Posts Tagged ‘pedestal dining table’

GERMANY TOOK LONGER to embrace
the changes in decorative arts seen elsewhere in Europe. This was largely because it was still preoccupied with the prevailing Historismus style,
where design was centred on an interpretation of historic elements.
However, through the influence of the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde – who worked on a number of high-profile projects in Germany –and the innovative work of gifted German artists such as Richard Riemerschmid, Peter Behrens, and Franz von Stuck, the Art Nouveau style became popular. This style was known in Germany as Jugendstil
(Youth Style) – a name associated with the popular review Die Jugend (Youth) – and it subsequently flourished throughout Germany during the last decades of the 19th century.
Jugendstil embraced both Symbolism and a preoccupation with nature and natural shapes. It was applied to everything from architecture to furniture and simple household objects. Each element had to work as part of a whole in terms of form and design: a concept called Gesamtkunstwerk. The aim was to make the home a unified, total work of art: practical, simple, dignified, and beautiful.
Many of the exponents of Jugendstil
were painters who turned to the decorative arts as part of a reaction against the stifling historicism of the fine arts. Munich was home to some of these designers, and came to be the city at the heart of the movement.
INNOVATIVE DESIGNERS
Early advocates of Jugendstil included Hermann Obrist, who was inspired by the Symbolists’ emotions and the plant world, and architect August Endell, who played a pivotal role throughout the development of Munich’s Secessionist movement
by seeking to echo the
spirit of his Austrian
contemporaries. Endell designed boldly proportioned, clean-lined furniture in materials such as elm or forged steel, and paid considerable attention to decorative detail.
Among the furniture designers in the Munich group were Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul, and the architect, Peter Behrens.
Behrens was also one of the founding members of the Vereinigte Werkstatten fur Kunst im Handwerk (United Workshops for Applied Art). His furniture combined traditional
rectilinear shapes with restrained
curves. Richard Riemerschmid,
a talented designer, painter, and architect, was also linked to the workshops. His furniture followed Behrens’ example but was also influenced by Celtic origins, which played a role in Germanys decorative traditions. His simply shaped furniture used wood in its natural state and colour, with the grain its most distinctive decorative feature. Bruno Paul, another protagonist of Jugendstil, developed comfortable, rectilinear designs called Typenmobel which he was able to mass produce. They were a forerunner of the industrial furniture production of Ithe I Q Ws and 40s.
Germany also spawned a host of artists’ guilds, established in an effort to realise the ideals of the British Arts and Crafts movement.
THE DARMSTADT COLONY
The most notable of these guilds was founded in 1899 by Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, and was based at Darmstadt. Largely the vision of the Austrian architect and designer, Josef Maria Olbrich, the Darmstadt colony included public buildings and residences that were designed, built, and furnished by various artists.
art” could be found at Darmstadt in the house that Peter Behrens designed for himself. The interior, furniture, and decoration created a unified whole.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Germany had embraced industrial production and increasingly turned its attention to improving the quality of mass-produced, industrial products. This signalled the death knoll for Art Nouveau, with its ideals of hand-craftsmanship, freedom of artistic creation, and refined decoration.

CIRCULAR DINING TABLE
This oak pedestal dining table was designed by Peter Behrens and made by the Vereingte Werkstatten far Kunst im Handwerk, Munich. It has a panelled top above an urn-shaped pedestal. The six C-scroll supports underneath the table repeat the symmetry of the six-panel circular top. The circular foot plate also
repeats the shape of the circular table top. With Richard Riemerschmid, Behrens was the first industrial designer, designing specifically for mass production. With this piece, Behrens moved away from his earlier elaborate and curvilinear Art Nouveau style towards a simpler style that depended on the quality of the wood, and simple shapes and proportions. c.1900.
SIDE CHAIR
This chair by Peter Behrens was designed for the poet Richard Dehmel’s house in Hamburg. Made of white painted wood, the chair is geometric in design, with bold cut-out shapes on the back and has straight legs.
YELLOW LACQUERED CUPBOARD
This pinewood cupboard was designed by Gertrud Kleinhempel and made by Dresdner Werlkstatten. Two of its four doors are pierced with heart motifs, and it is divided horizontally with three rows of rectangular, black and white scenic panels.
c.1900.

