Posts Tagged ‘extending tables’

TABLES
The table is a fairly obvious piece of furniture. It is required for all kinds of purposes in the house, though its chief function is for use when dining. One of the earliest surviving specimens are the huge trestle tables at Penshurst Hall, Kent. They date from the fourteenth century, when it was still the custom for the entire household to dine together in the great hall. One would be placed across the upper end of the hall, usually on a raised dais, and another, or sometimes two, at right angles to it, going lengthwise along the hall. The more important guests used the raisedThe tendency to use a framed-up construction already mentioned in connection with the chest is seen in the next stage of the table, when an underframing of four or six legs joined by rails (such as in the present-day table) was used. There stands in the museum at South Kensington an interesting table dating from the opening years of the sixteenth century. It has square legs with the corners chamfered, and the top rails are shaped on the underside with the Gothic arch formation. The long form in Fig. ig has this shaping—in fact it is a companion to the table of which we are speaking. Its most interesting feature, however, is that it is of the ” draw ” type ; that is, it is provided with extending leaves which, contained beneath the top when not required, can be drawn out, so increasing the size of the top considerably. As a matter of passing interest, this type of table has again become popular at the present time ; indeed, few extending tables are made now which have not this method of extension.
Bulbous Turnings.—The draw table of the Elizabethan period is shown in Fig. 23, and the feature that at once strikes one are the heavy bulbous legs. These represent a fashion in turning that had the most amazing popularity in Elizabethan times and in the first half of the seventeenth century. Turning had been introduced in this country during the sixteenth century, though it does not appear to have been widely used until about the middle of the century. One imagines that the turners, having acquired the technique, decided to make the most of what they had learnt, for there is nothing really logical about such disproportionate legs. The strength of the leg is governed by its thinnest part, so that the heavy bulbous part is entirely wasted from the constructional point of view.
In the particular table shown in Fig. 23 the legs are plain, direct from the lathe, but in most cases they were elaborately carved with nullings, scrolled acanthus leafwork, and other details, as shown on the turnings in the Court cupboard in Fig. 29. Possibly this is another reason why they appealed to the Elizabethans ; they offered such scope for decorative detail.
In most cases the stretcher rails ran round the four sides of the table in the same way as the rails at the top, but occasionally the H arrangement in Fig. 23 is found. In one, and the retainers were accommodated at the others in rotation, the serfs sitting at the lower end.
These trestle tables were generally made with movable tops, so that they could be taken to pieces and stored away when the floor space was required to be cleared. They were extremely massive in build, with tops of 4 in. or so in thickness, supported by heavy trestles or pedestals. The illus-BUFFET WITH BULBOUS TURNINGS.
Late 16th century.
Thiswas the Elizabethan form of sideboard. The modern dinner wagon
is of similar formation. Often a drawer was fitted beneath the top, the
rail acting as the drawer front.
tration of the hall at Penshurst Place on p. 12 shows these tables.
When as the years passed men sought more privacy there arose a demand for smaller tables which could be used in the smaller private room in which the family took their meals. The rise, too, of the merchant class brought about the erection of vast numbers of smaller houses, and so there have survived a fair number of smaller tables dating from the sixteenth century. The term ” smaller ” is used com-paratively. Actually they usually measure 6 ft. to 9 ft. or io ft. in length.
At the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the next the Gothic tradition was still strong, and tables
FIG. 31. FOUR-POSTER WITH PANELLED HEAD AND TESTER.
Second half 16th century.
These were extremely massive structures and were held in great value.
They were often specifically mentioned in wills. Note the holes in the
bed frame to support the mattress and clothes.
were often still of the trestle kind shown in Fig. 22. It will be noted that the rails are held to the trestles with wedges, so that the whole thing could be stacked away when not required in use. It is interesting to compare the Gothic shaping of the trestles with that of the small stool in Fig. 20.other types two legs only were used, these being built into the centre of the end rails and fitted with cross pieces at the bottom, and were a revival of the pedestal leg used in Gothic times, as exemplified by the Penshurst table on p. 12, except that the bottom was joined by a stretcher and the top had a framing to contain the mechanism of the extension.

ELIZABETHAN
COURT CUPBOARD.
