influenced his contemporaries. "Theology rules there," said Grotius
of England only two years after Elizabeth's death. There was an
indifference to pure letters and persons were counted fine scholars
who were diligent in the study of the Bible. The language of the
people became enriched with this study, which extended to all
classes. John Bunyan, the son of a tinker at Elstow, learned his
intense prose from the Bible. The peasant absorbed the Bible till its
words became his own. With the Puritan movement came the production
of men of serious type, and with it too came the disappearance of
the richer and brighter life and humour of Elizabethan days. It was
a literary movement and a religious movement which penetrated to the
lower classes and often left the upper classes and gentry unmoved.
In dealing with this and its reflex upon the domestic habits of the
people, the visible effects in regard to furniture are strikingly
evident in the plethora of Bible-boxes belonging to those in this
period of Biblical study, to whom Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were
unknown and Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ and Milton's _Comus_ were
sealed books.
It would almost seem that in many cases the Bible was the only
book which was read and treasured. It was incorporated in the home
life. It served as a register to record the names and dates of
birth and death or marriage of members of the family. Some of these
family registers have been most valuable in tracing details in
biography where parish registers have failed to supply the necessary
information.
=The Variety of Carving found in Bible-boxes.=--We give a series
of illustrations indicating some of the interesting details of
carving to be found on such boxes, where, as in work intended for a
treasure-chest to preserve a sacred book, considerable zeal has gone
to the elaboration of ornament. These seventeenth-century relics of
a wave of religious enthusiasm are the crude Puritan likenesses,
belonging to a less innately artistic race, of the tabernacles and
ivory carved Madonnas and saints of the Italian renaissance. They
both, though poles asunder in realisation, represent the instinctive
love of man for ornament in connection with his religious emotions.
Savage races with another ritual produce religious and ceremonial
woodcarving representative of their best. Here, then, is the Puritan
craftsmanship, mainly of provincial origin and found scattered over
various parts of the country, following _motifs_ executed by the same
hands as Jacobean chairs and dressers, but bearing rich touches of
ornament, betraying much originality, within the limited scope of
Jacobean design.
The carving has nothing of the humour or strong bold relief of the
miserere seats of the palmy days of the woodcarver in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth century in details that might well have been
applied to the Bible-box. The ambition of the Puritan woodcarver
never reached figure-work, or he might have represented Biblical
scenes if his abhorrence of graven images had not demoralised his
fancy. Some of the early boxes have bold carving. We illustrate
a fine example (p. 143) of the time of James I., about 1600. The
design is floral, which embodies the well-known conventional rose.
Illustrated on the same page is another carved box of unusual pattern
with floriated design. It was a frequent practice to treat the front
of the box as though it were continuous and the pattern leaves off
at the ends much in the same manner as modern wallpaper. In the box
above it will be seen that the front is panelled and the design is
confined to the circumscribed area.
[Illustration: CARVED OAK BIBLE-BOX. FINE EXAMPLE. TIME OF JAMES
I. ABOUT 1600.
Length, 2 ft. 4 ins.; width, 1 ft. 4 ins.; height, 11-1/2 ins.]
[Illustration: CARVED BIBLE-BOX OF UNUSUAL PATTERN.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
[Illustration: BIBLE-BOX OF VERY RARE PATTERN. ABOUT 1650.
This type always had the same kind of clasp.]
[Illustration: BIBLE-BOX OF USUAL PATTERN COMMONLY FOUND.]
Another piece with very rare pattern, in date about 1650, has a bold
type of carving in the two semicircles stretched across the front.
This use of semicircles occurs in types usually found. The example
illustrated (p. 145) has incised carving or "scratch." It will be
seen that there is never an attempt at inlay or any of the delicacies
of the refined craftsman. Among the various types of "scratch" boxes
the use of circles and heart-shaped ornament is constant. The locks
found on this type of box are always of the class as shown in the
illustration, and the clasp is well known.
In the collection of Bible-boxes the novice must carefully learn
the exact limitations of the school of woodworkers in this minor
field. The touch of the foreign craftsman should be easily
recognisable, with its piquancy and real artistic feeling. These
Puritan Bible-boxes have flat lids, and in order to give some touch
of romance to them or whet the appetite of the collector they are
frequently described as "lace-boxes," though it is very doubtful if
such boxes were ever used for storing lace. Sometimes similar boxes
with sloping lids were used as early forms of writing-desks.
=The Jacobean Cradle.=--The specimens of this type of furniture
always exhibit, in the oak variety associated with farmhouse use,
a plainness as a noticeable factor. They are usually panelled, but
the panel has received no carved ornament and is especially simple.
Of course they always have rockers. In the examples illustrated the
slight variation in these rockers will be observed. Sometimes they
are plain and sometimes they have slight ornamental curves. The only
other ornament may be found in the turned knobs at the foot and
sometimes at the head. Sometimes there are fine knobs on the hood.
The hood is sometimes shaped and exhibits a naïve attempt at
symmetrical design. These cradles have long been familiar objects
in cottagers' homes, but are now being displaced by modern wicker
cradles. The picture _A Flood_ (1870), by Sir John E. Millais, shows
one of these cradles floating in a flooded meadow. The baby is
crowing with delight, and a black cat sits at the foot of the cradle.
The holes in the example illustrated (p. 149) are intended to receive
a cord stretched across the cradle to protect the occupant.
[Illustration: OAK CRADLE.
With shaped hood and turned knobs at head and foot.]
[Illustration: OAK CRADLE.
With shaped hood with turned ball ornaments. Holes on each side
to fasten rope to protect occupant.]
[Illustration: YARN-WINDER AND SPINNING-WHEEL.]
[Illustration: BUCKINGHAMSHIRE BOBBIN'S.
Turned wood bobbins with coloured beads to identify the bobbins
from each other.
(_In the collection of the author._)]
=The Spinning-wheel.=--To this day the spinning-wheel is used in
Scotland, in the Highlands. The wool or yarn winders are usually
in windlass form with six spokes. The turning upon these winders
and spinning wheels resembles the spindles on the spindle-back
chairs. There is in Buckinghamshire bobbins a similar turning,
individual in character and exhibiting considerable artistic beauty.
In spinning-wheels there is considerable scope for the use of fine
touches of ornament, in such practical objects dear to the housewife.
Bone sometimes was used in the turned knobs. The making of these
spinning-wheels was undertaken by persons desirous of winning the
esteem of those who used them. Many of them have come down as
heirlooms in families and have not been held as objects of art, to be
regarded as curiosities, but as articles of everyday use.
The use of the spinning-wheel was not confined exclusively to the
farmer's wife. In early days great ladies were adepts at spinning.
By the time of George III. it was employed by the ladies of titled
families. Mrs. Delany, when staying with the Duchess of Portland at
Bulstrode, writes: "The Queen came about twelve o'clock, and caught
me at my spinning-wheel, and made me spin on and give her a lesson
afterwards; and I must say she did it tolerably for a queen." This
letter, dated 1781, goes to prove two things, that spinning was a
real task still undertaken by great ladies, and not a fashionable
amusement. Had it been the latter Mrs. Delany would not have used the
expression "caught me at my spinning-wheel," wherein she indicates
that the occupation was somewhat of a menial one.
In regard to the Buckinghamshire bobbins, sometimes finely carved
in bone, those illustrated (p 151.) indicate the character of the
cottagers' treasures in the pillow-lace-making districts. The
patterns of these bobbins are not repeated. Individual touches
are given to these bobbins by the village turners which are not
duplicated. In use, the bobbin has to be identified by some mark, and
beads of different colours are employed, which are affixed by means
of a wire to the bobbin, as is shown in the illustration.
=The Bacon-cupboard.=--Another class which it is convenient to place
among miscellaneous objects is the bacon-cupboard. The illustration
(p. 231) shows the type of bacon-cupboard with seat and arms and
drawers beneath. The position held by the bacon-cupboard in the
farmhouse is shown by the growing dignity in the character of these
cupboards. The gradual growth and development are shown in many
specimens of the Queen Anne period, frequently of Lancashire origin.
Such pieces, with classic pilasters, broken cornice, and bevelled
panels and drawers beneath, are typified in wardrobes and dressers
belonging to eighteenth-century farmhouse furniture. The development
of capacious cupboards for various domestic uses is noticeable in
this class of furniture up to early nineteenth-century days.
CHAPTER VI
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STYLES
CHAPTER VI
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STYLES
The advent of the cabriole leg--The so-called Queen Anne
style--The survival of oak in the provinces--The influence of
walnut on cabinet-making--The early-Georgian types--Chippendale
and his contemporaries.
The dawn of the eighteenth century practically commenced with the
reign of Queen Anne. The times were troublous. As princess, in the
days of William the Dutchman and her sister Mary, she was forbidden
the Court as John Churchill, then Earl of Marlborough, designed to
overthrow William and place Anne on the throne. "Were I and my Lord
Marlborough private persons," William exclaimed, "the sword would
have to settle between us."
At the death of Mary the Princess Anne, together with the
Marlboroughs, was recalled to St. James's. At the death of William,
in 1702, Anne came to the throne. Only just in her thirty-seventh
year, she was so corpulent and gouty that she could not walk from
Westminster Hall to the Abbey, and was carried in an open chair.
During the Coronation ceremony she was too infirm to support herself
in a standing position without assistance.
The age of Anne is remarkable for its restless intrigues. Court plots
were rife when Queen Anne "Mrs. Morley" in her private letters to the
Duchess of Marlborough, who was "Mrs. Freeman," finally broke with
the overbearing Duchess and made Abigail Hill, one of the Marlborough
creatures, her chief confidant. The Protestant Whig party favoured
the long war in the Low Countries and in Spain, although conducted by
a Tory general, Marlborough, who, by the way, did not take the field
in Flanders till he was fifty-two, a remarkable achievement for so
great a military career, wherein he never fought a battle in which he
was not victorious.
The greatness of Marlborough is indisputable. His fond love for his
wife runs like a gold thread through the dark web of his life. His
wife had, during a large part of Anne's reign, despotic empire over
Anne's feeble mind. "History exhibits to us few spectacles more
remarkable," says Lord Macaulay, "than that of a great and wise man
who, when he had contrived vast and profound schemes of policy, could
carry them into effect only by inducing one foolish woman, who was
often unmanageable, to manage another woman who was more foolish
still."
