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Transcriber's notes:
italics converted to _
bold converted to =
small caps converted to +
gesperrt converted to ~
page 33 ...he native effort fred... typo repaired at
...the native effort freed...
illustration caption typo stretches repaired at stretchers
illustration caption typo carbriole repaired at cabriole
'patine' is the French version of the Latin/Italian,
and English word 'patina'
page 11 word screscent repaired for crescent
This book contains instances of hyphenated and
unhyphenated variants of words. All retained.
JACOBEAN FURNITURE
[Illustration: Plate I--THE SMALL JACOBEAN ROOM OF ELEGANCE AND INTIMACY]
JACOBEAN FURNITURE
AND
ENGLISH STYLES IN OAK AND WALNUT
BY
HELEN CHURCHILL CANDEE
+Author of "Decorative Styles and Periods,"
"The Tapestry Book," Etc.+
_WITH FORTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1916, by_
+Frederick A. Stokes Company+
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I +Early Jacobean Styles+ 3
=James I Crowned 1603.=
II +Jacobean Styles to Charles II+ 14
III +The Middle of the Century+ 27
=End of the Pure Jacobean.=
IV +Carolean Styles or the Restoration+ 37
=Charles II, 1660 to 1685.=
V +The End of the Seventeenth Century+ 48
=William and Mary, 1689-1702.=
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
I The small Jacobean room of elegance
and intimacy _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
II Late Tudor mantel 4
III Late Tudor bed 5
IV Large oak chest 6
V Early Jacobean chest of carved oak 7
VI Oak chest with drawers 8
VII Oak stand and marquetry cabinet 9
VIII Gate-leg table, forming console with gate
closed 10
IX Oak chairs 11
X Oak chest of drawers 12
XI Early Jacobean cabinet 13
XII Oak chairs 16
XIII Spiral turned chair, characteristic of first half
of Century 17
XIV Oak cabinet, dated 1653 20
XV Oak gate-leg dining table 21
XVI Oak day beds 24
XVII Stuart chairs 25
XVIII Marquetry cabinet about 1700 28
XIX Walnut cabinet 29
XX Stuart settee with carving. Second half of
XVII Century 42
XXI Charles II chairs in varying styles in carving 43
XXII Walnut sofa 44
XXIII Gilt mirror, time of Charles II 45
XXIV Interesting chair transitional between Stuart
Styles and William and Mary 48
XXV Chairs in variants of William and Mary 49
XXVI Chest of drawers in burr walnut veneer 50
XXVII Small walnut table 51
XXVIII Carved chairs. Period of William and Mary 52
XXIX Walnut chairs, William and Mary 53
XXX Queen Anne single chair. Queen Anne arm
chair. Walnut Queen Anne chairs 54
XXXI Queen Anne chair 55
JACOBEAN FURNITURE
CHAPTER I
EARLY JACOBEAN STYLES
JAMES I CROWNED 1603
When a passion for collecting antique furniture first swept America,
and prizes were plucked from attics, cellars and old barns, the eagle
eye of the amateur sought only those fine pieces that were made in the
age of mahogany and satin-wood. Every piece was dubbed Colonial with
rash generalisation until the time when a little erudition apportioned
the well-made distinctive furniture to its proper classes. Then every
person of culture became expert on eighteenth century furniture, and
the names of Chippendale and his prolific mates fell glibly from all
lips.
That much accomplished, the collector and home-maker then threw an
intelligent eye on another page of history and realised that the
seventeenth century and certain bits of oak and walnut that had stood
neglected, belonged to an equally interesting period of America's
social development.
All at once the word Jacobean was on every tongue, as Colonial had been
before. Attics, cellars and barns were searched again, this time for
oak and walnut, not mahogany, and for heavy square construction, not
for bandy legs and delicate restraint. It was the marvellous carved
chest that first announced itself, and then a six-legged highboy, and
the lower part of a thousand-legged table--which now we call a gate.
