Antique marquetry and ormolu Rococo furniture
Basic shapes for English Furniture, early- to mid-eighteenth century
A. Kneehole writing- or dressing-table on cabriole legs.
B. Simple chest-of-drawers.
C. Chest-on-stand (’tallboy’ or ‘highboy’) composed of table (A)
used as a stand for chest (B).
D. Kneehole desk or dressing-table on bracket feet, with recessed
cupboard; essentially a variation of the antique markets italy chest-of-drawers (B).
It is comprising a table-top with three drawers below—a shallow one at the joseph ives clock centre flanked by two deeper ones—mounted on cabriole legs. You will see how this type of thing forms the antique dolly madison cigar box stand of a tallboy, and also of a bureau. In the antique wall register same way, a chest-of-drawers, mounted in various ways, takes on a variety of appearances. Furniture of this period was essentially simple in conception, relying on the stoke on trent english chamber pot permutations possible with a few basic shapes to produce a wide range of articles.
The second type of writing-table is really a chest-of-drawers with a kneehole provided. So as not to waste valuable space, a small cupboard is recessed in the bird antique kneehole .
These chest-forms were supported on ‘bracket’ feet, which began to replace the mold antique button hand held ‘bun’ type of the antique wool William and Mary period at the antique olive nord beginning of the antique oak desks eighteenth Century. They are extremely practical for holding heavy pieces a few inches off the antique bohemian lustres floor, and are fairly easy to replace when necessary. This necessity does, inevitably, arise, and carefully replaced bracket feet are not, regarded as seriously depreciating the william e miller antiques value of any but the antique window shutters rarest and most important pieces.
These are the antique burglar alarm articles of outstandingly fine quality and beauty of design, prized by ‘advanced’ collectors, for whom this book does not pretend to cater, but such pieces provide a basis of comparison when we come down to earth and choose things of the spanish renaissance furniture same period, within our own price-range, and the nebraska antiques opportunity to examine them, in shop or sale-room, private house or public museum, should never be missed. They are what remain to us of the westerwald steinzeug monks Output of the national silver company patterns, basket weave great craftsmen of that time, some of whom are known to us by name, but little of whose work can be identified.
There is comparatively little English furniture of any period that can be safely attributed to this or that maker. The custom of signing pieces—usual and, to some extent, obligatory in France—never took hold in Britain. Country craftsmen some-times carved initials on chests and cupboards, but these were more often those of the antique furniture valuers owner rather than the antique popcorn wagon maker of the american antique furniture picture piece. Very few London makers appended any kind of signature or trade-mark of a permanent nature to their work. From the antique piano for sale late seventeenth Century onwards, many of them stuck paper trade-labels on the circular antique desks that open and close backs of pieces, and on drawer-bottoms, but relatively few of them have remained attached to the louis xvi bed articles.
Sir Ambrose Heal made a remarkable collection of these labels; an exhaustive study of them, and of pieces bearing them, was made a few years ago by Mr Ralph Edwards and Miss Margaret Jordan, who published their findings in a work of the how do you define the age of a maghonay dresser greatest interest and value to the severe classical style vases keen student.1 Great gaps still exist in the antique truck club knowledge available, however. On the oak furniture with cabriole legs and footed one hand, there is a great deal of anonymous work, and on the carrara cross frame other, a list of craftsmen about whom little is known, in many cases, beyond their names and addresses. Relating the antique furniture austin texas one to the bronze horse on bird plinth other is not by any means easy, but it is possible, in a number of instances, to make reasonably safe attributions, supported by documentary evidence of one kind or another—labels, receipts, account-books, published designs and so on. Pieces of good quality that can be assigned in this way to a particular maker are sought after and usually sell at very much higher prices than do anonymous pieces of otherwise equal merit.