[Illustration: LANCASHIRE OAK SETTLE. _C._ 1760.
Length, 6 ft.; depth, 2 ft. 1 in.]
[Illustration: LANCASHIRE QUEEN ANNE SETTLE.
Showing transition into later type of modern settee.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
To us now, with the secret springs of history laid bare, there is
much to marvel at, much to deplore as trivial. In regard to matters
of high state and the suppleness of time-servers, memoirs and private
journals have exposed many a skeleton carefully hidden from public
gaze. But of the life of the people, especially the life in the
country districts, the picture is somewhat blurred. Men of letters
flocked to the town--the town was London. Provincial life lies behind
a curtain. There were Spanish doubloons coming up from Bristol and
prize-money from the wars was scattered inland from the ports.
Scotland was united to England by the Act of Union. "I desire," said
the Queen, "and expect from my subjects of both nations that from
henceforth they act with all possible respect and kindness to one
another, and so that it may appear to all the world they have hearts
disposed to become one people." This wish has been amply fulfilled
and the union has become something more than a name. Never have two
peoples different in thought, in tradition, and in established law
become so completely welded together.
But the war of the Spanish Succession must have drained English
blood as it taxed English pockets. "Six millions of supplies and
almost fifty millions of debt," wrote Swift bitterly. The tide of
Marlborough's success was undoubtedly secured by the outpouring
of English lives. Stalwart levies of men from the shires went to
join the strange medley of the forces of the Allies commanded by
Marlborough. Dutchmen, Danes, Hanoverians, Würtembergers, and
Austrians jostled shoulders with each other in his troops. He
launched them with calm imperturbability against his opponents
at Malplaquet, for example, where with a Pyrrhic triumph he lost
twenty-four thousand men against half that number of the French
behind their entrenchments.
It is little wonder that the war was unpopular in the country, where
the Spanish Succession and the "balance of power" were only symbols
for so much pressure on the needs of the labouring classes. Bonfires
might be lit for Blenheim, but many a village mourned those who would
never return.
In spite of this intermingling of England with European politics,
the general life of the people remained untouched from outside
influence in regard to arts and manufacture. Cut off from intercourse
with France, the grandeur of the art of Louis Quatorze was as far
removed from early eighteenth-century England as though Boulle and
Jean Bérain and Lepaute were in another continent and the château of
Versailles in the fastnesses of the Urals. It is true that Louis XIV.
presented two wonderful cabinets to the Duke of Monmouth, exquisite
examples of metal inlay and coloured marquetry, but such pieces were
beyond the capabilities of any English craftsman to emulate.
The chief innovations of the early eighteenth century followed
the Dutch lines familiarised in the preceding days of William and
Mary. Oak remained in farmhouse and country furniture, but in the
fashionable world walnut was extensively used, and occasionally
mahogany. Corner cupboards were introduced early in the reign of
Anne, and hooped chairs, familiar in engravings of Flemish interiors,
came into general use. Fiddle-splat chairs were also common in
the first half of the eighteenth century. In regard to feet, the
ball-and-claw, and club foot were introduced. Caning of chairs went
out of fashion till the end of the century. Shell and pendant
ornament on knees of chair-legs became marked features, and, above
all, the cabriole leg to chairs and tables is associated with the
early years of the reign, and the term "Queen Anne" is always applied
to such pieces.
[Illustration: CUPBOARD WITH DRAWERS. _C._ 1700.
With "swan head" pediment. Pedestal at top for delft or china.
Round beadings to drawers.]
[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE BUREAU BOOKCASE.
Farmhouse oak variety. Emulating a finer walnut or mahogany
piece.]
[Illustration: FINE EXAMPLE OAK TABLE. _C._ 1720.
Well-proportioned legs, club feet, original undercutting.
Exemplary of professional country cabinet-maker's highest work.]
[Illustration: OAK TABLE. _C._ 1720.
With hoof feet and knee, possibly copied from a fine Queen Anne
piece, exemplifying the best work of country cabinet-maker.
Height, 2 ft. 7 ins.; top, 1 ft. 7-1/2 ins. × 2 ft. 3 ins.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
=The Cabriole Leg.=--This form of leg, swelling into massive
proportions where it joins the seat, and curving outwards and
tapering to a ball-and-claw foot or a club foot, lasted till end of
Chippendale period, roughly, for nearly half a century. It assumed
various forms until it was supplanted by the straight leg, and the
stretcher, which had disappeared with the use of the cabriole leg,
again came into use.
Examples of the cabriole leg appear as illustrations to various types
of furniture in this chapter. At first its use did not interfere
with the employment of the stretcher, but about 1710 the stretcher
disappeared. The Lancashire Queen Anne settle illustrated (p. 159)
shows the stretcher joining the front leg to the back. In the settle
illustrated above, in date 1760, it will be seen the stretchers have
vanished.
=The So-called Queen Anne Style.=--Fashions slowly adopted in cabinet
design do not readily arrange themselves in exact periods coinciding
with the reigns of individual sovereigns. But it is convenient to
affix a label to certain marked changes and attribute their general
use to a particular reign. The innovation of the square panel with
broken corners and ornamental curves at top is found in Queen Anne
settles. The departure from the square panel and line of the curved
and broken top is exhibited in the second Great Seal of Anne,
commemorating the Union with Scotland. It is reminiscent of the Dutch
influence, and is found in Sussex firebacks of an earlier period. The
straight lines of early-Jacobean cabinet-work were rapidly undergoing
a change; the square wooden back of the chair was shortly to be
replaced by fiddle splats, which in their turn, in late-Georgian
days, became pierced and fretted and carved under the genius of
Chippendale's hand.
The two settles illustrated (p. 159) show several interesting points.
The panels are typical of the love of the curved line, which Hogarth
defined as the line of beauty. In the upper one the arms still retain
the old Jacobean form in this farmhouse example. The ball foot still
clings to the earlier form. The seat is sunk to receive a long
cushion. In the adjacent specimen the seat with its cushion and the
curved =S= arms upholstered show the transition into the later type
of modern settee.
The curved outline finds similar expression in the hood of
grandfather clock-cases and in the shape of metal dials. A cupboard
with drawers illustrated (p. 163) has what is known as a "swan head."
The panels to the doors have similarly novel features in their
structure. It will be observed that there is a square pedestal at
the top of this piece, which was intended as a stand for a delft or
Chinese jar. The drawers of this cupboard have round beadings.
The typical instance of curved design with not a single straight
line, not even the back legs, which are bowed, is the grandfather
chair with the high back, upholstered all over. The cabriole legs
with ball-and claw-feet, the =C=-shaped arms, the scroll upholstered
wings, and the oval back, depart from the rectilinear; even the
underframing of the seat is bow-shaped. Similarly, the walnut
arm-chairs of the period from 1690 to 1715 had bold curves. The arms
always possessed a curious scroll, the backs had broad splats with
curling shoulders, and often a broad bold ribbon pattern making two
loops to fill up the top of the hoop at the back, with a carved
shell at the point of intersection. Big pieces of furniture, such
as bureaus, had the broken arch pediment, and smaller objects, such
as mirrors, had the arched or broken top; and when these dressing
mirrors had small drawers, these disdained the straight front and
became convex.
Under the Dutch influence, in the first period of English veneer
work, from about 1675 to 1715, very fine cabinets and bureaus and
chests of drawers were made. Walnut was the wood employed, with
the panels inlaid with pollard elm, boxwood, ebony, mahogany,
sycamore, and other coloured woods. Figured walnut was beloved by
the cabinet-maker beginning to feel his way in colour schemes of
decoration. Bandings of herring-bone inlay and rounded mouldings to
drawers are very characteristic. Bureaus and important pieces had
birds and flowers and trees or feather marquetry after fine Dutch
models. Picked walnut, especially exhibiting a fine feathered figure,
was used as veneer, and with these and other glorious creations of
the walnut school of cabinet-workers the age of walnut may be said
to have been in full swing.
=The Survival of Oak in the Provinces.=--The foregoing descriptions
apply to fashionable folks' furniture. Such fashions did not come
into usage in the farmhouses and in the cottages. Oak was still
employed without being displaced by the walnut of the town maker.
Oak was in the main more suitable for the particular class of
furniture which was likely to receive less delicate care than
the writing-cabinets and bureaus and the china-cupboards of more
fastidious people. Tea-drinking had become the luxury of the
great world of society, and had hardly come into general use in
the country till late in the reign of Anne, though by 1690 it
had gained considerable favour in London. Coffee was introduced
slightly earlier, and many invectives in broadsides and in poetical
satires appear in the late seventeenth century against coffee
and coffee-houses. In 1674 the "Women's Petition against Coffee"
complained that "it made men as unfruitful as the deserts whence that
unhappy berry is said to be brought; that the offspring of our mighty
ancestors would dwindle into a succession of apes and pigmies, and on
a domestic message a husband would stop by the way to drink a couple
of cups of coffee." The prejudice against coffee, and especially
against coffee-houses, was lasting, and coffee failed to establish
itself as a national beverage. The labouring classes declined to
be weaned from their ale and other stronger drinks. The Spaniards
brought chocolate from Mexico; Roger North, Attorney-General to
James II., uttered a violent polemic against chocolate houses,
perhaps more on account of the political clubs gathered there than
against the beverage itself. "The use of coffee-houses," says he,
"seems much improved by a new invention called chocolate-houses, for
the benefit of rooks and cullies of quality, where gaming is added
to the rest, as if the Devil had erected a new university, and those
were the colleges of its professors."
[Illustration:
QUEEN ANNE GLASS- OR CHINA-CUPBOARD.
Spun glass doors. Heavy bars mark early type prior to tracery.
GEORGIAN CORNER CUPBOARD. LATE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.
Broken architraves and cushion top. Having original hinges.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
[Illustration: SMALL OAK TABLE. 1700-1720.
Height, 2 ft. 4-3/4 ins.; width, 2 ft. 3 ins.; depth, 1 ft. 9-3/4
ins. Graceful proportion with cabriole leg.]
[Illustration: OAK TABLE.
Showing at a later period the last traces of the cabriole leg.]