This stained pine commode, designed by Richard Riemerschmid, has a rectangular top with a three-sided splashback. The six drawers have nickel-plated pulls. c.1905.
This Patriz Huber cupboard is polished and partly carved. It has inlays of different exotic woods and copper mountings. The top has facetted glazing and shelves on either side. c.1900.
This mahogany table, designed by Richard Riemerschmid and made by Dresdner Werlkstatten, has a hexagonal top, a round second tier, and curved legs. 1905.
This oak chair by Otto Eckmann has square-section arms, rails, legs, supports, and stretchers, with the latter two bowed. It has a brass-riveted, leather-upholstered back and seat pads. c.1900.
SIX-DRAWER COMMODE
LEMON MAHOGANY CUPBOARD
COUCH TABLE
OAK FRAME ARMCHAIR
DINING CHAIR
This is a poplar dining chair which comes from a set of nine, designed by Peter Behrens. It is lacquered and has a
leather seat. c.1901.
BEECH FRAME ARMCHAIR
This beech chair was designed by Marcel Kammerer and made by Thonet of Vienna (see p.375). The bentwood frame is stained mahogany, and the stuffed seat and buttoned back are covered in brown leather. c.1910.

Sideboards and serving tables
From the Middle Ages, social status was reflected by the lavish display of both the delicacies and the plate that were arranged on the “buffet” or sideboard in the principal Eating Room. Although the dresser, with its tiered superstructure, sufficed during the medieval period, during the 16th century it was superseded in the most sophisticated households by the court cupboard, which was an early type of sideboard.
18TH-CENTURY SERVING TABLES AND SIDEBOARDS
During the first half of the 18th century serving tables were closely related in form to pier tables, with either wooden or marble tops above plain friezes. The earliest 18th-century examples were usually of walnut, painted or of gilt-gesso, the friezes supported on cabriole legs often joined by stretchers. However, during the 1730s such serving tables became increasingly elaborate under the influence of the William Kent (c.1685-1748) and Matthias Lock (c.1710-65), with marble tops often being supported by richly carved architectural friezes. This architectural language gave way to a lighter, freer Rococo style, and in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754-62) by Thomas Chippendale (1718-79) there were several designs for “sideboard” tables of carved mahogany in the Rococo, Gothick, and Chinese fretted styles.
However, these too did not provide for the utilitarian considerations of storage, and although some serving tables from the 1750s were fitted with “pot-cupboards” to the side, it was not until the early 1760s, with the introduction of urns and pedestals conceived en suite with the serving table, that the need for storage was first addressed. This concept was adopted and popularized by the brothers Robert and James Adam in Works in Architecture ( 1773-8), as such suites lent themselves perfectly to the Neo-classical idiom of the 1770s, the pedestals serving as cellarets and plate-warmers to complement the serving table, while the urns often held iced water, or water for the butler to wash the cutlery and plates. Often with break-front tablets to the friezes, these serving tables were usually mahogany. In 1779 the firm of Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster, introduced a new type of sideboard, usually with a serpentine or bow-fronted top above a central drawer and kneehole, flanked to one side by a cellaret-drawer, simulated as two drawers and containing bottle-divisions, balanced by a further pair of drawers on the other side. Standing on six tapering legs, perhaps with trailed husks in carved relief or marquetry, and standing on plain or spade feet, such George III sideboards depend primarily on the figuring of the timber for decorative impact —hence the frequent use of flame-figured mahogany. Sideboards were often mounted with brass galleries, upon which fresh linen was hung; Thomas Sheraton ( 17-51-1806) expanded the brass gallery to new extremes in The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1791-1802), depicting a gallery in the form of a stylized foliate arch incorporating candelabra.
North American sideboards of the Federal period were often based on the published designs of Sheraton, George Hepplewhite (d.1786), and Thomas Shearer. Examples usually had square, tapering legs decorated with husks, and such details as quarter fans, and ovals inlaid with shells and the American eagle, motifs often used by cabinet-makers working in Baltimore and Annapolis in Maryland.
TABLES A GIBIER AND CONSOLES DESSERTES