These, we said with inspiration, are the gods of the first settlers;
mahogany is but modern stuff.
But this time we were more savant than before, and instead of starving
our eager minds on the occasional resurrected American bit, we went
at once to the source, to England, and there found in abundance (for
the long purse) a charming sequence of styles covering all the times
of our earlier history as settlers and colonisers. Thus were we able
to identify these strange early pieces of our own and to recognise our
quarry when found in a dusty corner.
That very old pieces still are found, pieces brought over here in
the days of their mode, is proved to any collector. In two towns on
Long Island Sound I recently found for sale two six-legged highboys,
William and Mary, and that great rarity, a straight oak chair known as
a Farthingale chair, made without arms for the purpose of accommodating
the enormous crinoline or farthingale of its day. This chair may have
supported the stiffly dressed ladies of Elizabeth's court, so like it
was to the Italian models of Tudor times.
[Illustration: Plate II--LATE TUDOR MANTEL
From a house built in 1606, which shows a toning
of Tudor style into Jacobean]
[Illustration: Plate III--LATE TUDOR BED
With motifs which characterised early Jacobean carving, dated 1593]
The pity of it is, that no sooner had the artistic eye of the true
collector begun to search for seventeenth century furniture than
the commercial eye of the modern manufacturer began to make hideous
variations on its salient features. He caught the name of Jacobean and
to every piece of ill-drawn furniture he affixed a spiral leg and the
Stuart name; or, he set a serpentine flat stretcher and called his
mahogany dining set, William and Mary. These tasteless things fill our
department stores, and it is they that are rapidly filling American
homes. And the worst of it is, that both buyers and sellers are
startlingly yet pathetically glib with attaching historic names to the
mongrel stuff, and thus are they misled.
New furniture must be made, however, or resort must be had to
soap-boxes and hammocks. The old models are the best to follow for the
reason that the present is not an age of creation in this direction.
The stylist is always a hobby-rider, and I must confess to that form of
activity, but it is always with the idea in mind to make and keep our
homes beautiful. And so I make the plea to manufacturers to stick to
old models of tried beauty, and to buyers to educate their taste until
they reject a hybrid or mongrel movable with the same outraged sense
that they reject a mongrel dog.
Now let us pass through the gate that leads to happy hunting-grounds
of study where we find historic men and women, both royal and common,
making the times that called for the furniture we now admire as deeply
as they admired it.
One might almost say that since Henry the Eighth's introduction of
the styles of the Italian Renaissance into England, that country has
produced no original style of furniture. But lest this statement be
resented by affronted savants and hurt sentimentalists, side by side
with that fact must be placed another, that England has played upon
the styles she imported with such skill and grace that she has thus
produced variants of great and peculiar beauty.
England has taken the furniture creations of Europe through the
centuries and has impressed them with her national traits, with a
resulting beauty entirely her own. The effect is bewildering to all
but the student of styles, for without study one is often unable to
account for certain alterations of detail and construction. It cannot
be too often repeated that as each nation in turn adopted the Italian
Renaissance, that nation impressed its own signet upon the style. Thus
came all the variations.
It is to be remembered that in the case of England, the affair is one
of great interest and complication. In the sixteenth century Pistaccio
and his artist mates hurried from Italy at the bidding of Henry VIII
and planted their classic patterns in the British kingdom. That was an
infusion of the pure Renaissance drawing is visible but with a general
flattening of the relief blood of the Renaissance, and it lasted well
into Elizabeth's time before the Anglo-Saxon temperament altered it
characteristically.
[Illustration: Plate IV--LARGE OAK CHEST
In noblest type of early Jacobean carving]
_Courtesy of Charles_
[Illustration: Plate V--EARLY JACOBEAN CHEST OF CARVED OAK]
By the time James I, in 1603, established the Stuart reign, the
style became markedly British, and British styles called Jacobean in
compliment to James' Latinized name, prevailed until another imported
fashion came along. Then came another and another, and so on even until
the end of Georgian styles and the beginning of Victorian.
