Posts Tagged ‘curvaceous’

EARLY 19TH CENTURY REGENCY BRITAIN FURNITURE

THE REGENCY WAS a clearly defined
period in British history From 1811 to 1820, the Prince of Wales, who later became George IV, ruled instead of his father, who was suffering from porphyria – a form of madness. However, as a furniture style, Regency has come to embrace a wider time frame, from the 1790s to the third decade of the 19th century.
Reflecting the exuberant tastes of the Regent himself, the period begins with his commission of the Neoclassical architect Henry Holland for his London home, Carlton House, in the 1780s, and concludes with the exotic, Oriental confection that is John Nash’s
Brighton Pavilion, remodelled for the Prince of Wales between 1815 and 1823. George, the Prince Regent, came to dominate taste in the early 19th century. He and his circle drew on a diverse group of talented architects and artisans, often trained in France, many of whom had worked on Carlton House. These included the architect, Charles Heathcote Tatham, the decorators and cabinet-makers, Morel and Hughes, and the clock-maker, Benjamin Vulliamy.
FURNITURE STYLE
Regency furniture is often symmetrical with clean, rectilinear lines. As such, it was inspired by French Empire furniture and the simple late 18th-century furniture designs of Thomas Sheraton. Large surfaces were often veneered in highly figured rosewood and then decorated with gilt-brass mounts of ancient motifs, such as rosettes, paterae, laurels, and anthemia. The Liverpool cabinet-
maker George Bullock is best known for his use of patterned surfaces; he frequently balanced English timbers, especially oak, with a riot of border patterns featuring stylized flower-heads, lotus leaves, and dot motifs.
The strict Neoclassical taste found its most archaeological expression in the designs of Thomas Hope, which he published in 1807. Not only had he plundered ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome for decorative ideas, but he also attempted to recreate ancient furniture and interiors. Probably the most
typical furniture of this type is the rounded klismos chair – first known to have been produced in ancient Greece
– which has back stiles that rise from outswept sabre legs to support an almost semi-circular back.
During this period, a wide variety of side cabinets of diverse outlines came to dominate the wall space in drawing rooms, replacing the use of commodes. In the dining room, a similar role was performed by the popular sideboard and chiffonier.
ECLECTICISM
It would be a mistake, however, to see the Regency as simply a curvaceous and light Neoclassical style. It was characterized by endless variety, a freedom of forms, and an eclectic
ornamental vocabulary. George Smith, who published a pattern book the year after Hope, reinterpreted his cold, academic designs by applying Neoclassical motifs to French Empire models that also included Gothic-and Chinese-inspired furniture. Indeed, exotic forms and materials became the hallmark of Regency taste. Smith popularized Hope’s designs in his pattern book, introducing them to a wider public.
Smith inspired impressive-looking furniture, with boldly carved leopard’s masks or large lion’s-paw feet, which anticipated the slightly heavier furniture of the 1820s and 30s.

The front rail and highly scrolled ends are inlaid with trailing foliage and flowers, terminating in floral paterae.
The seat rail is inlaid with a trailing brass foliate motif.
The design of the chaise longue is influenced by the contemporary French form, the meridjenne - a type of sofa with scrolled ends, one higher than the other.
Brass inlay detail
CHAISE LONGUE
This elegant Regency chaise longue is made of rosewood and is profusely inlaid throughout with brass inlay in a foliate design. The frame has a sweeping back rail which is centred with a scrolled hand grip, and has highly decorative
scrolled end supports. The generously padded seat and arms are supported on a rectilinear front rail decorated with a foliate motif. The piece stands on outswept sabre legs which terminate in lion’s-paw feet on casters.
Sabre legs terminate in lion’s paw feet and casters.
SMALL CENTRE TABLE
The surface of this tilt-top table has a painted scene within a laburnum veneer border. It is supported on a rosewood-veneered stem, on a base with scrolled, ribbed feet on brass casters. Early 19th century
MAHOGANY STOOL
This Regency mahogany stool has a gently shaped rectangular seat with scrolled ends and light carving on the surface. It is supported on an X-frame base with simple, carved decoration and stretchers. c.1810.
This mahogany writing table has a three-quarter brass gallery and a central, pull-out insert. There are six drawers behind a lift-up flap, two drawers on either side, and two in the frieze, supported on slender, turned legs. c.1800.
LIBRARY TABLE
The rectangular top of this rosewood library table is inlaid with a Greek-key border in satinwood and ebony. The frieze has a central pierced ormolu palmette and two drawers. The bowed legs are headed by gilt lion’s heads and
terminate in lion’s-paw feet, joined by a shaped stretcher. c.1810.

