Posts Tagged ‘motifs in the dumb waiter’

Antiques Recently Found on Antcollectors (3) - Scandinavia

THE GREAT BRITISH VICTORIES of Abukir
(1798) and Trafalgar (1805), which opened up trade along the North Sea coastline, suggest that sympathy for Britain and British design could be evident in Scandinavian furniture. This was not always the case. Denmark and Sweden’s ambivalence to France encouraged the British Prime Minister, Pitt, to destroy the Danish fleet and bombard Copenhagen, creating much animosity towards the British. This affected trade and shipping and left the Danish-Norwegian economy at the point of bankruptcy in 1813.
So, although there are traces of British Neoclassicism in early 19th-century Scandinavian furniture, it was often due either to the residual effect of late 18th-century design, or it had filtered through the influence of north German cabinet-making.
The one positive outcome of these hostilities was that local craftsmen were protected from British competition and were encouraged to develop their own workshops and styles. As in the rest of Europe, the Empire style predominated, although it had marked local characteristics.
DANISH EMPIRE
A traditional preference for simplicity, and the need for frugality as a result of war and financial hardship, gave rise to a version of the prevailing French style called Danish Empire, which was taken up by three of the Scandinavian countries. Although mahogany was
favoured, and was used in the larger, wealthier cities, it was difficult to obtain due to war. As a result, the Danish Empire style made use of light local woods, such as alder, maple, ash, and birch, which could be polished to look like satinwood. Mahogany furniture did reappear after 1815, and was generally veneered on pine rather than oak pieces.
Danish furniture was often inlaid with contrasting woods, such as citrus, rather than having ormolu mounts. Inlaid lunettes and arched details were popular, as was the occasional pressed brass or giltwood detail.
One of the most distinctive chairs produced in Denmark was the klismos chair, designed by Nicolai Abilgaard in 1800 and now in the Copenhagen
Museum of Decorative Arts. Similar
to a chair later designed by the sculptor Hermann Freund (now in the Fredericksborg Castle), it mimics the ancient Greek original.
The Danish custom of using one room as a combined dining room, drawing room, and study at this time resulted in some unique types
of furniture. One of these, the Chatol, consisted of a cylinder bureau with a retractable writing slide, surmounted by cupboards for storing cutlery and glassware. Another was a divan, which had cupboards in the sides.
HETSCH STYLE
In Denmark, the Neoclassical style lasted into the 1840s, thanks to the late Empire style popularized by Gustav Friedrich Hetsch. Hetsch had studied with Charles Percier in Paris earlier in the century, returning to Copenhagen to direct the porcelain factory. He was also a designer and his works were often scholarly reproductions of antique prototypes. This style, which favoured the use of carved appliques and mouldings over mounts, is sometimes confusingly called Christian VIII after the Danish king who reigned from 1839 to 1848.
SWEDEN
Sweden was slightly more francophile in its tastes than Denmark, particularly in Court circles. The furniture in the Yellow Room at Rosendal Castle in Stockholm, created for the king in the 1820s, is closer to true French Empire style than any furniture produced in Scandinavia during the early 19th
century It was designed by Lorenz Wilhelm Lundelius, the leading craftsman in Stockholm.
A famous secretaire, made by Johan Pettey Berg in 1811, demonstrates how Swedish cabinet-makers absorbed German heaviness, combined it with Empire motifs (such as white marble pilasters), and added the occasional British reference, such as the Sheraton-inspired inlaid shell.
The Hetsch style eventually arrived in Sweden, but it did not become dominant because Neo-Gothic had taken hold there quite early Indeed, by 1828, there was already a room decorated in the Gothic style in the Royal palace in Stockholm.

BIEDERMEIER LOVE SEAT
This mahogany, Biedermeier-style love seat has a solid, rectangular form with outswept arms. The back and sides of the seat have brass-moulded panels and fan spandrels. The arms have rosette terminals and mahogany
facings. The seat rail has brass mounts and is supported on verdigris brackets, carved in the shape of drapery. The piece terminates in massive gilt and verdigris claw-and-ball front feet. The love seat has an upholstered back, sides, and seat. Early 19th century.

SWEDISH SECRETAIRE
The tall, flame-veneered case of this Swedish Empire secretaire has tapering sides. The upper section of the case has a fall front positioned beneath a shallow drawer. The lower section consists of three graduated drawers; the bottom
drawer has a cut-away arched shape. The piece is raised on rectangular block feet. This secretaire is made in the style of furniture from towards the end of the period and is a move away from the Empire style. It was possibly made by J.C. Reher. 1841.

