Antiques - Cupboards and bookcases
(One type, known as
the court cupboard, had an enclosed upper section). Cupboards
were used in the hall, parlour or great chamber to display silver;
at the end of the previous century William Harrison had observed
that in “the houses of knights, gentlemen and merchantmen”
he had seen “costly cupboards of plate, worth five or
six hundred or a thousand pounds” (a reference to the
plate, not the furniture, which was of negligible value).
The press, practical rather than decorative,
was an oak cupboard enclosed by doors, with shelves and pegs
for clothes inside.
Antique furniture Bookcases
hardly existed in the early 17th century: a set of hanging shelves
or a chest were considered sufficient. However, as book-buying
increased, so did the need for efficient and accessible storage.
In 1666 Samuel Pepys noted in his Diary that he had ordered
bookcases from a joiner, and they still survive, as do similar
examples. They have a bold cornice (moulded projection at the
top), glazed doors and adjustable shelves.
Chests of drawers
Antique furniture the 17th
century, a period of few innovations did, however, see the development
of a compact, practical new piece, the chest of drawers. Early
examples were massive and heavy, usually of oak, occasionally
with an inlay of bone or mother-of-pearl. Some had double doors
which opened to reveal the drawers inside; others had one very
deep drawer at either top or bottom (the standard arrangement
of the deepest drawer at the bottom and graduated shallower
ones above had not yet been introduced). The drawer fronts had
Flemish-inspired decoration, either with faceted panels or with
geometric mouldings and applied baluster decoration, in which
sections of turned wood were split vertically and glued to the
surface. Handles were simply small wooden knobs.
Antique furniture from the
1660s, the design of chests of drawers was refined. Oak was
replaced by walnut, drawers acquired little brass drop handles
and, by the end of the century, when the chest of drawers became
known as the commode, panels of floral or seaweed marquetry
were applied to the sides and front, making it an expensive
and decorative piece as well as a useful one. Some examples
were built on stands and, with their spiral, turned legs and
curved stretchers, resembled cabinets.
Cabinets
Antique
furniture the cabinet on stand was the most fashionable
new piece of the 17th century. In the preceding century a cabinet
was simply a small portable box with either two doors or a fall
front, which was placed on a table in the closet or study and
served as a container for jewels, miniatures or papers. The
cabinet on stand, used to furnish bedrooms, great chambers and
long galleries, was much more substantial and highly decorative.
In the 1620s and 1630s most cabinets were imported
from Europe. Paris specialised in ebony veneers (so much so
that cabinet-makers in France were called ébénistes),
as did Augsburg in Germany, where the veneer was enriched with
silver mounts (handles, corner pieces and so on). Other fine
cabinets came from Italy. The English diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706)
possessed a particularly splendid one made in Florence. It is
inlaid with panels of pietre dure (coloured hard stones) and
decorated with gilt-bronze mounts. Evelyn’s cabinet is
unusual in not having outer doors enclosing the small drawers,
which by mid-century had become the standard design. In the
later 17th century, a cornice formed another, handle-less drawer.
