Antique English Period Furniture - Tudor Gothic Period Settles, Chairs and Stools
SETTLES, CHAIRS, AND STOOLS
It has been already noted that the chest was often used as a seat, and at a time when furniture was scarce one can understand that it would conveniently fulfil the purpose. Just what the first chair was like is doubtful. The writer came across the curious Penitent stool, Fig. 16, in the old church at Fordwich, in Kent, and it may be that a similar structure was used for secular purposes. It is a solid block of oak with a sort of huge notch cut in it to form a seat. The church itself dates from before the Norman Conquest, though the date of the stool itself is uncertain.
The earliest form of seating accommodation was probably evolved from the early planked chest as suggested by the dotted lines in the left hand illustration in Fig. 13. The construction of the two is practically identical, and one can conceive a craftsman of some imagination cutting away the front and back and evolving a long form of the kind in Fig. ig. The only real difference is that in the latter the ends or legs are given a cant to give stability, and are shaped out in Gothic form. Also the long rails are fitted in slots in the legs instead of being nailed to notches at the outside, and the underside is cut away in imitation of the heading of a Gothic arch.
The two stools in Fig. 20 show clearly this stage of development. That to the left is entirely of the planked chest formation, whilst the other has the refinements already noted in the use of slots to contain the side rails and the shaping of the rails and legs.
Just as the framed-up chest replaced the planked type, so a framed construction came to be used for stools. The method used for the one probably gave the suggestion for the other. Fig. 21 shows a stool of this type, and it is interesting to note that the chest idea is still retained in that a box is formed beneath the seat. The carved flutes partly filled with millings are a feature that was used considerably in Elizabethan times and in the following century.
Settles.—Returning to Fig. 13 it will be seen that the development of the settle from the framed-up chest is suggested. It seems a likely theory that this is what happened. The disadvantage of using a chest as a seat must have become obvious, and as men began to make their houses more comfortable and were able to afford more luxury it probably occurred to someone that by suitable adaptation the chest could be made far more comfortable. It meant merely that the back posts would have to be continued up to enable a back framing to be added, and the front posts taken up high enough to provide support for the arms.
The result was the form of settle shown in Fig. 15, which is virtually just a chest with the back and arms above it. The chest portion is retained with the seat acting as a lid. It seems that sometimes the chest was omitted, as shown in Fig. 14, though even here the panelled front is retained.
FIG. 26. SIDE TABLE WITH GOTHIC DETAILS.
Early 16th century.
A piece such as this would probably have stood in the dining hall of a
manor house. It is virtually a chest with the corner posts made extra
long to form legs. The Gothic tracery designs carved In the panels are
pierced right through.
This would be done partly from convention, and partly because it helped to keep away draughts which must have been strongly in evidence in early houses. This illustration is from a small piece of carving cut out of a solid block, and now in South Kensington Museum, and its chief interest from our point of view lies in its showing the form of settle used in the late fifteenth century.
As furniture became more plentiful, and there was no longer the rigid need for economy, the chest portion was eliminated entirely, the under-portion being made up of an open framing of turned legs and stretchers.
Evolution of the Chair.—The development of the chair was identical with that of the settle. It was really just a short chest or box with back and arms above it. That in Fig. 17 shows the early type. It is not suggested that this was the earliest form of chair (forgetting the Fordwich example, Fig. 16), but that the evolution of the domestic chair came about in this way. There is of course the famous coronation chair in Westminster Abbey which dates back to the fourteenth century, and there are various other early Gothic chairs in churches and halls in various parts of the country, but these were made for special purposes and cannot be classed in any way as domestic pieces.
By omitting the lower box portion the chair became less cumbersome, and, as we have noted, the need for economy was not of such importance. A particularly fine example dating from the end of the Tudor Gothic period is that in Fig. 18. It now stands in the museum at South Kensington, and there are several features about it that make a close examination worth while.
Firstly, the back is given a backward rake, a detail that soon occurred to the carpenters once the idea of a chair had been thought of. At first the back had been continued straight up (see the settle in Fig. 14), but any man who has sat in a straight-backed church pew for any length of time will appreciate how really uncomfortable this can become, and a similar conviction must have come into the minds of the early carpenters—or possibly the people who had the chairs made. Consequently the back was made to slope, but the legs were still kept upright, probably because the old convention derived from the chest structure did not suggest the desirability of giving them a corresponding slope.
It is surelya rather remarkable thing that for the whole of the sixteenth century, and for the better part of the next, chairs were still made with straight, upright back legs. One would imagine that it would occur to a man leaning back in a chair that some means might be invented of preventing the chair from tilting right back. It is true that the Elizabethan chairs were heavy, and this would certainly help to counterbalance the weight, but even so there must have been the tendency for a man to topple over backwards, especially when leaning back after a meal, during which the flagon might have passed freely. In the later years of the seventeenth century the heaviness of the chair was no longer an argument, for the chairs had become incomparably lighter and the height of the back had increased !
However, there it was, and in returning to the Elizabethan chair in Fig. 18 we find in it a detail showing that the possibility of an accident had occurred to its maker, in that the lower ends of the back legs are made extra thick at the back to help to prevent the chair from tilting backwards. It was probably the germ of the idea which resulted later in the legs being splayed outwards, though, as we say, it took a long time for it to develop.
Use of Inlay.—The ornamentation of the back brings to notice a form of decoration not yet mentioned, which came into great popularity during the second half of the sixteenth century, that of inlay. This was carried out entirely in the solid. That is, the background was carved out to receive the shaped inlays. All kinds of native woods were used, apple, pear, holly, cherry, and bog oak, and the design, as in the present example, was usually a conventional treatment of naturalesque motifs. Occasionally geometrical designs were used. The solid method should be noted in particular, because later on an entirely different system was evolved.
The shaped arms, terminating with semi-scrolled fronts, are of the kind invariably used in Elizabethan chairs, and it may be noted that chairs without arms are exceptional in the period. It is just another example of how ideas will cling on. Possibly it was felt that the arms gave a certain dignity to the person using the chair, for these were still reserved for the more important people, though they were becoming more plentiful.
TUDOR GOTHIC PLANKED HUTCH. FIG. 28. FRAMED-UP TUDOR GOTHIC HUTCH.
Early 16th century. First half 16th century.
Just as there were two systems of construction in the chest, so the early form of cupboard or hutch was made either by single
planks nailed or pegged together as in the left-hand example, or by a much improved method in which there was a framework with
panels fitting in grooves as in the hutch to the right.