Posts Tagged ‘library shelf’

Trays, knife-boxes, cutlery-urns, wine coolers, cellarets, and buckets
TRAYS
Known as “voyders” in the Middle Ages, and conceived not only for clearing away but also for the presentation of delicacies and sweetmeats, the earliest utilitarian trays were probably made of pewter and wood. During the late 17th century lacquered trays imported by the East India companies and European japanned versions revolutionized tray designs. The fashion for tea in the early 18th century was directly reflected upon all of the component parts of the tea ceremony.
Modest trays in oak and elm also survive from the early 18th century, and from the 1750s mahogany trays first appeared in pattern-hooks. Thomas Chippendale (1718-79), in the first edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754), included four designs for trays in the Chinese style with carved fret borders. However, this type is very rare, and Chippendale also supplied designs for plain rectangular trays. From the 1780s trays became increasingly decorative; they were made in mahogany, and other exotic timbers, were sometimes richly inlaid with shells, fan-parquetry, and foliate arabesques of stained fruitwood, or were painted. Late 18th- and early 19th-century trays were dominated by the fashion for japanning, particularly in papier-mache. A process long practised in Persia (now Iran), it was patented in 1772 by the firm of Henry Clay, in Birmingham, and later by Jennens &, Bettridge (active 1816-64) in London. Although papier-mache trays were often of scalloped form, rectangular trays with similar decoration were also fashionable, particularly those of tole peinte or polychrome-painted metal.
KNIFE-BOXES AND CUTLERY-URNS
Supplied in pairs as ornamental containers for silver and enamel-handled cutlery and designed to stand prominently on the serving table, knife-boxes came into fashion during the reign of George II ( 1727-60). Although the basic form, with a serpentine front, remained remarkably unchanged until the 1780s, George 11 knife-boxes were often ten covered with silk-velvet or shagreen, rather than veneered. From the 1760s knife-boxes in mahogany were made and are characterized by their bow-fronted form, hinged slope with drop-handles, and shaped bracket or claw-and-ball feet; they are unembellished apart from the cockbeaded or chequerbanded edges. The interiors, with slopes pierced with holes to display the cutlery in tiers, were also often silk lined but otherwise restrained. During the 1770s their decoration became increasingly lavish, with crossbanding and featherbanding, ebony-inlaid star parquetry to the slopes, and even stylized green-stained shell inlay – a motif particularly identified with North Country workshops – while the feet were discarded altogether in favour of Classical plinths. With the age of satinwood ( 1780-1800), elaborate Neo-classical embellishments became commonplace, and these were often complemented by richly engraved Sheffield plate Mounts. During the 1780s the vase-form knife-box, published by George Hepplewhite (d.1786) in The Cabinet-Maker and upholsterer’s Guide ( 1788-94), was designed to stand either set at each end of the sideboard or on pedestals. Made of satinwood or other light woods, the most refined examples were painted or inlaid with Neo-classical marquetry, arabesques, and simulated flutes, while the spring-loaded lids opened to reveal a chequerbanded interior with concentric tiers for the display of cutlery. During the early 19th century, knife-boxes and cutlery-urns became increasingly redundant both by sideboards with fitted drawers for storage, and by cutlery-urns being affixed to pedestals.
WINE COOLERS AND CELLARETS
As wine was an expensive luxury, receptacles for cooling and storing wine – whether of open-topped cistern (wine cooler) or lidded cellaret form, fitted with a lock, with divisions for bottles –were often lavishly decorated. Although metal and marble cellarets were first recorded in Britain in the late 17th century, it was not until the mid-18th century that lead-lined mahogany examples carved in the Rococo taste were made. Perhaps the most celebrated wine cooler is the Georgian form with a hexagonal or oval body, made of vertical sections of mahogany held together with two or three brass bands.
Neo-classical wine coolers and cellarets were usually conceived en suite with sideboards and pedestals, and were still predominantly of mahogany, although exotic timbers such as satinwood, padouk, and rosewood were also used. Although wine coolers with serpentine-channelled flutes to the body, which were directly inspired by Roman sarcophagi, and those with elaborate marquetry in a lighter style, continued to be made in the 1780s and 1790s, the most common examples were plainer mahogany- hooped with brass, with the lead-lined inside divided with partitions for the bottles. It is from this date that the majority of canted rectangular, circular, dome-lidded, and octagonal examples survive. Increasingly restrained in form and decoration, cellarets were rendered somewhat redundant by the inclusion of cellaret-drawers within designs for dining-room pedestals and sideboards.
