Posts Tagged ‘friezes’

MID 19TH CENTURY CHESTS OF DRAWERS

MANY OF THE CHESTS made and sold in this period were direct descendants of their 18th-century counterparts. The chest was still in widespread use, both in the bedroom as a clothes store and in the salon, very often for display purposes only. Examples with specialist uses, such as music cabinets and folio chests, augmented the range of commodes, cabinets, and vitrines already found in the home. The traditional low, broad chest was frequently of very fluid form, incorporating serpentine, bombe, or bowfront curves reminiscent of 18th-century styles. Elaborate commodes were rare, however, and, in the drawing room, were often replaced by credenzas, or side cabinets.
CONTRASTING STYLES
A more contemporary look was provided by a new generation of tall and slender, rather elegant, filing cabinets, precipitated by the bestselling Wellington chest. These filing
cabinets tended to be less fussy than the more old-fashioned chests of drawers, particularly those in the Rococo-revival style, which were often excessively ornamented. Profuse use of gilt-metal mounts, sabots, and inlays combined with marble tops, carved skirts, friezes and aprons, and intricate marquetry decoration often made these very busy items of furniture. Neoclassical and Gothic forms sat alongside chests in the Rococo style, although these labels often referred to little more than token applied decoration, used by cabinetmakers to distinguish an otherwise plain piece of furniture.
FAVOURED WOODS
Tropical hardwoods, such as mahogany and rosewood, were frequently used for chests, although Dutch cabinetmakers often substituted walnut for their marquetry-decorated pieces, and cherry wood was sometimes used in the United States.
FRENCH COMMODE
This 18th-century-style commode has a moulded, veined marble top above a Rococo-style, rosewood- and walnut-veneered bombe case with polished, gilded, bronze mounts. The front of the piece is inlaid with colourful
marquetry, and shows an asymmetrical floral pattern. The case is set on cabriole legs. It is an accurate copy of a Louis XV commode and uses expensive materials. However, this mid 19th-century example was constructed by
machine rather than by hand.
ITALIAN PARQUETRY COMMODE
This kingwood parquetry commode is of bombe form and has a moulded Siena marble top above two chequer-veneered drawers. Each drawer has a flower-head motif centred over
the escutcheon plate. The same motif appears on the sides of the case. It is raised on square, cabriole legs, terminating in sabots. Although almost an exact copy of an 18th-century piece, its excessively slender legs reveal its 19th-
century origins.
DUTCH CHEST OF DRAWERS
The moulded top of this Dutch, Empire-style, walnut and marquetry tall chest of drawers has an outset frieze drawer. Below this are five equal-sized drawers, decorated sans traverse with fine floral marquetry inlaywork, which
exhibits a mixture of mid 18th- and late 18th-century styles in its overall design. The oval border is Neoclassical in inspiration, while the floral design within it is asymmetrical and, therefore, more Rococo in style. The case is supported on tapering, square-section feet. 1880.
FRENCH FILING CHEST
This late Louis XVI-style ebony and brass filing chest has a moulded edge above eight drawers. The drawers have leather fronts and brass catches and are supported on a plinth base. c,1900.
ANGLO-INDIAN WELLINGTON CHEST
Made of the distinctively striped coromandel wood — a type of ebony from the Coromandel coast of India —this Wellington chest also features surface carving typical of the subcontinent. c.1880.
BRITISH WELLINGTON CHEST
The moulded top of this figured maple chest protrudes above its frieze. Beneath the frieze are seven graduated drawers, flanked on either side by a locking flap. At the top of each flap is an applied scroll-leaf decoration. 1860.
GERMAN COMMODE.
This mahogany commode has a protruding rectangular top above four flame-mahogany veneered drawers. The front of the case has canted corners, with a carved scroll and acanthus top and bottom. The case is supported on carved scroll, bracket feet. c.1850.
