Posts Tagged ‘early 18th century oak gate leg dining table’

Many major British designers used elements of the Art Deco style in their furniture, while remaining true to their Arts and Crafts roots and making little use of lavish ornament or exotic woods. Art Deco furniture was more typically produced by minor makers, whose work included copies of popular pieces shown at the 1928 Exhibition of Modern Art in Decoration and Furnishing. Held in London, the exhibition introduced decorative, continental Art Deco furniture into Britain. The Modernist influence of the 1930s is seen in the mass-produced furniture by Isokon (1932-9).
TRADITIONALISTS
The designers of the Cotswold School concentrated on the Arts and Crafts tenets of truth to materials, form derived from function, and traditional construction techniques. Native woods such as oak and walnut were favoured, and decoration was minimal. Luxury furniture was made by, among others, Sidney Barnsley (1865-1926), Peter Waals, and Robert Thompson (d.1955), the Houseman”, who used a carved mouse as his signature. Gordon Russell (1892-1980) made the most successful transition to both traditionalist and Modernist styles of Art Deco. While using traditional construction techniques, he incorporated such exotic materials as Macassar ebony and ivory into some pieces, together with Art Deco motifs like sunbursts and chevrons. His belief in the need for good-quality, mass-produced furniture led him to develop a range of furniture that used tubular steel and other synthetic materials, with machine-made parts.
Heal & Son (est. 1800), in London, maintained its role as a major manufacturer and retailer. Oak, especially limed oak, was most commonly used for a range of traditional Arts and Crafts designs with some Art Deco features. Again, decoration was minimal, and although contemporary construction techniques such as screw-fixing were used, pieces were hand-finished.

MODERNISTS
In 1934-5 Finmar Ltd was
set up in Britain to distribute Alvar
Aalto’s moulded plywood furniture. The plain, simple pieces had clean contours, decorated with blocks of colour; solid wood was often combined with laminates. The firm of Isokon (Isometric Unit Construction), founded in London by the architect Jack Pritchard (b.1899), produced a range of simple furniture, generally more adventurous than that distributed by Finmar. Designers associated with the company include Marcel Breuer (1902-81). Typical of the period are its lightweight stacking “cutout” tables and chairs made from a single sheet of cut and moulded plywood.
More exclusive Modernist Art Deco furniture was designed by Betty Joel (1896-1984), who used curving shapes, minimal decoration – wood grain or contrasting veneers – and native woods such as sycamore; from the 1930s she also used chromed steel and plywood laminates. One of the few truly innovative British Art Deco designers was Gerald Summers (1899-1967). In the 1930s he designed side-chairs and open armchairs, cut and shaped with curved backs and seats, in laminated birchwood. The Birmingham firm of PEL (Practical Equipment Ltd, est. 1931) commissioned collectable steel-frame furniture from such designers as Oliver Bernard (1881-1939) and Wells Coates (1895-1958).

•    MATERIALS light woods were popular – sycamore, limed oak, walnut, and burr-walnut
•    CONDITION plywood furniture must be in good condition: check laminated pieces for chips or flaking
•    COLLECTING one-off, commissioned pieces by well-known makers are very expensive; minor furniture is collectable if well designed and in good condition; pieces by members of Cotswold School most desirable; forms associated with Jazz Age most sought after
Marks
Heal & Son: work is stamped with this mark, inset in a circular ivory plaque on the insides of doors or inside drawers

Vienna
After unsuccessful attempts to make porcelain, Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier (d.1751) bribed the Meissen arcanist Christoph Conrad Hunger (active c.1717-48) to come to Vienna in 1717 to teach him the secret formula. Hunger’s expertise proved to be limited, so Du Paquier employed Bottger’s kilnmaster Samuel Stolzel (d.1737) in 1719, and the factory made its first successful hard-paste porcelain.
THE DU PAQUIER PERIOD: 1719-44
The shapes of Du Paquier’s wares arc similar to early Meissen, as they are copied from Baroque silver and are of symmetrical form embellished with scrollwork. The factory actory also made some original items: tall beakers, sometimes with moulded borders and usually on a narrow foot; bottles or flasks applied with masks or modelled with animal-head spouts; and double-handled beakers on large, oval trembleuse stands.
