IV Stuart or Jacobean. Late Seventeenth Century
Charles II. 1660-1685.
James II. 1685-1688.
William and Mary. 1689-1694.
William. 1694-1702.
Sir Christopher Wren. (1632-1723).
Grinling Gibbons. (1648-1726).
1660. Bombay became a British possession. Importation of Indo-Portuguese furniture.
1666. Great Fire in London. Much valuable furniture destroyed.
1675-1710. St. Paul’s Cathedral built under Wren’s direction.
1685. Edict of Nantes revoked. Spitalfields’ silk industry founded by French refugees.
After the Civil War, when Charles II. came into his own again, the furniture of the Restoration period most certainly took its colour from the gay Court with which the Merry Monarch surrounded himself. The cabinet which we reproduce has the royal arms embroidered on the cover, and is a beautiful example of intricate cabinetmaking. The surface of the piece is entirely covered with needlework. On the front stand a cavalier and lady, hand-in-hand. On the side panel a cavalier is leading a lady on horseback. On the back a man drives a laden camel, and on another panel is shown the traveller being received by an old man in the grounds of the same castle which appears all through the scenes. This suggests the love-story of some cavalier and his lady. The casket is worthy to have held the love-letters of the Chevalier Grammont to La Belle Hamilton.
As is usual in pieces of this nature, the cabinet contains many artfully devised hiding places. A tiny spring behind the lock reveals one secret drawer, and another is hidden beneath the inkwell. There are in all five of such secret compartments—or rather five of them have been at present discovered—there may be more. The illustration of the cabinet open shows what a nest of drawers it holds.
In the days of plots, when Titus Oates set half the nation by the ears, when James solemnly warned the merry Charles of plots against his life, provoking the cynical retort, “They will never kill me, James, to make you king,” secret drawers were no doubt a necessity to a fashionable cabinet.
Catherine of Braganza, his queen, brought with her from Portugal many sumptuous fashions in furniture, notably cabinets and chairs of Spanish and Portuguese workmanship. The cavaliers scattered by the Civil War returned, and as in their enforced exile on the Continent they had cultivated foreign tastes, it was only natural that Dutch, French, and Italian work found its way to this country and effected the character of the early furniture of the Charles II. period. From Portugal came the high-backed chair, having the back and the seat of leather cut with fine design, and coloured or gilded. This leather work is of exquisite character, and we reproduce a portion of a Portuguese chair-back of this period to show the artistic excellence of the design. With Catherine of Braganza came the marriage dower of Bombay, and from India, where the settlement of Goa had been Portuguese for centuries, were sent to Europe the carved chairs in ebony, inlaid in ivory, made by the native workmen from Portuguese and Italian models, but enriched with pierced carving and intricate inlay of ivory in a manner which only an Oriental craftsman can produce. Having become fashionable in Portugal, they made their appearance in England, and rapidly became popular. At Penshurst Place there are several fine specimens of this Indo-Portuguese work, with the spindles of the chair-backs of carved ivory; and in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford there is the well-known chair which was presented by Charles II. to Elias Ashmole.
Both in this later Stuart period and in the days of the first Charles inlay was considerably used to heighten the carved designs on oak tables, chairs, and cabinets. The growth of commerce was responsible for the introduction of many varieties of foreign woods, which were used to produce finer effects in marquetry than the rude inlay of Elizabethan days.
The Frontispiece to this volume represents a very handsome cabinet of English workmanship, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. It is an unusually fine example of the middle seventeenth century, and bears the date 1653, the year when Cromwell forcibly dissolved the Rump Parliament and was declared “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.”
Up till now oak—the hard, tough, English variety, and not the more modern Baltic oak or American varieties now used—was the material for the tool of the carver to work upon. With the introduction of more flowing lines and curves, a wealth of detail, it is not unnatural to find that softer woods began to find favour as more suitable to the new decorations. The age of walnut was approaching when, under William the Dutchman, and in the days of Queen Anne, a newer style of furniture was to arise, made by craftsmen trained in the precepts of Grinling Gibbons and following the conceptions of Sir Christopher Wren. It must be borne in mind that in Italy the softer woods, such as lime, willow, sycamore, chestnut, walnut, and cypress, had long been used for the delicate carving during the height of the Renaissance and succeeding period, and in France and Spain chestnut and walnut were favourite woods.