FRENCH COMMODE
This bowfront kingwood commode has a moulded, veined marble top. The four drawers have veneered fronts, and are divided and flanked by brass-lined flutes. A veneered herringbone pattern is on each side. The commode has a shaped apron with gilt mounts and stands on bracket feet. c.1900.
AMERICAN CHEST OF DRAWERS
This chest has been grain-painted in ochre and yellow with dark green mouldings and recessed side panels. The backboard is dark green with the initials “A” and V’ in gold and copper. The chest has two short above four long drawers. Each side panel is stencilled with a vase of flowers.
AMERICAN BUTLER’S CHEST
This cherry wood chest has panelled sides and four dovetailed drawers with glass handles. The top drawer has a drop front with spindle columns and opens onto a fitted interior with four drawers, eight cubbyholes, and a central prospect door. Mid 19th century.
BRITISH CREST OF DRAWERS
This rectilinear chest of drawers has two short above three long, equal-sized drawers. Each drawer is decorated with laurel swags, and the long drawers also feature a central carved rosette. The chest is supported on a shaped plinth base. Late 19th century.
GERMAN COMMODE
This small commode is made from solid mahogany and veneered in various exotic woods. There is a single frieze drawer below the moulded top and two additional, bombe-form drawers decorated, sans traverse, with flowers, figures, and rocaille. c.1900.

Furniture and the Renaissance
There was a revolution in thinking in the fifteenth century which was much apparent in the visual arts but fed through more slowly to the design of furniture. Most of what was made was just a reworking of old themes and styles, even in Italy which was the forerunner of new forms of arts at this time. It was in Italy that late Gothic elements were first replaced by architectural forms such as pilasters, rounded arches, and columns. These designs were decorated with motifs borrowed from classical antiquity.
A 16th century carved cupboard attached to a wall.
This included rosettes, toothed friezes, parallel, and egg and tongue mouldings. Where the structure of the furniture had previously been obvious it was now less obvious and greater emphasis was placed on the beauty of the shape of the piece itself.
Interior furnishing of the home was further extended during the Renaissance with hat stands, mirrors, busts, and bookcases. The choice of furnishings were largely dictated by the architectural character of Renaissance homes.
The functional form of the furniture was partly determined by aesthetic considerations.
CHESTS
This new style was found in chests of the time which became one of the main decorative pieces in the homes of the era. At first the chests were assembled from framing and panels which were initially solely decorated with simple geometric patterns. Subsequently the tops of these chests were embellished with human figures placed at the corners and the panels were often supplemented with mythological or historical scenes.
Chests changed shape in the second half of the fifteenth century, becoming more cubic.
The geometric shapes of the surfaces were now enhanced with figurative decorations and also with plant forms. The feet of these chests were strikingly decorated.
CABINETS
Cabinets and cupboards became increasingly more important in the furnishing of homes. At first these had appeared in town halls and sacristies but they now started to turn up in private homes.
A credence table was used as a dresser. This is a two-door cupboard with sliding leaves beneath a folding leaf with quite limited decoration.
Two cupboards were placed one on top of another in less important rooms that were decorated even less. Cabinets sometimes also possessed a slide out or fold-down leaf which could be used as a surface to write on so that they could act as a bureau.
There were also bookcases, with and without doors and chests of drawers.
A 17th century oak pillow cabinet inlaid with walnut and palisander from the southern Netherlands.
BEDS
A higher standard of living brought a further showpiece into homes — the bed. This formed part of the fitted furniture, attached to the walls. The principal end of the bed was raised and at first sat on a chest-like base but this disappeared around 1500.
During the high Renaissance the bed featured superb examples of sculpture. The richly embellished pillars bore a canopy.

TABLES
Ancient stone furniture inspired Italian craftsmen in their construction of tables leading to two or three highly decorative side-pieces, with caryatids, acanthus scrolls, and winged fantasy animals.
SEATING
Great value was placed upon elegance and comfort by people in this era and this is apparent from their stools, backed chairs, and other seats. Regional variations now arose in the different types of seating.
