THE MAHOGANY PERIOD
It is interesting to note that the Great Fire of London started the
importation of foreign woods from across the Baltic, as great
quantities were needed at once for the purpose of rebuilding. These
soft woods aroused the invention of the cabinet-makers, and were
especially useful for inlaying; so we find in addition to oak, that
mahogany, pear and lime woods were used in fine furniture, it being
lime-wood that Grinling Gibbons carved when working with Sir
Christopher Wren, the famous architect (seventeenth century).
During the early Georgian period the oak carvings were merely poor
imitations of Elizabethan and Stuart designs. There seemed to have
been no artist wood-carvers with originality, which may have been
partly due to a lack of stimulus, as the fashion in the decoration of
furniture turned toward inlaying.
THE PERIOD OF WILLIAM III AND QUEEN MARY AND EARLY GEORGIAN
are characterised by _turned_ work, giving way to _flattened forms_,
and the disappearance of the elaborate front stretcher on Charles II
chairs.
The coming of mahogany into England and its great popularity there
gives its name to that period when Chippendale, Heppelwhite, Sheraton
and the Adam Brothers were the great creative cabinet-makers. The
entire period is often called CHIPPENDALE, because Chippendale's books
on furniture, written to stimulate trade by arousing good taste and
educating his public, are considered the best of that time. There were
three editions: 1754, 1759, and 1762.
The work was entitled "The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director and
Useful Designs of Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and
Modern Taste" (and there was still more to the title!).
Chippendale's genius lay in taking the best wherever he found it and
blending the whole into a type so graceful, beautiful, perfectly
proportioned, light in weight and appearance, and so singularly suited
to the uses for which it was intended, that it amounted to creation.
The "Chinese Craze" in England was partly due to a book so called,
written by Sir William Chambers, architect, who went to China and not
only studied, but sketched, the furniture, he saw there.
Thomas Sheraton, we are assured, was the most cultivated of this group
of cabinet-makers. The three men made both good and bad styles. The
work of the three men can be distinguished one from the other and,
also, it can be very easily confused. To read up a period helps; but
to really know any type of furniture with certainty, one must become
familiar with its various and varying characteristics.
The houses and furniture designed and made by the Adam brothers were
an epoch in themselves. These creations were the result of the
co-operation of a little band of artists, consisting of Michael Angelo
Pergolesi, who published in 1777, "Designs for Various Ornaments";
Angelica Kauffman and Cipriani, two artist-painters who decorated the
walls, ceilings, woodwork and furniture designed by the Adam brothers;
and another colleague, the great Josiah Wedgwood, whose medallions and
plaques, cameo-like creations in his jasper paste, showed both classic
form and spirit.
The Adam brothers' creations were rare exotics, with no forerunners
and no imitators, like nothing the world had ever seen--yet reflecting
the purest Greek period in line and design.
One of the characteristics of the Mahogany Period was the cabriole
leg, which is, also, associated with Italian and French furniture of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As a matter of fact this
form of leg is as old as the Romans and is really the same as the
animal legs of wood or bronze, used as supports for tripods and tables
by Assyrians, Egyptians and Greeks. The cabriole leg may be defined as
"a convex curve above a concave one, with the point of junction
smoothed away. On Italian console tables and French commodes we see
the two simple curves disguised by terminal figures."
The rocaille (shell) ornament on the Chippendale as well as the
cabriole leg copied from Italy and France, and the Dutch foot from
Holland, substantiate our claim that Chippendale used what he found
wherever he found it irrespective of the stigma of plagiarism.
There is a beautiful book by F.S. Robinson in which the entire subject
of English furniture is treated in a most charming fashion.
Now let us return a moment to the Jacobean period. It was under
Charles I that couches and settles became prominent pieces of
furniture. Some of the Jacobean chairs are like those made in Italy,
in the seventeenth century, with crossed legs, backs and seats covered
with red velvet. Other Jacobean chairs had scrollwork carved and
pierced, with central panel in the back of embroidery, while the seat
was of cane.
Some of the Jacobean cabinets had panels of ebony, the other parts
inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory.
The silver Jacobean furniture is interesting and the best examples of
this type are said to be those belonging to Lord Sackville. They are
of ebony with silver mountings.
Yorkshire is noted for its Jacobean furniture, but some famous rooms
done in this style are at Langleys, in Essex, the seat of Col.