In the central panel of the Restoration chair-back, canework began to be used instead of the Early Jacobean carving. Cane seats were frequent, and loose cushions, attached by means of strings, covered these cane panels and seats. The illustration (p. 122) shows a Jacobean chair of this period.
Belonging to these later Jacobean days are chests of drawers of oak with finely panelled fronts. We illustrate two specimens, showing the old brass metal work and the drop-handles. They are usually in two parts, and are very deep from back to front. These are two typical examples of this kind of furniture, which was in general use up to the days of Queen Anne, when pieces are frequently found supported on a stand.
In the picture by Caspar Netscher, showing a Dutch lady at her toilet, a good idea is conveyed of the kind of chair in use in Holland in the latter half of the seventeenth century, upholstered in brocade, and the rich tapestry tablecloth is a noticeable feature.
Before entering upon the last phase of Stuart furniture, and leaving the days of Jacobean oak with its fine carving and handsome appearance—the careful result of selecting the timber and splitting it to show the fine figure of the wood—the attention of the reader should be drawn to the fact that the appearance of the surface of furniture made subsequent to this period begins to approach the results of the modern cabinetmaker with his polishes and spirit varnishes and highly glazed panels and table tops. The lover of old oak abominates varnish. The Elizabethan and Jacobean carved oak furniture received only a preliminary coat of dark varnish in its early days, mixed with oil and not spirit, which sank into the wood and was not a surface polish, and was probably used to preserve the wood. These old pieces, which have received centuries of rubbing with beeswax and oil, have resulted in producing a rich, warm tone which it is impossible to copy by any of the subtle arts known to the modern forger. The collector should make himself thoroughly familiar with the appearance of this old oak by a careful examination of museum pieces, which, when once seen, cannot easily be forgotten.
The Italian Renaissance furniture probably received an oil varnish, the composition of which, like the varnish employed for old violins, has been lost, but after centuries of careful usage and polishing, the result, as seen in the fine specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is to give to them the appearance of bronze.
There is little doubt that the Great Fire, which did such immense destruction in London in 1666, in which some eighty-nine churches and thirteen thousand houses were demolished, gave a considerable impetus to the manufacture of furniture in the new style. It is not a pleasing reflection to think how many fine pieces of Elizabethan and early Jacobean furniture were consumed in the flames, including much of Inigo Jones’s work.
Under the genius of Sir Christopher Wren many of the city churches were rebuilt, including St. Paul’s Cathedral; and Greenwich Hospital and Hampton Court were enlarged according to Wren’s designs, with the co-operation of the master woodcarver, Grinling Gibbons. In later Jacobean days a splendour of style and an excellence of workmanship were the outcome of the fine achievements in interior woodwork by Grinling Gibbons and the school he founded.
The work of Grinling Gibbons consisted of most natural chains of flowers and foliage, fruit, or birds or cherubs’ heads, all faithfully reproduced untrammelled by convention. St. Paul’s Cathedral, Hampton Court, Chatsworth, and Petworth House all contain work by him of singular beauty. He trained many assistants to help him to carry on his work, and one of them, Selden, lost his life in endeavouring to save the carved room at Petworth from a destructive fire. The soft wood of the lime was his favourite for detailed carving; for church panelling or choir stalls, such as at St. Pauls, he employed oak; in his medallion portraits or figure work he preferred pear or close-grained boxwood.
The gradual development of the chair in the later Stuart days in the direction of upholstered seat will be noticed in the specimens which are given as illustrations. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by Louis XIV. drove some thousands of French workmen—weavers, glass-workers, and cabinetmakers—to this country. The silk-weaving industry established by them at Spitalfields was one of the results, and silk stuffs and brocades were used for covering the seats and backs of furniture. At Hampton Court the crystal glass chandeliers were made by French workmen, whom Wren was glad to employ to assist him to make that palace a worthy rival to Versailles.