Late z61h century.
love of Elizabethan crafts. This exemplifies well the men for ornament of every
kind. The upper recessed portion is inlaid with various woods such as apple, holly, cherry, bog oak, and stained woods. The carving is typical of
the time, being virile, deep and bold if somewhat barbaric in execution.

Tureens
Tureens were introduced in the early 18th century, reflecting the French fashion for serving stews, soups and sauces. Legend has it that the tureen was named after the 17th-century Vicomte de Turenne, who reputedly ate his soup from his upturned helmet; in fact, the term derives from the French terrine. From the early 18th century, soup usually accompanied boiled meats, fish, and vegetables as part of the first course and was served to the guests by the host or hostess. As such, the tureen became associated with a show of wealth and was often the most richly ornamented and expensive piece in the dinner service. Sauce tureens replaced sauceboats in the second half of the 18th century and were often smaller versions of soup tureens.
SOUP TUREENS
soup tureens were introduced c.1720, but examples dating from before 1750 are very rare today. Generally circular or oval and of heavy-gauge silver, they were set on four cast scroll, hoof, or ball-and-claw feet with cast scroll, ring, or drop handles at the sides and a domed cover with an ornamental finial; most are engraved with a coat of arms. Tureens designed in the 1730s and 1740s by famous French silversmiths such as Juste-Aurele Meissonnier ( 1695-1750) and Thomas Germain are among the most magnificent pieces of Rococo silver pair of tureens (1734-40), designed by Meissonnier for the English Duke of Kingston, is cast in the shape of lame shells on curving scroll bases, with the covers decorated with cast crustacea, game, and vegetables. These pieces were highly influential: vegetable, fish, and game finials are a feature of European tureens from the 1730s to the 1760x. In the I 750s matching stands and ladles became popular, and many tureens were fitted with detachable liners in thin sheet silver with two end handles; these are often sold separately as baskets. Sheffield-plate liners became more common after the 1770x.
In the Neo-classical period architects such as Robert Adam (1728-92) produced designs for tureens to match the dining-room furnishings. Adam’s designs particularly influenced silversmiths, and tureens of this period arc generally oval on a single pedestal foot, with high loop handles, a ring handle, or an urn finial on the cover, and reeled, beaded, and gadrooned edges; decoration includes fluting, swags, palmettos, and bands of Vitruvian scrolls. Soup and sauce tureens were often made as sets from the 1770x, but these are now rare. Tureens were also made in Sheffield plate. The handles and feet of such pieces were not cast but stamped in two halves from thin sheet metal, filled with lead, and soldered together; in many cases a silver panel was inserted for engraving the armorials.
Early 19th-century Regency tureens contrast strongly with the elegant forms of the late 18th century: massive and of heavy-gauge silver, they are richly decorated with lion masks and Classical ornament and have four cast shell, scroll, dolphin, or paw feet. The best pieces have solid cast crests and heraldic devices on the cover. Due to the increasing popularity of the ceramic dinner service, fewer silver tureens were made in the first half of the 19th century. However, a distinctive form of the 1830s and 1840s was the melon-shaped tureen with cast vegetable finials, typical of the Rococo Revival style.
Silver disks for engraved coats of arms or crests, are often easily visible. More ornate and expensive examples have cast-and-applied swag ornament, with fruit- or bud-shaped finials; some especially fine pieces made by the renowned Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) also have radiating fluting on the covers. In addition, some sauce tureens were engraved with a crest or coat of arms on both the cover and the body; any armorials on the cover should match those on the body. In the late 18th century engraved armorials Such as these were often ten enclosed within wreaths or ribbon cartouches.
In the early 19th century silver sauce tureens were made in fewer numbers (sometimes in Sheffield plate), as ceramic examples (particularly those in creamware) became more popular and widely available. However, some heavier versions in both silver and Sheffield plate, with large, cast, drop-ring handles and elaborate mounts, finials, and decorative borders, standing on four feet, survive from this period, while the Neo-classical boat shape was revived at the end of the century.
