Posts Tagged ‘marinot - acid-etched clear glass bottle and stopper 19’

Antique Mid 19th Century Japanese Furniture.

HAVING REMAINED almost completely
isolated from the rest of the world for several hundred years, Japan entered a period of momentous and unprecedented change in the mid 19th century, instigated by the Kurofune Raiho (visit of the black ships) in 1853. Commodore Perry’s American fleet effectively forced the Tokugawa government to reopen Japanese ports to international trade.
THE NEW ORDER
Japan had been a rigid feudal society, steeped in conservatism and slow to change. In 1868, after a short civil war, the last Shogun was overthrown and
the Meiji Emperor — Mutsuhito, who ruled from 1867 to 1912 — was restored, promising modernization. Japanese industries developed at an astounding rate, and her citizens began to turn their backs on many aspects of their traditional past and adopt Western attitudes and customs.
Changes were gradual at first. Although it became fashionable among the wealthy elite to add rooms with a Western theme to their houses, these were generally areas in which to
Six-panel silk and paper screen This screen is
decorated with a stylized landscape scene depicting wildlife – predominantly birds – in their natural habitat. c.1880.
DISPLAY CABINET-ON-STAND
This rosewood display cabinet is from the Meiji period (1867-1912). It has an elaborately carved pediment and stand, both featuring representations of birds and vegetation. The cabinet also has a number of inlaid gold lacquer
panels. Some of the panels slide open to reveal numerous interior shelves and compartments. The relief-carved ivory, bone, mother-of-pearl, and lacquerwork depict figural scenes, floral arrangements, and birds. The whole cabinet is of very fine quality. Late 19th century.
TWO-FOLD LACQUERED SCREEN
Consisting of two lacquer panels, this hinged screen from the Meiji period has carved rosewood and mahogany surrounds and a similarly carved rosewood and mahogany frame. The face of the screen is inlaid with
ivory and mother-of-pearl, and depicts an anthropomorphic battle of frogs, including a commander, infantry, standard-bearers, and trumpeters. The back of the screen is decorated with flowering cherry trees in togidashi (lacquerwork). Late 19th century.
entertain guests, rather than living spaces. Traditional Japanese furniture, rectilinear and plain, was the product of a culture in which people sat on the floor to eat and converse. Cabinets and tables therefore had very short legs. The case furniture in many houses was limited to a large chest for storing bedding, a smaller chest, and a stand for a mirror.
Modular living spaces were divided by a paper screen, typically consisting of two to six panels, and often decorated with paint or simple inlays of ceramic or wood. The joints in the lacquer frame were sometimes disguised with metal mounts. Lacquer was by far the
most common form of surface decoration — usually in black, though sometimes in red.
EXPORT FURNITURE
The greatest changes within the furniture industry were those that catered to the export market. The unsurpassed quality of Japaneselacquer was widely known in the West, and craftsmen began to construct cabinets and screens with gold lacquer grounds, elaborately inlaid with precious natural materials, including ivory and mother-of-pearl, to form designs with Japanese motifs such as dragons or Samurai. This kind of crowded
decoration was anathema to Japanese taste but very popular in the West, and business was brisk.
The export market also benefited from a renaissance among Japanese woodworkers. Although intarsia techniques had been widely understood in Japan for more re than 1,000 years, they had fallen into disuse owing to the preference for lacquered furniture. A process known as Ran Yosegi, or “random parquetry”, whereby mosaics of different woods were assembled to draw attention to their various textures and colours, established the Hakone region as the pre-eminent centre of intarsia work in Meiji Japan. Later,
craftsmen began to adapt Kimono designs for use on furniture, and the process became more refined as it was mechanized.
Japanese expertise in manipulating wood extended to the art of carving. Again, this was an alien concept to most Japanese and the bulk of carved furniture produced in Japan at
this time was sent to international exhibitions and sold abroad. Friezes and crests were carved with scenes adapted from shrines and temples. Traditional Japanese symbolic motifs, such as ripped leaves signifying autumn, delighted Western consumers and found a ready market.
The black-lacquered base
provides a perfect foil for the
silver panel scenes.
DECORATIVE IRON CASKET
The cover of this iron casket by Ryuunsai Yukiyasu is inset with a copper panel decorated in silver and gold relief with a basket of flowers and insects. The sides depict aquatic scenes, flowering trees, and Mount Fuji. The inner rim is ornamented with wisteria and grape vines. c.1870.
FOLDING CHAIR
This red-lacquered priest’s folding chair is from the Edo period (1603-18671. The back is gold-lacquered and carved with manji diaper and a trellis of repeated manji motifs. Originally manji was a Sanskrit symbol that has come to represent
Buddhism in Japan. Mid 19th century.
COLLECTOR’S CABINET
This unusual lacquered cabinet has been made as two stacking parts. The front and sides have recessed panels decorated with roundels on a deep gold ground. The roundels show various scenes in gold and silver, and display a variety
of techniques, including lacquerwork. The upper section of the cabinet has two doors, which open on to a fitted interior containing ten shallow and eight deeper drawers. The lower section has two deep drawers. The whole stands on shaped sabre feet.
The shaped sabre feet are mounted m metal.
There is an arrangement of five
shallow and four deep drawers
behind each cabinet door.
The roundels depict stylized rural and landscape scenes m gold, silver, and coloured lacquerwork.

