Antique Stands and Racks.
Stands and racks
The term “stand” is used in a wide-ranging sense and implies any kind of support. Although the word can be used for a piece joined to another item of furniture, such as a cabinet stand, this section looks at stands complete in themselves. Such stands were specifically designed to be both highly practical and easily portable. Although they were often embellished with the fashionable decorative qualities of the day, the common feature of these pieces was that function always prevailed over style.
FOLIO AND READING STANDS
The folio stand allowed the reader to store a heavy book temporarily, to browse through at leisure, rather than having to keep taking it down from a library shelf and replacing it. Folio stands were usually adjustable, often with hinged or ratchet actions, to allow for different thicknesses of books or to hold several at once. Before
the 20th century it was common practice to read standing up, but books were heavy to hold. A reading stand, designed for resting the book on, provided the solution. Some reading stands were also intended to hold Music scores, while others were more robustly constructed to take the greater weight of a book. Like folio stands, reading stands could be adjusted so that the reader was able to place the book at different heights and angles.
CANTERBURIES
Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) referred to two types of canterbury in The Cabinet Dictionary (1803): the music stand and the
supper tray. He described the first as “a small music stand”, or open-topped rack, with slatted partitions for the storage of loose sheets of music and bound music books. It generally had four short legs on casters, so that it could be moved or kicked away easily, and was short enough to be stored inconspicuously beneath the piano. Commonly used for the storage of magazines today, it was first introduced in Britain in the 1780s. It is thought that the canterbury was named after an Archbishop of Canterbury, for whom the first example was made. Two such stands were illustrated in A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1808) by George Smith (active c.1786-1826). He wrote that “they are intended for holding such music books as are in constant use and may be manufactured in mahogany, rosewood, or bronzed and gilt”.
Some stands had sides of wire latticework, and in these examples the slatted partitions were usually omitted. Others, for example some made for the International Exhibition of 1862 in London, were constructed of wood but decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay on papier-mache, which was then overpainted with gilt and coloured varnishes.
The second type of canterbury to which Sheraton referred was “a supper tray, made to stand by a table at supper, with a circular end, and three partitions cross-wise, to hold knives, forks, and plates, at that end, which is made circular on purpose”. Much taller than the music-stand type of canterbury, the supper tray resembles a small table. It was used, like the dumb waiter, when service in the dining-room was dispensed with, especially particularly at informal parties. It too stood on casters so that it was easy to move around, and often had splayed legs which provided greater stability.
DUMB WAITERS
First invented and used in
Britain c.1725, the dumb waiter consisted of a central shaft with
circular trays, which often revolved. The trays increased in size from top to bottom, and
terminated in a tripod foot. In The Cabinet
Dictionary, Sheraton described it as “a useful piece of furniture, to serve in some respects the place of a waiter, whence it is so named”. The absence of a human attendant helped confidential dining, and the dumb
waiter was generally placed at the corner of the dining-table for diners to help themselves to
additional plates, knives and forks, pudding, and cheese. After dinner, bottles of drink and glasses were placed on the trays of the stand.
Toward the end of the 18th century, the use of the dumb waiter had spread to France and Germany in differing forms. At that time in Britain, the dumb waiter was elaborated, and new varieties were introduced. Plain elegance was eschewed in favour of such decoration as Gothic fretwork, leaf moulding, and curves. Quadruped supports often supplanted the traditional tripod base. In 1803 Sheraton gave two new designs in his Dictionary: the first was “partly from the French taste”, and on the top was a thin layer of marble “which not only keeps cleaner and looks neater than mahogany, but also tends to keep the wine cool when a bottle for present use is placed upon it”. There were knife trays, shelves for plates, and holes, lined with tin, for bottles and decanters. Sheraton’s second design had two levels, not three, although there were drawers underneath the lower for cutlery or dirty plates, and it rested on a quadruped, spider-legged stand.
In the early 19th century in Britain a Classical air, which had no prototype in antiquity, was imparted to many types of furniture, including dumb waiters. Grecian motifs such as lyres provided novelty, and by the Victorian era designs for dumb waiters were as eclectic as those for any other piece of furniture.
WHATNOTS
This type of stand was intended to display a variety of objets d’art, ornaments, curiosities, books, and papers. Generally rectangular in shape, with three shelves, and possibly one or two drawers beneath them, they were supported by turned columns at the angles. The first published reference to the whatnot occurred in 1808 in the Correspondence of Sarah, Lady Lyttleton, but it is also mentioned in the cost books of the firm of
Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster eight years earlier. Whatnots were extremely popular throughout the 19th century. They were usually made of mahogany or rosewood, and were sometimes embellished with ormolu
mounts. In addition, the shelves of some pieces were
edged with pierced brass galleries.
ETAGERES
The French etagere, meaning “stand”, combined the qualities of the English dumb waiter and the whatnot. A two- or sometimes three-tiered table, it was intended either for displaying objects or for serving food. In some cases the top tier could be removed and used as a tray. Casters and handles on the lower tier enabled the piece to be pulled around a room. French etageres were more highly decorated and sinuous than their British counterparts. By the second half of the 19th
century there was an enormous variety of designs available, ranging from ones that recalled the Louis XIV and Boulle styles to those featuring ormolu mounts, gilding, naturalistic motifs, and exaggerated Rococo curves and scrolls.
MUSIC STANDS
While the Canterbury was for storing music, the music stand was designed for playing a score. Music stands were purely functional before c.1770. Professional musicians provided their own, utilitarian, stands and in any case often played sitting down. The development of the music stand as a decorative item marks the fashion in the late 18th century for private recitals, at which works by composers of the chamber form, particularly Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert, were played. Even then, function took precedence over adornment.
• ALTERATIONS often polescreens have been converted into music stands; ensure that all the platforms on dumb waiters match, and that a three-tier waiter has not been converted into a two-tier one: look carefully at the size of the tier, and the balance and proportions.
• COLLECTING canterburies arc generally very popular with collectors because of their small size, particularly Regency examples, which because of their delicate form have often had one or more of their divisions replaced; small whatnots with hinged tops are very commercial and are generally made in mahogany; the tiers of some dumb waiters were hinged at either side with two drop flaps so that they could be discreetly stored away; good-quality waiters have galleried tiers.