During the early 19th century the lidded cellarets of Roman sarcophagus form, which were often of much larger size than its 18th-century predecessors, dominated Regency
pattern-books, and generally do not have stands. While firms such as Dillow (est. c.1730) of
Lancaster, Continued to supply cellarets in superbly figured
mahogany, from 1810 cabinet-makers under the
influence of George Bullock (c.1777-1818) increasingly promoted the use of indigenous English woods such as pollard oak and elm, frequently enriched with foliate marquetry arabesques in the “Buhl” style. However, from the 1830s this decoration became increasingly lavish, often combined with carving, and later Victorian cellarets arc often betrayed by their squatter, heavier proportions.
PLATE-BUCKETS AND PEAT-BUCKETS Plate-buckets are distinguished by their one-dished side that enabled servants to remove plates easily and straight-sided, or even polygonal form. Inspired by the need to ferry- plates the long distances from the kitchen to the dining-room, and usually made in pairs, plate-buckets were initially intended to be placed near the fire to keep the plates warm. The plate-bucket lent itself easily to embellishment and carving with pierced Gothick arcades, Chinese blind fretwork, and even marquetry inlay in the Neo-classical style; plain types were also made. The role of the plate-bucket was superseded in the late 18th century by the warmers enclosed within dining-room pedestals, and thus plate-buckets became increasingly plain, purely for use by servants for carrying china to the dining-room. The “peat-bucket” is an Irish term for a container traditionally thought to have been used for carrying peat to the fireplace. However, this is now thought to be unlikely as the bucket and peat together would have been very heavy indeed. It is now thought that they were used for carrying any number of items, including oysters. Although buckets are usually considered an English form, 18th- and 19th-century ones from The Netherlands arc among the most common found today, and can be distinguished from their English counterparts by their slightly smaller proportions, ribbed tapering bodies and, most characteristically, by the alternating use of light fruitwood and mahogany to give a streaked effect to the bodies.
• TRAYS 18th-century mahogany trays are rare; those that exist are often made from the leaves of old dining-tables; papier-mache trays may suffer from craquelure and
flaking; the best papier-mache examples have mother-of-pearl inlay.
• KNIFE-BOXES many have had the insides removed so that they could be converted to other uses – often as writing-cases in the 19th century; a premium is attached to those that retain their original fitments; examples with shell inlay sire usually from the North Country and Scotland; pairs of cutlery urns are very desirable.
• WINE COOLERS rare examples are those from the 18th century of carved mahogany or walnut.
• PLATE- AND PEAT-BUCKETS these are faked in huge numbers, often from old timber; look out for indications of consistent old damage, shrinkage, and seams to the brass bands, and beware of suspicious stains.

Stands and racks
The term “stand” is used in a wide-ranging sense and implies any kind of support. Although the word can be used for a piece joined to another item of furniture, such as a cabinet stand, this section looks at stands complete in themselves. Such stands were specifically designed to be both highly practical and easily portable. Although they were often embellished with the fashionable decorative qualities of the day, the common feature of these pieces was that function always prevailed over style.
FOLIO AND READING STANDS
The folio stand allowed the reader to store a heavy book temporarily, to browse through at leisure, rather than having to keep taking it down from a library shelf and replacing it. Folio stands were usually adjustable, often with hinged or ratchet actions, to allow for different thicknesses of books or to hold several at once. Before
the 20th century it was common practice to read standing up, but books were heavy to hold. A reading stand, designed for resting the book on, provided the solution. Some reading stands were also intended to hold Music scores, while others were more robustly constructed to take the greater weight of a book. Like folio stands, reading stands could be adjusted so that the reader was able to place the book at different heights and angles.
CANTERBURIES
Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) referred to two types of canterbury in The Cabinet Dictionary (1803): the music stand and the
supper tray. He described the first as “a small music stand”, or open-topped rack, with slatted partitions for the storage of loose sheets of music and bound music books. It generally had four short legs on casters, so that it could be moved or kicked away easily, and was short enough to be stored inconspicuously beneath the piano. Commonly used for the storage of magazines today, it was first introduced in Britain in the 1780s. It is thought that the canterbury was named after an Archbishop of Canterbury, for whom the first example was made. Two such stands were illustrated in A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1808) by George Smith (active c.1786-1826). He wrote that “they are intended for holding such music books as are in constant use and may be manufactured in mahogany, rosewood, or bronzed and gilt”.
