Antique Furniture - Interest in accumulating artefacts

Antique Furniture - Interest in accumulating artefacts of beauty and/or curiosity has been a preoccupation of individuals since the earliest civilisations. In Imperial Rome there were auctions of works of art and furniture, beginning with the booty of war, and these were accompanied by flourishing art dealers and a thriving industry supplying fakes and forgeries. In Medieval Europe, the chief hoarders and accumulators were the Church and the emergent monarchies.
Upholstery
Two threads, those of status and comfort, weave their way throughout the history of antique furniture Status could be embodied in the importance as well as the modishness of furniture: it was certainly often reflected in cost. Comfort was also related to status: the most wealthy paid attention not just to changes in style but to developments in comfort and convenience. The increase in the numbers and specific functions of small tables during the 18th century represented an aspect of this, but the evolution of upholstery was an even more important consideration.

The part played by the upholsterer in interior design is an often neglected aspect of its history. Architects may have laid down the shapes of rooms, their style of decoration and sometimes their furniture, but it was upholsterers who had the last word in the finished effect. The 18th-century “upholder”, was concerned not just with seat upholstery and bed hangings but with wall and floor coverings, window blinds and curtains, and was usually responsible for the arrangement in a room.

Because furniture textiles are so much more perishable and as a consequence have rarely survived, emphasis placed on them in the interiors of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries can easily be forgotten. Hangings for beds invariably cost much more than the bed frames themselves; seats were often made expressly to set off embroidery; and the sums spent on curtains, hangings and textile wall coverings in many instances far exceeded expenditure on woodwork. The very term was, in the 18th century, used as much for hanging and coverings as for movables. This supremacy of the upholsterer over other craftsmen was often enhanced by his direct contact with the client rather than, as was usually the case with other members of the furnishing team, with the client’s agent. Indeed, the upholsterer’s perceived superiority was often a cause of friction with architects, who felt their control over total schemes to be threatened.

The most powerful cabinet-makers were those, such as Thomas Chippendale, William Vile (d. 1767), John Cobb (d.1778) and Samuel Norman, whose business embraced both cabinet-making and upholstery. Chippendale, for example, supplied his important clients with wallpapers and borders, curtains and blinds, bedding, carpets and other household equipment.

Curtains, cushions and rich wall hangings were in widespread use among the status-and comfort-conscious nobility of Europe during the medieval period, but upholstered chairs, with stuffing and fabric fixed to their frames, did not come into use until the 16th century and were not adopted widely until the 17th. The typical farthingale (joined and upholstered) chair of this period had a stuffed back as well as seat, with covers of leather, patterned Turkey-work or embroidery, and with added embellishment in the form of fringes or brass-headed nails.

In its early stages the technique of upholstery was still relatively primitive, with luxurious effects achieved through the use of rich and colourful fabrics rather than through any particular artistry in applying them, but from the late 17th century the upholsterer in France emerged as a craftsman establishing standards of excellence that were maintained throughout the next two centuries all through Europe and America with surprisingly little change.