Furniture Direct
Jacobean furniture
English Home Life in the Reign of
James I.—Sir Henry Wootton quoted—Inigo Jones and his work—Ford
Castle—Chimney Pieces in South Kensington Museum—Table in the Carpenters'
Hall—-Hall of the Barbers' Company—The Charterhouse—Time of Charles
I.—Furniture at Knole—Eagle House, Wimbledon, Mr. Charles Eastlake—Monuments
at Canterbury and Westminster—Settles, Couches, and Chairs of the Stuart
period—Sir Paul Pindar's House—Cromwellian Furniture—The
Restoration—Indo-Portuguese Furniture—Hampton Court Palace—Evelyn's
description—The Great Fire of London—Hall of the Brewers' Company—Oak
Panelling of the time—Grinling Gibbons and his work—The Edict of
Nantes—Silver Furniture at Knole—William III. and Dutch influence—Queen
Anne—Sideboards, Bureaus, and Grandfather's Clocks—Furniture at Hampton
Court.
n the chapter on
"Renaissance" the great Art revival in England has been noticed; in the
Elizabethan oak work of chimney pieces, panelling, and furniture, are to be
found varying forms of the free classic style which the Renaissance had
brought about. These fluctuating changes in fashion continued in England
from the time of Elizabeth until the middle of the eighteenth century, when,
as will be shewn presently, a distinct alteration in the design of furniture
took place.
The domestic habits of Englishmen were
getting more established. We have seen how religious persecution during
preceding reigns, at the time of the Reformation, had encouraged private
domestic life of families, in the smaller rooms and apart from the gossiping
retainer, who might at any time bring destruction upon the household by
giving information about items of conversation he had overheard. There is a
passage in one of Sir Henry Wootton's letters, written in 1600, which shews
that this home life was now becoming a settled characteristic of his
countrymen.
"Every man's proper mansion house and home,
being the theatre of his hospitality, the seate of his selfe fruition, the
comfortable part of his own life, the noblest of his son's inheritance, a
kind of private princedom, nay the possession thereof an epitome of the
whole world, may well deserve by these attributes, according to the degree
of the master, to be delightfully adorned."
Sir Henry Wootton was ambassador in Venice in
1604, and is said to have been the author of the well-known definition of an
ambassador's calling, namely, "an honest man sent abroad to lie for his
country's good." This offended the piety of James I., and caused him for
some time to be in disgrace. He also published some 20 years later "Elements
of Architecture," and being an antiquarian and man of taste, sent home many
specimens of the famous Italian wood carving.
It was during the reign of James I. and that
of his successor that Inigo Jones, our English Vitruvius, was making his
great reputation; he had returned from Italy full of enthusiasm for the
Renaissance of Palladio and his school, and of knowledge and taste gained by
a diligent study of the ancient classic buildings of Rome; his influence
would be speedily felt in the design of woodwork fittings, for the interiors
of his edifices. There is a note in his own copy of Palladio, which is now
in the library of Worcester College, Oxford, which is worth quoting:—
"In the name of God: Amen. The 2 of
January, 1614, I being in Rome compared these desines following, with the
Ruines themselves.—INIGO JONES."
In the following year he returned from Italy
on his appointment as King's surveyor of works, and until his death in 1652
was full of work, though unfortunately for us, much that he designed was
never carried out, and much that he carried out has been destroyed by fire.
The Banqueting Hall of Whitehall, now Whitehall Chapel; St. Paul's, Covent
Garden; the old water gate originally intended as the entrance to the first
Duke of Buckingham's Palace, close to Charing Cross; Nos. 55 and 56, on the
south side of Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn; and one or two monuments
and porches, are amongst the examples that remain to us of this great
master's work; and of interiors, that of Ashburnham House is left to remind
us, with its quiet dignity of style, of this great master. It has been said
in speaking of the staircase, plaster ornament, and woodwork of this
interior, "upon the whole is set the seal of the time of Charles I." As the
work was probably finished during that King's reign, the impression intended
to be conveyed was that after wood carving had rather run riot towards the
end of the sixteenth century, we had now in the interior designed by Inigo
Jones, or influenced by his school, a more quiet and sober style.
The above woodcut shews a portion of the
King's room in Ford Castle, which still contains souvenirs of Flodden
Field—according to an article in the Magazine of Art. The room is in
the northernmost tower, which still preserves externally the stern, grim
character of the border fortress; and the room looks towards the famous
battle-field. The chair shews a date 1638, and there is another of Dutch
design of about fifty or sixty years later; but the carved oak bedstead,
with tapestry hangings, and the oak press, which the writer of the article
mentions as forming part of the old furniture of the room, scarcely appear
in the illustration.