France
The French were the first to be influenced by Italian arts — because of their eager meddling in Italian politics. Hence the first foreign country to adopt elements of the Italian Renaissance was France. The French were attracted by the reverence for classicism and the humanist attitude of the Italians. Italian artists were attracted to their court circles by the French aristocracy and yet the Gothic influences lived on long after this.
The early French Renaissance period saw development of the Frans I style, which saw late Gothic furniture acquire baluster legs, Corinthian capitals, friezes, pilasters, and decorative mouldings mixed with late Gothic characteristics. Chests, buffets, and benches retained an upright Gothic appearance.
Hence chests remained unchanged for a long time but dressers were used to store cutlery, tableware and other valuables.
The centre section was provided with a drawer for storage or was used to set out the cutlery and tableware. The top sat on Gothic pillars. Early dressers had the corners set back at an angle but later examples were more cubic in form as a result of the pilasters and pilaster legs.
The Gothic form of chair was retained but the armrests were raised and new ,architectural’ details were added. Despite the tremendous influence of the Italians, a new generation of French artists emerged who smothered furniture with a wealth of mouldings. These artists were mainly active in south-western France for in the north there was greater interest in functional design with both form and geometry arrived at logically. This found expression in an harmonic blend of neutral framework with modest decoration.
Cabinets were increasingly constructed with ever more slender legs. The body changed and was decorated with rich reliefs depicting the four seasons, the four elements, and ancient gods. Further south the form remained altogether more plump and cabinets still comprised two parts of equal size.
France already led the way in terms of style for the building of palaces for Royalty and the aristocracy by the sixteenth century. These needed to meet the increasingly refined way of life of the nobility. France also led the way in the style of the interior decoration and furnishings of such aristocratic dwellings. High-backed chairs are very characteristic of this era.
By the late sixteenth century, the shape of people was once more a consideration in the design of chairs and chair backs were lightly curved in order to make them more comfortable. Armrests ending with ram’s heads or scrolls rested on small turned column-like legs.
The high back of the Low Countries was exchanged for the low back of Italy. This development ended though when the Louis XIV style prescribed high chair backs. Very few chairs from this time have survived.
The bed with canopy established a firm place for itself in interior design in France in the sixteenth century. These used upright posts in the form of pilasters or caryatids (female muse forming a pillar) in the Italian manner and for the design of their tables too the French looked to Italy. The leaf was carried by two moulded side-pieces in the form of chimeras or Hermes. There are often column supports between the side pieces and the table leaf. Column legged tables were very popular. These had horizontal stretchers linking them in the form of a double T.
The centre of large halls were often filled with tables with six, eight, or nine legs. It is difficult to differentiate between Louis XIII and Louis XIV tables. This often makes it difficult to date such a piece.
Germany
The Italian Renaissance style die not make headway in Germany before 1500. Its adoption is largely due to the German artists Holbein and Durer. A great deal of work was done between 1525 and 1550 with drawings of ornamentation by the so-called ‘minor masters’. Their influence only extended though to the decoration of the surfaces while form and function remained unchanged.
Only the aristocracy really adopted Italian examples. The citizenry continued to use furniture with Gothic style elements until the arrival of Baroque.
Furniture increasingly became more centrally made in France during the Renaissance but this did not happen in Germany, which was largely fragmented at the time. Furniture in Germany therefore differed from region to region.
NORTHERN GERMANY
The greatest response to the new style was in northern Germany, largely due to examples in the engravings of Heinrich Aldegrever. Yet here too the field was not
wide open for greater ornamentation. There were two important types of cabinet: a large one with a Gothic style front with symmetrical mouldings, and a cabinet on tall legs that resembled a French dresser. The first of these types was decorated in a manner also found with chests from the Rhineland and Westphalia where the Gothic style endured. These chests were often decorated with long panels with lettering.
Most northern cabinets were made of oak while the preference in most other parts of Germany was for ash, larch, or deal (pine).
