Illustrated History of Furniture
Illustrated History of Furniture. By Frederick Litchfield, b. 1850. London: Truslove and Hanson, 1903. Not in copyright. Scan from UC Libraries. First edition: 1892.
This is a really gorgeous, charming, and informative book, impeccably scanned at the Internet Archive. Wonderful line drawings of furniture are preferable in my view to photos. There are reconstructions of interior scenes (“Life of Furniture”) based on paintings and MS illuminations. I love this book!!
Highlights:
Begins in ancient world, including biblical. Chair of St. Peter’s in Rome, p. 19.
“Carved Norwegian Doorway,” line drawing, p. 23. With cared steins in the doorway, which also looks like a keyhole!! Coronation Chair, Westminster Abbey; line drawing, p. 31. Vestry chairs. (Political theology of the Chair!!).
“The Table at Penshurst”!!, p. 33.
Gorgeous narrow bedstead with matching chair, pp. 34-35. Domestic interiors redrawn from religious and secular paintings and illuminations. Really nice …
“Portrait of Christine de Pisan” writing!! (p. 38)
State banquet, p. 39. (Great use of line drawings to recapture life of furniture using Renaissance and medieval art.) Medieval bed and bedroom, p. 41.
“Scribe/copyist,” p. 41. Great carved oak buffet, p. 43, 15th century.“Tapestried room in a French chalet,” p. 45.
“Interior of an apothecary’s shop,” p. 46. “Reproduction of decoration by Raffaelle,” p. 49. “A sixteenth century room” (Italy, with tapestries!), p. 48. “Chair found in the house of Michelangelo,” p. 49 Italian cassone, p. 50; French coffer with medallions of ivory, p. 55.
“Fac Similes of engravings [engravers] on wood” (workshop image; depicts women working, p. 60). Barber’s Shop; Flemish Workshop, p. 65. Sedan Chair of Charles V, p. 67.
“Early English ‘Joyners,’ p. 73ff. “The joiner’s work plays a very important part in the interior decoration of the castles and country seats of this time, and the roofs were magnificently timbered with native oak” (p. 72). Great Hall, Hampton Court: linen scroll patttern = “a panel carved to represent a napkin folded in close convolutions, and appears to have been adopted from German work.” (p. 73) Carved enrichments in the Chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey were taken from “old German engravings,” work “done in England before architecture and wood carving had altogether flung aside their Gothic trammels, and shows an admixture of the new Italian style which was afterwards so generally adopted.” (p. 73)
“There are in the British Museum some interesting records of contracts made in the ninth year of Henry VIII’s reign for joyner’s work at Hengrave, in which the making of ‘livery’ or service cupboards is specified.’
‘Ye cobards they be made ye facyon of livery y is wthout doors.’
These were fitted up by the ordinary house carpenters, and consisted of three stages or shelves standing on four turned legs, with a drawer for table linen. They were at this period not enclosed, but the mugs or drinking vessels were hung on hooks, and were taken down and replaced after use; a ewer and basin was also part of the complement of a livery cupboard, for cleansing these cups. In Harrison’s description of England in the latter part of the sixteenth century the custom is thus described:
‘Each one as necessitie urgeth, calleth for a cup of such drinke as him liketh, so when he hath tasted it, he delivereth the cup again to some of the standers by, who maketh it clean by pouring out the drinke that remaineth, restoreth it to the cupboard from whence he fetched the same.’” (p. 73).
Links religious persecutions and break up of feudal system to the “disuse of the old custom of the master of the house taking his meals in the large hall or ‘houseplace,’ together with his retainers and dependants; and a smaller room leading from the great hall was fitted up with a ‘dressoir’ or ‘service cupboard,’ for the drinking vessels in the manner just described, with a bedstead, and a chair, some benches, and the board on trestles, which formed the table of the period. This room, called a ‘parler’ or ‘privee parlour,’ was the part of the house where the family enjoyed domestic life, and it was a singular fact that the Clerics of the time, and also the Court party, saw in this tendency towards private life so grave an objection that, in 1526, this change of fashion was the subject of a Court ordinance, and also of a special Pastoral from Bishop Grosbeste. The text runs thus:
‘Sundrie noblemen and gentlemen and others doe much delighte to dyne in corners and secret places,’ and the reason given, was that it was a bad influence, dividing class from class; the real reason was probably that by more private and domestic life, the power of the Church over her members was weakened.” (p. 74)
In spite, however, of opposition in high places, the custom of using the smaller rooms became more common, and we shall find the furniture, as time goes on, designed accordingly.” (p. 75) (p. 90).
