Illustrated History of Furniture: From the Earliest to the Present TimeLitchfield, Frederick
History
Illustrated History of Furniture: From the Earliest to the Present Time
Litchfield, Frederick
Furniture -- History
The Science and Art Department keep for reference an album containing
photographs, not only of many of the specimens in the different museums
under its control, but also of some of those which have been lent for a
temporary exhibition. The illustration of the above two chairs is taken
from this source, the album having been placed at the writer's disposal by
the courtesy of Mr. Jones, of the Photograph Department. The left-hand
chair, from Abingdon Park, is said to have belonged to Lady Barnard,
Shakespeare's grand-daughter, and the other may still be seen in the Hall
of the Carpenters' Company.
[Illustration: Oak Chimney Piece. Removed from an old house in Lime
Street, City. (_South Kensington Museum._) Period: James I.]
In the Hall of the Barbers' Company in Monkswell Street, the Court room,
which is lighted with an octagonal cupola, was designed by Inigo Jones as
a Theatre of Anatomy, when the Barbers and Surgeons were one
corporation. There are some three or four tallies of this period in the
Hall, having four legs connected by stretchers, quite plain; the moulded
edges of the table tops are also without enrichment. These plain oak
slabs, and also the stretchers, have been renewed, but in exactly the same
style as the original work; the legs, however, are the old ones, and are
simple columns with plain turned capitals and bases. Other tables of this
period are to be found in a few old country mansions; there is one in
Longleat, which, the writer has been told, has a small drawer at the end,
to hold the copper coins with which the retainers of the Marquis of Bath's
ancestors used to play a game of shovel penny. In the Chapter House in
Westminster Abbey, there is also one of these plain substantial James I.
tables, which is singular in being nearly double the width of those which
were made at this time. As the Chapter House was, until comparatively
recent years, used as a room for the storage of records, this table was
probably made, not as a dining table, but for some other purpose requiring
greater width.
[Illustration: Oak Sideboard in the S. Kensington Museum. Period: William
III.]
In the chapter on Renaissance there was an allusion to Charterhouse,
which was purchased for its present purpose by Thomas Sutton in 1611, and
in the chapel may be seen to-day the original communion table placed there
by the founder. It is of carved oak, with a row of legs running lengthways
underneath the middle, and four others at the corners; these, while being
cast in the simple lines noticed in the tables in the Barbers' Hall, and
the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey, are enriched by carving from the
base to the third of the height of the leg, and the frieze of the table is
also carved in low relief. The rich carved wood screen which supports the
organ loft is also of Jacobean work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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