Tufnell, where the ceilings and mantels are especially fine and the
library boasts interesting panelled walls, once enlivened by stained
glass windows, when this room was used as a private chapel for the
family.
Jacobean carving was never ornate.
Twenty years later came the Queen Anne period. Queen Anne chairs show
a solid splat, sometimes vase-shaped, and strap-work arabesques. Most
of the legs were cabriole, instead of the twisted turnings (on Stuart
lines) which had been Supports for chairs, cabinets and tables. The
Queen Anne chair legs terminated when cabriole, in claws and balls or
simple balls. Settees for two were then called "love seats," and
"pole-screens" belonged to this period, tall, slender poles with
small, sliding screens.
Queen Anne hangings were of rich damasks, silks and velvets, and the
wainscot of rooms was painted some pale colour as an effective
background to set off the dark, turned walnut or gorgeous lacquer
made in red, green or black, and ornamented with gold. Some of the
Queen Anne pieces of this variety had hinges and lockplates of chased
brass. Another variety was of oak, veneered with walnut and inlaid.
The very high ceilings of the Queen Anne period led to the use of
"tall boys" or family bureaus, those many-storied conveniences which
comprised a book-case above, writing desk in the middle, and drawers
below.
Lockwood says in giving the history of chairs, in his "Cabinet Makers
from 1750 to 1840": "Extravagance of taste and fluctuation of fashion
had reached high water mark due to increase of wealth in England and
her colonies. From the plain, stately pieces of Queen Anne the public
turned to the rococo French designs of early Chippendale, then tiring
of that, veered back to classic lines, as done by the Adam brothers,
and so on, from heavy Chippendale to the overlight and perishable
Heppelwhite. Then public taste turned to the gaudily painted Sheraton
and finally, took to copying the French Empire."
The American Revolutionary War stopped the exportation of furniture
to America, with the result that cabinet-makers in the United States
copied Chippendale and neglected all other later artists. When America
began again to import models, Sheraton was an established and not a
transitional type. Beautiful specimens are shown in the Nichols house,
at Salem, Mass., furnished in 1783. The furniture used by George
Washington when President of the United States in 1789, and now in the
City Hall, New York, is pure Sheraton. (See Colonial Furniture, Luke
Vincent Lockwood.)
Sir Christopher Wren, architect, with Grinling Gibbons, designer and
wood-carver, were chiefly responsible for the beautifully elaborate
mouldings on ceilings and walls, carved from oak and used for forming
large panels with wide bevels, into which were sometimes set
tapestries.
The Italian stucco mouldings were also used at that time. The fashion
for elaborate ceilings and sidewalls had come to England via Italy and
France. The most elaborate ones of those times were executed under
Charles II and William III, the ceilings rivalling those of Louis XIV.
William and Mary (1687-1702) brought over with them from Holland,
Dutch cabinet makers, which accounts for the marked Dutch influence on
the Mahogany Period, an influence which shows in a Dutch style of
inlaying, cabriole legs and the tulip design. A sure sign of the
William and Mary period is the presence of jasmine, as designed for
inlaying in bone, ivory or hollywood.
Lacquer came to England via Holland, the Dutch having imported Chinese
workmen.
The entire Mahogany Period, including the Adam brothers, used the
shell as a design and the backs of settees resembled several chair
backs places side by side.
A feature of the Mahogany Period were the knife-boxes and cases for
bottles, made of mahogany and often inlaid, which stood upon pedestals
constructed for the purpose, at each side of the sideboard. Later the
pedestals became a part of the sideboard. The urn-shaped knife-boxes
were extremely graceful as made by Adam, Chippendale and Heppelwhite.
It is impossible to clearly define all of the work of the
cabinet-makers of the mahogany or any other period, for reasons
already stated. So one must be prepared to find Chippendale sofas
which show the shapes originated by him and, also, at times, show
Louis XVI legs and Louis XV outline. Chippendale's contemporaries were
quite as apt to vary their types, and it is only by experience that
one can learn to distinguish between the different artists, to
appreciate the hall marks of creative individuality.
The early Chippendale was almost identical with Queen Anne furniture
and continued the use of cabriole leg and claw and ball feet. The top
of the Chippendale chairs were bow-shaped with ends extending beyond
the sides of the back and usually turned _up_. If turned down they
never rounded into the sides, as in the case of Queen Anne chairs. The
splats have an upward movement and were joined to chair seats, and not
to a cross-rail. They were pierced and showed elaborate ribbon and
other designs in carving. There were, also, "ladder backs," and the
Chinese Chippendale chairs, with lattice work open carved and
extending over entire backs. The characteristic Chippendale leg is
cabriole with claw and ball foot.
