Posts Tagged ‘walnut veneer’

Art Nouveau Furniture: FRENCH CABINET, ENGLISH HALLROBE, SCOTTISH BOOKCASE, VIENNESE SIDEBOARD, VENEERED CUPBOARD, STAINED-GLASS CABINET, MAHOGANY CABINET, OAK BOOKCASE

ART NOUVEAU
CASE PIECES
THE CABINET CONTINUED to be one
of the most expensive and impressive pieces of useful furniture in European houses. Both decorative and functional, cabinets were used as writing chests, for locking away precious jewels, for storing important papers, and for the display of small, treasured collectables.
Art Nouveau cabinets were made in a variety of styles. The Anglo-Japanese cabinets, such as those designed by E.W Godwin, were embellished with brass mounts and painted decorations.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, C.EA. Voysey, and E.W Gimson combined simple designs and an attention to the details of fine craftsmanship with
the use of rich timbers, such as oak, walnut, satinwood, and mahogany.
These designers influenced the design of cabinets in the Art Nouveau style in Europe, especially the austere, geometric style favoured in Germany and Austria.
In contrast, French cabinets
were more sensuous in their
design, with Rococo and Oriental elements combined to produce asymmetrically shaped pieces, decorated with curvilinear plant, flower, and vegetable motifs. Louis Majorelle created superbly crafted cabinets of extraordinary luxury, in fine-quality woods. These pieces were often embellished with finely wrought gilt-bronze or wrought-iron mounts, or included decorative inlays of mother-of-pearl or metal.
This elegant cabinet is made of walnut. It is decorated with a marquetry design depicting a clematis and a bird, executed in exotic hardwoods. The top section provides open storage, which is accessed via a rounded
opening, surrounded by relief carving. The piece was made by Louis Majorelle. His sinuous and fluid style, evident here, was inspired by 18th-century Rococo furniture. c.1900.
Carved circular supports
are decorated with
a twisting tendril and root-like design.
The cabinet body is made from walnut
with marquetry in exotic hardwoods.
The marquetry incorporates floral motifs.
FRENCH CABINET

ENGLISH HALLROBE
top of this hallrobe supports Classical carved panels. The panelled front is adorned
stylized copper hinges and handles and
interior is fitted. This piece was made by
the prominent commercial furniture manufacturer, Shapland and Pettey.
SCOTTISH BOOKCASE
This oak bookcase by leading furniture-maker, Wylie and Lochhead of Glasgow, is in the style of the Scottish school. The intricate floral panels are in stained glass and flanked by angular, stylized, copper, repousse panels, all above a long drawer and a bottom cabinet. c.1900.
VIENNESE SIDEBOARD
This impressive walnut veneer sideboard is by the school of Josef Hoffmann. The piece is decorated with intarsia. The symmetrical, clean design is typical of Hoffman and the linear style reveals the influence of Charles Rennie
Mackintosh. The upper section is enclosed behind glazed doors that form a geometric pattern. The mirrored central section is supported by rounded columns. The base has a marble top and contains cupboards and a drawer. The plinth and the handles are made of brass. c.1902.

The straight lines and gentle curves of this cabinet are typical of the Glasgow School, as is the stained-glass window depicting a pastel-coloured flower design. The piece has a broad, projecting cornice, which was a feature of many Glasgow School cabinets.
This walnut veneer and brass dining room cabinet is part of a set by Otto Wytrlik. The matching table, stool, pair of commodes, four armchairs, and two further chairs are solid, dark pieces with strongly geometric lines, and would have given the room a masculine look. c. 1901.
This small, mahogany-veneered cupboard from Austria is raised on four slender legs. The two cupboards, two drawers, and shelves all have nickel fittings. The distinctive top cupboard has three sides of panelled glass with ornamental silver decoration. c.1900.
Anglo-Japanese influences are evident in this mahogany music cabinet decorated with stylized, floral, stained-glass panels. The fine, string ebony and boxwood inlay is enriched with delicate floral carvings. The arched apron is reflected in the curved pediment. c.1895.
STAINED-GLASS CABINET
DINING ROOM
VENEERED CUPBOARD
MUSIC CABINET

INLAID CABINET
This ornate mahogany display cabinet is elaborately inlaid in copper, pewter, and specimen woods with decoration of stylized flower-heads and leafy tendrils. The central panel is mirrored and flanked by two glass doors opening onto glass shelves.
MAHOGANY CABINET
The shaped, raised back, and moulded finials of this highly decorative display cabinet have whiplash-style foliate and floral marquetry inlays. The leaded and stained-glass panel doors are decorated with a floral design, and are enclosed by marquetry panels.
FLORAL CABINET
This mahogany display cabinet, attributed to the Scottish designer Ernest Archibald Taylor, has silver plated repousse decoration on the glass. The architectural form is decorated with a butterfly centrepiece and floral designs in sycamore and tulipwood inlay. c.1903.
OAK BOOKCASE
This bookcase cabinet has a projecting dentil cornice above three open compartments, flanked by pierced decorative brackets. The twin doors, enclosing adjustable shelves, have leaded clear glass panels with stained-glass decoration on the top.