Influence of HOLBEIN on English furniture. p. 76.
“Chairs were during the first half of the sixteenth century very scarce articles and, as we have seen with other countries, only used for the master or mistress of the house.” Chair said to belong to Anna Boleyn, probably made by “an Italian workman,” Hever Castle, Kent; p. 74; p. 76.
Most tables in Renaissance paintings are depicted covered by a a “CARPET” (carpets for tables; tapets for floors). p. 76. These carpets often worth more than the furniture they covered.
“Most of the old inventories from 1590, after mentioning the ‘framed’ or ‘joyned’ table, name the ‘carpett of Turky werke,’ which covered it, and in many cases there was still another covering to protect the best one, and when Frederick, Duke of Wurtemburg, visited England in 1592, he noted a very extravagant ‘carpett’ at Hampton Court, which was embroidered with pearls and cost 50,000 crowns.” (p. 76)
“The cushions or ‘quysshens’ for the chairs, of embroidered velvet, were also very important appendages to the otherwise hard oaken and ebony seats.” p. 77.
“Inventory of the parlor of St. Jone’s, within the cittie of Chester,” 1589 (will of Alderman Glasseor). Includes “six joyned stooles covr’d with nedle werke,” “sixe other joyned stooles,” “One cheare of nedle werke,” ““two little fote stooles,” various “carpetts” and “quysshens of Turky and tapestrie,” “eight pictures xls Maps, a pedigree of Earl Leicester in ‘joyned frame,’ and a list of books.” (p. 77)
Elizabethan period: wood carving becomes more ambitious. Flemish workmen settled in England, influenced “our native craftsmen.” “A certain grotesqueness introduced into the treatment of accessories, combine to distinguish th English school of Elizabethan ornament from other contemporary work.” (p. 77)
The Glastonbury Chair, “the original of the chair familiar to us
now in the chancel of most churches.” p. 78
From painting walls to framing pictures, influence of Holbein during reign of Henry VIII. Frames then added to mirrors.
Dinng Hall in the Charterhouse (dissolved monastery), pp. 81-82.
Oak Screen, Gray’s Inn, p. 83.
Penshurst Place, Philip Sydney. “Queen’s Room.” pp. 83, 89.
Great Bed of Ware, referred to in Twelfth Night: “the sheet were big enough for the Bed of Ware in England.” p. 87. p. 89.
Shakespeare’s Chair, p. 87. Attributed as early as 1769. Carved ornament “represents a rough idea of the dome of S. Marc and the Campanile Tower.” p. 87, p. 88.)
During this period: “the ‘bahut’ or chest has become a cabinet with all its varieties; the simple prie dieu chair, as a devotional piece of furniture, has been elaborated into almost an oratory, and, as a domestic seat, into a dignified throne; tables have, towards the end of the period, become more ornate, and made as solid pieces of furniture, instead of the planks and tressels which we found when the Renaissance commenced…. The English livery cupboard, with its foreign contemporary the buffet, is the forerunner of the sideboard of the future.” (pp. 87-89).
“Carved oak panelling has replaced the old arras and ruder wood lining of an earlier time ….” (p. 89)
CHAPTER IV: JACOBEAN FURNITURE
“The earliest dated piece of Jacobean furniture which has come under the writer’s observation is the octagonal table belonging to the Carpenter’s Company.” p. 95
Carved Oak Chair said to belong to “Lady Barnard, Shakespeare’s grand-daughter.” (p. 96)
“In the Hall of the Barber’s Company in Monkswell Street: Court Room, lighted with an octagonal cupola, was designed by Inigo Jones as a Theatre of Anatomy,when the Barbers and Surgeons were one corporation.” (96-7). 3-4 tables from the period.