SAUCE TUREENS
Sauce tureens became popular from the 1770s. Unlike traditional cold accompaniments to meat, such as mustard and redcurrant sauces, the new French sauces were served hot – meaning that tureens with lids were more practical than open sauceboats for keeping them warm. Sauce tureens were usually made in pairs or sometimes as a set of four – one for each corner of the table – and some had matching ladles. Single tureens are generally less collectable than a pair, and sets of four fetch considerably higher prices. Some examples have matching stands, as with sauceboats, to protect the table from the heat of the tureen’s contents and to hold the ladle when not in use, although other pieces have covers with a notch inside the tureen where the ladle could be placed.
Like soup tureens of the period, sauce tureens from the late 18th century are characteristically oval or boat-shaped, with elegant upswept loop handles and a single pedestal foot. The cover will often be steeply domed in the centre, with the finial at the same height as the top part of the handles. The body of the tureen was raised from a single sheet of silver, while the handles and foot were made separately and soldered onto the body. The majority of early tureens have cast handles, but from about 1790 a number were made from thick silver wire. These delicate handles, which could be very easily damaged by lifting the tureen when full, were sometimes reinforced at the bottom, but it is always important to make sure that the handles have not been pulled away from the body; nor should there be any cracks or tears on the lid where any reinforcing plate that secures the finial has been damaged and/or repaired.
Sauce tureens of this period tended to be sparingly decorated, usually only with reeding, gadrooning, or beading around the rims, covers, and feet; small, urn-shaped finials on the lid were common, but these
were generally replaced with a single reeded or plain ring handle from the early 1790s on onward. On such plain pieces scratches, dents, and, on versions made from Sheffield plate, inserted

Soup tureens• CONDITION seldom good as many pieces suffered from over-use and cleaning; pieces were raised from a single sheet and should therefore not have scams, thinning of metal may indicate removed armorials
• COLLECTING examples were usually made singly but sometimes in pairs; many were produced with stands, liners (often in Sheffield plate), and ladles, but these are typically missing or have been sold separately
Marks
These should appear on both the cover and the base; armorials on the cover should match those on the body
Sauce tureens• CONDITION with the earliest designs (typically featuring a pedestal foot and loop handles) it is particularly important to check for cracking, splitting, and signs of repair where the foot, finial, and handles, join the body
• COLLECTING examples were made from the I 770s, in pairs or sets of four; from c.1790 reeded or plain ring handles were common on the lid instead of the finial
Marks
The cover and body should feature the same mark; a crest on the cover should match that on the body

Dining-tables after 1840.
The 19th-century middle classes seem to have emphasized their much-vaunted family values with grandiose dining habits. The tendency during the later 18th century to eat in a dining-room furnished with a single large table rather than, more intimately, with several smaller ones, as had been the custom earlier in the 18th century, was developed most spectacularly in the baronial interiors of the Victorian nouveau riche, who recalled picturesque “Metric England” with long, rectangular dining-tables resplendent with “Tudorbethan” carved legs of massive bulbous form. The various styles of earlier periods were all recorded in the dining-table.
THE LEGACY OF THE EARLIER PERIODS
The fashion for this somewhat pompous dining furniture percolated through to the inhabitants of villas and terraced houses as well as the minor gentry in the country, who now found space for a dedicated dining-room whose central focus was a capacious table suitable for Victorian family meals. Expansion was the order of the day, and while few of these rooms could accommodate the 30- or 40-seater tables that only half filled the awesome spaces of mansion or baronial dining rooms, many were furnished with moderately sired tables that could be made bigger by the addition of leaves or the raising of flaps.
This idea of extending tables was nothing new. Tables with gateleg supported flaps had been in existence for more than two centuries, and “draw-tables”, with extending tops that could double the length of a rectangular table, for just as long. Dining-tables with extensions based on the gateleg principle were in use from c.1730. The D-end table, which could have extra leaves inserted, proved its worth from the 1750s onward, and the pedestal dining-table, made in sections and most convenient for sitters’ knees and feet, was
developed in the late 18th century. Extending tables with the “lazy tongs” telescopic underframing, which had been patented in 1805 In, Richard Gillow (1734-1811) of the firm of Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster, were a popular introduction during the early 19th century. All these principles were exploited in the search for adaptability in the dining-rooms of Europe and North America. Some later 19th-century rectangular tables had as many as ten extra leaves to allow expansion from six or eight seats to twenty or thirty, and the round multi-segmented Jupe tables, patented in 1835, were copied with minor variations for the rest of the century.
