose surname, one is told, was derived from an ancestor's unromantic original post of Warden of the Sties, — the glamour cast by misfortune, deserved ^ and undeserved, will probably never be dispelled. Chiefly interesting in our own days as psychological studies, to their contemporaries they were of tragic significance ; and if little is traceable in their manners and methods, of the blood of their rugged forbears who fought in the wars of Wallace and Bruce, nearly all these decadent or effeminate descendants possessed a magnetic charm exciting to passionate allegiance the most level-headed, even when mingled with consciousness that its royal recipient was unworthy of such whole-hearted trust. FACSIItllLE SKETCHES OF The decorated furniture of the days of panels by inigo jones. 194 DECORATIVE FURNITURE JAMES THE FIRST of England and Sixth of Scotland, "The wisest fool in Christendom" (who must also be called the " Royal Solomon," to duly discharge the literary conscience of its stock labels), pre- sented little radical difference to that of later Elizabethan days. The same unstinted use of solid materials, the same picturesque if crude concepts of Italian detail, marked the earlier years of both Stuart architecture and Stuart decorative home equipments. It was not without tremors for the future of Englishmen that even educated men had viewed the luxurious new buildings with many chimneys which were erected from Elizabethan days. Harrison the Chronicler voices this feel- ing, saying, that when the houses " were builded of willow we had oken men ; but now they are come to be made of oke . . . the men had become willow." Harrison also appears to have considered the smoke, so imperfectly carried off by the central hole or louvre, to have been a whole- some specific against many ills of the body. In Jacobean times we first discern the authoritative influence of the architect of the exterior over the design of the interior equipments of the house ; indeed, the architect, or " De vizor," and his functions, were both of somewhat shadowy nature, until the days of England's first great architect, Inigo Jones. He, Christopher Wren, and Vanbrugh all interested themselves in, and assumed responsi- bility for, the woodwork fittings of their buildings. FACSIMILE SKETCHES OF CAPITALS BY INIGO JONES. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 195 INIGO JONES It is with more than a soupgon of regret that the lover of the many-gabled picturesque Tudor work, with its homely irregular skyline and plan, views the advent of the scholarly architects who transplanted the Vitruvian- Palladian system to our less congenial English soil. In Walpole's words, " England adopted Holbein and Van Dyck, borrowed Rubens, and produced Inigo Jones." Indeed, the definite abandonment of the last shreds of Gothic, and the real practice of Italian Renaissance, commenced only with Inigo Jones — the first of the England traveller- architects, — reached its highest point with Sir Christopher Wren and his school, and underwent an equally slow process of decay, in matters architectural, during the eighteenth century. Inigo Jones, on his return from Italy and the Danish Court in 1605, was first commissioned to design decorations for masques and pageants. The portion remaining — the Banqueting Hall — increases our regret that he was pre- vented by the Puritans and the Civil "War from carrying out in its entirety his design for the palace of Whitehall. Had the whole structure been built, and Van Dyck been commissioned to paint upon the waUs of the Banqueting Hall the story of the Order of FACSIMILE SKETCHES OF CAPITALS the Garter, at a cost of £75,000, it would by inigo jones. 196 DECORATIVE FURNITURE have been one of the noblest palaces in Europe. The ceiling of the Hall was painted by Rubens in Antwerp, at a cost of £3000. Inigo Jones' influence upon the decorative woodwork of the Stuart period was greater than can be gauged by the record of his actual achievements in interior design, one of the most interesting of which is the chimneypiece at Wilton House illustrated in Colour Plate XXX. His ideals and interpretations of Renaissance were dominant in the work of his son-in-law and nephew, John Webb, one of his many pupils, and it may well be supposed that even Sir Christopher Wren derived much from the earlier master. Inigo Jones was Surveyor of Works to CHARLES THE FIRST The first and almost the only connoisseur among England's monarchs ; a