The chair here illustrated shows the commencement of the use of cane work in place of wood for the panel in back and for the seat. The James II. chair illustrated shows the later development of the cane-back. The William and Mary chair (illustrated p. 125) shows how the cane-back was retained later than the cane-seat, and how rich damask was employed for the upholstered seat. It is interesting to see how the stretcher, which in earlier days was of use to keep the feet raised from a wet or draughty floor, has now become capable of elaborate ornamentation. Genuine examples of chairs of Elizabethan and Early Stuart days show the wear of the feet of the sitters. The same wear is observable in the lower rail of old tables. In later Stuart days the stretcher has left its place at the bottom, between the two front legs. Since its use as a foot-rest, owing to carpeted floors, is gone, it is found either joining the legs diagonally, or higher up as an ornament with carved front. In the eighteenth century it has almost disappeared altogether.
Mirrors began to take a prominent place in interior decoration. The house of Nell Gwynne in St. James’s Square had one room entirely lined with glass mirrors. Hampton Court is full of mirrors, and they are arranged with considerable skill. By an artful arrangement the mirror in the King’s Writing Closet is placed at such an angle that the reflection of the whole suite of rooms may be seen in it. The looking glasses made in this country in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were the work of Venetian and French workmen. The plates had a bevel of an inch in width, and these bevels followed the shape of the frame, whether square or oval. A factory was established near Battersea which produced some fine work of this nature. It will be noticed by the collector who is observant that the bevels differ considerably from modern bevels. The angle is not such an acute one, and sometimes the edges are double bevelled. Many of the mirrors of the time of William and Mary had an ornamented border of blue glass. Sometimes the mirror was painted with festoons of flowers and with birds in French manner. In imitation of Italian style the back of the mirror, in examples a little later, was worked upon in the style of intaglio, or gem cutting, this presenting a dull silver surface when seen from the front.
In picture frames, in chimneypieces, or in mirror frames the school of Grinling Gibbons was still pre-eminent in carving. Now and again are found traces of Italian or Louis XIV. influence, but as a whole the English carver held his own, and the traditions of Grinling Gibbons were maintained, and he did not easily allow himself to be carried away by foreign elaborations.
When William of Orange came over in 1688 he brought with him many of his own countrymen as military and civil advisers, and in their train came artists and craftsmen, who introduced Dutch art into England, and prepared the way for the more homely style of Queen Anne. Walnut cabinets inlaid with various woods, and with ivory squares representing miniature Dutch courtyards in the recesses of cabinets, had found their way into England. With the period of William and Mary the cabriole leg in chairs and in tables became popular—at first an English adaptation of Dutch models—but later to develop into the glorious creations of the age of walnut.
Blue delft jars and bowls, some especially made for William and Mary and bearing the Royal arms and the cypher “W. M. R.” and the Nassau motto, “Je main tien-dray,” still to be seen in the Queen’s Gallery at Hampton Court, were introduced, and it became fashionable to collect china. Consequently the furniture in rooms had to be adapted for the arrangement of this new class of ornament, and cabinets were largely made with accommodation to receive vases and beakers and blue bowls on their shelves. The earlier form have straight sides; but later, especially in the next reign, they follow French designs, and are swollen or bombé at the sides.
With William, too, came over the plain walnut card-table. Clock cases of the style termed “Grandfather” were of Dutch origin. The seats of chairs were shaped and removable. The Dutch trade with the East Indies had brought Oriental china and lac cabinets into Holland, and these, with the coming of William, found their way into this country. Bureaux with a number of secret recesses were introduced, and another Dutch importation from the East was the now celebrated chair or table leg with claw and ball foot. This came directly from China, and as in the case of delft, which is the earthenware replica by the Dutch potter of fine blue porcelain vases, from Nankin and Canton, where the Oriental perspective and design have been slavishly copied, so with the furniture, the old Chinese symbol of a dragon’s foot holding a pearl, was repeated in the furniture by Dutch cabinetmakers. Dutch marquetry made an early appearance with simple ornamentation, sometimes enriched by ivory or mother-of-pearl inlay, but later it developed into flowing floral designs with figures, vases, fruit, butterflies, and elaborate scrolls in various coloured woods, of which yellow was the predominant colour.