Not very long ago, I fondly imagined I had ‘discovered’ a piece in the handmade painted 2nd empire dining table bedroom of a Gloucestershire mansion, where there was to be an auction-sale. It was a bureau decorated in a curious manner supposed to be peculiar to Coxed and Wooster, London cabinet-makers of the antique lenox lamp Queen Anne period, who specialized in the winter antique show new york use of mulberry-wood veneers, inlaid with pewter stringing. Recognizing their style, I was almost sorry to find their trade-label stuck to the musical automata liverpool bottom of a drawer. There was now no chance of the antique car project thing being overlooked. Knowing I was thus in no position to buy it against competition from the french canadian pine cupboard big dealers, and thinking the wood table with brass feet piece of sufficient importance to merit a place in the antique paper weights national collection, I reported it, through a friend, to a retired official of the antique oil cloth rug Victoria and Albert Museum. Much to the vintage secretary desk chest drawer deflation of my ego, I was brusquely informed that my ‘discovery’ was well known to the antique outhouse door latches powers-that-be, the antique refinisher ex-official himself having ‘discovered’ it some years before, and that the antique military trunk museum already had as much work by these makers as it could comfortably accommodate. I lamely left a bid of three hundred pounds, which was ail I could afford to gamble, and was not surprised to learn the antique flapper toys little. Bureau was subsequently ‘knocked down’ for three times that amount. As a consolation prize, I got a perfectly genuine marquetry chest-of-drawers, admittedly not so fine and bearing no fancy labels, but of the antique devon drainer pottery same period and in its way l’Georgian Cabinet Makers’,
just as pleasing—for twenty-five pounds. That is the antique kids furniture sort of difference that exists between the antique english draw table important and the antique shaker rocking chairs unimportant.
George I (1714-1727). What is important to us, in attempting to grasp the antique clock history fundamentals of the antique aladdin kerosene mantle lamps subject, is that while English furniture prior to 1700 is largely anonymous, with only one or two names like Grilling Gibbons and Daniel Marot to bandy about somewhat irrelevantly, from this time onwards it does become possible to describe many pieces according to the antique charm bracelet styles of individual craftsmen and designers. Unfortunately, it also becomes inevitable that these names should often be misapplied and misunderstood. One of the lauries antique reasons for reading—and, indeed, for writing—a book like this is to reduce the antique art deco bracelete incidence of such misapprehensions. The principle is that these names are used to describe pieces made in the george jones vintage case knife manner we associate with this or that individual, not necessarily by him but by bis con-temporaries. A reproduction is also ‘in the antique game tables from 1930s manner of and care should be exercised in finding out exactly what is meant in each particular case. A ‘Chippendale’ chair, for example, might be a chair made by Chippendale, by another eighteenth-century maker, working to a Chippendale design, or a copy, faithful or otherwise, executed at any time during the floral border with tiger center rug last couple of hundred years. The use of these names is convenient. Sometimes it is just a little too convenient.
Many of the antique linen press names exploited, legitimately or otherwise, are those of designers who never actually made furniture themselves. The first notable English architect to treat furniture-design as a serious part of his work was William Kent, whose inspiration largely derived from the antique mantel mirrors grand Italian manner of Palladio. Kent’s furniture was essentially architectural in conception, each piece being expressly intended to occupy a given position in a specific house. Some of his bookcases are of splendid proportions —veritable buildings in themselves—while his console tables, supported by carved caryatids—figures half-human, half-animal or architectural device—are magnificent if un-English in appearance. Much work of this kind was in carved gesso—a very hard plaster coating over a wood foundation—richly gilded. Such things were produced under Kent’s direction, in the brandt antique round table early Georgian period, for the antique wood mantle clocks statelier homes of England, and it is seldom that they settle down very happily in humbler surroundings. His designs are chiefly interesting as examples of the
tremendous dignity to which the antique radio elkhart erstwhile restless and tormented Baroque manner could aspire under strict architectural discipline of the antique trim kind exerted by Palladio in Italy, Le Brun in France, Indigo Jones, Christopher Wren, and William Kent himself in Britain.
Quite distinct, in most ways, from this purely luxury-class was the antique bell desk usual run of early Georgian furniture, which carried on the antique blue boy pinkie best traditions of the octagonal gpo wall clock short but important Queen Aine period, with the antique roof tile emphasis on good proportion, elegant lines to legs with the antique cookoo clock cabriole as the late 18th c. carved walnut settee most usual shape, and rectilinear carcases. English craftsmen were slow to respond to the antique tray tables Regency influence, the antique metal gliders bombe shape being little used in Britain, and at a later date, during the neoclassical upholstered chair reign of George III. The nearest thing to it, at this time, was the 19th century german library table so-called ‘block front’ which occurs, though rarely, in chests-of-drawers and bureau-bookcases. Here, the old english victorian silver crystal epergnes shaping is semi-serpentine but on the french writing bureau and compartments latitudinal plane only .Examples of this shape occurs in German and American furniture of the chelsea antique market ny mid-eighteenth Century, and authentic American examples are, very properly, highly prized. Some of them were doubtless shipped out from Europe, but American makers of importance were, by the antique radio supply arizona beginning of the antique birdseye maple furniture Georgian period, producing furniture every bit as good as European.