The Jacobean style developed serenely, playing happy pranks with
itself, altered by mechanical inventions and by new woods, until the
second half of the seventeenth century, when Charles II introduced
strong French influence and Portuguese--which was not greatly different
from Spanish. The French influence came lightly from the light ladies
of the frivolous court, and the Portuguese from Charles' queen,
Catherine, whose home was Braganza. Bombay as her dowry threw Eastern
colours and design into the mêlée.
British styles were not yet to be let alone, for no sooner was the
French way set than the Dutch pattern appeared, brought over by William
and Mary. Delicately it came at first, giving place for hints from
the court of Louis XIV, and then in full force by the time Anne took
the sceptre in 1703. And all these styles imported throughout the
seventeenth century, what were they but the several interpretations of
the Renaissance as it was expressed in France, Portugal, and Holland?
Let not the student stagger under these complications of English
styles, for although there are yet more reasons for the shapes and
ornament of furniture in England during the seventeenth century they
are all bright with incidents of kings and courts.
Tudor monarchs stop in 1603 at Elizabeth's death, but Tudor styles were
not at once outgrown, rather they linger along far into the seventeenth
century, heavily and elegantly regarding the newly throned Stuarts
and their bewitching manners. The Tudor table, for instance, was a
serious piece of furniture, put together as squarely and solidly as a
house. Its enduring qualities are proved by the number of these tables
still extant which, as refectory tables, are the smart thing for the
dining-room of to-day. Bulbous legs with Italian carving, heavy square
stretchers low on the ground, and draw-tops, are the distinguishing
features. It is even suggested by the erudite that these tables are the
last flicker of the style left by the Romans during their occupation of
England, so like are they to pictured tables of Rome at that time.
To fix in the mind certain important motifs used in early Jacobean
carving, a pause may be made before the fine oak bed pictured in
Plate 3, that we may discuss them. It is dated 1593, ten years before
James I, but, although Tudor, it has certain decorative features, the
development of which was left to the Jacobean styles of the seventeenth
century. Note especially among these the characteristic round arch
savouring of the Norman, of which two are shown on the bed's head.
These arches frame a rough inlay which appears also on the square
blocks of the tester. Holly and bog oak were the favourite woods for
this inlay on oak, woods obdurate enough to make the labour difficult.
The half-circle repeat is used freely as a moulding on the headboard,
and this develops in later furniture into an important motif. The
general construction of this bed is noble in its proportions, and in
all changes of fashion must it stand with the dignity of a temple.
[Illustration: Plate VI-OAK CHEST WITH DRAWERS
This is carved with all the characteristic motifs of early Jacobean
work--the arch, the guilloche, the S curve in pairs]
[Illustration: Plate VII--OAK STAND AND MARQUETRY CABINET
Here are combined the Jacobean robust strength and Spanish Moresque
detail]
As pictures on a screen melt one into another, so styles merge. Plate 6
shows a chest full of Jacobean promise yet retaining Tudor feeling. The
fact that it has drawers under the coffer pronounces it as a novelty of
the early seventeenth century, and therefore Jacobean.
It especially well illustrates the pattern for carving that occupied
workers through the reign of James I. There is the Norman arch, low and
wide, set on short supports which have now lost their architectural
look of a column. The arches at the ends have as ornament the
guilloche, that line of circles that sinuously proceeds through all
that time. The carving just under the lid shows the characteristic S
curve in one of its many varieties, and the line of decoration just
above the drawers indicates the development of the half-circle. Thus
are shown in this one early piece the principal motifs of the carvers
who were coaxing the models of a past Renaissance into an expression
that was entirely British.