The varying phases of town life, of which the above quotations give
a passing glimpse, found little reflex in the sturdy unchanging life
of the provinces. Generation after generation, men farmed the same
lands and their dependents lived in cottages adjacent; tillers of the
ground, herdsmen, toilers in the fields, living by the sweat of their
brow. They were content with simpler pleasures, which centred round
the alehouse and the village green, or maybe the village church, if
the hunting rector and the studious vicar were not too heedless of
the fate of their flock. But other influences were soon to be at
work to break the lethargy of those of the clergy who slumbered.
Wesley founded the Methodist movement. Whitefield began his sermons
in the fields and looked down from a green slope on several thousand
colliers grimy from the coalpits near Bristol to see, as he preached,
tears "making white channels down their blackened cheeks." Later
again, Hannah More drew sympathy to the poverty and crime of the
agricultural classes.
=The Influence of Walnut on Cabinet-making.=--If oak was the wood
which the country joiner loved best, he was not without some
sympathetic leaning towards the effects which could be produced in
the softer walnut. Such styles accordingly began slowly to have a
marked influence upon the farmhouse furniture in early-Georgian days.
It was not easy to produce curved lines in the refractory oak, tough
and brittle, but the village craftsman essayed his best to please his
patrons whose taste had been caught by the newer fashions observed in
the squire's parlour when paying rare visits.
In the two examples illustrated of farmhouse cupboard and bureau
bookcase (p. 163) it will be seen that here is the country maker
definitely trying his skill in his native wood to emulate the finer
walnut examples of town cabinet-makers. This is even more noticeable
in regard to some of the tables actually found in farmhouses
belonging to as early as the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
The two specimens illustrated (p. 165) exemplify this tendency to
imitate the designs of trained workers. The country touch always
betrays itself in the cabriole leg, whether in chair or in table. The
upper table has less _naïveté_ than most examples found. There is
a balance in its construction rarely found in provincial work. The
legs, always the stumbling-block to the less experienced artificer,
are here of exceptionally fine proportions, terminating in club feet.
The lower table shows a less capable treatment of the cabriole leg.
The hoof foot and the carved knee have obviously been copied from a
fine Queen Anne model. In the underframing of both tables there is
an experiment in ornament and form rarely attempted except in the
highest flights of the country maker, and as such these two fine
examples must be regarded.
[Illustration: OAK TABLE.
Showing clumsy corners and indicating the _naïveté_ of the
country cabinet-maker.]
[Illustration: OAK TABLE.
Showing transition from cabriole leg to straight leg of 1760.]
=The Early Georgian Types.=--Treating of the early-Hanoverian period
from the death of Queen Anne in 1714, and including the reigns
of George I. from 1714 to 1727 and George II. from 1727 to 1760,
furniture of all types begins to assume a complexity of construction.
At the final outburst the fine masterpieces of creation of the
great schools of design during the last half of the eighteenth
century, embodied the life-work of Chippendale, the brothers Adam,
Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and many others. This period from 1750 to 1800
was the golden age of design in England. It has had a far-reaching
effect, and still casts its glory upon the present-day schools of
designers, whose adaptations and lines of progress are based upon the
finest flower of the eighteenth-century styles.
The massive walnut chairs with deep underframing and broad hoop backs
departed from the solid splats of the Anne style and endeavoured
to become less squat by the employment of banded ribbon-work,
coarse, heavy, and ponderous in style. Settees, arm-chairs and
single chairs in this style came as the final efforts of the walnut
school. The graceful ribbon designs interlacing each other in knots,
and the flowing carving in mahogany of Chippendale, put a period
to all dullness and heavy design. With the new style and the new
wood a splendid field was opened to cabinet-makers, and the quick
appreciation of these opportunities signalised their work as of
permanent artistic value.
Among more important pieces, though still falling under the category
of farmhouse styles, may be mentioned the Queen Anne glass or china
cupboard, and the Georgian corner cupboard, illustrated p. 171.
The former has heavy bars, which mark the early type prior to
tracery, and it has spun-glass doors. Porcelain factories at Bow,
Worcester, and Derby brought such cupboards into more general use
after the middle of the century. Staffordshire earthenware tea
and coffee services were found in great numbers in farmhouses and
cottages. After the days of delft and stoneware came the prized china
services of the housewife. Pewter was largely used, but the number
of ale-jugs of Toby form, or cider-mugs with rural subjects to suit
the tastes of the users, indicate that more modern ideas and taste,
once exclusive to the world of fashion, had penetrated the country
districts.
The Georgian corner cupboard shows the broken architraves and cushion
top. The hinges should be noticed as being original.
=Chippendale and his Contemporaries.=--At first using the cabriole
leg with ball-and-claw foot, not quite as he found it, but reduced
to slightly more slender proportions to be in symmetry with his less
massive backs to chairs, Chippendale came to the straight line. He
employed it in the legs of tables and in the seats of chairs, in the
bracket supports, and in the top rail of his chairs. Chippendale
in his day, made the first straight top rail to the chair. It is
interesting to note the phases of changing design in country-made
furniture prior to his time, and the sudden mastery of form
which became the common inheritance of all after his and other
contemporary design-books were promulgated broadcast.
[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE TEA TABLE. _C._ 1710.
With scalloped edge for cups. Height, 2 ft. 4 ins.; depth, 1 ft.
9 ins.; length, 2 ft. 8 ins.]
[Illustration: OAK REVOLVING BOOK-STAND. _C._ 1720.
Rare form. Diameter of top, 2 ft.; height, 2 ft. 8 ins.
(_In the collection of Miss Holland._)]
[Illustration: COUNTRY CHIPPENDALE TABLE.
Leg with exaggerated knee, claw, and ball foot. Accuracy in
straight joinery. Failure in curved work.
Top, 2 ft. 7 ins. × 1 ft. 3 ins.; height, 2 ft. 4 ins.]
[Illustration: SQUARE MAHOGANY FLAP TABLE. _C._ 1730.
Height, 2 ft. 4 ins.; length, 3 ft. 10-1/2 ins.; width, 2 ft. 1
in. Round cross stretcher. Rare form.]
[Illustration: TRIPOD TABLE. _C._ 1760.
Chippendale style, probably unique. Elaborate rococo work.
(_In the collection of Harold Bendixon, Esq._)]
In the table the cabriole leg showed early signs of passing away.
The two examples illustrated (p. 173) clearly indicate this. The
upper one, of the time of Queen Anne, shows the cabriole leg in fine
proportion under due subjection, and is a delicate example of fine
cabinet-work. The lower one sees the leg losing its cabriole curve,
but still rounded and still possessing the club foot.
Even more interesting are the two tables illustrated (p. 177).
The country maker was slow to adopt the cabriole leg when it was
fashionable, but when it became unfashionable he was equally
loth to depart from his accustomed style. These clearly point to
the transition between the cabriole leg and the straight leg of
Chippendale, and are about 1760 in date.
The forms of design of tables of eighteenth-century date are
extremely varied in character, denoting the rapidly changing habits
of the people. The Queen Anne tea-table, with scalloped edges for
cups, marks the note of preciosity creeping into country life. A
revolving bookstand in table form, of about 1720 in date, is another
rare piece. The adjacent table (p. 181) is country Chippendale. The
exaggerated knee and the feeble ball-and-claw foot mark the failure
of the provincial hand at curved work, accurate though he might be in
straight joinery. The "Cupid's bow" underframing is interesting in
combination with the rest of the design.
The tripod table offered difficulties of construction and is not
often found. The example illustrated is probably unique in form. In
date it is about 1760, and is remarkable for the attempt at elaborate
rococo work. Sometimes, though not often, mahogany was used in
farmhouse examples. The table illustrated (p. 183) is an instance of
the use of this wood instead of oak. It is about 1730 in date, and
exhibits an unusual form in the round cross stretcher, a touch of
originality by the maker. It is, as will be seen, a square-topped
table with flaps.
Elaboration of a high order was happily not often attempted by the
country workman, or the results with his limited experience would
have been disastrous. Instead of a fine series of really good, solid,
and well-constructed furniture made for practical use we should have
had a wilderness of failures at attempting the impossible. A copy
of a fine Chippendale side-table illustrated (p. 187) is a case in
point. There is the usual want of balance in the poise of the leg,
but the carving is of exceptional character. The table beneath, with
its long and tapering legs, has all the characteristics of the Adam
style. The beaded decoration on the legs, the classic fluting and the
carved rosette claim distant relationship with the classic inventions
of Robert Adam. The wood is pinewood, and as an example it is of
singular interest.
The rapid survey of eighteenth-century influences bearing on the
class of furniture of which this volume treats will perhaps induce
the collector to scrutinise more carefully all pieces coming under
his notice, with a view to arriving at their salient features
in connection with the native design of more or less untutored
craftsmen.
[Illustration: ELABORATE TABLE.
Country attempt to imitate fine Chippendale side table. Note the
want of balance in leg.]
[Illustration: PINEWOOD COUNTRY-MADE ADAM TABLE.
Note the unusually long leg.]
CHAPTER VII
THE EVOLUTION OF THE CHAIR
[Illustration: OAK ARM-CHAIR. DATE _C._ 1675.
With elaborate scroll back.]
[Illustration: OAK ARM-CHAIR. DATE 1650.
With scratched lozenge.]
[Illustration: CHESTNUT ARM-CHAIR. DATE 1690.]
[Illustration: OAK ARM-CHAIR. DATE 1690.]
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)
CHAPTER VII
THE EVOLUTION OF THE CHAIR
Early days--The typical Jacobean oak chair--The evolution of
the stretcher--The chair-back and its development--Transition
between Jacobean and William and Mary forms--Farmhouse
styles contemporary with the cane-back chair--The Queen Anne
splat--Country Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton--The
grandfather chair--Ladder-back types--The spindle-back
chair--Corner chairs.
In order to deal exhaustively with the evolution of the chair
from its earliest forms to the latest developments in sumptuous
upholstery, it would be necessary to make an extended survey of
furniture, dating back to early classic days. To enumerate the
manifold varieties belonging to various countries and to trace
the gradual progress in form, which kept pace with the advance in
civilisation, would be of sufficient interest to occupy a whole
volume. Man, as a sitting or lounging animal, has grown to require
more elaborate forms of chair, or settee, or sofa, and the modern
tendency has been towards comfort and luxury.