Side cabinets
Although side cabinets were first made in the 18th century, the golden age was the 19th, when they were produced in a variety of styles that reflected the contemporary fashion for eclecticism. The form may well have been influenced by the French chiffonier – a small shallow cabinet topped by an open shelf or shelves and sometimes a drawer – and the Italian credenza – an early form of sideboard – both of which gave their names to types of side cabinet or meubles d’appui as they were known in France.
TYPES OF SIDE CABINETS
Eighteenth-century side cabinets were generally very simple: just shelves and drawers, with few decorative features. A variation introduced in good-quality, late 18th-century side cabinets was the replacement of solid wooden doors with silk-lined ones, sometimes protected by a brass grill. Regency side cabinets retained the simple rectilinear form with enclosed shelves and drawers; decorative inlay (often metal), crossbanding and applied brass mouldings were added. Both features are often found on Regency chiffoniers, many of which also have lyre- or S-shaped supports with brass rails for the exposed shelf sections, which may also be surmounted by brass galleries. Another desirable, but rare, feature is an adjustable shelf.
Credenzas became increasingly popular in the later 19th century. They tended to be larger than chiffoniers and side cabinets, with storage or display shelves fitted at either end. The most desirable pieces have serpentine fronts and glazed side panels; pieces with straight fronts and convex glass sides are generally less desirable. Traditionally the end shelves were lined with velvet. British examples were influenced by Continental models, especially those made in France and Italy. The centre-door panels offered good surfaces for decoration and in the best examples will be decorated with good-quality, undamaged pietre dare, marquetry boullework, or panels of ivory or porcelain. Therefore some unexceptional pieces may have exceptional decoration, and vice versa.
IMPORTANT MAKERS
After the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London there was a succession of international exhibitions at which British, Continental, and American furniture-makers showed spectacular pieces in the popular revival styles of the time. In France cabinet-makers such as Alexandre-Georges Fourdinois (1799-1871) and his son Henri-Auguste Fourdinois (1830-1907), Guillaume Grohe ( 1808-85), and Jean-Michel Grohe (b.1804) produced magnificent side cabinets in the Renaissance Revival style, which was popular at the time, for the Paris Exhibition of 1867. . Their works were immediately copied by other makers, who made inexpensive versions. Other influential French makers included Louis-Auguste-Alfred Beurdeley (1808-82), principal cabinet-maker to Empress Eugenie, and Henri Orison (1825-96), who is notable for his superb ormolu mounts. Francois Linke ( 1855–1946) is arguably the greatest exponent of the Louis XVI Revival, and his cabinets remain the most sought after. Pieces by such makers are generally very expensive, but the qualities that made their work so outstanding can be found in more modest forms. They include a well-made carcase (usually associated with French and English makers; Italian carcases are generally less well made, and liable to “move” and split the thin veneers that were used); good-quality ormolu mounts, and inventive decoration that is generous and includes the plinth and sides of the cabinet. In general, British and French examples are the most collectable.
Among the well-known British manufacturers, Wright & Mansfield (est. 1860) in London, was among the prize-winning British companies; its success was largely due to the production of a satinwood side cabinet in the Neo-classical style inspired by the work of the architect Robert Adam (1728-92). Most sought after are those made by such reputable firms as T.H. Filmer of London, which, working in the Renaissance Revival style, combined ebonized wood and pietre dure on credenza-style side cabinets with marble tops. The style was also Popular in the USA in the 1870s, where it was combined with Louis XVI ormolou decoration by Alexander Roux, a French maker active in New York from c.1856. Italian makers were known for their fine ivory inlay, although the pieces were not generally as well constructed as NEW MATERIALS
In the 19th century British furniture-makers, in particular experimented with some extraordinary materials in an attempt to capture the imagination and the purse-strings of the public. One of the success stories was the papier furniture made by Jennens & Bettridge (active 1816-64) in Birmingham, who from the 1820s used japanned papier-mache in conjunction with metal or wood frames to produce a range of furniture, and in 1825 patented a technique for incorporating mother-of-pearl inlay in papier-mache. In the 1840s and 1850s there were some 30 companies in Derbyshire producing marble furniture, in particular inlaid table tops influenced by the Florentine pietre dure models lent by the Duke of Devonshire from his collection at Chatsworth House. As a less expensive alternative, G.E. Magnus patented a technique in 1840 for colouring slate to simulate marble, and at the Great Exhibition he displayed a range of pieces; however, slate cabinet work was very unusual.
French and British examples. A notable exception was the work of Giovanni Battista Gatti (active 1850-80), prizewinner at the exhibitions in Paris in 1855 and 1878, who produced extremely well-made cabinets set with ivory and pietre dure plaques in the Renaissance Revival style.
In France, Rococo Revival side cabinets often had panelled doors with vernis Martin (a type of japanning) painted with fetes cbampetres (outdoor scenes) scenes after paintings by the 18th-century French artist Antoine Watteau, who specialized in this type of outdoor scene. Others were set with Sevres porcelain plaques, similarly painted or with flowers and birds. The more formal decorative vocabulary of the Louis XVI Revival included brass inlay and gilt-bronze mounts in Neo-classical motifs. Continental pieces were retailed by such British outlets as W Williamson & Sons (active c.1880-1920) in Guildford, and Maples of London, which imported French furniture during the 1880s.
• TYPES side cabinets were produced in three main styles: the side cabinet with enclosed shelves; chiffoniers (with exposed shelves on top of a cabinet); credenzas (with end shelves).
• DAMAGE the condition of the carcase and decoration is important; pietre dure and Boullework is very
difficult and expensive to restore.
• COLLECTING French and British makers were leaders in the field, with British makers influenced by French and Italian styles; Regency side cabinets and chiffoniers are generally more refined than many Victorian examples that were mass-produced; took for good-quality pieces with brass galleries, pleated-silk door panels, lyre-shaped shelf supports; original decoration, feet, and glass will usually add to value; some pieces of lesser quality may have superior decoration in the form of metal, ivory, or porcelain plaques that were taken from furniture made during an earlier period.