Some stands had sides of wire latticework, and in these examples the slatted partitions were usually omitted. Others, for example some made for the International Exhibition of 1862 in London, were constructed of wood but decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay on papier-mache, which was then overpainted with gilt and coloured varnishes.
The second type of canterbury to which Sheraton referred was “a supper tray, made to stand by a table at supper, with a circular end, and three partitions cross-wise, to hold knives, forks, and plates, at that end, which is made circular on purpose”. Much taller than the music-stand type of canterbury, the supper tray resembles a small table. It was used, like the dumb waiter, when service in the dining-room was dispensed with, especially particularly at informal parties. It too stood on casters so that it was easy to move around, and often had splayed legs which provided greater stability.
DUMB WAITERS
First invented and used in
Britain c.1725, the dumb waiter consisted of a central shaft with
circular trays, which often revolved. The trays increased in size from top to bottom, and
terminated in a tripod foot. In The Cabinet
Dictionary, Sheraton described it as “a useful piece of furniture, to serve in some respects the place of a waiter, whence it is so named”. The absence of a human attendant helped confidential dining, and the dumb
waiter was generally placed at the corner of the dining-table for diners to help themselves to
additional plates, knives and forks, pudding, and cheese. After dinner, bottles of drink and glasses were placed on the trays of the stand.
Toward the end of the 18th century, the use of the dumb waiter had spread to France and Germany in differing forms. At that time in Britain, the dumb waiter was elaborated, and new varieties were introduced. Plain elegance was eschewed in favour of such decoration as Gothic fretwork, leaf moulding, and curves. Quadruped supports often supplanted the traditional tripod base. In 1803 Sheraton gave two new designs in his Dictionary: the first was “partly from the French taste”, and on the top was a thin layer of marble “which not only keeps cleaner and looks neater than mahogany, but also tends to keep the wine cool when a bottle for present use is placed upon it”. There were knife trays, shelves for plates, and holes, lined with tin, for bottles and decanters. Sheraton’s second design had two levels, not three, although there were drawers underneath the lower for cutlery or dirty plates, and it rested on a quadruped, spider-legged stand.
In the early 19th century in Britain a Classical air, which had no prototype in antiquity, was imparted to many types of furniture, including dumb waiters. Grecian motifs such as lyres provided novelty, and by the Victorian era designs for dumb waiters were as eclectic as those for any other piece of furniture.
WHATNOTS
This type of stand was intended to display a variety of objets d’art, ornaments, curiosities, books, and papers. Generally rectangular in shape, with three shelves, and possibly one or two drawers beneath them, they were supported by turned columns at the angles. The first published reference to the whatnot occurred in 1808 in the Correspondence of Sarah, Lady Lyttleton, but it is also mentioned in the cost books of the firm of
Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster eight years earlier. Whatnots were extremely popular throughout the 19th century. They were usually made of mahogany or rosewood, and were sometimes embellished with ormolu
mounts. In addition, the shelves of some pieces were
edged with pierced brass galleries.
ETAGERES
The French etagere, meaning “stand”, combined the qualities of the English dumb waiter and the whatnot. A two- or sometimes three-tiered table, it was intended either for displaying objects or for serving food. In some cases the top tier could be removed and used as a tray. Casters and handles on the lower tier enabled the piece to be pulled around a room. French etageres were more highly decorated and sinuous than their British counterparts. By the second half of the 19th
century there was an enormous variety of designs available, ranging from ones that recalled the Louis XIV and Boulle styles to those featuring ormolu mounts, gilding, naturalistic motifs, and exaggerated Rococo curves and scrolls.
MUSIC STANDS
While the Canterbury was for storing music, the music stand was designed for playing a score. Music stands were purely functional before c.1770. Professional musicians provided their own, utilitarian, stands and in any case often played sitting down. The development of the music stand as a decorative item marks the fashion in the late 18th century for private recitals, at which works by composers of the chamber form, particularly Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert, were played. Even then, function took precedence over adornment.
• ALTERATIONS often polescreens have been converted into music stands; ensure that all the platforms on dumb waiters match, and that a three-tier waiter has not been converted into a two-tier one: look carefully at the size of the tier, and the balance and proportions.
• COLLECTING canterburies arc generally very popular with collectors because of their small size, particularly Regency examples, which because of their delicate form have often had one or more of their divisions replaced; small whatnots with hinged tops are very commercial and are generally made in mahogany; the tiers of some dumb waiters were hinged at either side with two drop flaps so that they could be discreetly stored away; good-quality waiters have galleried tiers.