EUROPEAN BUREAUX
Bureau cabinets of this period made in Germany and Italy usually display the full-blown Rococo style. Well before the mid-18th century, German princely courts such as those at Wurzburg, Dresden, Ansbach, and Berlin set the pace for Rococo at its most adventurous, and bureau cabinets were among the extreme Manifestations of the style. Exaggerated cabriole curves, vigorous serpentine shapes, and concave and bombe forms were inlaid with exotic materials, covered in marquetry and parquetry, and encrusted with gilt-bronze Mounts made by virtuoso craftsmen. The Italian Pietro Piffetti (c.1700-c.1777) took this already exuberant rite even further in the ivory inlaid bureau cabinets he made for the Palazzo Rcale in Turin. While bureaux and bureau cabinets from other parts of northern Italy such as Venice and Genoa, were le , ostentatious, they were
bold in their curves and often decorated with painting in light colours, or with a type of decoupage known as arte povera.
By contrast, the wealthy burghers of northern Germany and The Netherlands took a less flamboyant line, favouring bureau cabinets of restrained design, usually made of well-figured walnut. Such pieces increasingly fell under the restraining influence of British design, while conceding to more southern tastes with bombe and serpentine outlines to their bases.
Early 18th-century French writing furniture took an entirely different turn from that of Britain and most of Europe, but some new types related to the bureau were developed around the mid-century. During the Transitional period, when the curvaceous Rococo was being gradually discarded for the restrained and symmetrical Neoclassical style, small desks with cabriole legs, serpentine sides, and fine floral marquetry were especially favoured for ladies’ apartments. The bureau de dame( has a sloping top of conventional bureau form. Another type, known as a bureaua
 cylindre, has a horizontally slatted tambour top set into grooves on either side, allowing it to slide over the writing surface within. One of the most accomplished exponents was Jean-Francois Oeben (1721-63), 1-63), who is credited with the invention of the roll-top desk with its rigidly curved slide. His successor as one of the leading Parisian cabinet-makers was Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806), who continued the tradition of ingenious mechanical pieces and specialized in roll-top desks. Riesener’s output ranged from sumptuous pieces decorated with elaborate marquetry and gilt-bronze mounts to plain mahogany desks of no less fine craftsmanship. The German cabinet-maker, David Roentgen ( 1743-1807), produced bureaux of outstanding quality, in terms of both their marquetry decoration and the ingenious mechanisms with which they were often fitted. In Vienna, which was an important centre of furniture-making in the early  19th century, simple cylinder desks were executed in native woods such as walnut, cherry, pear, and maple, mainly for a middle-class clientele.
• COLLECTING the colour of early bureaux is a crucial
factor in determining value - examples showing exceptional colour can command very high prices; slope-fronted bureaux are more desirable than secretaire cabinets or secretaire bookcases.
• BEWARE if the top of a bureau is unusually deep (i.e.
over 3 lcml 12in wide) it may formerly have been the base of a bureau bookcase, in which case the veneering will have been added at a later date
• HANDLES check that all signs of handle holes to the backs of drawer fronts have corresponding scars on the veneered front; if they do not all correspond, the piece has either been reveneered at a later date or the drawer is associated.