The small oak cupboard on Plate 11 is another transition piece, being
in feeling both Tudor and Jacobean. Here the guilloche is enlarged to
form a panel ornament, and the acanthus becomes a long fern frond to
ornament the uprights. One hardly feels, however, that this piece was
ever the accompaniment of elegant living, although much antiquity gives
its present distinction.
Continuing with the low round arch as an ornament in the low-relief
carving of James' time, an example of its use is given in the folding
gate-legged table which is the property of the author (Plate 8). The
turned legs finished with squares, top and bottom, are characteristic
of the first quarter of the century. The arch is here used as an
apron to give elegance, and above is a drawer carved with leaves. In
construction this table presents three sides to the front, as does the
cabinet just considered, and its Italian inspiration is evident. Like
all old oak of the time, it is put together with wooden pegs, and bears
the marvellous patine of time.
Had the chairs of early Stuart time not been heavily made and squarely
constructed we would not have had so many examples with which to gladden
the eye. Almost without exception they are variants of the Italian,
originality having not then appeared possible to chair makers. Three of
the four chairs in the plates illustrate this so well that it is worth
while to make a comparison with old Italian chairs.
[Illustration: Plate VIII--GATE-LEG TABLE. FORMING CONSOLE WITH GATE
CLOSED
The turned legs with square bases and tops indicate date as early
as 1610.
The deep apron carved with fretted arch is an unusual feature]
[Illustration: Plate IX--OAK CHAIRS Early XVII
Century Italian Inspiration]
The chair on Plate 9 with a crescent-shaped carving on the back had
its first inspiration in Venice, that great port getting the idea from
the wares of Constantinople which the merchant ships brought to her
with prodigality. All of these chairs are of the square construction
that endures, and all have baluster legs but of different styles of
turning. All are understayed with honest stretchers, but one has the
front stretcher close to the floor, indicating a little earlier mode.
The colonnade of arches forming the back is nearer its Italian origin
where a column supports the arch rather than a bulbous spindle.
One more feature to note on these chairs, that is common to both late
Tudor and early Jacobean styles, is the decoration of split spindles or
pendants applied to a flat surface. This decoration is a favourite for
wood panelling, for chests of drawers and all large pieces about the
middle of the century.
We have but to call to mind the costume of Henrietta Maria, the queen
of Charles I, to realise why these armless chairs were the most popular
of the time; the voluminous skirts of the ladies of the court--whom
others imitated--could not have been squeezed into an arm chair with
courtly grace.
The sort of room in which this furniture was set--how happy we of
to-day would be to have their panelling! Occasionally an entire room
is taken from some old English home and set up in one of our American
dwellings, such as the rooms now owned by Mr. Frederick Pratt and Mr.
W. R. Hearst. And thus we know what beauty surrounded the English
family three hundred years ago. Panelling in squares covered the walls
from floor to ceiling or to a high level, above which hung tapestries
or embroideries. And as the architect of the house composed the
panelling it was drawn with such skill as to miss either hap-hazard or
monotony.
The linen-fold panel of Gothic and early Tudor popularity was no
longer repeated. The true Jacobean panel is small and square with
carving on the pilasters and cornice in rooms of elegance. To this day
no more home-like way of treating the walls of large rooms has been
devised than this wood panelling, which gives a sense of seclusion
and of richness that is never so well imparted except by the use of
tapestry--and the combination of the two nearly approaches perfection.
Jacobean styles, so-called, extend through the greater part of the
century, but each succeeding Stuart marked his special progress on
them. The styles of the first kings, James I and his son Charles I,
lifted the family movables from heaviness to comparative lightness, and
grew away from the Renaissance in truly original ways. On this fact
rests much of its interest. The other great fact for us is that these
years of the first Stuart kings were the years of the first American
colonisation.
[Illustration: Plate X--OAK CHEST OF DRAWERS
An interesting example of the Jacobean use of decorative mouldings]
[Illustration: Plate XI--EARLY JACOBEAN CABINET
Carved and put together with wooden pegs. A guilloche carving ornaments
each panel]