How to collect old furniture

In another work on the subject of Furniture I have endeavored to trace the changes In style and fashion from Antique to Medieval, from Medieval to Renaissance, and from Renaissance to Modern, but in the following notes I have attempted to give the reader some descriptions of the various kinds of furniture, made in different countries, from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, omitting the earlier periods. As examples of the latter are seldom seen except in museums, they are, for all practical purposes, unobtainable by the collector of ordinary means.

I have tried to convey by explanatory hints and suggestions, advice which may enable the reader to select the example of the period he is in search of, and avoid the imitation and the sham.

The information given in this book is more elementary and practical, than theoretical and historical; therefore but little has been said of those magnificent pieces de luxe which are only to be purchased by the millionaire collector, and more attention has been devoted to the domestic furniture of the last three hundred years, which so many persons of taste in these latter days like to see represented among their household gods.

A liberal supply of illustrations to these notes should render them intelligible and useful, and help the readers to have about them some old furniture of which they can tell the origin, the country, and date of manufacture, and in many cases assist them to identify a favorite specimen as the work of an individual maker.

In order that the collector may be able to compare the illustration of a particular specimen with the article itself, the half-tone blocks are, with few exceptions, produced from photographs of examples available to the public in the Victoria and Albert Museum of South Kensington, and to the Science and Art Department, controlling that useful national collection, my grateful acknowledgements are tendered for the generous permission to use Museum photographs.

The glossary of terms used in connection with furniture, many of which have peculiar and technical meanings not to be found in the dictionary, but constantly occurring in catalogues and written descriptions of old furniture, will, it is hoped, be of service to the reader.

In a popular handbook on furniture it is unnecessary and undesirable to consider in detail the historical and social events which influenced the manners and customs, the architecture, and the domestic arts and industries of different nations, but without some allusion to these contributory causes, it is difficult to appreciate the changes and variations, sometimes sudden and sometimes gradual, which affected the designs and styles of the furniture of successive periods.

Towards the latter end of the fifteenth century a great art movement commenced in Italy, spread to the Netherlands, Spain and Germany, which were then under the widespread sceptre of Charles V, and passed to France, whose king had married a daughter of the great Medici family, and afterwards, during- the reign of Henry VIII, was introduced into England.

We must remember that the ancient or antique period had passed away with the decline of the vast Roman empire, and had been succeeded by a period of art known as Medieval, which embraced the Byzantine and Gothic styles of building, decoration and ornament. The Gothic, with its different divisions and varieties, was now to give way to the new movement, termed Renaissance or re-birth, which, commencing in the fifteenth found expression and development in the sixteenth century. Every art student knows what an extraordinary period was the sixteenth century for the production and encouragement of great men in art, painters, sculptors, architects, designers and workers in gold, silver and bronze, potters and enamellers, weavers of beautiful textiles, and last, though by no means least, makers, carvers, and inlayers of ornamental woodwork and furniture.

The illustration which I am able to give of four panels of carved oak from the South Kensington collection, shows four different styles of woodcarving of this period of transition, and is useful to assist one in determining the kind of enrichment of late fifteenth century ornament.

The woodwork of the Medieval time was limited to the spare equipment of the feudal castle and the limited furnishing of the monastic house or church. The castle was now giving way to the palace or mansion, the use of gunpowder and firearms had contributed materially to change the character of the noble's residence; the rich burgess and merchant were everywhere asserting the power and influence of successful trade and enterprise, the arts of war were making way for the
arts of peace, and the people of the capitals and centres of civilization in the different countries of Europe, were beginning" to decorate and furnish their homes according to some idea of comfort and luxury.

The general scheme ot the leaders of the new movement, chief of whom were Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, was to abolish the Gothic principles of their predecessors, and to re-establish the simplicity and purity of the earlier Greek and Roman styles.

As an architect of the sixteenth century Andrea Palladio probably did more than any other man to give expression to the new movement in the buildings of his time, and the Italian palaces designed by him were the elaboration of the types of temples and city gates of ancient Rome. He appears to have been fascinated by the fine proportions, the stateliness and dignity of these ancient piles, and the school of architecture which came in after years to be known as Palladian, had a lasting influence upon the architecture of other nations. Inigo Jones, our great seventeenth-century designer, may be said to have built Whitehall Palace under the inspiration of Palladio's teaching and the Renaissance influence.

Furniture and woodwork of the period were affected as a natural consequence of the alteration in the elevation and plan, in the style and ornament of the building itself, and necessarily the panellings and mouldings, the cornices, enrichments, and all the equipment and furnishings, to a great extent followed the lines and spirit of the exterior.

The cabinet as a piece of furniture may be said to have first made its appearance in the sixteenth century; the chest, the credence, the buffet had been in existence much earlier, but not the cabinet, and it now took the form of a miniature gateway or part of a temple or a palace, which served as the model of the sixteenth-century designer. The interior decorations of some of these cabinets were arranged with pilasters, columns, and arcaded ornament, like the interiors of the palaces themselves, and not infrequently we find the floor or platform of these interior recesses inlaid with small squares or geometrical patterns in perspective, to imitate the floor of the vestibule of the palace from which the scheme of design was adopted.

To the sixteenth century also belongs the cassone or marriage chest, of which there are some good examples in the South Kensington Museum, and just as the cabinet had its prototype in the classic temple or gateway, so was the Italian cassone an elaboration of the antique sarcophagus. In Venice it was richly carved in walnut wood with Raphaelesque scrolls, and ornamented with the armorial bearings of the noble family whose daughter was to be married, or it was carved and gilded, and on the gold ground was painted a reproduction of a classic frieze, or the representation of some historical event. In Milan it was of ebonized or brown wood inlaid with ivory ; but whatever the form of enrichment and elaboration, the antique sarcophagus was the prototype.

Tables for the first time in the history of woodwork became more general as complete articles of furniture, made of wood, and elaborately carved and inlaid. In the fifteenth century, with few exceptions, the table for mealshad consisted of an arrangement of boards and trestles, and we have some reminiscence of this movable kind of table in the expression, " a seat at the board," in our language of to-day. Some of the illustrations will show sixteenth-century tables of Italian workmanship, and in England we had the "drawinge" table, which in the chapter on Jacobean furniture has received more detailed description.

Until the sixteenth century was well advanced the chair had been a kind of throne or state seat used by the master of the house, the seigneur or lord, or for his honored guest; in cathedrals, abbeys and churches for the bishop, the archbishop or the abbot, and in palaces for the king and queen. As we have remarked upon the expression of "a seat at the board," so that of "taking the chair" is clearly a survival of a time when the chair was the place of honor. Gradually the chair became an article of domestic furniture, and as rooms were of smaller dimensions and the life of the people more social, chairs became more numerous and more ordinary. The upholstered seat and back with padded arms were all of later date; in the sixteenth century they were made of wood with a loose cushion attached by strings.

Pictures were framed, and mirrors, which were now of larger size than formerly, became ornamental as well as useful articles of furniture in a house.

Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Urbino, and other Italian cities produced richly carved furniture, cabinets, tables, chairs, caskets, cassoni, mirror frames and bellows of elaborate design and beautiful execution.
 

In France under Francis I the Renaissance movement found great encouragement. An Italian architect was employed to build the new chateau of Fontainebleau, and Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto came from Italy to decorate the interior.


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