In France and northern Europe, the 17th-century marble buffet enjoyed enduring popularity well into the 18th century. However, during the Regency (1715-23) and early Louis XV periods, the table gibicr, upon which Cooked game was served, became more elaborate, with the marble slab often supported by an oak or a painted base extravagantly carved with acanthus, espagnolette masks, and Rococo shells, as well as with Bacchic symbolism appropriate to a room for entertaining.
With Neo-classicism a new linear console desserte or sideboard emerged. Often of mahogany or satinwood, it is usually of bow-fronted rectangular form with two tiers of grey-veined white marble above a richly mounted frieze applied with foliate ormolu arabesques, perhaps supported on stop-fluted turned tapering legs, and with a mirrored panel to the reverse. Although the frieze usually encloses a central drawer and, on the most sophisticated examples, spring-loaded drawers to the curved sides, the console dessert was principally designed not for storage but for the display of delicacies and plate in the 17th-century tradition. Although examples mounted with Sevres porcelain plaques were made in the 1780s by such cabinet-makers as Martin Carlin (d.1785), they became increasingly restrained in decoration during the Directoire period (1795-9). This form was widely copied in the late 18th century in Russia, Sweden, and Germany, and in the 19th century when the extravagantly mounted examples found favour again.
19TH-CENTURY SERVING TABLES AND SIDEBOARDS
The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Draining Book ( 1791-1802) by Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) also included a design for “a sideboard with knife cases”, and this formed the prototype for the early 19th-century pedestal sideboard. Rather than treating the sideboard and flanking pedestals as separate elements, Sheraton’s design united them, removing the back legs of the bow-fronted central section and instead supporting it by flanking pedestals. In the first half of the 19th century, pedestal sideboards were manufactured in large quantities, by which time the design had evolved and been considerably simplified. Invariably very well-made, veneered with richly figured flame mahogany, they had bow-fronted central sections which were no longer supported by tapering legs but by the flanking pedestals, which were “battered” or tapered in the manner Popularized by Baron Vivant Denon (1747-1825) in his Aventures daps la base et la haute Egypte (1802). Similarly, the linen-hung brass galleries were discarded in favour of solid pedimented splashbacks, often carved with stylized foliage scrolls.
Early 19th-century serving tables, almost always conceived en suite with the dining-chairs and dining-table, were altogether bolder than their 18th-century counterparts and as George Smith (active c.1786-1828) stated in A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1808): “These articles of so general use can scarcely be made of any other wood than mahogany”. However, indigenous woods such as oak and brown oak also enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1820s. Often with shaped tops and plain, moulded friezes, serving tables and sideboards were frequently enriched with Bacchic ornament, of vines, grapes, and satyrs, as promoted by George Smith as being appropriate for the dining-room. They were often fitted with shaped, pedimented, or scrolled backboards to the reverse, which were often removed in the 19th century and replaced with brass galleries.
The sideboards and serving tables of the later 19th century are inevitably inspired by their earlier prototypes. However, they are invariably more lavish and excessive in their decoration. During the 1830s exuberant foliate carved decoration prevailed, but this was in turn superseded by sideboards and serving tables in the “Jacobethan” Revival style, culminating in the late 19th century in Georgian Revival sideboards , with their characteristic Adam-inspired marquetry inlay.

• COLLECTING Regency pedestal sideboards can represent great value for money, as they are of a consistently high quality and many were made; they can also be seen as being as rather unfashionable at present, owing to their somewhat heavy form
• ALTERAHONS serving tables and pedestal sideboards have often been altered in both width and depth to make them more commercial: look at the proportions, see if any drawers and veneers have been replaced, or if the back has been altered, or the legs moved; look out for sideboards with later legs: legs should always be constructed of one piece, and although cuts are often hidden behind the decorative moulding or crossbanding just below the upper section, differences in colour and timber should reveal an alteration.

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.