In regard to English furniture the intense contrast between the days
of Elizabeth and those of Victoria is at once noticeable. According
to Lord Macaulay in his comparison between the manners of his day and
those of the past, the furniture of a middle-class dwelling-house of
the nineteenth century was equal to that of a rich merchant in the
time of Elizabeth. In general this may be true, though not as regards
the spacious structure and the massive grandeur of the Tudor house.
In many details the differences are most noteworthy. The wide gulf
dividing the modern world from the days of the Armada may be realised
by reflecting on such an astounding fact that Queen Elizabeth
possessed at one time the only pair of silk stockings in her realm,
which were presented to her by Mistress Montague, "which pleased her
so well that she would never wear any cloth hose afterwards."
The sturdy character of the yeomen of the days of the Tudors is
exhibited in their furniture. The illustrations of this chapter in
regard to the chair and its structural development indicate the
slowly acquired tastes, running some decades behind the fashionable
furniture, strong with foreign influences, which had come into more
or less general use. "England no longer sent her fleeces to be woven
in Flanders and to be dyed in Florence. The spinning of yarn, the
weaving, fulling, and dyeing of cloth, was spreading rapidly from the
towns to the country-side. The worsted trade, of which Norwich was
the centre, extended over the whole of the Eastern Counties. Farmers'
wives everywhere began to spin their wool from their own sheep's
backs into a coarse homespun."
The rough and wattled farmhouses were being replaced by dwellings of
brick and stone. The disuse of salt fish and the greater consumption
of meat marked the improvement which was taking place among the
countryfolk. The wooden trenchers in the farmhouses were supplanted
by pewter, and there were yeomen who could boast of their silver.
Carpets in richer dwelling-houses superseded the wretched flooring of
rushes. Even pillows, now in common usage, were articles of luxury
in the sixteenth century. The farmer and the trader deemed them as
only fit "for women in child-bed." The chimney-corner came into usage
in Elizabethan days with the general use of chimneys. The mediæval
fortress had given place to the grandeur of the Elizabethan hall in
the houses of the wealthy merchants. The rise of the middle classes
brought with it in its wake the corresponding advance of the yeomen
and their dependents. Visions of the New World "threw a haze of
prodigality and profusion over the imagination of the meanest seaman."
=Early Days.=--Of farmhouse types that can authoritatively be
attributed to Tudor days there are few, but the succeeding age of
the Stuarts is rich with examples of undoubted authenticity. Many of
them are dated, and they all bear a strong family resemblance to each
other, owing to the narrow range of _motifs_ in the carved panels.
There is a fixed insularity in these early examples, and the same
traditional patterns in scrollwork or in conventional lozenge design
retained their hold for many generations. The oak arm-chair of a
farmhouse kitchen made in the days of Charles I. was still followed
in close detail in the days of George III., as dated examples
testify, and it would puzzle an expert, without the date to guide
him, to say whether the piece was eighteenth or seventeenth century
work. It may be added that as a general rule there is a marked
leaning towards generosity in imparting age to old furniture. It is
now very generally recognised that, like wine, it gains prestige with
length of years. It therefore grows in antiquity according to the
fancy of the owner or the imagination of the collector.
Among the early forms of chairs falling under the category of
farmhouse furniture may be noticed examples of rough and massive
build, eminently fit to serve the purpose for which they were
designed. Ornament is reduced to a minimum, and they stand as rude
monuments to the cabinet-maker's craft in fashioning them and
following tradition to suit his client's tastes.
In regard to the sixteenth century there cannot be said to be any
type falling under the heading of cottage or farmhouse chairs. We
have already illustrated (p. 35) an early form of Elizabethan days,
but such examples are rare. Practically cottagers had only stools in
common use. It was not until about 1650 that a simplified form of the
well-known variety of the chairs of the Jacobean oak period came into
general use.
[Illustration: YORKSHIRE CHAIR. DATE 1660.
Late example, with ball turning in stretcher.]
[Illustration: CROMWELLIAN CHAIRS. DATE 1660.
With indication of transition to Charles II. period.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
=The Typical Jacobean Oak Chair.=--The seventeenth century offers a
wide field of selection, and many examples exist which undoubtedly
were in use in farmhouses at that period. The arm-chair illustrated
p. 191, with the initials "W.I A.", is evidently made for the
farmhouse. It is noticeable for its complete absence of ornamental
carving except a thinly scratched lozenge. In date this is from 1650
to 1700, and if made for a wealthier person at that date it would be
richly carved. The adjacent chair shows the next advance in type.
It is a superior farmhouse chair of the period. It has a carved top
with scroll cresting. The holes in the seat, it should be observed,
originally held ropes, upon which a cushion was supported. The wooden
seat is an addition made in the eighteenth century.
The two other chairs illustrated on the same page are later examples,
in date about 1690. One of these is fashioned of chestnut. The
form of these backs is related to the contemporary high-back cane
chairs of the time of Charles II. and James II. But these fashions
influenced the proportions only of farmhouse chairs. In arriving
at the date of such specimens as these the bevelled panel is an
important factor in determining the late period.
Cushions had no place in the effects of the farmhouse in early days,
although ropes were sometimes used to support cushions, as we have
shown. But as a general rule the wooden seats show tangible signs
of rough usage of centuries, and the stretcher has its worn surface
marked by generations of owners who found it protective against the
cold flagged or rush-strewn floor and the draughts in days prior to
carpets and rugs.
=The Evolution of the Stretcher.=--In making a study of the evolution
of the chair the stretcher is an important factor. For obvious
reasons, as explained above, no early chairs were made without the
stretcher across the front, a good sound serviceable piece of British
oak to stand rough wear and tear. Gradually, keeping time with
the march of comfort, the front stretcher begins to leave its old
position near the floor, and in later examples it is half-way up the
front legs. It still had a use, and a very important one: it added
considerable strength and solidity to the chair, and is nearly always
found in chairs intended for use. In the series illustrated herein
there are only few examples without the front stretcher. Later it
took another form, as the illustrated specimens in this chapter show:
it united the two side stretchers, and crossed the chair underneath
in the centre at right angles to the side stretchers. Its purpose in
adding stability to this class of furniture was evidently never lost
sight of.
At first strictly utilitarian, the stretcher was a solid foot-rest;
later, when partly utilitarian in adding to the strength, it became
suitable for ornamentation, Although in the class of furniture here
under review such ornament never took an elaborate form, there are
examples slightly differing in character from chairs intended for the
use of the wealthier classes, and these are evidently a local effort
to keep in touch with prevailing taste.
[Illustration: OAK SETTLE.
With back panel under seat made from older Oak Chest. Date 1675.]
[Illustration: OAK ARM CHAIR. DATE 1675.
With Bevelled Panels.]
[Illustration: OAK ARM CHAIR. DATE 1777.
With initials A.S. C.B.]
Finely turned stretchers, such as are found in gate tables, are a
feature of a certain class of local chairs, such as those illustrated
on p. 197. This kind of chair without arms is rather more
decorated and conforms more to the styles of furniture made for
higher spheres than the farmhouse. The upper chair with its light
open back and ornate decoration is a Yorkshire type, and the ball
turning in the stretcher shows the transition period to Charles II.
The other two are Cromwellian chairs, but showing indications of the
next period. In date they are all three about 1660.
=The Chair-back and its Development.=--Another point in connection
with the ordered progress of the chair-maker is the gradual
development of the back of the chair. At first it was straight
upright, and no attempt was made to impart an angle to rest the back
of the sitter. Types such as the arm-chair with square panel (p.
191) and the upright settle with the five panels illustrated on p.
201 indicate this feature of discomfort. The next stage is a slight
inclination in the back, still possessing a flat panel. This angle,
while not conforming to modern notions of ease, was an attempt to
offer greater comfort than before. This style, in a hundred forms,
with the minimum of inclination in the back, continued for a very
considerable period. It is found in the nearly straight-backed chairs
of Derbyshire and Yorkshire origin, with the turned stretchers, and
it actually in later days became almost upright in the series of
chairs following the later Stuart types with cane back and cane seat,
noticeable for their tall narrow backs with a resemblance to the
_prie-dieu_ chair of continental usage.
The settle illustrated is a plainer variety of the settle made for
use by fashionable folk with delicately panelled back. Very often,
in cottage furniture, chests and other pieces are broken up to make
into smaller furniture or to be incorporated into furniture of a
later design. Often it is found that the underframing of an old
gate table made in the seventeenth or eighteenth century is from an
earlier chest. In the present instance it will be seen that the back
panels of the settle have been made from an older chest, which bears
the inscribed initials, still visible, "I.E." In date this settle
is about 1675, and is contemporary with the square-backed chair
illustrated on the same page. Here the panel in back projects, that
is, it is slightly bevelled forward. The bevelling of the panel is
always a sign that a chair is later in date than the year 1670.
Illustrated on the same page is a remarkable chair having the
initials "A.S.C.B." and the date 1777 carved on it. It is a striking
instance of the adherence to old time-honoured form by the local
cabinet-maker, with touches that, even although the date were not
present, would tell their own story. This dull wood proclaims a
message in accents no less sure than the sturdy yeoman's to Lady
Clara Vere de Vere, and as a chair in date _anno Domini_ 1777 may
afford to "smile at the claims of long descent" of more pretentious
and fashionable furniture. It is like a rich vein of dialect running
in some old country song ripe with phrase of Saxon days. It seems
incredible that this survival of early-Jacobean days should have been
put together by a village craftsman true to convention and exact in
seat and arms and stretcher. But it was not done unthinkingly. Here
is a chair, astounding to note, made when Sheraton was creating
his new styles to supplant Chippendale, and when Hepplewhite stood
between the two masters as a _via media_. And the back of this
village chair has two distinct features translated from Hepplewhite's
school--the wheatear crest and the panel with its broken corner!
[Illustration: OAK CHAIRS. DATE ABOUT 1680.