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.

Davenports
An entry made in the 1790s in the records of the cabinetmakers Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster states: “Captain Davenport, a desk”. This is thought to be the first recorded example of the small writing cabinets now called by the Captain’s name. It is not known whether he ordered the desk for his own use, or as a gift for a lady.
For most of the 19th century the Davenport was generally used by women. The basic form, consisting of a small chest-of-drawers with a desk compartment on top, changed very little over the century or so during which most examples were produced. However, there were many minor variations. Most Davenports have four drawers that open at the side of the base sections, with simulated drawer fronts on the opposite sides. Just above the drawers there may be pull-out slides to hold papers or finished letters. Some examples depart from this pattern, with cupboards concealing drawers, but either way the arrangement is symmetrical, with dummy drawers or cupboard doors matching the real ones. Many Davenports are fitted with casters, allowing them to be moved about easily; because of their free-standing nature, they should be well veneered and finished to the same standard on all four sides.
The top section typically comprises a desk with a sloping lid inset with a leather writing surface, and a flat ledge behind it enclosed by a brass or wooden gallery.
One or two small drawers for storing writing implements and ink pull out sideways below. The finest examples have ingeniously concealed hinged drawers.
The first Davenport has a top section that slides forward to accommodate the writer’s legs and is anchored by a simple iron rod sliding into holes lined up in the top and bottom. As the Victorian period progressed (from c.1847), the desk section was more often fixed in the writing position, and supported on elaborately scrolled or turned supports or brackets, allowing a recessed space for more leg room, and emphasizing the width of the piece. However, the catalogue of the firm of William Smee & Sons (est. 1817) of Finsbury Pavement in London, which is undated but was probably produced c.1840, shows examples with both sliding- and fixed-desk sections.
While mahogany was the most popular wood for Davenports, some of the finest examples were made in rosewood,
particularly during the Regency period. These were often embellished with stringing lines of brass, a contrast carried further by the use of decorative brass drawer-handles, gilt-brass galleries at the back, and brass tappings on the feet.
Most Victorian Davenports had wooden galleries, and these could take the form of simple mouldings, turned spindles, or lacy fretwork. Turned wooden drawer knobs also replaced earlier brass handles, but some of the finest mid-19th-century Davenports had brass galleries and gilt-brass candle sconces on rotating arms fixed to the sides of the desks toward the back.
The popularity of the Davenport continued until the end of the l 9th century, but few of these late examples, often over-ornamented and of generally clumsy proportions, matched the quality of craftsmanship of those made up to the 1860s.
• CONSTRUCTION two main types: the plain Regency
box-type, which has a reading slope that slides.
forward, creating a comfortable knee aperture, and the type introduced c.1840, which has a rising superstructure and a recessed knee aperture
• WOODS the most common woods used were rosewood, mahogany, and burr-walnut.
• MECHANISM the rise on the mechanical Davenport runs on a leather belt and weights; it is released by a spring lock that opens to reveal pigeon holes and drawers.
• COLLECTING the Regency Davenport tends to be more popular than later Victorian examples; although collectable, Davenports are not as usable as bureaux; good-quality examples are well finished on all sides, and also on the inside.