These timbers remained popular until well into the seventeenth century. High relief carving is particularly characteristic of northern German furniture of the time. The carcass was also decorated with allegorical or religious representations such as fertility rites and scrolls on the top moulding and also with sculptures of female muses as pilasters. This type of cabinet was made in Schleswig-Holstein until late in the Baroque era. Another type of piece that is typical of northern Germany is the small but tall ‘farmer’s’ cabinet.
There were a number of variations in type of northern German chests of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The variant originating from Luneburg was the least changed of these from its predecessors. This type was made by joining planks together and it stood on tall legs.
Those from Holstein were supported on chest-like bases and were decorated in the same manner as cabinets from this region. Chests from Bremen had the form of cube that is slightly taller than it is wide.
SOUTHERN GERMANY
There was a marked preference for fine inlay in southern Germany. Italian architectural features were introduced via Augsburg where the local cabinetmakers were very active in the use of exotic woods such as palisander and ebony and also native timbers like maple, beech, cherry, and poplar for inlaying. A characteristic of late Renaissance furniture is the thoroughness of its making. Decorative designs were made by famous artists such as Burgkmair and Holbein. The plinths, centre parts, and cornices of these cabinets gave them a somewhat horizontal appearance. The main lines of southern German cabinets are largely lost beneath a welter of ornamental and architectural detail.
In reality they still consisted of two pieces. The decoration comprised Doric friezes, vines, symmetrical grotesque motifs, egg and tongue mouldings, and triglyphs. The sculptor and architect Peter Flotner exerted considerable influ-
This early 18th century southern German or Czech trois corps or three part cabinet is of amboyna over deal. These cabinets incorporating a secretaire were made from Strasbourg to the Balkans.
The grain of the wood was also allowed its full expression. Southern German chests often had drawers in the bottom and the lids featured decoration divided into panels. The status of chests gradually reduced until eventually they were only found as furniture in farmhouses. Despite this chests were still made in southern Germany, with walnut being increasingly used.
Tables based on chests arrived in southern Germany from France and remained until late into the Baroque period. The influence of Gothic continued to be readily apparent.
Beds were free-standing with canopies mounted on posts with short valances or curtains. Very few chairs of this period from southern Germany have survived and those that have show clear signs of Italian Renaissance and German Gothic.
The ‘farmer’s chair’ with square seat is the simplest form. Extensively carved chair backs and angled legs were adopted from Italy. This type of chair continued in existence until well into the eighteenth century in the Alps and southern Germany. In addition, there were many chairs with square rear legs that extended upwards to form the uprights of the back of the chair. Richly carved horizontal stringers were placed between the legs to make the chair more rigid.
Another widely found type of chair has arms, leather seat, and scissor-legs. A new type of ‘Dutch’ armchair appeared around 1600 with turned legs or moulded balusters that became very popular in the seventeenth century. Folding chairs also continued in use, especially in Switzerland.
The Low Countries
The Catholic southern part of the Low Countries was mainly influenced by the French but the north went its own way. Furniture makers in the north were influential upon sculptors in Mecklenburg and Lubeck.
The preference in the Dutch Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was for inlay with contrasting coloured woods, especially with ebony and rails, balusters, and carved pilasters were greatly favoured. Chests of this period exhibit the same features. Between 1725 and 1750 there was a marked preference for richly carved pieces.
By the late sixteenth into the seventeenth century many homes had a two-storey cabinet with protruding cornice. The upper part of the cabinet was slightly set back.
There were many regional variants on this theme with cabinetstypical of North and South Holland, Zeeland (with tall legged underframe), and Gelderland. This type of cabinet was also much desired in Cologne where they developed their own richly embellished style.
England
There was some small but increasing influence from the European mainland on England during this period. The dominant style was Elizabethan, after the name of Queen Elizabeth, characterised by simple interpretation of French but mainly Flemish Renaissance. Gradually the Gothic pointed arches and rosettes were replaced by heavy baluster legs, friezes, and other classical architectural elements.