High chests-of-drawers
Chests-on-stands, also known as high chests-ofdrawers or highboys, were a development of the chest-of-drawers. The form comprises a series of short drawers at the top, three or four long, graduated drawers beneath, and two or three drawers in the stand. The form was made in England from the end of the 17th century in walnut veneer, with double-twist turned supports, barley-twist or cup-and-cover legs, flat stretchers, and a plain moulded cornice. This piece of furniture became a singularly American form after c.1730.
AMERICAN HIGH CHESTS-OF-DRAWERS
From the 1690s to the 1730s, following the popular London styles, cabinet-makers in New England and Pennsylvania made chests-of-drawers on tall barley-twist, scroll, and trumpet-turned legs, with matching dressing tables (lowboys) for use in the bedchamber. Their arched aprons (skirts) generally accommodated three drawers. Blind frieze drawers are found on some made in New York and New England. The finest are veneered with richly figured burr-walnut, their drawers
outlined with herringbone veneer. Others are made
of solid maple or cherry, and some are painted. Several from Boston, with four cabriole legs instead of six turned ]cgs, have their original japanned decoration.
By the 1750s high chests with broken-arch pediments had come into vogue. The Philadelphia high chest was tighter and more graceful, with a richly carved middle drawer in the lower section, the uppercase, like the lower, flanked by fluted quarter columns, and topped
by a richly carved broken-arch pediment with carved rosettes, a cartouche in the centre, and flame finials at the corners. The typanum of the arch, no longer housing a drawer, was filled with Rococo streamers, leaves, and grasses, while carving decorated the apron and knees. The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754-62) by Thomas Chippendale (1718-79) influenced the design of a horizontal cornices, which in the 1760s and 1770s separated the carved scrolled pediments from the unadorned facades of the drawer fronts.
High chests made away from the coastal cities are country versions of those made in urban centres. Those made in Lancaster County inland Pennsylvania, reflect the Philadelphia style, while those from the back country of the Shenandoah Valley are largely influenced by Pennsylvania forms that the settlers of that region were familiar with; eccentric maple chests, stained to simulate mahogany, were made in New Hampshire by the Dunlap family, suggesting their Scottish/ Irish origin. In New York and the South they preferred the chest-on-chest form.
• CONSTRUCTION some flat-top high chests were fitted with pedestals for displaying ceramics.
• Alterations high chests were made in two parts, which were sometimes separated; the top was often given feet and sold as a chest-of-drawers, and the bottom given a new top and sold as an over-size dressing table or serving table; even in their altered states, they are considered of value.
• COLLECTING in the USA high chests have long been the most highly priced type of furniture; matching high chests and dressing tables will achieve a premium.