friend of Rubens and Van Dyck, the purchaser of the Raphael Cartoons ; the monarch of whom it has been said that he knew all the arts, except that of governing. It is a strange coincidence that our English Charles i. and Louis xvi. of France, the two monarchs whose disastrous reigns were ended by their execution at the hands of their subjects, were each handicraftsmen, genuinely interested in the industrial arts, Charles saying that "he believed he could make his living by any trade save that of making hangings, and of that he knew a little." A modest boast, since he endeavoured to remedy his ignorance by bringing over some foreign craftsmen who specially excelled in the latest continental developments of the upholsterer's art. It is useless to emphasise the belief resulting from study of early Stuart furniture, that had England continued contented under Charles i. and his queen (a daughter of the Medici), the national woodwork would have been developed into a dignified yet flexible expression of national needs and idiosyncrasies. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 197 Passing perforce to the second of the three great political divisions which we have accepted as lines of demarcation for the Stuart period, that of the COMMONWEALTH The see-saw of opinion alternately unduly exalts and depreciates the Puritan and all his works, but whatever their effect upon the well-being of England politically, from the artistic standpoint the Civil Wars and Commonwealth are essentially the revolt of narrow Philistinism, against the liberal arts and refinements. Despite Swinburne's aphorism, "Puritanism is in this one thing absolutely right about art : they cannot live and work together, or the one under the other," one feels some belated indignation at the savage foolishness of the Roundheads towards all that savoured of taste or learning when reading, for instance, that — in defiance of their promise to do no damage to the furniture and goods, if Lady Arundel would surrender — the besiegers of Wardour Castle not only burnt all the wearing apparel not in actual use, but demolished a magnificent carved chimneypiece (valued by contemporaries at £2000) with their vandalistic axes. It is some corroboration of the theory that Cromwell's private tastes — though he is credited with desiring his portrait to be emphatically realistic, " with the warts " — were not acridly utilitarian, to find that the staircase of the house he built at Highgate for his daughter, upon her marriage to General Ireton, was ornamented by figures of the various grades of soldiers in her husband's army. -VT j_1 1 -i -il /-^l SABBATH-BEEAKING GOLFERS' SEAT OF REPENTANCE. Nevertheless it was with Crom- - parish church, st. Andrews. 198 DECORATIVE FURNITURE well's approval as Lord Protector that the furniture, hangings, pictures, and other art effects of nineteen royal palaces were destroyed or sold to foreigners. One is not surprised to find, therefore, that no Tudor examples are left at Windsor Castle of all the items mentioned in the inventory in 1547. Many a noble old piece of furniture was doubtless destroyed in sheer iconoclastic wantonness, revenge, or for firewood, or found its way into homes incapable of valuing such "luxuries." The confiscations and dispersals of " delinquents' " belongings were enormous. Fines said to have amounted to more than a million pounds were paid by the Royalist families for the privilege of retaining the remnants of their property : the would-be neutrals at times faring worst, some sharing the fate of the owner of Bramhall Hall, who was fined, raided, and requisitioned by both parties, and ultimately again fined by the Parliament for inability to resist payment to the Loyalists ! Furniture of the Commonwealth evinces at least the dignity of reticence. The craftsmen of the period preferred sound construction to ornament, and infused perforce the conscientious sombre temperament of their rulers into their work. Cromwell's mild assumption of State ceremony, which so grieved many of his friends, slightly relaxed the poverty of the mode ; yet upon his death, his son's retirement, and the Year of Anarchy, England would have no more of the stern austerity which regarded melancholy a» essential to morality, and art as almost synonymous with vice. CHARLES II., " The Merrie Monarch " The revulsion of feeling which produced that second acceptance of the Stuarts, the Restoration, is traceable in the decorative