A much more ornate specimen of this period called a “fan-shaped table,”
(“_table à l’éventail_”) is owned by the Dijon Museum. It is of
Burgundian workmanship. The support, which still shows traces of
gilding, is formed of an eagle with outspread wings standing between two
winged chimaera with lions’ paws, these paws connected with a
straining-rail, or stretcher. The open-work shelf is ornamented with
leaves and a mascaron, and the two upper and lower straining rails are
ornamented with a very clearly defined and handsome decoration. The top
of the table is surrounded by a thread of marquetry.
Folding-tables were also in use; in Margaret of Austria’s inventory,
mention is made of “a little table in the Spanish fashion which opens
and closes.”
[Illustration:
PLATE XIV.—_Bedstead._
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM.
]
Chairs are still heavy and carved more or less richly. Two typical
specimens appear in Plate XII. As shown in these examples, the seats and
backs were often covered with stamped leather, velvet, silk, or some
woollen material and ornamented with tassels. The covers are tacked to
the frame by means of large-headed nails that also form part of the
decoration. A chair and footstool by Vredemann de Vries, of very
characteristic model, are shown in Fig. 23. The chair is three-cornered,
with a triangular seat, and the legs are connected with straining-rails.
It much resembles the _voyeuse_ of which Cardinal Mazarin had several;
and which was again popular in the days of Louis XVI, in France and
elsewhere. It was essentially a chair for a man, who faced the back and
rested his arms on the top rail.
A Flemish chair of the second half of the sixteenth century is
reproduced in Figs. 24 and 25. This is pure Renaissance in its simplest
and certainly its least elegant form. The legs consist of Doric columns
connected by stretchers close to the ground. The back slants, and is of
somewhat confused carved decoration consisting of a mascaron and Classic
architectural and floral motives.
When not built in the panels of the room, the _armoire_ bears a very
close likeness to the large double cabinet with doors, which is, as we
have seen, merely a chest-upon-chest, and which we shall find developing
into the great Dutch _kas_ of the seventeenth century. Plate XV shows
the great double cabinet, or _armoire_, of the Renaissance with carved
panels, pillars and caryatides. This stands on ball feet. It is of the
same period as the bed represented in Plate XIV.
A magnificent specimen of the late sixteenth century, now in the _Musée
des Arts Décoratifs_, Paris, is reproduced in Plate XVIII. This is in
two stories and is frankly architectural. The doors of the _armoire_, or
cabinet, are decorated to look like windows, and the niches and
pilasters lend their aid in making the front of this piece of furniture
look like the façade of a handsome Renaissance residence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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