Showing the inclination of the craftsmen to assimilate designs
then being fashioned in walnut.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
=Transition between Jacobean and William and Mary Forms.=--The rapid
growth of the finer specimens of furniture made in walnut brought
a new note into the farmhouse variety. The elegance and grace of
the newer styles were at once evident. In the same manner as the
grandiose splendour of Elizabethan woodcarving was succeeded by a
less massive style in oak, degenerating into a rude simplicity in
farmhouse examples, so in turn Jacobean lost favour. Walnut lent
itself to more intricate turning, and lightness and greater delicacy
claimed the popular favour of fashionable folk. The cane seat and the
cane back at once indicate this new taste. The use of cushions became
general and the sunk seat for the squab cushion is a feature in the
later years of the seventeenth century.
Oak still remained the favourite wood of the country craftsman, in
spite of its more refractory qualities. But when the walnut styles
became so firmly established that clients demanded furniture in
this fashion, elm and beech and yew were found pliable enough to
conform to the more slender touches and the finer turning considered
desirable.
Walnut was in its turn supplanted by mahogany, and it will be shown
later how farmhouse furniture followed the dictates of fashion
in days when the outburst of splendid design by Chippendale,
Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, together with a crowd of lesser
known men, spread far and wide new principles in the art of
furniture-making and brought country furniture another stage in its
evolution.
Farmhouse furniture slowly assimilated the technique and design
of the walnut age. The love for the native oak was so pronounced
that country makers did not desert this wood and essayed to produce
effects by its employment that were exceedingly difficult and
oftentimes unsuccessful. The three chairs illustrated p. 205 show
this transition style, about the year 1680, struggling with technical
difficulties and affording a fine series of points in the evolution
of design.
=Farmhouse Styles contemporary with the Cane-back Chair.=--Farmhouse
furniture rarely, if ever, had cane-work in the back or in the seat.
But the craftsman, while appreciating the delicacy of the cane back
in adding lightness to the chair, circumvented his inability to work
in cane by substituting thin vertical splats to give the necessary
effect of transparency. The three chairs illustrated show each in
varying degree the quaint compromise made between the technique of
oak and the technique of walnut, and the attempt to reproduce the
walnut designs.
The arm-chair exhibits strong relationship with the older Jacobean
chair in its turned legs and uprights, but these have assumed a more
slender proportion. The front stretcher is in the newer manner.
The sunk seat is intended to receive a cushion. There should be no
difficulty for the amateur correctly to assign a date to such a
piece. The process of reasoning would be somewhat as follows:--The
lower half of the chair is Jacobean, but the front stretcher suggests
the Charles II. period, borne out by the open back, which removes
it from the Cromwellian period, and the details of the top rail
with its curved top indicate that the country maker had seen the
tall straight-back chairs of the William and Mary period with the
cane-work panel.
[Illustration: OAK CHAIRS.
With cresting rail, of Charles II. period, retained and
perforated arch centre peculiar to walnut designs.
With elaboration in turned legs, and uprights, of William and
Mary period retained, and having Queen Anne splat of 1710.
With sunk seat for squab cushion, turned uprights and legs and
curious back, showing transition from lath back to splat back.]
The middle chair more closely approaches the upright chair of the
Charles II. period. There is a straight top-rail, supplemented by
a lunette, giving the top a character of its own. This specimen is
exceptionally interesting. The right-hand chair in its seat and legs
is pronouncedly Jacobean. But the back with the three splats and the
coarsely carved top-rail betray the hand of the country craftsman
following in oak the more graceful curves of the worker in walnut of
the days of Charles II.
It will be seen that these three chairs, each in varying manner,
evade the difficulties of the light cane-back by the substitution of
thin rails, and, as will be seen from the illustration of three other
chairs (p. 209), the next stage of walnut design with fiddle-shaped
splat offered equal problems to the makers of cottage furniture.
Sometimes they eliminated the splat altogether, while adopting other
points of design found in chairs with the Queen Anne splat of 1710.
In every case the fondness for old established styles is exhibited
in the fact that the country cabinet-maker clings doggedly to these
and appears too conservative or too timid to break wholly away from
tradition. In consequence, his work, with patches of newer design
welded on to the old, is quaintly incongruous. There is thus an
absence of "thinking out" the design as a whole. The minor maker
thought out the parts as he went along. Some of his results are
extraordinary in their characteristics: they resemble that freak of
fashion termed "harlequin" tea services, where the cups are of one
pattern and the saucers of another. Bearing in mind these unfailing
proclivities of the maker of cottage and farmhouse furniture, the
collector should not find it difficult to recognise the country hand
at once. Now and again one is struck with the extraordinary ingenuity
of some of the work, or one is charmed with the faithfulness with
which designs have been translated from the golden bowl to the
silver, or, to be literal, from walnut and mahogany to oak and elm
and beech. But one is never amazed at the delicacy of proportion, the
balanced symmetry, or the fertility of invention--these attributes
belong to cabinet-makers on a higher plane.
Of three chairs illustrated on p. 209, that on the left in the legs
and seat shows the moribund Jacobean style. The stretcher indicates
the oncoming of the newer styles, and the back with its cresting
rail is of the Charles II. period. Its retention is curious, and the
perforated arched centre is peculiar to designs found in walnut; its
use in oak by the maker of this chair was a blunder, as oak is too
hard a wood to employ for such a design.
[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE CHAIR.
Entirely oak form except back and splat.]
[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE CHAIR.
In oak, with strong inclinations towards walnut styles.]
Illustration: QUEEN ANNE CHAIR.
Walnut design made in oak for farmhouse use.]
[Illustration: QUEEN ANNE ARM-CHAIR.
With shaped front, walnut design executed in oak.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
[Illustration: COUNTRY CHIPPENDALE CHAIR, STYLE MERGING INTO
HEPPLEWHITE.
Less pronounced Cupid's bow top.]
[Illustration: TWO CHAIRS COUNTRY HEPPLEWHITE STYLE MADE ENTIRELY
IN OAK.
Left-hand chair with Prince of Wales's feathers.]
[Illustration: TYPES OF COTTAGE CHAIRS IN OAK.
Having features of the three styles--Queen Anne, Chippendale, and
Sheraton.
Two chairs Queen Anne style. Chair Country Chippendale style.]
The middle chair shows an equal admixture of styles. The elaboration
in the turned legs and uprights belongs to the William and Mary
period and the splat is the Queen Anne fiddle pattern of 1710.
The seat begins to show another form in having the middle sunk for
the use of a squab cushion.
The right-hand chair parts with the underframing below the seat,
which gives a touch of lightness to the construction. The turned
legs and uprights have departed from the coarse early-Jacobean style
and perceptibly depend on walnut prototypes for their character. The
back shows the transition from the lath back (such as in the chairs
simulating the cane-work) to the splat back. It is an interesting and
rare example, marking the slow assimilation of new forms by isolated
makers. This specimen came from Ireland and evidently possesses
native touches of originality which defy the connoisseur to determine
its exact date.
=The Queen Anne Splat.=--The fiddle-shaped splat of 1710 marks a
turning-point in the construction of the chair.
The walnut chairs with caned backs of the time of James II. and the
early days of William III. were carved richly, and sometimes there
was a splat dividing the caning at the back, which later, also in
caned-back examples, is curved and plain. The general tendency in
the reigns of William and Mary, especially towards the close of the
period, was one of economy, and elaborate carving began to disappear.
The Queen Anne smooth splat of fiddle form rapidly became
popular. This Anglo-Dutch style became acclimatised here, and is
characteristic of the homely examples of the Queen Anne period. In
walnut it was comparatively easy to carry out carving. In oak such
elaboration was well-nigh impossible. It was therefore natural that
in the farmhouse examples the plain Dutch splat would readily find
favour as more easily executed. By the time that the fiddle splat had
become popular the stretcher joining the cabriole legs commenced to
disappear.
The splat plays an important part as indicating sharp variations in
design--walnut with open carving, intricate and floriated; walnut
with the plain fiddle splat, with its corresponding minor form in
oak; mahogany, with the advent of Chippendale, with the splat again
open, carved with graceful ribbon-work.
The arm-chair illustrated p. 213 is a remarkable instance of
intermingling of styles. The front legs are in Jacobean style, and
are continued in the same manner as the usual type of oak chair as
supports for the arms, but an original touch and naïve departure is
in the curve given to this upright from the seat upwards. The seat is
shaped like that of the Windsor chair. The arms are somewhat stiff
for the back with its Cupid's-bow design, which has a sprightliness
and grace making it a thing apart. The whole is not unpleasing. It
is a remarkable instance of the attempted assimilation of several
diverse styles by an undeveloped cabinet-maker with strong ideas of
his own. The oak form is rigidly retained in all except the back and
splat of Queen Anne days.
[Illustration: COUNTRY-MADE OAK SETTEE WITH DOUBLE BACK IN
CHIPPENDALE STYLE.
The shaped underframing is a feature only found in farmhouse
varieties.]
[Illustration: COUNTRY-MADE OAK SETTEE IN CHINESE CHIPPENDALE
STYLE.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
The adjacent chair, with its tall back with curved splat and its
cabriole legs, marks the transition between William and Mary and
Queen Anne. The top rail indicates by its clumsy joinery the touch of
the immature country cabinet-maker. It is an attempt to approach a
fine model with insufficiency of skill by the maker. The use of the
cabriole leg either in chairs or in dressers in homely furniture has
always proved a stumbling-block to the minor craftsman. The delicacy
of balance required in order to preserve the harmony of the whole has
proved too subtle a problem for him to handle, and to the practised
eye these farmhouse pieces at once proclaim their origin.
The broad splat and the straight square front and the bold cabriole
leg of the Queen Anne type in walnut were often copied in oak. The
example of the chair with the later tapestry covering, illustrated p.
213, is a case where the local cabinet-maker has faithfully copied
detail for detail from some fine original in walnut. His is in oak
for more strenuous usage. The adjacent arm-chair is of the Queen Anne
style, with a shaped front that is very rarely found in such pieces.
The maker here has not been so successful in catching the bold lines
of his original. There is a sense of something lacking in the curves
of the back. The touches of his own that he has added in the arms,
reverting to an earlier Jacobean type, reveal the unpractised hand.
=Country Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton.=--A word in passing
may be said in regard to the unique character of furniture of these
types. It is obvious that factory-made furniture turned out by the
hundred pieces can offer nothing personal, whatever its merits or
demerits of design or workmanship. It is this personal note, the
love of a craftsman in his creation, that appeals to the collector,
whether it be of Persian rugs or of old brass candlesticks. It is
absent in art produced in a wholesale manner. Blunderingly as the
village craftsmen went to work, they often stumbled into great
things, and they always produced original results.