furniture modes of the days of Charles ii. Puritan design, bald and severe, was thrown aside for the brighter continental modes ; a melange of French, Flemish, and Italian motifs, bizarre but piquant in its more or less congruous blendings. Not only had Charles ii. lived amid foreign PLATE XXVI SHOVELBOARD TABLE IN THE HALL OF LITTLECOTE The Property of Mr. L. Popham, and by Length, 30 ft. 2 in. ; width, 3 ft. ; permission of Mrs. Leopold Hirsch height, 3 ft. Circa 1660 The decorative woodwork within the ivy-clad walls of Littlecote is in harmony with its forty gables and the traditions — historical and romantic — associated with its many-mullioned exterior : the interior displays a wealth of panelling and old furniture, and is almost guiltless of modern anachronisms. The long Shovelboard Table here illustrated is undoubtedly the finest of its type in England. Its plain, uncarved bulb-legs, and the pendants of the frame, indicate Cromwellian or — possibly — Charles the Second period. The top is unusually narrow for so late a period, and suggests that the owner felt that Merrie England, not having even in his days become sufficiently peaceful for him to sit at board without having his back close to the wall, he consequently preferred to adhere or revert to his ancestor's custom. It must be remembered that such long tables were narrow compared with those of the present day : partly that diners, who sat upon the wall side of the table only, might more conveniently be waited upon by servitors across the board. When the game of shovelboard subsequently became popular the table was made quickly convertible to its use, by means of thumb- screws fixing a receptacle at the end, and nets at the sides for the overshot metal discs, which were propelled from the farther end of 199 200 DECORATIVE FURNITURE the table to a mark drawn some 3 or 4 in. from the end; the game is still played in Scotland, where, however, it is better known as the curling table. At the farther end of the hall, below the magnificent pair of Irish elk horns, which measure about 7 ft. 6 in. across, are Chief Justice Popham's chair and thumbstocks — an old-time and readily- movable substitute for the dock — the silver mace, which was carried before the Life Guards of Charles the First, and two fine "black- jacks." The faded yellow leathern jerkins, bandoliers, helmets, and petronels arranged round the walls were worn by the Parliamentary troops under the command of General Edward Popham. They looked down upon "William of Orange at his interview here with the Commissioners, but one wonders whether their owner thought it might suggest un- welcome memories of his zeal in the opposite direction to leave them upon the walls when he entertained Charles ii. That charming trifler's visit to Littlecote appears to have suggested Shaw's picture in his Mansions of England of the Olden Time of this very table being used by shovelboard players in Charles ii. costume. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 201 fashions so long that they had become natural to him, but large numbers of Stuart adherents, who had perforce shared his exile, had acquired the same tastes, during their sojourn on the Continent. The demand for new furniture must have been pressing on the part of these proscribed Royalists, who now returned to their native land ; since even those who were so fortunate as to recover their estates and homes, found such of their furniture as n hi"--' yet remained, either irretrievably damaged or but // ""-^v.-. clumsy in their eye compared with that of the ' ^^^^ ^ Z^^ Continent. %)//7jf INDO-PORTUGUESE FURNITURE Bi^ Adding to the many new elements at the decorative ^^^^^^--a woodworker's command, Bombay — not only a port for %^ ^^-^sjy Indian produce, but a species of clearing house to which TnuMnsrocKs, LITTLECOTE HALL, the Dutch traders to the Far East resorted — was part for confining PRISONERS DURING of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, Charles ii. s examination. wife, and after her arrival with her suite, much Indo-Portuguese furniture, of ebony or blackwood, richly carved and with twisted columns, was imported. Evelyn, who was presented by Charles ii. with a chair of this make, and somewhat similar in design to that shown in our Colour Plate No. XXXV., tells us that the queen brought over with her such Indian " Cabinets as never has been seen before." Thus the decorative furniture of later Carolean days is not