The solid oak ‘four-poster’ canopy beds of this era are famous and many can still to be seen in castles and great stately homes.

Bedside tables and washstands
Bedside tables and commodes, known as “night tables” in British 18th-century pattern-books, were first made in France during the second quarter of the 18th century. By the latter part of the century they were frequently supplied in pairs, one designed to conceal the chamber-pot, perhaps behind a tambour-fronted slide
or simulated drawer, the other to accommodate the basin for shaving and washing. These modest conveniences replaced the early 18th-century commode chairs – so frequently copied in the late 19th century, and betrayed so readily by their exaggeratedly deep friezes.
MID-18TH-CENTURY BEDSIDE TABLES
Known as tables de chevet, French mid-18th-century bedside tables were usually veneered in kingwood, tulipwood, and amaranth; provincial examples were made of fruitwood. Often decorated with floral marquetry, sometimes end cut across the grain – a technique particularly associated with Bernard van Risenburgh (c.1700-1765) and Pierre Migeon (1701-58) – Louis XV tables de chevet are distinguished by their waved galleried tops, pierced carrying handles to the sides, and cabriole legs, often with richly chased ormolu mounts. Extensively copied in Russia, Germany, and northern Italy, particularly in Genoa, they either supported two open tiers with marble tops or, on the most sophisticated examples, had lower tambour-fronted tiers, sometimes with simulated book spines, behind which the chamber-pots were concealed. Although this shaped rectagular form prevailed, Rococo tables de nuit of both kidney shape (a rognon) and oval form are also recorded, and these were inspirational to Swedish and Russian cabinet-makers in the second half of the 18th century.
ENGLISH NIGHT TABLES
The French fashion for night tables was adopted in Britain, and the basic form of the British commode had emerged by c.1760. Usually of mahogany, with waved or pierced galleried tops, they incorporate carrying handles above pairs of doors and shaped aprons. From the 1770s Neo-classical tables were restrained and firms such as Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster, manufactured tambour-fronted night tables with only crossbanding, ebony, and boxwood lines or raised panels to enrich the flamed mahogany veneer. Usually fitted with leather or wooden casters, bedside commodes usually display galleried, plain tray-tops and tambour-fronted slides,
simulated drawers, which pull out to reveal the lidded pots, often set within oak frames. An improvement of the 1780s was the refinement of having “split” front legs, cut diagonally, which, when closed, appeared to be one, the front sections of these pulling out with the pot-cupboard drawer to provide support, as opposed to the more ungainly use of six legs that appears on less sophisticated pot-cupboards.
From the 1770s, as a result of the influence of Louis XVI taste, night tables became increasingly light in both form and colour. As a result, bow-fronted commodes, often with slender, turned, tapering legs, veneered in exotic timbers and inlaid with Neo-classical marquetry, emerged. Gradually the rather cumbersome and heavy pattern of the 1760s was also superseded by the growth in popularity of pot-cupboards. Far narrower than their earlier counterparts, late George III pot-cupboards usually have plain three-quarter galleried tops above a single doors or tambour-slides and stand upon elegant turned legs; this form was also widely manufactured in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
EARLY 19TH-CENTURY POT-CUPBOARDS
The early 19th century saw a renewed and vigorous revival of the designs of Classical antiquity. Napoleon I’s succesful campaigns in Egypt, poularized by Baron Vivant Denon (1747-1825) in his Aventures daps la base et la haute Egypte ( 1802), led to an explosion of Egyptomania, and this was further expressed by v Thomas Hope (1769-1831), Who simultaneously embraced ancient Greece in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope (1807). Inevitably this renewed Neo-classical fashion was reflected in the design of pot-cupboards in the early 19th century. In France, therefore, firms of cabinet-makers such as Jacob Desmalter & Cie (est. 1767) in Paris manufactured mahogany pot-cupboards standing on plinths rather than on legs; these were sometimes battered or splayed, and mounted with Egyptian berms and crocodiles in ormolu.