The setting for Chippendale furniture was a panelled dado, classic
mantelpiece, architraves and frieze, and stretched over sidewalks,
above dado, was silk or paper showing a large pattern harmonising with
the furniture. The Chinese craze brought about a fashion for Chinese
wall papers with Chinese designs. This Chinese fashion continued for
fifty years.
Chippendale carved the posts of his bedsteads, and so the bed curtains
were drawn back and only a short valance was used around the top,
whereas in the time of William and Mary bed curtains enveloped all the
woodwork. Still earlier in the Elizabethan period bed posts were
elaborately carved.
In the eighteenth century it was the fashion to embroider the bed
curtains.
The Chippendale china-cabinets with glass fronts, were the outcome of
the fad for collecting Chinese and French porcelain, and excellent
taste was displayed in collecting these small articles within definite
and appropriate limits. Cabinets with glass doors were also used as
receptacles for silverware.
Thomas Sheraton (1760-1786), another great name in the Mahogany
Period, admired Louis XV and Louis XVI and one can easily trace French
influence in the "light, rhythmic style" he originated. Sheraton's
contribution to interior decoration was furniture. His rooms, walls,
ceilings, over-doors, windows and chimney pieces, are considered very
poor; which accounts for the fact that Sheraton furniture as well as
Heppelwhite was used in Adam rooms.
Sheraton made a specialty of pieces of furniture designed to serve
several purposes, and therefore adapted for use in small rooms; such
as dressing-tables with folding mirrors, library step-ladders
convertible into tables, etc.
The backs of Sheraton chairs had straight tops and several small
splats joined to a cross-rail, and not to the seat. The legs were
straight.
Sheraton introduced the use of turned work on the legs and outer
supports of the backs of chairs, and produced fine examples of painted
furniture, especially painted satin-wood. He, also, did some very fine
inlaying and used cane in the seats and backs of chairs which he
painted black and gold. Among those who decorated for him was Angelica
Kauffman.
Heppelwhite chairs are unmistakable on account of their _shield_,
_heart_ or _oval_ backs and open splats, which were not joined to
the seat in the centre of backs. The most beautiful were those with carved
Prince of Wales feathers, held together by a bow-knot delicately
carved. They were sometimes painted. The legs of Heppelwhite furniture
were straight.
We see in the book published by A. Heppelwhite & Co., a curious
statement to the effect that cabriole chairs were those having stuffed
backs. This idea must have arisen from the fact that many chairs of
the eighteenth century with cabriole legs, did have stuffed backs.
Robert Adam, born in 1785, was an architect and decorative artist. The
Adam rooms, walls, ceilings, mantels, etc., are the most perfect of
the period; beautiful classic mouldings encrust ceilings and
sidewalls, forming panels into which were let paintings, while in
drawing-rooms the side panels were either recessed so as to hold
statuary in the antique style, or were covered with damask or
tapestry. It is stated that damask and tapestry were never used on the
walls of Adam dining-rooms. James Adam, a brother, worked with
Robert.
Every period had its own weak points, so we find the Adam brothers at
times making wall-brackets which were too heavy with ram's heads,
garlands, etc., and the Adam chairs were undoubtedly bad. They had
backs with straight tops, rather like Sheraton chairs, and several
small splats joining top rail to seat. The bad chairs by Adam, were
improved upon by Sheraton and Heppelwhite. The legs of Adam furniture
were straight.
The ideal eighteenth century interior in England was undoubtedly an
Adam room with Heppelwhite or Sheraton furniture.
Sir John Soane, architect, had one of the last good house interiors,
for the ugly Georgian style came on the scene about 1812. Grinling
Gibbons' carvings of heavy fruits and flowers, festoons and masks made
to be used architecturally we now see used on furniture, and often
heavily gilded.
William Morris was an epoch maker in English interior decoration, for
he stood out for the "great, simple note" in furnishings. The
pre-Raphaelites worked successfully to the same end, reviving classic
simplicity and establishing _the value of elimination_. The good,
modern furniture of to-day, designed with reference to meeting the
demands of modern conditions, undoubtedly received a great impetus
from that reaction to the simple and harmonious.