entirely dominated by continental woodwork, though the Restoration gave England not only a queen, court, and manners a la Frangaise, but, one might almost say, a French king, for Charles ii. emulated Louis xiv., without having that monarch's taste, and was essentially Gallic in his outlook on life. Midway in Charles ii.'s reign appears England's great conjurer with the chisel, 202 DECORATIVE FURNITURE GRINLING GIBBON, whose work carved in soft woods minutely realistic in detail, but arranged in admirably decorative masses, we shall find also in the days of James ii., William and Mary, Anne, and George i., and whom Evelyn claims to have discovered whilst living near Deptford. Deptford CAEVING BY GRINLING GIBBON. ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. will be remembered as the scene of Peter the Great's shipbuilding studies ; its naval importance dates back to the days of Henry viii., when Admiralty Offices were established there, and from those times gave occupation to many carvers in decorating the picturesque high- pooped ships of Tudor and Jacobean days. EVELYN AND GRINLING GIBBON The insertion of the S in Gibbon's name is so sanctioned by custom that its omission almost savours of pedantry, despite a clear balance of contemporary evidence against its use. Under date January 18, 1671, the indispensable Evelyn's diary speaks of " that incomparable young man. Gibbon, whom I had lately met in an obscure place by accident, as I was walking near a poor solitary thatched house in a field, in our parish, near Sayes Court. Looking in at the window, I perceived him carving that large cartoon or crucifix of Tintoretto, brought from Venice, BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE -STUART, 1603-88 203 such work as for the curiosity of handling, drawing, and studious exactness I never had before seen in all my travels. I questioned him why he worked in such an obscure and lonesome place ; he told me that it was that he might apply himself to his profession without interruption. I asked him if he was willing now to be made known to some great man, for I believed that it might turn to his profit ; he answered that he was yet but a beginner, but would not be sorry to sell that piece. On demanding the price, he said £100. In good earnest the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the work was very strong : in the piece was more than one hundred figures of men, etc. I found he was likewise musical and very civil, sober and discreet in his discourse." That Evelyn was a good friend to Gibbon, his further reference proves : "I caused Mr. Gibbon to bring to Whitehall his excellent piece of carving, whereof which his Majesty seeing, he was astonished at the curiositie of it, and having considered it a long time and discoursed with Mr. Gibbon, whom I brought to kiss his hand, he commanded that it should be immediately carried to the queene's side to shew her. It was carried into her bed-chamber, where she and the king looked on and admired it again." PORTION OF SCREEN. CHAPEL, TKINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. LATE STUAET. 204 DECORATIVE FURNITURE This particular outcome of Gibbon's skill was not, however, purchased by the king or his queen. A semi-pedlar Frenchwoman "who us'd to bring petticoates and fanns and baubles out of France to the Ladys," prejudiced the queen against it, though, as Evelyn bluntly puts it, "she understood no more than an asse or a monkey." Gibbon was, however, shortly after employed at Windsor by Charles ii., and subsequently in 1686 at the New Catholic Chapel, Whitehall. During the days of William and of Anne his chisel was active, as we shall note ; and upon the ascension in 1714 of George i. he was retained until his death by that monarch as master carver, at a salary of Is. 6d. per day. To Evelyn also was Gibbon indebted for an introduction to SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, who owed to Evelyn his own introduction to Charles ii. — after Inigo Jones' death in 1652, when Wren became the leader in the development of the purer English Renaissance, giving it a rendering so instinct with his individuality as to almost excuse the architectural punster's writing Wrennaisance ! Wren's opportunity, unique in archi- tectural annals, of displaying his genius to the full, did not occur until the GREAT FIRE OF LONDON END VIEW OF BOOKCASE. PETEEHousE ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ geueratious from