Prior to the publication of the design-books of the great
eighteenth-century masters of cabinet-making, the furniture of
certain localities began to assume a character of its own, the
result of long tradition, and designs such as the dragon found in
Welsh carving became established. The term "unique" is peculiarly
appropriate to furniture of this calibre, for rarely are two pieces
found to be exactly alike. Not only did different makers add novel
features, but the same craftsman apparently did not repeat himself.
The permutations of form governing furniture are illimitable,
associated as they are with so many details of construction. To
take the chair--the leg, its shape, and the design of its turning;
the style and character of the work on the stretcher; the form of
the seat; the decoration and formation of the front; the back, its
length, and the variety of splats and panels; and the top rail
with its variations--these are only the salient features in which
differences appear. Such modifications of design and piquant touches
of personal character appeal to the collector, who loves the foibles
and fanciful moods of the native craftsman, be he ever so humble.
Chippendale published his "Director" in 1754, and it became a working
guide to all ambitious craftsmen. Ince and Mayhew, cabinet-makers
of Broad Street, Golden Square, had issued "Household Furniture" in
1748, and Hepplewhite & Co. followed later with the "Cabinet Maker
and Upholsterer's Guide" in 1788, where the delicacies of ornament
were related to the chaster classic models, and in 1794 came Sheraton
with his "Drawing Book," rich with subtle suggestiveness. A rough
generalisation shows the Chippendale school holding sway from 1730
to 1780, the Hepplewhite school from 1775 to 1795, and the Sheraton
school from 1790 to 1805: and behind all, the strong influence of
the Brothers Adam in their classic revival. What had previously been
tradition came very speedily into line with current modes. Fashion,
as we have shown, had a slow and impermanent effect upon village
ideals. But the output of these great illustrated volumes, with
working drawings, undoubtedly had a wide-reaching influence. The last
quarter of the eighteenth century saw an intense outburst of interest
in the arts of interior decoration. A great amount of finely designed
and beautifully executed furniture belongs to those days, and the
echo of the splendid achievements in mahogany and in satinwood is
seen in the farmhouse and cottage furniture, which came singularly
close upon the heels of fashion.
Chippendale furniture in oak, elm, or beech is being largely
collected. We illustrate a sufficient number of types to show that
this class of design known as "Cottage Chippendale," has peculiar
charms of its own. The arm-chair illustrated p. 225 is in elm, and
is in the style Chippendale employed in his rich mahogany creations
in 1760. The fine interlaced carving of the back is graceful and
well proportioned. The adjacent chair, in elm, still follows the
Chippendale style. The seat is rush, and the maker has confined
himself to his own limitations and avoided in the splat the too
intricate work of more sumptuous models. He has arrived at a very
finely balanced result. The heart cut out of the splat is frequently
found in cottage examples, suggesting that some of the more ornate
examples may have been made as wedding presents for young couples
just setting up housekeeping, or possibly the village cabinet-maker
himself had thoughts in that direction, and such work was destined to
equip his own home.
The illustration of a chair, in beech, with a plain wooden seat, has
a somewhat intricate ribbon-like pattern terminating in the Prince
of Wales's feathers. The heart is present in the design at the base
of the splat, cut out in fretwork. The arm-chair on the right, with
its dipped seat, is in oak, and is an instance representing the
adaptations of Sheraton styles in the provinces.
Another page of chairs in oak (p. 215) shows the influences at work
in moulding the character of the styles of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century farmhouse furniture. Of the three chairs
at top of p. 215, the left-hand one is in Chippendale style merging
into Hepplewhite. The Cupid's bow at the top rail has become less
pronounced. The other two chairs on right are typically Hepplewhite
in character. The Prince of Wales's feathers, so often associated
with Hepplewhite's own work, are embodied in the splat of one.
[Illustration: ELM CHAIR. COUNTRY CHIPPENDALE STYLE. 1760.]
[Illustration: ELM CHAIR, COUNTRY CHIPPENDALE STYLE.]
[Illustration: BEECH CHAIR. COUNTRY CHIPPENDALE STYLE.]
[Illustration: OAK CHAIR, COUNTRY CHIPPENDALE STYLE. WITH DROPPED
SEAT.]
In the lower group, the right-hand chair is of the Chippendale
type. The other two chairs have features of three styles--the Queen
Anne, the Chippendale, and the Sheraton. It is this piquancy and
incongruous combination of styles adjacent to each other in point
of time, but having little other relationship, which make the
provincialisms of the cabinet-maker of exceptional interest.
At times more ambitious attempts were made in oak, following the
lines of the Chippendale style in mahogany. These have pronounced
features always recognisable as belonging to the farmhouse variety of
furniture. Two examples are illustrated, p. 219. The upper example
of country-made oak settee, with double back, at once indicates
that it is provincial by the shaped underframing, which is never
found in other classes of furniture. The lower example of farmhouse
oak settee is clearly in Chippendale's Chinese style. A reference
to the "Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Directory," published by
Thomas Chippendale in 1754, shows that this Chinese style adopted
by the local maker is very far removed from the series of delicate
fretwork designs illustrated by Chippendale in his volume. It
is true that the old designer of St. Martin's Lane sent forth
his work with the sub-title stating that it was "calculated to
improve and refine the present Taste, and suited to the Fancy and
Circumstances of Persons in all Degrees of Life." The great master
cabinet-maker, in scattering his designs far and wide, evidently
had in mind the formation of a new style. He builded better than he
knew. The importance of his book of designs cannot be overrated.
It was subscribed for in Yorkshire, in Devon, in Westmorland, and
in Ireland, and straightway minor men looked upon these delightful
inventions and began to follow to the best of their ability the
ideals set forth by Chippendale the dreamer.
That he was an idealist in this book of designs is naïvely explained
in his Preface: "I frankly confess that in the executing many of the
drawings my pencil has but faintly copied out those images that my
fancy suggested, and had they not been published till I could have
pronounced them perfect, perhaps they had never seen the light." But
Chippendale was also a practical cabinet-maker as well as a designer.
He has a lingering doubt that after all, perhaps, the country
cabinet-maker and those who bought the book for use might not be
able to carry out his designs. Evidently this had struck others too.
Perhaps he was accused of fobbing-off in a design-book mere fanciful
work that was too far above the plane of ordinary cabinet-work. He
meets this objection with a declaration, so to speak, upon honour,
with which he winds up his Preface, which is a pretty piece of
eighteenth-century advertising:--
"Upon the whole, I have given no design but what may be executed
with advantage by the hands of a skilful workman, though some of the
profession have been diligent enough to represent them (especially
those after the Gothic and Chinese manner) as so many specious
drawings, impossible to be worked off by any mechanic whatsoever.
I will not scruple to attribute this to malice, ignorance, and
inability, and I am confident I can convince all noblemen, gentlemen,
or others, who will honour me with their commands, that every design
in the book can be improved, both as to beauty and enrichment, in the
execution of it, by--Their Most Obedient Servant, Thomas Chippendale."
Enough has been said to prove that "country Chippendale" is not
a misnomer. It is equally true that the Hepplewhite style was
disseminated in like fashion in the provinces. It must be remembered
that these trade catalogues, as they really were, brought out
somewhat in rivalry with each other by the great London designers
and cabinet-makers, were the only literature the country makers
had to indicate town fashions. These volumes therefore served a
double purpose in procuring clients for the firm and in stimulating
the art of the country designer. That they were in part intended
to be educational is shown by the Preface to the "Cabinet Maker
and Upholsterer's Guide," published by A. Hepplewhite & Co.,
Cabinet-makers. We quote from the Preface of the third edition,
"improved," 1794.
The Preface opens with a lament that owing to "the mutability of
all things, but more especially of fashions," foreigners who seek
a knowledge of English taste and workmanship may be misled by the
"labours of our predecessors in this line of little use."
"The same reason in favour of this work will apply also to many of
our own countrymen and artisans, whose distance from the metropolis
makes even an imperfect knowledge of its improvements acquired with
much trouble and expense."
"In this instance we hope for reward; and though we lay no claim to
extraordinary merit in our designs, we flatter ourselves they will be
found serviceable to young workmen in general, and occasionally to
more experienced ones."
In view, therefore, of the books of design we have enumerated, it
is obvious that the country designer had a new field open to him,
and now and again he made ample use of his opportunities. During the
last quarter of the eighteenth century there was quite an outburst of
literature on furniture, much of it forgotten and much of it waiting
to be disinterred by patient research; and with the dissemination of
these fine designs some of the most perfect examples of country-made
furniture began to exhibit touches of skill of the practised hand.
=The Grandfather Chair.=--From the illustration given on p. 231 it
will be seen that the type known as the "grandfather" has a humble
lineage. It will be found with the same wings and curved arms and
plain wooden seat in the alehouse or in the ingle nook of the
farmhouse. The specimen we illustrate does duty as a bacon-cupboard
as well as a chair. Usually such pieces have the cupboard opening at
the back, but in this instance the cupboard opens in front.
[Illustration: COUNTRY GRANDFATHER CHAIR.]
[Illustration: ARM-CHAIR AND BACON-CUPBOARD.
Opens at foot. This type usually opens at back.]
As early as the opening years of the eighteenth century there were
upholstered chairs of a somewhat similar type to the so-called
"grandfather" with scrolled arms or wings. The example we illustrate
is representative of those which may be met with in the country
farmhouse.
=Ladder-back Types.=--The ladder-back chair belongs to the northern
half of England, and similarly the spindle-back chair is found in
the same locality. The Windsor chair, on the other hand, is mainly
confined to the southern half of the country. These are points which
become noticeable after years of systematised research, and although
nowadays these three varieties of chair may still be found, somewhat
scattered, their real home and place of origin is as indicated.
Another feature of interest is that both ladder-back and spindle-back
varieties, with but slight differences, are found on the Continent.
It will be observed that this class of chair has a rush seat. This
feature it has in common with the spindle-back chair.