Flower decoration was copied from Chinese and Japanese wares with a palette dominated by iron red, green and manganese purple; contemporary Meissen wares are much closer to the originals. Vienna, however, pioneered the use of European flower decoration on porcelain c.1730. At first these were precisely painted in the style of botanical engravings, but from c.1740 to 1745 they arc smaller and scattered, with much freer brushwork. Another innovation was the use of black, puce, or iron-red monochrome for battle and hunting scenes and chinoiserie; black monochrome, known as “Schwarzlot” (”black lead”), was a common technique among the Hausmaler who worked for the factory. These scenes were often enclosed by borders or cartouches of Baroque scrollwork with Laub- and Bandelwerk, (”leaf- and strapwork”) ornament.
FIRST STATE PERIOD: 1744-1841
Although the earls Vienna wares were successful, the factory’s finances were always precarious. In 1744 Du Paquier sold the factory to the Austrian state, which had been supporting it for many years. Because its financial troubles might
have been due to over-production, the
factory did not introduce any new designs
until c.1750. From this date, wares and figures were made in the fashionable Rococo style. The paste was improved c.1749 with the use of a much finer clay imported from Hungary.
With the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756 there was a new influx to Vienna of Meissen craftsmen who influenced the style of decoration; typical themes were scattered European flowers, unframed monochrome landscapes, and scenes within cartouches and paintings in the manner of Boucher, Watteau, and Terriers.
The greatest innovation of this period was the
wide variety of figures, particularly those modelled
by Johann Josef Niedermayer (d.1784), chief modeller from 17 47
. A series of dwarfs copied from engravings by the French printmaker Jacques Callot (1592-1635) is particularly notable. Many were left in the white, while others were painted in very pale colours such as lilac
lemon leon yellow. The bases arc usually a simple pad shape, and arc frequently embellished with a wavy gilt border around the bottom edge.
THE SORGENTHAL PERIOD: 1784–c.1830
After several financial problems at the factory Conrad Sorgel von Sorgenthal was appointed director in 1784. Phasing out the Rococo style in favour of refined Neoclassicism, was responsible for the production of
superb wares equalled only by the Berlin factory. Simple, geometric forms were adopted in line with the severe Neo-classical style, and urn and amphorae shapes were directly copied from antique pieces excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The factory was particularly famous for its tete-a-tete services and solitaires.
The decoration of Vienna wares was among the finest of the period. Coloured grounds with sumptuous gilding and rich painting meant that none of the white body of the porcelain was left showing. Vienna is especially associated with raised gilding with tooled architectural ornament. From 1791, following the example of Sevres, the chemist Josef Leithner developed brilliant ground colours, in particular a claret and a dark blue. The overall effect was enhanced by the fine painting of Classical subjects, topographical views, and botanical Subjects in central or reserved panels. The greatest exponent of botanical subjects was Josef Nigg (active 1800-43), whose most celebrated works are minutely painted flower still-lifes on rectangular plaques.
Figures were made on a limited scale at the end of the 18th century. Generally in biscuit porcelain, they were based on Classical sculptures and Pompeian paintings, or were busts of the imperial family and such luminaries as the composer Haydn. The most important modeller was Anton Grassi (1755-1807), who for several months in 1792 visited Rome, where he sketched and noted the recently excavated Classical sculpture.
After the death of Sorgenthal, Matthias Niedermayer (d.1827) became director. The factory was still producing Neo-classical-style wares, but by the 1830s the restrained 18th-century style had been replaced by the heavier, rounded shapes that characterize the Biedermeier taste. Painters continued to embellish plaques, trays, services, and vases with copies of Old Masters, and original botanical, topographical, and Classical compositions; however, the overall decoration is less rich (often with areas of white porcelain showing) and slightly poorer in execution.
AFTER c.1830
Although it had encountered various problems from the beginning of the 19th century from c.1830 the Vienna

factory entered a serious period of decline, producing inexpensive, rather poor-quality porcelain with transfer-printed decoration to keep up with demand and to try to compete with mass-produced goods, particularly those made in Bohemia. Attempts were made to turn it into an art institute and a model factory, but in 1864 Emperor Francis Joseph ordered its closure.
Subsequently, large quantities of undecorated Vienna porcelain, some dating back to the beginning of the 19th century, were sold off to other factories and decorators. Such wares were decorated in the Classical Revival style of the Sorgenthal period, with heavy gilt borders, Classical motifs, and topographical scenes, often reserved on a claret ground. As the wares were made at the Vienna factory, they bear the underglaze blue shield mark of Vienna and on this basis could be mistaken as original; however, the decoration is much less refined and sometimes verges on extremely coarse. These wares are now described as “Vienna” pieces.