MATERIALS AND DECORATION
Timbers were as varied as ever; mahogany, walnut or oak were most usual for large extending tables, while busily figured burr woods, amboyna, maple, or birch were favoured for the more ostentatious pillar tables, the tops of which might be covered in floral marquetry or intricate Gothic and Renaissance patterns in variously coloured woods. Throughout most of the 19th century the majority of dining-tables, of whatever shape or revival style, were fitted with casters, which allowed them to be moved around the room, and also enabled the extensions to run smoothly from the main framework. The architect Augustus Welby Northmorc Pugin (1812-52) was probably the first to break this general rule. His reformed Gothic style vle signalled a departure from the usual revivalist compromises, and his dining and other tables, whether of stark monastic simplicity or great decorative refinement, have their feet set directly and firmly on the floor. Progressive designers of the later 19th and early 20th centuries tended to follow his lead in this respect, but casters continued to be used on most mass-produced tables in the mainstream styles.
The dining-room was traditionally a place for ostentatious display of a distinctly masculine cast, and 19th-century exaggerations of earlier characteristics and styles were often most pronounced in dining-room furniture. The top of the dining-table itself was generally covered with a white damask tablecloth when in use, but legs offered plenty of opportunity, for conspicuous decoration, and even the tops of extending dining-tables, exposed at times, usii had deep moulded edges and ornamented friezes.
NEW TYPES OF TABLE
Some of the earlier systems of table extension were refined or slightly N altered during the later 19th century, but there was little real innovation. One of the few mechanical
developments was the square or rectangular table in two sections with a long metal screw under the top, which could be unwound with a special handle inserted at one end. Once the sections were fully separated, an extra leaf or leaves could be fitted into the middle. This system was adopted widely for the more ordinary dining-tables of the second half of the 19th century, of which examples abound today. The handles are often missing, but these call be easily replaced.
Not all ditung-tables were of the extending variety. A popular form, and one which could be embellished ill the widest variety of styles, was the round loo table. This table was
onginally conceived during the early 19th century for the card game of lantcrloo, but was probably later used just as often as a dining-table. I he top, chatacteristicalb, supported on a central sturdy pillar, could usually be tipped up when not in use, arid was often the vehicle for decoration, with flamboyant inlays or marquetry on the surface, and carving or moulding round the edge and on the pillar.
REVIVAL STYLES
Dining-tables were made in 19th-century interpretations of Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, and Neo-classical styles, and eery often in an indiscriminate mixture of several of these at the same time. The Practical Cabinet Maker and upholsterer’s Treasury of Designs ( 1847) of Henry
Whitaker (active 182)-50) included illustrations of “Dining-Table Standards (pillars l and Legs” of both “Elizabethan” and “Italian” flavour, liberally carved with scrolls, fluting, and “jewelled” patterns in the Renaissance Revival style, or with fruiting vines. Mid-19th-century attempts to reform taste and purify design were largely unsuccessful, and dining-tables, like other furniture chosen by most of the population, continued to reflect the stylistic confusion and ornamental excess that characterized the period. However, from the 1860s, the efforts of the reformers gractualb, began to take effect. The firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (est. 1861) in London, set up by the reformer and designer William Morris ( 1834-96), produced radical (and sometimes lavishly painted) furniture that became fashionable, at least among all influential elite (alongside furniture in the more cornmerciall, successful Chippendale Revival style), and the work of such designers as William Borges ( 1827-81), Owen Jones (1809-74), and Bruce J. Talbert (1838-81) was conscientiously Gothic in style.
The Japanese taste that swept Europe and North America after the International Exhibition of 1862 in London resulted in a wave of “aesthetic” fervour, turning table legs into spindly supports in real or imitation bamboo or with fretwork. However, on the whole, more solid styles such as “Old English”, “Jacobean”, or “Gothic” (but of a somewhat simpler and lighter form than before) were preferred for dining-room furniture.
Traditional forms, such as oval tables supported on pillars at either end, or tables with draw-leaf tops, were treated with stylish originalirv, but there were still plenty of dining-tables in revivalist modes for those who could not wean themselves from the past.