The rush-bottom chair covers a wide area. It comes with an air of
_naïveté_ and rustic simplicity. One recalls the long lines of green
rushes by the river-bank and the rush-gatherers in idyllic placidity
slowly trimming the banks, disturbing coot and moorhen with their
punt, and adding another human touch to the lonely angler. They are
pursuing a calling as old as the river itself, and the use of rush
for floor, for lighting, or for seating furniture, found occupation
for generations of men plying curious trades, of which the plaiting
of osiers into baskets and the thatching of cottage roofs may be
numbered among the decaying industries. Indeed, this latter art
and the making of birch and heath brooms may be almost said to be
extinct. A good artisan who can thatch in the old artistic style is
much sought after. Of course ricks have still to be thatched, but the
picturesque skill of masters of this old-world craft is absent, and
corrugated iron sheets have found favour in lieu of the old style.
The ladder-back chair is, as its name denotes, decorated with
horizontal supports, ladder fashion. These are capable of the most
pleasing variation. The perfection of form of this type is seen in
the arm-chair illustrated p. 237. The well-balanced proportion of
the ladder rails is a test as to the excellence of the design. They
are not meaningless ornaments put in place, unthinkingly, to create
a new style. The two examples illustrated on page 235 show other
types of the ladder-back chair. The left-hand one shows the later
stages in the development of the design, and its top rail is of the
Sheraton period. The right-hand one, with arms, is composite in its
character, and is in date about 1820, and exhibits a touch of the
Sheraton slenderness of style in the splats and the round turning of
arms. Both examples show the quaint survival of the Queen Anne foot.
The ladder-back form survived the eighteenth century and lasted down
to within fifty years ago, when it became merged into that of the
Windsor chair.
[Illustration: LADDER-BACK TYPE OF CHAIR.
Showing Empire influence in curved back.
Dated 1820-1830.]
[Illustration: SPINDLE-BACK NURSING CHAIR WITH ROCKER.
Three rows of spindles.]
[Illustration: SPINDLE-BACK CHAIR.
Two rows of spindles.]
[Illustration: LADDER-BACK CHAIRS WITH RUSH SEAT.
Both chairs showing quaint survival of the Queen Anne feet.
Late Eighteenth Century, with top
rail in Sheraton style.
Later form of splat with turned
ends. Dated 1820.]
[Illustration: COUNTRY BARBER'S CHAIR.]
[Illustration: LADDER-BACK CHAIR.
Perfect specimen in regard to style.]
[Illustration: OAK CORNER CHAIR.]
[Illustration: LADDER-BACK FORM OF CORNER CHAIR WITH RUSH SEAT.
Probably Lancashire.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
=The Spindle-back Chair.=--The spindle-back chair is of long lineage.
As early as the reign of Charles I. this type was known. There
is still treasured in America the chair of Governor Carver, with
simple turning in legs and back, which practically consisted of
upright posts rounded and having slight ornament. The back was set
with "spindles." The older types of these chairs had thick upright
posts, the back and back legs being two posts and the front legs,
continued upward beyond the seat, forming supports for the arms.
These posts are often six or seven inches in circumference, and
belong to early-Jacobean days. The type found its way to America in
Puritan days and has continued to be a favourite. Hickory wood was
used for American specimens, and considerable attention has been paid
to this form of chair and its varieties, the differing heights of the
posts and the number of the spindles and their character, by American
collectors. In England examples are not easily found of early date.
The examples illustrated (p. 235), a Nursing Chair on rockers and an
ordinary Spindle-Back Chair, are of eighteenth-century days, and are
sufficient to indicate the type of chair, but these two represent the
style when it had become of more general use. Practically it was not
until the eighteenth century that such types were commonly used in
cottages and farmhouses.
These turned chairs, turned in every portion but the rush seat, lend
themselves to the above-mentioned two styles of treatment. Their
upright posts forming the open back can be treated with vertical
splats divided by horizontal divisions, or they can, as in the ladder
form, receive horizontal splats. The complete simplicity of this
attitude towards the back absolved the homely cabinet-maker from
dangerous experiments. Avoiding curved backs, he had not to face
the intricacies of the nicety of balance in the splat. Altogether it
was a very satisfactory solution, and in practice resulted in the
production of a wide range of chairs, differing in slight details but
well within the range of the local workman's art.
The unassuming simplicity of this class of chair made its appeal
to Madox-Brown, who held that simplicity and utility were the two
desiderata, united with soundness of construction, for domestic
furniture. Veneer was as abhorrent to him as to all genuine lovers
of the artistic. "Let us be honest, let us be genuine in furniture
as in aught else," were his words. "If we must needs make our chairs
and tables of cheap wood, do not let them masquerade as mahogany or
rosewood; let the thing appear that which it is; it will not lack
dignity if it be good of its kind and well made." Accordingly he put
his theories into practice and designed some furniture. In a chair in
the possession of Mr. Harold Rathbone he has employed the rush seat
and used spindles to decorate the back, and in another chair in the
same collection he has adhered to the horizontal ladder-back style,
coupled with the rush seat, with pleasing effect.
=Corner Chairs.=--Among interesting types of chairs often with
lingering traces of the Jacobean style and additional features
of splats that may be regarded as standing on the threshold of
the Chippendale period, corner chairs stand in a class alone. The
illustrations on p. 237 show some typical examples. The chair with
the double tier is the oak adaptation of Chippendale with the
retention of the old Jacobean form of support for the arm. These
chairs with this added tier are often used as country barber's
chairs. The rush-seated corner chair on the same page, probably made
in Lancashire, is suggestive of the ladder-back form, and there
are indications in its construction that it is subsequent to the
Hepplewhite period.
With these notes relative to the evolution of the chair, and with
carefully selected illustrations of types likely to be of use to the
collector, enough has been said to whet the curiosity of the reader
to study the matter for himself. It requires keen and discriminating
judgment to allocate specimens with passing exactitude as to time and
place. The taste for the subject must be natural and not acquired.
Training alone will give the eye the readiness to detect false
touches and modern additions. The search for bargains goes on apace,
and those who enjoy stalking their quarry in out-of-the-way places
have an exciting quest nowadays for fine pieces. To those with
endless patience, forbearing under disappointment, and having plenty
of leisure, the search will offer abundant delight, if, to quote Mrs.
Battle, they enjoy "the rigour of the game."
CHAPTER VIII
THE WINDSOR CHAIR
CHAPTER VIII
THE WINDSOR CHAIR
Early types--The stick legs without stretcher--The tavern
chair--Eighteenth-century pleasure gardens--The rail-back
variety--Chippendale style Windsor chairs--The survival of the
Windsor chair.
The Windsor chair in its early form is coincident with the early
years of the eighteenth century. Its history and development
therefore exhibit traces of the various styles in furniture which
ran their courses throughout the century. It is essentially a chair
which belongs to minor furniture, and in its use it is bound up with
the country farmhouse, the country inn, or in the metropolis with the
chocolate-houses and taverns, and later with the innumerable pleasure
gardens which sprang up around the metropolis in the eighteenth
century.
There is more than a strong suggestion that the type originated in
the country. The first forms have a similarity to the easily made
three-legged stools. The seat is one piece of wood into which holes
are bored to admit the legs. The origin of the term "Windsor chair,"
according to a story largely current in America, is that George III.,
the Farmer King, saw a chair of this design in a humble cottage near
Windsor, and was so enamoured of it that he ordered some to be made
for the royal use. The chair had a singular vogue in America, and it
is stated that George Washington had a row of Windsor chairs at his
house at Mount Vernon, and Jefferson sat in a Windsor chair when he
signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
=The Stick Legs without Stretcher.=--Obviously this is the earliest
type, and the illustrations of these primitive forms (p. 247) show
the simplicity of the joinery. The chair on the left with its almost
straight top rail suggests a probable date. It was not till 1768 that
Chippendale made the first straight top rail in English furniture.
The seat is of the saddle-form. The spindles at the back in the
lower row taper at each end. It will be observed in all the types we
illustrate in this chapter that the arms extend in one piece around
the chair. Nor has every example the saddle seat. On the same page is
illustrated one with a plain seat, but still having the stick legs
set at an angle towards the centre of the chair.
Whatever interest attaches to this early type, from a collecting
point of view, they cannot compare in beauty with the finer varieties
of a later period, with cabriole leg and with pierced splat,
displaying a pleasing diversity of patterns in pierced work, no two
of which are always quite alike.
[Illustration: WINDSOR CHAIRS.
Earliest form; stick legs with no stretcher.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
=The Tavern Chair.=--It was Dr. Johnson who declared that a tavern
chair was the throne of human felicity. Undoubtedly the eighteenth
century found the need of a comfortable chair for club meetings at
taverns and alehouses. The country inn to-day has its Windsor chairs,
many of them of great age. Nor were chairs of this type always with
arms. There are many plainer chairs without arms and having what is
termed "fiddle-string" backs; more often than not across this back
there is a rail put transversely to strengthen it. Many of these
chairs were made by local carpenters and wheelwrights. They employed
any wood that happened to be in their workshop at the time; in
consequence the variety of woods in which these chairs are found is
great. Sometimes the seat is made from beech or elm and the arms are
fashioned from the wood of the pear-tree. The curved horseshoe rails
and back are more often than not constructed from the ash.
=Eighteenth Century Pleasure Gardens.=--There is no doubt that we
owe the considerable output of Windsor chairs in the middle of the
eighteenth century to the growth of coffee-houses, and especially
the numerous tea and pleasure gardens on the outskirts of London and
other great towns. These semi-rural resorts began to be in great
demand as a recreation for jaded eighteenth-century town-dwellers.
The nobility and persons of fashion had Bath and Tunbridge Wells
to fly to for country air and open-air recreation. The citizen and
mechanic, the society beau, and the politician, crowded to Ranelagh
Gardens, to Vauxhall, to Sadler's Wells, and to Hampstead, to
enjoy sunny afternoons and summer evenings in the open air, or to
spend Sundays. It was the eighteenth-century diversion similar to
the nineteenth-century Crystal Palace and the twentieth-century
Earl's Court. To quote Mr. Percy Macquoid in his lordly work on
English furniture, "So great were the numbers of visitors to these
places that attention was called to their increase in one of the
contemporary weekly journals, where a calculation was made that on
Sundays alone two hundred thousand people visited the tea-gardens
situated on the northern side of London; and as half-a-crown per
head was probably the least sum expended by them, it can be no
exaggeration to state that £20,000 on a fine Sunday was taken at
these places of amusement. Many cheap chairs must have been required
at such places of entertainment."