Numerous firms in Bohemia, Silesia, and Germany (particularly Dresden and Thuringia) made their own wares in the Vienna style during the last quarter of the 19th century. The Augarten Factory (est. 1922), in Vienna, continues to reproduce earlier Vienna porcelain, mostly in the Neo-classical and Biedermeier styles; its products are also marked with the underglaze blue shield.
1719-44
• BODY creamy-white hard paste; smoky, thin glaze with greenish hue
• STYLE heavy Baroque forms and dense, symmetrical decoration
• PALETTE iron red, green, and manganese purple for Oriental flowers; pale, delicate colours for European flowers; black, puce, and iron-red monochrome
• DI CORATION Oriental and European flowers,
chinoiseries; battle, hunting, and mythological scenes; latticework and Laub- und Bandelwerk decoration
1744–84
• BODY greyish hard paste; white and glassy glaze
• DECORATION ION European flowers, monochrome landscapes, copies of French and Dutch paintings
• FIGURES left white or painted in pale colours
• BASES pad, sometimes with a wavy gilt border
Marks
This mark was made in underglaze blue from c.1749; it was sometimes impressed mid-1740s
1784—c.1830
• BODY warmer-coloured hard paste
• STYLE Nco-classical, rich Empire, and Biedermeier
• DECORATION raised gilding; claret and dark blue grounds; mythological and Classical scenes and topographical views

Pembroke and sofa tables
The elegant dropleaf table known as the Pembroke table, so called, according to Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) in his pattern-book The Cabinet Dictionary (1803), “from the name of the lady who first gave orders for one of them”, was part of the evolution of the breakfast table. The Pembroke table was eventually replaced in the fashionable drawing-room by the sofa table, an extended version of the type, v developed in the last years of the 18th and the first decade of the 19th century.
Pembroke table
This English mahogany serpentine Pembroke table is an elegant example of its type. It has square-tapered legs, brass feet, and casters, which are all typical features of Pembroke tables of this period.
PEMBROKE TABLES
Recorded in accounts from the 1750s, Pembroke tables were placed in the drawing-room and the boudoir where they were used for taking meals, playing cards, writing, and needlework. By the 1770s this elegant, useful form was well established, and was often a vehicle for the finest cabinet-making of the Neo-classical period. The basic structure, with its two side flaps supported on hinged brackets, lent itself to almost limitless variations. The opened table may form a rectangle or a square, an oval or an octagon; it can be straight or bow-fronted, with rounded, serpentine, or D-shaped flaps; the wood can be plain or crossbanded, with marquetry, painting, or carved decoration; and the legs may be of cabriole or straight-tapered shape, of round or square section.
A drawer in the frieze is usual, but some examples have sliding sections concealing compartments, while the rare “harlequin” type includes a mechanism to raise and lower compartments of drawers and pigeon holes within the centre. Most 18th-century Pembroke tables are Supported on their four legs without understretchers, while others have decorated base supports or small platforms. Appropriately for a highly mobile piece of furniture, nearly every example is fitted with casters.
While examples are known in the Gothic and Chinese tastes of the 1760s, those produced between 1770 and 1800 reflect the Neo-classical taste at its most refined.
Veneers are of mahogany, satinwood,
or other luxurious woods; lines
are simple, proportions carefully
considered, and ornament is of the greatest delicacy. The examples illustrated by George Hepplewhite (4.1786) in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1788-94) are typical of those available to the gentry during the last quarter of the 18th century. Pembroke tables with tapering legs of attenuated cabriole form, ending in the thinnest of scroll feet, were the result of French influence toward the end of the 18th century. Some had finely chiselled gilt-brass mounts.
Decoration took the form of plain stringing or crossbanding, or marquetry borders of anthemion, husks, guilloche, or scrolling acanthus, with such
embellishments as shells, medallions, or florets. These could also he painted, although garlands, beribboned swags, or tapering trails were the most usual.
The proportions of late 18th-century Pembroke tables are crucial; the side flaps are usually (but not always) equal to half the width of the central section, and should be one-third of the table height in their fall postion. There should be a frieze drawer at one end with a dummy drawer oil the opposite end. An oval table usually also displays bow-fronted end friezes to match the curve of the top. Each flap should have one or two fly-bracket Supports, opening sideways on wooden hinges. The legs should be tapered and the tops of the legs should continue upward to form the side frame of the drawer.
Pembroke tables continued to be made in the 19th century, the most advanced design having a central column with splayed legs (called a pillar and claw), which Sheraton illustrated in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1791-1802). A slightly later variant was the platform base. Pembroke tables of the 1820s and 1830s are of characteristically squat proportions, with turned tapered legs, and often have two frieze drawers, one above the other.