“one of those plain substantial James I tables, which is singular
in being nearly double the width of those which were usually made at this time.” (p. 97) Probably made for a purpose other than dining.
Gorgeous image of “seats at Knodle,” p. 98-99. Folding stools, chair, foot stool. Like a little family. (Goldilocks ….) Possibly Venetian. “A suite of furniture of that time appears to have consisted of six stools and two arm chairs, almost entirely covered with velvet.”
Lounge chair with reclining back, described by Mr. Charles Eastlake in “Hints on Household Taste.” p. 100, 104.. Early sofa.
Two Jacobean styles, “simple and severe,” and Venetian. p. 102.
Holland House, commenced 1607. Decorations of the “Gilt Room” by “Franceso Cleyn, an Italian, who also worked for the King.” (=involved at Mortlake; made copies of Raphael’s cartoons.) p. 102. Walpole mentions Cleyn’s chair designs, p. 104.
Charles I: “was himself an ecellent mechanic, and boasted that he could earn his living at almost any trade save the making of hangings. “ (p. 104). “The Civil war, whatever it ha has achieved for our liberty as subjects, certainly hindered by many years our progress as an artistic people.” (p. 104)
TABLE: “Until the sixteenth century was well-advanced the word ‘table’ in our language meant an index or pocket book (tablets), or a list, not an article of furniture. The table was, as we have noticed in the time of Elizabeth, composed of boards generally hinged in the middle for convenience of storage, and supported on trestles which were sometimes ornamented by carved work. The word trestle, by the way, is said to be derived from the ‘trestule,’ i.e., three-footed supports, and these three-legged stools and benches formed in those days seats for everyone except the master of the house. Chairs were, as we have seen, scare articles; sometimes there was only one, a throne-like seat for an honored guest or for the master or mistress of the house, and doubtless our present phrase of ‘taking the chair’ is a survival of the high place a chair then held amongst the household gods of a gentleman’s mansion.” (p. 104)
Quotes Shakespeare, R&J: “turn the tables up,” p. 105
“Table” could also be used of religious carvings and paitnings in churches, p. 105.
JACOBEAN PERIOD: chairs becoming more plentiful; table becoming a definite article of furniture. “joyned table,” “framed table,” “standing” and “dormant” table. [LESS MOVABLE.] “The word ‘board’ had gradually disappeared. It remains to us, however, as a souvenir of the past, in the name we still give to a body of men meeting for the transaction of business, and, in connection, with social life, in the phrase ‘the festive board.’ The width of these earlier tables had been about 30 inches, and guests sat on one side only, with their backs to the wall, in order, it may be supposed, to be the more ready to resist any sudden raid …” (p. 105) [WALL HUGGERS]
Width increases under Charles I. Drawing table had folding pieces. p. 105, 106. Folding tables. 12, 16, or 20 legs; could go down to one third its extended size.
Shakespeare refers to a DAY BED in Twelfth Night and RIII. (p. 107) Settees, pp. 109, 110.
“We may date from the Commonwealth the more general use of chairs; people sat as they chose, and no longer regarded the chair as the lord’s place.” (p. 111) Cromwellian style of chair from Holland. Plain and simple. [POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF THE CHAIR.]
Diary of Evelyn: records “hangings designed by Raphael, very rich with gold”; “Abraham and Tobit.” p. 112. Queen’s bed. (Pre-Wren.)
Weird and wonderful print called SEDES BUSBIANA. p. 113. Dr. Busby, of Westminster School.
Brewer’s Company, Addle Street: kitchen has “remains of an old trestle.”
Carved oak livery cupboard, 1674.
First mention of a corner cupboard, 1711: p. 121.
First mention of a “Buerow” (bureau) 1727. p. 121
Communion Table at Charterhouse, p. 98.
Carved oak chest with the Adoration of the Magi, 1615-20, p. 98.
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