When the hood of the clock-case became arched and the dial
correspondingly had a lunette, the decorative marquetry panel
in the case below followed the same form. It is possible, indeed
very probable, that many such shaped panels were imported and were
especially intended to meet the demand for use on clock-cases. It
is always possible to a trained eye to see whether a panel has been
made to fit the place in which one finds it. Is it part of a sanely
conceived decorative scheme, or was it used because it happened to be
handy as part of a cabinet-maker's stock-in-trade? We illustrate two
examples of marquetry chests of drawers of the William and Mary period
which offer many interesting features. In regard to the example with
the oval panels (illustrated p. 93), the side of the piece exhibits
a panel that is incongruous where it is. It is a clock-case panel.
Similarly in the "all-over" marquetry chest of drawers of the same
period (illustrated p. 95), the panel at the side is undoubtedly a
clock-case panel. To examine both these chests of drawers in detail is
to discover that the former shows that the panels of the drawers were
carefully thought out before execution. The metal drop-handles in the
centre were each intended to be there. They were in the cabinet-maker's
mind when he made his design and laid his marquetry. He has
accommodated his pattern to receive these handles. In the other example
it is seen that no such care was taken. The escutcheon of the locks
covers a portion of the marquetry. The cabinet-maker in London had his
Dutch-imported panels ready to hand and he used them as he found them.
If some collector or expert were to come along and determine that
all the green and purple and flecked glass of the Early Victorian
period, bottles with long necks and gilded stoppers, in English leather
cases, vases of inimitable colour but execrable form, were typically
English as representing early nineteenth century glass, we should put
his theories aside as nonsense. Partly because we happen to know what
Bohemia was exporting and partly because we know what the English
glassworkers were doing in the same period. But in regard to 1650 to
1700 it is less easy to determine whether a wonderful school of expert
marquetry-workers existed in London as a secret industry. One must
assume that they had quietly assimilated all the technique of the Dutch
craftsmen, and descended on the town, just at the right moment, with
a new art, quite un-English, just at that moment when Dutch fashions
were in the ascendant and when Mary, the consort of William of Orange,
was employing Marot, the late Surveyor of The Hague, to convert Hampton
Court from a Tudor into an Anglo-Orange palace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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