DANISH ARMCHAIR
The substantial hooped-back, upholstered backrest of this mahogany armchair is raised on curved supports. The upholstered seat has square, tapered legs at the front and sabre legs at the rear. Early 19th century.
EVE LATE GUSTAVIAN ARMCHAIR
This Swedish gilt-and-painted armchair has an upholstered seat and back, a curved top rail with lion’s head terminals, and carved, down-sweeping arms. The padded seat is supported on a carved seat rail and is raised on turned and fluted legs at the front and sabre legs at the rear. Early 19th century.
LADY’S WORKTABLE
This late Gustavian Swedish worktable has an oval, galleried top above a single frieze drawer. The table top is supported on tapering legs terminating in brass caps and casters and joined by a shaped cross-stretcher.

Furniture
The first humans were nomads who moved from place to place and found what they needed about them from what nature provided. When they learned to cultivate the soil humans generally ceased living as hunter-gatherers. They established homes beside their cultivated land and meadows. At first these were simple huts of wood and reed, perhaps daubed with clay or mud. Later some of them learned to make homes built of natural stone and baked clay but this was more the exception than the rule.
The walls of their houses were often weaker than the solid timber doors. It is not surprising then that the ancient Greek word for a ‘housebreaker’ has the literal meaning of ‘he who breaks through a wall’.
Early furniture
Humans only began to make furniture when they started to settle in a fixed place.
Anntiques can sometimes contain surprises. The year 1703 is inscribed in the leaf of this table but when the table is turned around it becomes apparent the top was originally a door (the keyhole can still be seen). Does the date relate to the door or when the table was made?
The early furniture was understandably very primitive and entirely utilitarian but gradually the appearance of furniture also began to have more importance and it became decorated. The furnishings of wealthy households became more refined and unified in style.
Large-scale excavations and research have revealed a rich treasury of information about early cultures. These provide evidence of an abundant variety of design in crafts and architecture. A few surviving fragments of furniture and surviving illustrations show that the early Egyptians and people of Mesopotamia used tables, chairs, chests, and cabinets.
Furniture in antiquity was sometimes richly and extensively decorated. Inlay techniques with gemstones, wood, majolica, and metal were already known. They were not used again widely until the eighteenth century.
The ancient Greeks and Romans had stools, three-legged footstools, easy-chairs, and forms of chaise longue.
There were tables with one to four legs (card tables and folding tables) and also beds, plus large and small cabinets and chests. In Egypt these were made of different types of wood, leather, string, palm fronds, and reed. Luxury furniture was often decorated with glass and majolica with fittings of precious metal.
Greek furniture
Comfort and aesthetic appearance of furniture was intentionally combined in Ancient Greece. In addition to chairs, tables, and chests of widely differing forms they also made high-backed lounging chairs or chaise longues and lightweight portable beds. Typical decorations on such furniture included stylised acanthus leaf motifs, meanders, metopes, eggand-tongue moulding, and parallel mouldings. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Hellenic sphere
This chair of mixed styles is of no value to purists. The back is Louis XV, the legs are Queen Anne, and the sides are Louis XV.
of influence extended throughout the eastern end of the Mediterranean. This led to an interchange between the upper echelons of Hellenic society and the local populace which became apparent in arts and crafts.
THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE
The Romans made contact with Greece and the Hellenic empire from the third century BC. In the centuries which followed, the Greeks became subject to the Romans but the Romans were in turn conquered by Hellenic culture.
The leading Roman scholars studied Greek and Greek literature and adopted Greek religions. Religious subjects were very important in Greek art and the Romans adopted this too.
Although there were differences between them it is possible to speak of a Greco-Roman classical culture.
The spread of this culture and its longterm influence was of great importance in the civilisation of western peoples and manifested itself in their arts. Think of the furniture makers of the Renaissance and Classicism who harked back to Greco-Roman forms of art. This classical influence has also been felt in later trends in which the specific intention has been to depart from the strictures of classical forms. Examples of this are Jugendstil and Art Nouveau around 1900 which determined to break free of both classical forms and their bombastic derived forms in the neo-styles.
Roman furniture
The Hellenic culture developed further during the rise of the Roman empire. Flexible furniture was made using metal and lathes were already in use. There were many forms of table but these were mostly round. Large pieces were decorated with plaster reliefs of chimeras, lions, and acanthus leaf motifs. Small numbers of folding chairs, tables, and bronze chairs have survived from this period. The Romans also had furniture with shelves.
Medieval furniture
Early Middle-age furniture
Knowledge of the majority of tools and techniques disappeared in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and were only rediscovered once more in the late Middle Ages. Certain techniques were retained though within the walls of monasteries.