the a^^':^:'^'trPiuy^^'iZl^. recurring danger of visitations of the stability of case.) plague of the prevlous year, with its BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 205 awful death roll of 40,000. Some 13,000 buildings are said to have been burnt, together with nearly 100 churches, many of which had been stored with large quantities of furniture during the early stages of the conflagration, in the hope of their escaping the flames. The Great Fire may well be described, therefore, as a great misfortune in the annals of decorative woodwork, since an enormous quantity of furniture of antiquity and interest must have been destroyed. In the woodwork of St. Paul's Cathedral, as well as that of many of the city churches. Wren, as we shall note in our next period, had the assistance of Gibbon and his pupils, Samuel "Watson, Drev6t of Brussels, and Lawrence of Mechlin. "Wren, by the way, must have possessed much of the versatility which had distinguished Michael Angelo, Leonardo da "Vinci, and many others of the great Italian artists, since he is described in the charter of the Royal Society as " Christopher "Wren, Doctor of Medicine and Saville Professor of Astronomy in our University of Oxford," at which university he was also Professor of Mathematics. After the lean years of the Commonwealth the cabinetmaker of Carolean days doubtless felt gratefully the stimulus of Charles' accession, provided he refrained from public expressions on politics and theology. This was, however, too difficult a task for Stephen Colledge, "the Protestant Joyner," who made the fine wainscot panelling (at a cost of £300) for the Hall of the Stationers' Company in 1674, and was one of the victims of the politico-religious rancour of his days, being hanged at Oxford in 1681, "having been convicted of conspiracy upon monstrous small evidence." SILVER FURNITURE Though Massinger at the beginning of the century, when he speaks of silver bathing tubs, shows his knowledge of the Spanish and German penchant for silver Renaissance furniture which spread 27 206 DECORATIVE FURNITURE to France in his days, it was, in England, reserved for the court and times of the Second Charles to express its love of luxury, and ape the opulence of I "II *^® French court by silver-mounted furni- ture — such as that presented by the citizens of London to the witty Stuart king, and drawn from the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, by his late Majesty's per- mission, in Colour DOLE-BOARD. ALL SAINTS, HEREFOED. DATED 1683. Plate JN O. A A A V i. JAMES II Lilliburlero — lero — ^lero — Lilliburlero, bullen — a-la. History has as usual revised its previous slap-dash presentment. James ii. is now deemed to have been a tactless not unkindly fool, the tool of traitorous self-ambitious missioners, rather than a malevolent tyrant scheming to hand his subjects over to the methods of propaganda of the Spanish Inquisition. Though furniture, in common with the other branches of the applied arts, owed nothine; to his •'•■'■ ' ° WOODEN SIDE CANDEL- encouragement, the beginning of his brief and abea. charles h. inglorious reign coincided with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE -STUART, 1603-88 207 THE FRENCH IMMIGRATION The resulting immigration of some 30,000 or 40,000 French craftsmen and their families was an event pregnant with consequences to British arts and crafts ; for among these Huguenot workers were many skilled cabinetmakers, inlayers, and carvers, and it was doubtless largely due to their settlement in this country that English furniture displayed henceforward increasing technical expertness. Indeed, upon the formative arts the stimiulus was so important that, were it not for a bias in favour of preserving unbroken throughout the Stuart reigns the continuity of their style-label, one might add the three years of James ii/s reign to the succeeding period of William and Anne. THE BAROGGO INFLUENGE ON ENGLISH GHAIR WORK During the last years of the Stuart dynasty one can trace the imminent domination in chair work of the harocco — contrasted curves of the Italian designers, Bernini and Borromini, now filtering through France and Holland. Incidentally, the use of these curves encouraged the use of walnut, it being found tougher across the grain, as well as more easily worked than the harsher oak. WOODS Although, until the reign of William and Anne, frames of sofas and chairs were probably more frequently made in oak or soft wood, the real commencement of the vogue of walnut was penshukst. LATE STUART CHAIK. 