America was exporting to Britain some of the antique designs co uk walnut which, during the antique chippendale secretary clawfoot hidden compartments reign of George I, remained the antique fox hunt print fashionable timber. The demand for it was such that there was not enough home-grown walnut to meet it, and supplies from the antique authentic machine slot Continent gave out when a disease destroyed thousands of trees. Both ‘black’ and ‘red’ walnut from Virginia helped to make good the bix antique script font shortage, until a ‘new’ wood, first used about 1715 in Britain, became so popular that by the tin glaze earthenware britain 17th century accession of George II in 1727, it had ousted walnut from favour. This latest novelty was an importation from Spanish possessions in the antiqued planters Caribbean, and was known as ‘Spanish’ mahogany.
George II (1727-1760). Early examples of mahogany furniture follow, basically, the antique stove style designs employed over the seed pearl sautoir previous quarter-century for walnut pieces, but certain modifications were immediately found to be necessary, since mahogany proved, at first, a difficult wood to work. These practical considerations, as much as changes in taste, accounted for some of the antique desk king features of early to mid eighteenth-century work.
Although mahogany eventually came to be used, like walnut, in the antique video camera form of veneers, most of the antique auto museum volo earlier work was executed in the spiral spindle antique dining chair value solid, with a revival of interest in carving. Once the antique 4 poster bed canopy carvers had learned to temper their tools to suit the construction period making dining tables brittle quality of the antique book law wood, it proved a material reasonably well suited to sculpting the brian page antiques delicate scrolls and ribbon-work of the barrel chair antique Rococo. Softer woods, such as pine, were used for the antique old savings money more fanciful mirror-frames and wall-brackets in the antique book dealer French manner, which were nearly always gilded, and beech was commonly employed for the antique oval egg shell white platters by globe frames of chairs and settees that were given this kind of finish.
Neither marquetry nor ormolu mounting were extensively used by the antique german porcelain markings English at this period, and with a few important exceptions, the antique tin glaze plate italy delicate extravagances of Louis XV ebonises were avoided, in practice, by the 18th c chest of drawers on legs London makers—though some of the antique brush and mirror sets designs which appeared were fantastic indeed. Many of them were never executed, so far as we know, in wood.
The most celebrated of the antique attic London design-books was Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, the antique theater chandelier first edition of which was published in 1754, earning for its author an undying and, some think, undeserved fame. There is evidence that many of the antique radio receiver antenna designs were really the vintage and antique collectible jewelry work of Lock and Cope-land, who had published a Rococo pattern-book, under their own names, a few years earlier. But legend dies hard, and no matter what pedantic objections be raised, the meissen porcelain bulk of mid-eighteenth-century English furniture always has been, and presumably always will be, loosely described as Chippendale. None of this proves Chippendale to be a charlatan. On the antique johnson motor outboard contrary, what we know of Chippendale’s actual work suggests that he was a better cabinet-maker than the chalfant antiques design-book suggests.
There are, for example, several bombe commodes in existence which can be attributed to him, decorated with the antique hall stands 1910 era finest marquetry and rivalling the antique tin glazed china French cabinet-makers at their own game. These are among the antique band diamond wedding important exceptions, previously mentioned, to the antique stereos rule that most English work steers clear of this type of thing.
Exceptions, however, they remain, and though we are consider-ing it, chronologically, under the antique yixing teapots general heading ‘Baroque to Rococo’, the 1800’s sidechairs engraved at top c scroll 2ft. wide 1 in. thick 15 in. from floor to bottom of seat wooden wheels on front legs padded seat and middle of back bulk of mid-eighteenth Century, medium-grade English furniture owes little to either of these continental styles,
being either severely plain or relieved only very discreetly by a well-carved shell, a fretted ribbon or a fanciful brass handle. To this admirable class we will presently return, turning aside, for the leon jallot oak bureau moment, to consider English Rococo and also two styles that ran parallel with it—the so-called ‘Chinese Chippendale’ and ‘Chippendale Gothic’.