An example is the lathe that once stood in the monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland. Knowledge of this technology and of other techniques spread once more through Europe from the ninth century.
A characteristic of the time was the lack of a fixed home. The rulers (kings and
queens) travelled from castle to castle and took furniture with them that needed to be portable: bed-side cabinets, beds, dining tables, chests, lounging chairs, lecterns, foot stools, three-legged stools, and folding chairs. The many different styles and shapes from the early Middle Ages is the result of localised culture, and the tools and materials available.
The personal tastes of the persons ordering items also differed and hence so did the styles of their furniture. This ranged from outstanding to ordinary, from intricate to simple, from royal to bourgeois or even somewhat rustic.
CHESTS
Chests were very important during the Middle Ages. They were used to keep money in particular but also clothing and tableware in. Northern European chests were mainly of softwood such as deal and other pine. The main tool used to make these were an adze (specialist woodworker’s axe), saw, and perhaps also a plane. These chests took various forms including those with saddle-form lids, elongated chests with decorative but straight moulding, and others that had the form of a coffin.
Middle-Age chests were also the first pieces of furniture to be artistically enhanced with very rich decoration. Northern European wood carving with arabesque motifs and twists was exceptionally imaginative.
New techniques for making furniture were first developed in southern and central Europe and the fronts of chests were embellished with copious curvilinear mouldings, irises, rows of stopped arc-forms, rosettes, and carved decorative mouldings. Iron fittings were not just used to join the wooden planks together but also formed part of the decoration. The few rare pieces from this period are mainly found in museums.
Gothic furniture
The feudal system began to change in western Europe in the twelfth century and standards of living gradually improved. The concept of chivalry, high moral principles, and courtly practices became increasingly more important. The nobility became increasingly more interested in pomp and splendour and much the same was true of the towns and cities, where the guilds in particular were of great influence in the development of the painting as an art form.
The guilds ensured the quality of goods and professionalism of craftsmen. The guilds also kept the various hand crafts entirely separate from each other. New guilds were even formed from within the timber workers’ guilds for joiners, turners, and cabinetmakers who specialised in finer quality furniture. Furniture only became everyday items in the late Middle Ages. Pieces from this period only turn up for sale very exceptionally. The form, design, and standard of joinery often exhibit high standards of craftsmanship. The sawmill was invented in Germany in the early fourteenth century and this enabled cabinetmakers to make lighter and more elegant pieces.
It was now readily possible to saw pieces for the construction of a carcass and furthermore very thin pieces of timber could be cut to use as veneer.
These were used for inlay work of wood of contrasting colours. This development also led to a new style of art arising: Gothic. This first became apparent in the building of churches which we can still enjoy to this day, with great richness of sculpture, slender columns, and pointed arches.
GOTHIC CHESTS AND CABINETS
Chests were still the main form of show in his home for the increasingly better-off citizen. In the fourteenth century these were often decorated with reliefs of heraldic animals but this gradually gave way to a series of Gothic arches and by the late Middles Ages to finials. The type of ornamentation was determined by the wood used and varied from area to area. Timber from conifers decorated with leaf motifs was used in southern Germany, Austria, and Tyrol. Joiners in the Rhineland and North East France decorated pieces with garlands of fruit and flowers, and stylised vine stems. The hardwoods used in England, northern Italy, Scandinavia, and Spain was ideal for carving cruciform decorations and script panels.
Cabinets developed from chests and two chests stood one on another formed the first decorated cabinets, which became the second important item of furniture. A decorative moulding ran through the centre of the cabinet and they rested on a plinth. The first forerunners of dressers were made in Flanders. These were chests with a cupboard set on high legs.
The legs were joined together with cross-stretchers. Metal tableware was stored and displayed on these cabinets which had doors on them.
TABLES
Tables existed in a variety of forms. There were round and octagonal tops on a broad foot, long rectangular tables with broad cheeked supports on which the legs were joined by cross-stretchers. Chest tables and cashier’s tables were made well into the eighteenth century.
SEATING
Little changed with seating. Folding chairs and those with three or four turned legs and also stools remained in use for some time. Throne like backed chairs were also used in France and the Low Countries. These contained storage space, making them part chest/part chair. Benches were lighter and less robustly made. Some of these had folding back rests.
BEDS
The bed was a major eye catcher in the well-to-do home. In northern parts of Europe these had a full or semi canopy over them.
In France and the Low Countries, beds were often fixed to panelled walls.