208 DECORATIVE FURNITURE in the days of Charles ii., the principal pieces being usually "faced" with English walnut. Perfunctory attempts had been made from Plantagenet times downwards to replace the oaken forests for the use of future genera- tions. The inadequacy of the supply of the wood attracted the attention of that gossiping genius Samuel Pepys, whose unceasing efforts for naval efficiency pass unnoticed, whilst — ;living under seven rulers — he immortalised himself in his leisure hours by his Diary, written in a species of shorthand which was undecipherable until 1825. "Pollard man" that he was, in Coleridge's phrase, his zeal led him to project large afforestation schemes to ensure that the "wooden walls of England" might be of British oak, and the enormous sales of Crown timber in James i.'s days, at extremely low prices, must have seemed to him little short of criminal. AGE OF WALNUT The dearth of the national wood encouraged the use of walnut ; the trees planted in Queen Elizabeth's time were becoming timber, and from the end of Charles ii.'s reign oak furniture was decreas- ingly made. Curiously enough, the little disputed dominance of oak practically ceased with that of the Stuarts, whose association with this wood at critical moments of their history is one of the many interesting chapters in the history of the wood. The use of walnut for furniture of decorative character was undoubtedly much earlier upon the Continent than in this country. Much walnut furniture was imported into England from Holland, where it had been much in vogue during the latter half of the seventeenth century. Its susceptibility to the attacks of wood-boring insects was apparently not realised in England until the end of the Stuart era, but upon the Continent "worm" had long been known, judging from an ordinance of Granada dated 1616 which, PLATE XXVII COURT CUPBOARD BUFFET The Property of Sm Theodore Fry, Width, 4 ft. 1 in. ; height, 3 ft. 10 in. ; Beechanger Court depth, 1 ft. 7 in. The design of this piece, dated the year before Cromwell's death, shows little indication of the Puritanical plainness which marks Commonwealth furniture. It is indeed a disconcertingly late version of the combined buffet and court cupboard, though of undoubted authenticity, despite the fact that the initials must not be taken to indicate that the piece was constructed for its present owner's ancestors. The embroidery shown in the recess behind the buffet is an example of petit point worked in silk and gold thread. The intro- duction of the royal arms of France and England with Scotland in the sinister and Ireland in the dexter, together with the initials "J. R.," which, with the probable needlewoman's name Mary Hulton, occupy opposite lower corners (not visible in our sketch), indicate the date of the work to be the reign of James i. The woollen Indian carpet — also of seventeenth-century design — is from the Salting collection. 309 BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 211 after stating that "divers of the carpenters and joiners cut their walnut and other woods while yet the moon is crescent, whereby the wood decays," proceeds to order that "all walnut and other woods be cut only at the time of the waning moon, and be not used until seasoned thoroughly, so that it does not warp," a prescription requiring a belief in occultism from a timber merchant ! STUART UPHOLSTERY The Company of Upholders is stated to have been founded as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and to have received a grant of arms from Edward vi. We are told upon better authority that Cornhill was the headquarters of the upholder in those days when the Tottenham Court Road was a grassy lane, famed for flowers and innocent of furniture, and that the up- holder originally dealt also in old clothes, old armour, beds, and combs. The puffed and padded jerkins, doublets, and trunk hose, and the farthingales (which latter developed to such proportions that James i. forbade their being worn at Court masques, and ladies found decorum necessi- tated the absence of arms from the chairs upon which they sat), greatly fostered the fashion for textile fabrics, and encouraged the elaborate upholstery — the chief novelty in early Jacobean furnishings of the wealthy. The upholder indeed must, in early Jacobean days, have been a busy and wealthy crafts- man, for enormous sums were expended upon embroidered hangings, gold, silver, and pearls being introduced with considerable prodi- gality. Probably the brilliant colourings of the velvet, silk, or needle- UPHOLSTERED CHAIR. KNOLE. 