Between the year 1760 and the end of the century the Windsor chair
was being made for general country use. "The backs and arms of
these," continues Mr. Macquoid, "are made of hoops of yew, held
together by a number of slender uprights and a perforated splat of
the same tough and pliant wood; the seats were generally invariably
of elm, as yew cut into a superficies of any size is liable to split;
the legs and stretchers were generally of yew."
[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S CHAIR.
Wood, painted green, with circular seat, curved arms, and high
back. Bequeathed by Oliver Goldsmith in 1774 to his friend, Dr.
Hawes.
(_Bethnal Green Museum._)]
=The Rail-back Variety.=--We have alluded to the use of the rail
placed across the back from the top rail to the seat, crossing the
uprights. It is not an elegant device, but it was used as a means
of strengthening the back. It seems almost unnecessary, although
possibly these chairs received a good deal of rough usage.
Later, when the fiddle splat began to be employed, this transverse
rail--sometimes there were two used--was discontinued. An historic
example of the chair with transverse rails is that which was once
in the possession of Oliver Goldsmith. There is no doubt about
the authenticity of this, as it was bequeathed by the poet to his
medical attendant, Dr. Hawes, who, by the way, was the founder of
the Royal Humane Society. Goldsmith told his farmer friends at his
cottage at Edgware that he should never in future spend more than two
months a year in London, and at the time of his death in 1774 he was
negotiating the sale of the lease of his Temple chambers. This chair
(illustrated p. 251) has a rather small shaped seat, curved arms, a
top rail that is of exceptional interest considering the date, which
is, say, from 1770 to 1774, perhaps a little earlier. This was at the
commencement of the Hepplewhite period, which lasted till 1790. The
year 1768 was, as we have already said, the date at which chairs with
straight top rails, designed by Adam and executed by Chippendale,
were first made. The turned legs are interesting, showing the hoofed
foot, and the turned stretcher retains an earlier form. The chair is
of soft wood, probably beech, and is painted green. It is preserved
at the Bethnal Green Museum, with the distinctive label on the stand:
"Oliver Goldsmith's Chair."
=The Splat Back and the Cabriole Leg.=--It is here that the Windsor
chair assumes a character essentially charming and attracts the
admiration of connoisseurs of styles that are peculiarly English.
The splat back is a feature only found in English varieties of the
Windsor chair. In America a great deal of attention has been paid to
old types, and there the pliant hickory wood is used in the making
of chairs of this form; but the splat back is never used in America,
and when found by collectors there the piece is attributed to English
manufacture.
The splat, with its varying forms, denotes the date of the chair.
From 1740 to 1770 the form with cabriole legs and with finely
ornamented fiddle splat was at its best. We illustrate a sufficient
number of specimens to show how graceful and perfectly well balanced
these chairs had become. In contemplating pieces remarkable for the
highest style, it must be admitted that their artistry and their
simple unaffected sense of comfort do make a direct appeal to those
who are willing to recognise fine qualities in minor furniture.
The two chairs illustrated (p. 255) differ slightly in details of
construction. That on the left has the plain urn splat, a survival
of the Queen Anne type. The seat is finely shaped and the legs are
cabriole form. The top rail is almost straight, and is ornamented
at the two ends with turned discs. The three stretchers are turned,
and in the adjacent chair the stretchers are similar, save in a
slight variation in the pattern of the turning. But here the splat
is perforated with an intricate design suggestive of the lines
of Chippendale; the top rail is a departure in form, imparting a
distinctiveness which lifts the chair from the ordinary type.
[Illustration: WINDSOR CHAIR.
With plain fiddle splat of Queen Anne type, Chippendale top rail
and cabriole legs, and three turned stretchers.]
[Illustration: WINDSOR CHAIR.
With pierced fiddle splat, shaped arms, cabriole legs, and three
turned stretchers.
(_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]
[Illustration: CHIPPENDALE WINDSOR CHAIRS.
Chippendale splats. The type of splat indicates the date of
Windsor chairs.]
[Illustration: HEPPLEWHITE WINDSOR CHAIR.
Exceptionally fine legs back and front. Urn back. Probably Welsh
carving.]
[Illustration: HEPPLEWHITE PERIOD WINDSOR CHAIR.
With wheel back, in yew.
(_By courtesy of Messrs. A. B. Daniell & Sons._)]
=Chippendale Style Windsor Chairs.=--The page of chairs (p.
257) tells its own story. The beautiful sweep of the curved back is
always a sign of the old and true form. Later imitations or replicas
seem somehow to lose this effect. It has been suggested that the back
of this style was produced by the village wheelwright in horseshoe
form, but possibly that is a conjecture which is more fanciful than
real. It has also--collectors are often fond of inventing theories to
fit little-known facts--been asserted that the wheel-back variety,
which is of somewhat more modern growth, is due to the same origin.
This wheel is fretted with six triangular openings. One chair on
this page has the wheel unperforated. In the examination of the
details of the four examples there is nothing of great importance to
differentiate them from each other in construction. The two at the
top are suggestive of Chippendale in the ornament employed in the
splat. The lower two incline more to the slightly later Hepplewhite
period. Of these the one on the left has only fourteen upright rails
at the lower portion and six in the upper portion of the back, in
comparison with sixteen and eight in the other chairs. The legs of
this chair are exceptionally fine both back and front. The work in
the splat is slightly suggestive of Welsh carving, especially that
style associated with Welsh love-spoons.
Following the influence of Chippendale and Hepplewhite came the
style of Sheraton, which after 1790 began to affect the character of
some forms of minor furniture. That this was a very real factor is
often shown most unexpectedly in cottage and farmhouse pieces. The
satinwood and the painted panel, and the intricacies and subtleties
of his employment of colour, were of course too far removed from
the simple cabinet-work of the country maker to have the least
effect upon him, even if he ever saw them. But the slenderness and
elegance of the Sheraton styles did in a small degree have weight
with cabinet-makers as a whole in the provinces. So that it is quite
within reasonable surmise to attribute certain forms to the Sheraton
school, or rather to the oncoming of the early nineteenth-century
mannerisms. On p. 261 two examples are illustrated showing this
influence. The one with the horseshoe back is devoid of the splat,
which had now disappeared. The turned legs begin to show signs of
modernity. The other has the top-rail familiar in later forms of
cottage chair. The turned rails for the arms and the type of turning
in the legs show signs of decadence. The fine days of the old Windsor
chair were coming to an end.
[Illustration: WINDSOR CHAIR.
Horseshoe back, saddle seat, turned legs, with stretcher.
Sheraton style.]
[Illustration: WINDSOR CHAIR.
Curved top rail, turned arms, legs, and stretcher. Sheraton
style, pierced fiddle splat.]
=The Survival of the Windsor Chair Type.=--Apart from the love of
the simple form and especially well-conceived design of the Windsor
chair, which have made it at once the especial favourite of artists
and lovers of simplicity and utility, it has won the practical
approval of generations of innkeepers, who to this day store hundreds
of chairs for use at village festivals. What we have said in regard
to the popularity of the gate-leg table applies in greater degree to
the Windsor chair. The industry of turning the legs and rails of this
type of chair is still carried on in Buckinghamshire. Until recent
years much of this turning was done by hand by villagers in the
district surrounding High Wycombe, where the parts are sent to be
finished and made up. To this day some of the old chair-makers use
the antiquated pole lathe. But the chairs have departed from their
old stateliness. It is true that they have survived, almost in spite
of themselves. They are not now the objects of beauty they once were.
But they have, by reason of modern requirements, found a fresh field
of usefulness. Will it be supposed that the modern office chair is
in reality a Windsor? An examination will at once show this, even
in the latest American types. The saddle-shaped seat is there, the
straight turned legs, and the back is the same except that the upper
extension has disappeared and the old centre rail has become broader
as a properly-formed rest for the tired clerk's back. A perusal
of a few catalogues of up-to-date office furniture will establish
this. Here, then, is the last stage of the country Windsor chair.
The twentieth-century Windsor has come to town and graces the head
cashier's private office in a bank or the senior partner's room of a
firm of stockbrokers.
CHAPTER IX
LOCAL TYPES
CHAPTER IX
LOCAL TYPES
Welsh carving--Scottish types--Lancashire dressers, wardrobes,
and chairs--Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridge, and Essex
tables--Isle of Man tables.
The charm of collecting cottage and farmhouse furniture lies
in the wide area over which it is found. Those who have given
especial attention to collecting it have learned instinctively
to differentiate between the work of various localities. Some
well-defined types of cottage furniture are only to be found in
certain counties, and nowhere else. Take for example the ladder-back
and the spindle chairs. The latter are usually found in the northern
half and the former in the southern half of England. It is obvious
that craftsmen developing on original lines, or on lines more or
less apart from outside influence, must establish designs peculiarly
identified with their field of labours.
The sturdy insularity of the British peasant, and his uneasy
reception of foreign suggestion, have had a very pronounced influence
upon his methods of work. He has the defects of his qualities, the
stern, almost uncompromising conservatism in habit of mind and in
his daily pursuits. A close study of the thoughts, and as far as
is recorded the written ideals, of the rural labouring population
exhibit an extraordinary fixity of purpose in clinging tenaciously
to old customs. The country songs more often than not express
disapproval of innovations and call up the memories of slowly
vanishing customs. The farm hands recall wistfully the old style of
Shearers' feasts and Harvest homes, when great festivities with song
and dance and old country sports enlivened the company. In Yorkshire
this was termed the Mel Supper, in Kent the Kern Supper, and in parts
of the North of England it was called the Churn Supper. Annual feasts
were given to labourers such as the Wayzgoose or Bean feast, which
later name remains to this day. The good old days is a refrain not
confined to the cottager in his relation with the farmer. The farmer,
imbued with the same wistful regard for the vanished past, bewails
the May Day tenants' feast of the eighteenth-century English squire.
We get touches of disdain for the oncoming fashion of seclusion which
invaded the farmhouse in "A Farmer's Boy," by Robert Bloomfield. He
laments that the annual feast of the harvest home had lost its former
joviality. This was written in 1798.
"The aspect only with the substance gone." Evidently the mug that
passed around was becoming a thing of the past.