Chats on Old Furniture: A Practical Guide for CollectorsHayden, Arthur
History
Chats on Old Furniture: A Practical Guide for Collectors
Hayden, Arthur
Collectors and collecting; Furniture -- History
The result of this wave of fashion on the domestic furniture of England
was to impart to it the elegance of Italian art combined with a national
sturdiness of character seemingly inseparable from English art at all
periods. As the reign of Queen Elizabeth extended from the year 1558 to
the year 1603, it is usual to speak of architecture and furniture of
the latter half of the sixteenth century as Elizabethan.
A favourite design in Elizabethan woodwork is the interlaced strapwork
(see illustration p. 68), which was derived from similar designs
employed by the contemporary stonecarver, and is found on Flemish
woodwork of the same period. The panel of a sixteenth-century Flemish
virginal, carved in walnut, illustrated, shows this form of decoration.
Grotesque terminal figures, half-human, half-monster, supported the
front of the buffets, or were the supporting terminals of cornices. This
feature is an adaptation from the Caryatides, the supporting figures
used instead of columns in architecture, which in Renaissance days
extended to woodwork. Table-legs and bed-posts swelled into heavy,
acorn-shaped supports of massive dimensions. Cabinets were sometimes
inlaid, as was also the room panelling, but it cannot be said that at
this period the art of marquetry had arrived at a great state of
perfection in this country.
It is noticeable that in the rare pieces that are inlaid in the Late
Tudor and Early Jacobean period the inlay itself is a sixteenth of an
inch thick, whereas in later inlays of more modern days the inlay is
thinner and flimsier. In the Flemish examples ivory was often used, and
holly and sycamore and box seem to have been the favourite woods
selected for inlay.
Take, for example, the mirror with the frame of carved oak, with scroll
outline and narrow bands inlaid with small squares of wood, alternately
light and dark. This inlay is very coarsely done, and unworthy to
compare with Italian marquetry of contemporary date, or of an earlier
period. The uprights and feet of the frame, it will be noticed, are
baluster-shaped. The glass mirror is of nineteenth-century manufacture.
The date carved upon the frame is 1603, the first year of the reign of
James I., and it is stated to have come from Derby Old Hall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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