Mr. Hungerford Pollen tells us that the
majority of so-called Tudor houses were actually built during the reign of
James I., and this may probably be accepted as an explanation of the
otherwise curious fact of there being much in the architecture and woodwork
of this time which would seem to have belonged to the earlier period.
The illustrations of wooden chimney-pieces
will show this change. There are in the South Kensington Museum some three
or four chimney-pieces of stone, having the upper portions of carved oak,
the dates of which have been ascertained to be about 1620; these were
removed from an old house in Lime Street, City, and give us an idea of the
interior decoration of a residence of a London merchant. The one illustrated
is somewhat richer than the others, the columns supporting the cornice of
the others being almost plain pillars with Ionic or Doric capitals, and the
carving of the panels of all of them is in less relief, and simpler in
character, than those which occur in the latter part of Elizabeth's time.
Carved Oak Centre Table. In the Hall of the
Carpenters' Company.
The earliest dated piece of Jacobean
furniture which has come under the writer's observation is the octagonal
table belonging to the Carpenters' Company. The illustration, taken from Mr.
Jupp's book referred to in the last chapter, hardly does the table justice;
it is really a very handsome piece of furniture, and measures about 3 feet 3
inches in diameter. In the spandrils of the arches between the legs are the
letters R.W., G.I., J.R., and W.W., being the initials of Richard Wyatt,
George Isack, John Reeve, and William Willson, who were Master and Wardens
of the Company in 1606, which date is carved in two of the spandrils. While
the ornamental legs shew some of the characteristics of Elizabethan work,
the treatment is less bold, the large acorn-shaped member has become more
refined and attenuated, and the ornament is altogether more subdued. This is
a remarkable specimen of early Jacobean furniture, and is the only one of
the shape and kind known to the writer; it is in excellent preservation,
save that the top is split, and it shews signs of having been made with
considerable skill and care.
Carved Oak Chair. From Abingdon Park.
Carved Oak Chair. In the Carpenters' Hall
From Photos in the S. Kensington Museum
Album. Early XVII. Century. English.
The Science and Art Department keep for
reference an album containing photographs, not only of many of the specimens
in the different museums under its control, but also of some of those which
have been lent for a temporary exhibition. The illustration of the above two
chairs is taken from this source, the album having been placed at the
writer's disposal by the courtesy of Mr. Jones, of the Photograph
Department. The left-hand chair, from Abingdon Park, is said to have
belonged to Lady Barnard, Shakespeare's grand-daughter, and the other may
still be seen in the Hall of the Carpenters' Company.
In the Hall of the Barbers' Company in
Monkswell Street, the Court room, which is lighted with an octagonal cupola,
was designed by Inigo Jones as a Theatre of Anatomy, when the Barbers and
Surgeons were one corporation. There are some three or four tallies of this
period in the Hall, having four legs connected by stretchers, quite plain;
the moulded edges of the table tops are also without enrichment. These plain
oak slabs, and also the stretchers, have been renewed, but in exactly the
same style as the original work; the legs, however, are the old ones, and
are simple columns with plain turned capitals and bases. Other tables of
this period are to be found in a few old country mansions; there is one in
Longleat, which, the writer has been told, has a small drawer at the end, to
hold the copper coins with which the retainers of the Marquis of Bath's
ancestors used to play a game of shovel penny. In the Chapter House in
Westminster Abbey, there is also one of these plain substantial James I.
tables, which is singular in being nearly double the width of those which
were made at this time. As the Chapter House was, until comparatively recent
years, used as a room for the storage of records, this table was probably
made, not as a dining table, but for some other purpose requiring greater
width.
In the chapter on Renaissance there was an
allusion to Charterhouse, which was purchased for its present purpose by
Thomas Sutton in 1611, and in the chapel may be seen to-day the original
communion table placed there by the founder. It is of carved oak, with a row
of legs running lengthways underneath the middle, and four others at the
corners; these, while being cast in the simple lines noticed in the tables
in the Barbers' Hall, and the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey, are enriched
by carving from the base to the third of the height of the leg, and the
frieze of the table is also carved in low relief. The rich carved wood
screen which supports the organ loft is also of Jacobean work.
There is in the South Kensington Museum a
carved oak chest, with a centre panel representing the Adoration of the
Magi, about this date, 1615-20; it is mounted on a stand which has three
feet in front and two behind, much more primitive and quaint than the ornate
supports of Elizabethan carving, while the only ornament on the drawer
fronts which form the frieze of the stand are moulded panels, in the centre
of each of which is a turned knob by which to open the drawer. This chest
and the table which forms its stand were probably not intended for each
other. The illustration on the previous page shows the stand, which is a
good representation of the carving of this time, i.e., early seventeenth
century. The round backed arm chair which the Museum purchased last year
from the Hailstone collection, though dated 1614, is really more Elizabethan
in design.
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