212 DECORATIVE FURNITURE iie^-nc^l; work fabrics contributed as greatly to the vogue of upholstered furniture as the increased comfort. Cushions were used for the caned furniture, as they had been for its more solid forerunners; whilst at times the old wall hangings were cut up for use as covering fabrics. The built-up head-dresses and periwigs of the period encouraged the employment of high-backed chairs and settees. One finds the "stuffover" up- holstered seats were even higher than the cane chairs which they succeeded or supplemented. One of the earliest examples of English upholstery, the identical chair at Knole used by James i., is shown in Colour Plate XV. It is depicted in the king's portrait by My tens — the painter also of that enter- taining little fire-eater, Jeffrey Hudsdn, the 18-inch dwarf who was first presented to the queen in a OAK "RESTORATION" cold pie. At thirty, Hudson quickly added twenty- cHAiR IN HAMILTON ggygj^ luchcs to hls stature, and in a duel killed his KOOM, HOLYEOOD ' PALACE, EDINBURGH, oppoueut, who had come armed with a squirt in derision. These chairs, which might with equal certitude be placed at the commencement of the Stuart period as at the conclusion of the Elizabethan, possess a pathetic dignity in their tarnished and faded velvet coverings, with their knotted and fringed threads of gold and silver. ALLWOOD CHAIRS Proof of the ceremonial attribute of the chair is given by the fact that no sets of chairs appear to have been made in England until the end of Elizabeth's reign : a point well worth remembrance when to any set of chairs or "part of a set" is ascribed a pre- Jacobean date. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 213 The Commonwealth was upon the whole a good friend to the chair-maker, since the " Cromwell " chairs brought over from Holland in such quantities swept aside the last vestige of etiquette of the seat ; henceforth Jack and his master could both be seated upon chairs of identical pattern, without any world-cataclysm occurring. CHAIR IN JOHN KNOX'S STUDY, EDINBURGH. STUART. (John Knox diedin 1572.) JACOBEAN CARVED OAK CHAIE. (VERY REV. SUB-DEAN BOURNE, D.D.) ( The holes in arms suggest its use as a child's chair for infant heir after the father' s death.) CHARLES I. CHAIE, WITH SEAT SUNK FOR " SQUAB " CUSHION. PAENHAM COL- LECTION. These broad square and squat chairs of the Commonwealth are strongly typical of the Roundhead. From about 1650 front rail stretchers were raised more from the floor, or set back under the^ seat : the floor was kept cleaner, possibly owing to the Puritans' dislike of dirt ; the feet could now without discomfort be placed under the chair, A type of chair having deeper and enriched front rails was thus encouraged, of which several examples had existed upon the Continent as early as the days of Henri Deux. The Cromwell chair had a low padded back, and seats covered with leather or brocade, studded with the large gilt or brass-headed nails in vogue, an open space invariably being left between the 214 DECORATIVE FURNITURE JACOBEAN "wheel" CHAIR IN CARVED OAK. CIRCA 1640. back and the seats. In the slightly higher chairs this space was lessened, the plain panels nearly reaching to the seat, which was sunk panelled that the cushion might " bed " therein. Of that economical outcome of Cromwellian design, the chair con- vertible into a table by lowering the hinged back to rest upon the arms, the chair referred to in our chapter on "Some Seats of the mghty," as formerly belonging to Theodore Hook, is an interesting example. Though throughout Stuart days chairs were made with solid wood panelled backs of the late Elizabethan pattern, from the Restoration chair- backs became more open, and pierced wooden scroll- work was very generally used as a frame for cane and for perforated "slats." With the accession of Charles ii. came the deepening, and carving with pierced work, of the two horizontal back rails, and the upright inner rails. CHARLES II. OAK CHAIR. ^SIR GEORGE DONALDSON.) STUART CANED-SEAT CHAIR. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 215 Many and varied as are the patterns of later Carolean chairs, they are almost invariably high backed, with spiral or spindle- turned posts and with carved scroll-work ; sometimes supporting central cane-panelled backs and surmounted by a crown, whence their title of "Restoration" chair to emphasise their owners' loyalty. The under rails connecting the front legs were also carved and scrolled. DAY-BEDS As we have noted, the parlour was usually a species of bedroom also. In consequence, when its functions as a reception and sitting- room were deemed sufficiently important to justify its entire disuse as a bedroom, the bed which had served as a resting lounge during the day was missed ; hence arose the day-bed mentioned by Malvolio, in musing of his happy future, "with branded velvet gown, having come from a day-bed." But though day-beds appeared at the conclusion of the Tudor period, they had apparently little vogue and suffered eclipse from the troubled days of the Civil War ; being, one would imagine, equally in danger from usage or dislike by the soldiery. Their prompt reintroduction and popularity at the Restoration was probably owing to their gay revolt against the sadness of Puritan colouring. The design of the day-bed was adapted from the new forms of chairs, the backs being adjusted, with primitive simplicity, to the desired angle by cords or chains. STUART DAY-BED. 216 DECORATIVE FURNITURE SETTLES AND COUCHES Of all the settles and benches which mediaeval MSS. and other documentary evidence prove to have existed from the earliest times, either as dossiers or similarly shaped to the bancs of Francis i.'s days, scarcely any of English decorative and domestic character are to be found earlier than Stuart times, — a period when, as we have noted, the carved high-back " all wood " settle somewhat yielded its place to more luxurious upholstered settees such as the Indo-Portuguese settee at Penshurst, or the example shown in the Colour Plate of Knole furniture. The latter design, which succeeding generations have found it difficult to improve upon, considerably resembles a French pattern in use during the days of Henri Quatre and Louis Treize. LOVE SEATS Love seats, to adopt the jocular term of their day for the double chairs, were, in their genesis, merely enlarged chairs. Later Stuart days witnessed their development into luxuriously upholstered short settees with high backs of twin pattern. STOOLS AND TABOURETS Stools or tabourets were made in imitation of the lower parts of the upholstered chair. Most common are the Joint Stools, those short seats reserved for the joint carver, which were still made to match the forms placed on either side of the table. Joint Stools have retained the alternative title of Coffin Stools, in deference to their occasional JOINT STOOL (^FFiN STOOL), ^^^ ^^ trestles uot ouly to support coffins indoors, but because they were carried by additional bearers SOUTH WILTS. MUSEUM. BRITISH DECORATIVE FURNITURE— STUART, 1603-88 217 to rest the coffin upon at intervals in walking funerals, and to enable a change of bearers also to be made. During the latter part of the Stuart period they fell into disfavour, and degenerated in design and make. BEDS Would-be sleepers who find the dark oak carved bedstead, with canopy supported at the foot end by posts independent of the actual bed, "stuffy" and depressive, would prob- ably be affected even more by the high upholstered beds a la Louis Treize which were used in Stuart days for important and State bedrooms at a cost prohibitive to all but the richer nobles, who usually purchased them in preparation for royal visits. The insanitary hangings and finial plumes of these beds are more suggestive to modern tastes of the hearse than of the hearth. Some few of the curious old Scottish folding "floor beds," closing up flush with the wall and therefore practically undiscoverable during the day, survive. That in the so-called " Palace " at Culross, with four panels in front with raised, reeded, and with bolection mouldings, is a good example of its type. FOLDING FLOOR BED. THE "PALACE," CULROSS. STATE BED. KNOLE. ■AHiiasiivs 'j-aaais hdih •asnoH aio ki aoaM-AanMiHO j,avnis Aiava jQAiqs 0(; pojoq^^-eS s^'bss'BA STq pn-e pjo]; 9t[(; qoTqAV punoj-e 'j^q i:J[oras 8q(^ JO 8jau90 eqq. ni qc^j'eaq GAT^^iraud eq^ raoaj psepui sc^ouiaj ora'Boeq '3[jOiViTpn'Bt[ UM.0 s^ajiK^Tsn pnbe 0'\ (^neos pur? jnojoo c^nq Smc^n-BiW si8AiO]5 ngpooTW qc^m ni8q(j 5[08p -aq 0(} noqqTf) ^nqnuj^ q-^jAi 'pn-B 'mstn'BC^ijn^j uiojj c^pA9j; 8AT(^'BJ[O09p 9q(^ HI paj-Bqs S90'Bjd9J[Ij: C^J-BTK^g jac^'B'^ -nado Jopnj^