The Romance of Furniture

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 95, 13 July 1927, Page 11

The Romance of Furniture

LATE JACOBEAN IV. (Written for THE SUN.) A FTER a period of years extending through four reigns the accession of Charles 11. to the Throne marks the culminating point in the Jacobean era. What was happening in other parts oL' Europe, in the industrial arts sense has some value in the consideration of the final expression of Jacobean taste, the years of its glory and its sudden submersion in the era which followed. This we may designate the “age of walnut.” It is a debatable point which of the two popularly assigned reasons is responsible for the introduction of elaborate carving and scroll work upholstery, characteristic of the reign of Charles 11. On the one hand it has been suggested that the Spanish wife of the monarch was the chief inspirer of the rococo designs. It is true that at this time tooled leather from Spain was much in vogue, but Spanish furniture, although carved, was not so tortured as examples of this period. The other reason generally upheld is that of the influence of the French refugees expelled from France under the Edict of Xantes. As populations go

to-day a handful of 40,000 immigrants would not seem impressive, but in 1660, such a number, including skilled artisans,. well in advance of their English hosts, must certainly have had a permanent effect on the industries of the nation. Briefly, the chief characteristics of the furniture of this era are that of a refinement of line, the use of timber in lesser bulk than in the earlier Jacobean days, an emphatic love of the exotic in carvings; the introduction of the Spanish foot to legs of chairs, leather work, and a prolific use of velvet. Speaking of velvet, it is interesting to note that an act was passed forbidding the making of this fabric from a mixture of cotton and silk. The perfect condition of the velvet on

the chairs in Hampton Court and other places to-day is due in no small measure to the action of the Government in enforcing the use of pure silk only in the manufacture. CHINESE LACQUER Chinese lacquer furniture had been imported into England prior to Charles 11., but it was in his day that lacquer work was first produced in England. Some gorgeous specimens of Englishmade lacquer cabinets, mounted on elaborately-carved stands, either gilded or silvered, are in existence to-day. They bring almost their weight in gold when they are sold. Furniture was not cheap in those days. The Queen's bedstead at Hampton Court, of which we have record through Evelyn, cost the sum of £8,000! The high-backed chair illustrated in this article is made of walnut. The designer’s inspiration is essentialy Continental from the Spanish foot up to the Dutch stretcher and top rail. This chair was probably the work of a Frenchman. The lightness and grace of the frame and filling of the back was certainly not the work of an English craftsman, who was at that time emerging from the state of the stolid joiner into that of the craftsman«3abinetmaker. That there is no purely English style in furniture we must accept as a truism, until we reach the Georgians, and even then the influence of the Greek, French, Dutch and Spanish is traceable in many outstanding instances. ZENITH OF WOOD-CARVING Carved woodwork ,reached its zenith under Charles 11., and produced a genius in Grinling Gibbons, the first of the recorded great wood-carvers, of England. The arts received a great impetus in directions other than in furnituremaking. In architecture, Sir Christopher Wren, and in literature in the unofficial historian of the times, “Pepys the Diarist.” “Daybeds,” as generally conceived to-day, -were first introduced at this period, although they were known, perhaps in another guise, in Elizabeth’s time. Canework was extensively used in chairs and daybeds. The cumbersome bulbous pillar-bedstead passed out of fashion, but the long, early-Jacobean dining table remained, usurped, sometimes, by the gate-leg table. OSWALD CRINE.