Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse FurnitureHayden, Arthur
History
Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse Furniture
Hayden, Arthur
Country furniture -- England; Furniture -- England; Textile fabrics -- England
The Joint Stools on the lower half of the page afford a picture
of slowly advancing invention in turned work. The one on the left
of the group is the earliest, and is about 1640 in date. Its legs
are seen to be of coarser work, roughly turned, but typically
early Jacobean in breadth of treatment. The two on the right are
about 1660 in date. The left-hand one shows the urn-shaped leg of
the strong, broad treatment (as in the Table illustrated p. 63),
brought into subjection and exhibiting a gracefulness of form and
balance that make furniture of this type so lovable. The smaller
stool shows the ball-carving associated with the Restoration
period, and found in gate tables. A combination of these styles
of turning is shown in the graceful oak Table illustrated p. 65,
in date about 1680.
=Chests of Drawers.=--The conservative spirit of the minor
craftsmen is especially noticeable in the articles of everyday
use. The merchant's account ledger with its green back and
cross-stitched pattern in vellum strips, still in use, is to
be found in the same style in Holbein pictures of the days of
the Hanseatic League. Brass and copper candlesticks have a long
lineage, and their form is only a slight variant from very early
examples. The evolution of ornament is especially interesting;
the old stoneware Bellarmine form still remains in the bearded
mask at the lip of china jugs at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The two buttons at the back of the coattails continue
long after their primary use to loop up the sword-belt has
vanished.
In America the early carved chests of the Puritan colonists were
followed by similar designs contemporary with our own Jacobean
style for a period well towards the end of the seventeenth
century. The panels on chairs and chests have the same arcaded
designs as found in Elizabethan bedsteads and fireplaces. These
become gradually crystallised in conventional form, and Lockwood,
the American writer on old colonial furniture, has reduced the
types coincident with our own Jacobean styles into ten distinct
patterns, until the advent of the well-known chests of drawers
with geometric raised ornament laid on, which pieces of furniture
in Restoration days were set upon a stand.
We have shown in the illustration (p. 53) the earliest form
of the chest with drawers underneath. The stage transitional
between this and the multifarious designs with bevelled panels
in geometric design is exemplified by the chest, in date about
1660, illustrated (p. 63), having two drawers and a centre
bevelled panel, and with two arcaded panels on each side of this
and also arcaded panels at the ends of the chest. This form was
rapidly succeeded by the well-known chests of drawers on ball
feet or on stand so much appreciated by collectors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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