A Pembroke table
The top of this British oval Pembroke table is set with segmented satinwood veneers and decorated with marquetry The large oval paten medallion in the centre of the top is surrounded by a band of sycamore set with scrolling plants and flowerheads, with similar decoration on the outer moulded border. Its delicate construction and graceful appearance give it especially feminine associations. As with many tables of this type, this sofa table has a real and an opposing dummy drawer; the legs are decorated with pendent husks typical of late 13th-century Neo-classical ornament.
SOFA TABLES
The sofa table was as varied as the Pembroke table in the details of its design and decoration and, like its predecessor, it followed a defining form. According to Sheraton in The Cabinet Dictionary (1803), the sofa table was specifically for use “before a sofa” where “the Ladies chiefly occupy them to draw, write or read upon
Sofa tables are usually between 1.52m (5ft) and 1.83m (6ft) long, when fully extended, and 61cm (24m) wide. The flaps, supported on fly brackets, are each about one-quarter of the width of the central section. Some examples have sliding-topped compartments in the middle for games, or rising desks for writing and drawing, but the majority have one long or two short drawers on one side of the frieze, with corresponding dummy drawers on the opposite side.
The edges of sofa-table tops are always straight, and the corners of the flaps rounded, or chamfered to form “octagon corners”, but the bases are hugely varied and closely reflect the evolving design styles of the Regency period. The top may be set on end supports, with or
without stretchers across the middle, or central supports rising from a platform base. The legs are so designed that the feet can fit a little way under a sofa, allowing the table to be pulled close to the sitter. They arc nearly always on casters.
The plainest sofa tables have plank-shaped supports dividing into splayed tapered or sabre legs with brass cappings and casters. Alternatively after c.1810, rectangular plinths were set at right angles to the uprights, often with scrolls in the angles and with scrolled feet. For more luxurious sofa tables lyre-shaped end supports or patterns of decorative spindles were favoured, and while the lion monopodia that were advocated by George Smith (active c.1786-1828) in A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1808) were rarely executed, the lion mask often appears on the decorative brass drawer handles. “Hipped” sabre or cabriole legs were also popular; they appear often on sofa tables with central supports. All of these shapes could be embellished with reeding, lines of inlaid wood or brass, or strategically placed carved paterae or leaves. Cross-stretchers provided many, opportunities for decorative turnings. Inlaid brass decoration on the table top and frieze was sometimes matched on the legs, and/or on the fronts of the fly brackets.
The timbers used for sofa tables range from plain mahogany or more fashionable timbers such as rosewood to exotic woods including calamander; lightly coloured woods such as satinwood for veneering were now no longer in vogue in the 19th century, except for crossbandings as a foil to the dark woods now in favour; common timbers such as beech could be stained or ebonized to simulate these. By c.1815 brass inlays in the manner advocated by George Bullock (c.1777-1818) were generally used to create decorative contrasts; the most lavish examples have ormolu mounts as well as inlaid brass. A rare but significant form of surface decoration on sofa tables was black and white penwork, painted by ladies to imitate inlaid ivory decoration.
Because they have been highly desirable for a long time many sofa tables have been “improved” or even fabricated beyond acceptable levels of repair and restoration. As well as “marriages” between tops and associated bases, decoration such as crossbandings or brass inlays may have been added to tops to enhance the commercial value. Bases may have been legitimately repaired, but many sofa tables have been “made up” with the trestle supports from old (and much less expensive) cheval mirrors. These arc liable to look somewhat flimsy in proportion to the table tops. Wood grain running the length of a sofa-table top, rather than across it, may indicate a top made up from another larger piece of old furniture.
• PEMBROKE TABLES beside the genuine repairs that may be necessary in the course of time, collectors should beware of later restorations and alterations to Pembroke tables: these include substituting an oval top for a (less valuable) square or rectangular one; inserting decorative veneers or crossbandings into a plain surface to increase the value, or later painting, on a previously undecorated table – usually identifiable by the quality
• SOFA TABLES those tables that have low stretchers are generally less popular than those with higher stretchers, which allow more leg room; sometimes lower stretchers have been moved, and the scars that are left should be visible, although often these areas have been re-veneered to hide them; satinwood or rosewood tables are more desirable than mahogany, and end-support tables more sought after than those with central pedestals; the best sofa tables have cedar-lined drawers
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