In Germany, Austria, and northern Europe, the Empire style was interpreted in the designs of the Biedermeier movement from c.1815, and Biedermeier pot-cupboards are simlarly Classical in inspiration. Usually of mahogany, or indigenous woods, such as birch, Karelian birch, ash, or elm, they are enriched with ebonized and parcel-gilt decoration, perhaps with Egyptian-berm caryatids or lion’s-paw feet. Regency pot-cupboards in England also saw a return to the simple, clean lines and richly figured veneers of early Neo-classicism. The were made of mahogany,
often with only subtle, raised panel decoration. Perhaps the most famous design introduced at this time was the multi-purpose bedside steps; made by Gillow, and Usually of exceptionally good quality, they concealed the chamber-pot within the sliding first tread of the steps.
VICTORIAN COMMODES
During the 19th century bedside commodes and pot-cupboards became more utilitarian, and the discomfort of the early commodes, with their pull-out bases, was replaced by a comfortable and permanent, but still
disguised, seat. These metamorphic chests-of-drawers, first recorded c.1830 to 1840, were a huge improvement. Appearing on the outside to be plain chests, usually of walnut or mahogany, and standing on turned tapering feet, these chests of simulated drawers opened to reveal a fitted commode-chair. This design refinement was reflected in the quality of the interior, the commode no longer cheaply set within a carcase wood, such as pine or oak, but within a frame veneered with richly figured timbers such as satin-birch, amboyna, arid bird’s-eye maple. However, these luxurious Victorian bedside commodes, elaborate as they were, did not last; they were superseded by the widespread introduction of the water closet.
WASHSTANDS
Although basin-stands are recorded in the Middle Ages, it was not until the mid-18th century that washstands became pieces of furniture. Inspired by French prototypes and popularized by Thomas Chippendale ( 1718-79) in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754-62), mid-18th-century washstands, often of mahogany, tend to have twin-flap square tops, the flaps opening from the centre to reveal a fitted interior with sunken bowl, dressing compartments, and a rising mirror that lifts up from the back. Although the earliest examples are plain, more elaborate examples, carved with Gothic ornament, or pierced fretwork angles in the Chinese manner, were made in the 1750s and 1760s, and these were gradually superseded by Neo-classical marquetry in the 1770s. In the 1790s corner-washstands, as featured in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1791-1802) by Thomas Sheraton (1751 1806), also appeared, and this pattern enjoyed great popularity in North America. This period also saw the emergence of multi-purpose washstands, such as that designed by Thomas Shearer, which contained a bidet below the dressing-drawer.
In the 19th century, washstands became larger; often they had rectangular tops hinged to the backs and fitted with mirrors on the inside, above central basins and further compartments. From the 1830s they became more practical in design, and are distinguished by wash-boards or splash-backs, which with the basin frame, was often made of white marble. Often conceived as part of a bedroom suite in the late 19th century, the washstand became very elaborate, with cupboards, drawers, and shelves that sometimes framed a toilet-glass. Frequently of satinwood, perhaps painted with flowers and Classical figures, Edwardian and late Victorian washstands were occasionally enriched with Arts and Crafts tiles.
• POT-CUPBOARDS mid-18th-century pot-cupboards arc extremely rare; pairs of pot-cupboards are among the most commercially desirable objects, and can command a huge premium; however, beware, as they have often been either matched together by later carving or embellished at a later date with elaborate marquetry.
• CHAMBER-POTS it is increasingly rare to find the original porcelain or earthenware pot, but this should not affect value.
• CONVERSIONS numerous commode sections or commodes have been converted later into drawers or chests-of-drawers; this should be reasonably obvious when examining the carcase and does not dramatically affect the value
WASHSTANDS many Victorian and Edwardian examples exist; originally washstands were fitted
with marble tops with holes cut through for the bowls to sit in – most of these have now been replaced with solid marble tops.