Sep
27
17th Century Dutch and English Furniture
September 27, 2009 |
The United Netherlands the expanded enterprises of the Dutch East
India company brought wealth to the rising class ot maritime merchants,
who patronized painters, silversmiths and furniture craftsmen. Dutch
17tl century interiors were lively and colourful, decorated with checker-
board marble floors, tapestries, portrait paintings, chandeliers and
uphplstered furniture. Furniture was gilded, crisply carved, painted,
lacquered in the oriental manner, and faced with figured veneers. Portu-
gue e and Spanish Baroque influence inspired boldly turned legs and
upri dils, scrolled feet and caned backs and seats. The tall, straight backs
of sjttles, chairs and daybeds, painted black or gilt, or plain walnut,
wer i richly carved with Flemish strapwork, putti and grotesques.
Tie naturalism of the Dutch 17th century still-life school, and of
scul )tor Artus Quellin, was reflected in floral marquetry and inlay
compositions executed by craftsmen such as Jan van Vlekeren and Dirk
van Rijswijk of Amsterdam.
An influx of craftsmen from Germany and Belgium popularized
Top: Leather studded side chair.
Centre: Early oak armchair with sturdy
turned posts and plank seat.
Bottom: Charles II walnut stool with
upholstered seat.
Furniture
expensive furniture of ebony; witwerkers worked in soft white deal and
pine, producing painted pieces for less wealthy purchasers. The tall,
double-doored kas often had a flat, bold cornice and arched panels
separated by pilasters or twisted columns. Tables stood on tapering or
spiral-turned legs often with the curves of the apron echoed in the
stretchers.
The designs of Daniel Marot, who became Minister of Works to
William of Orange after leaving France, popularized ornamented volutes,
strapwork and grotesques, and features such as curved chair backs,
diagonal stretchers and tapering legs.
Of enormous influence to the Dutch and English furniture crafts at
this time were the rare and highly fashionable foreign specimens brought
from the Orient in East India Company cargoes. In both countries,
oriental cabinets raised on silvered or gilt stands displayed porcelain
treasures, and lacquered furniture was especially sought after.
Known in the Orient since the last centuries B.C., lacquer was used to
cover boxes, leather armour, bows, chests, household utensils, baskets,
earthenware, incense-burners and furniture. The grey resinous sap of
the Rhus vernicifera tree, urushi in Japanese or ch’i-ichou in Chinese, was
utilized because it hardens, develops a gloss and turns black upon expo-
sure to air. Dyes were added to produce coloured lacquer, and the puri-
fied urushi was applied in about 30 separate coats.
Various lacquer treatments were used including ‘Coromandel’ lacquer,
with incised and coloured designs; raised designs with mountainous
landscapes; mother-of-pearl inlay; and Japanese maki’e, in which the
design was formed of sprinkled gold particles on a black ground.
Imported screens were cut up and inserted into European cabinets,
secretaires, mirrors and tables, often with total disregard for the cohesion
of the oriental scheme. In Amsterdam, before 1610, a guild of Dutch
lacquerworkers existed, and pieces were made at about the same time in
London and Copenhagen. Although the craft suffered a decline in the
mid-17th century, it became increasingly popular in England after the
publication in 1688 of Stalker and Parker’s Treatise of Japanning,
Varnishing, and Guilding which provided essential information for
professionals. Publications in the following century raised the craft to a
level of a fashionable pastime in England, inspiring accomplished ladies
to entertain themselves at lacquer-making parties.
Foreign influences permeated England after the Restoration. Early in
the century heavy oak pieces still persisted. Jacobean gate-leg and draw
tables, presses, benches and chests were ornamented with carved
Renaissance foliage and mouldings, grotesques, strapwork and spindles
and bosses. Chests-of-drawers, faced with geometric panels which were
ornamented with ebony mouldings as well as mother-of-pearl inlay,
appeared about the middle of the 18th century.
The widescale rebuilding programme that followed the Great Fire of
London of 1668 made great use of walnut, and also popularized the
classical interior architectural style introduced to England by Inigo
Jones (1573-1652) after the example of the Italian Renaissance architect
Andrea Palladio. The Flemish style carvings of Grinling Gibbons
(1648-1720), appointed Grand Carver to Charles II, initiated a school
of highly delicate and realistic carvings, decorated tables and picture
Iran es such as those in the Carved Room at Petworth House, Sussex,
with putti, fruits, flowers, vegetables and birds.
T ie accession of William and Mary in 1689 brought Dutch craftsmen
to I ngland. Carved black, gilt and occasionally silvered chairs and day-
bed! reflected the Flemish Baroque style, as did the rectangular forms,
marquetry and figured veneers, spiral-turned legs and curved stretchers
of cabinets, stands and tables. An intricate, lacy form of marquetry
kno vn as ’seaweed’ developed in England, possibly from the examples
in tortoiseshell and metal of Andre Charles Boulle.
R chly hung state beds, such as the one at Knole in Sevenoaks, Kent,
witl fabric woven with silver threads, were the prized features of the
best 17th century manor houses. They were draped with silks, damasks,
brocades, crewel embroidery, mohair and gold cords and fringes.
T ie production of long-case clocks also became an increasingly
imp irtant industry in England. As in Dutch examples, they were often
enlivened with colourful floral marquetry and small classical or twisted
coli mns on the hoods, and were frequently used to display pieces of
orie ital porcelain.
The accessories that made life comfortable in European courts, cities
and provinces filtered very slowly across the Atlantic, where architcc-
tura and decorative styles emerged in much simplified forms often
decades after they had dictated European fashion.
S nail houses, generally with a maximum of two rooms and a large
fireplace, were standard in the colonial settlements of the American east
coast until after the mid-17th century. Sparsely furnished, these homes
reflected the austere conservatism of religious emigres, such as the
Purjtans, and the simple lifestyle of a settlement economy. The essential
fun iture they contained was serviceable, sturdy and simple, although
free uently colourfully painted.
The northern Baroque idiom surfaced in North America in about
167 i. Until then colonial furniture continued to be made in the Renais-
sance style, based on Dutch, German, English or French prototypes,
acc( rding to the ethnic character of the region in which it was produced.
Joining and turning were used for construction: as in Europe, oak pre-
dominated, but pine, maple and cherry were sometimes used. Chests
fori led of six planks and painted with stripes existed side by side with
more solidly joined panel-and-frame examples, the latter carved with
ang icized classical ornament, such as pilasters and arches, or lunettes
enclosing broad acanthus leaves. This ornament showed regional
variations.
Bjulbous, fluted baluster uprights, showing the influence of Hans
Vricdman de Vries, appeared on presses and court cupboards in the
Eng ish Jacobean manner with knob pulls, ‘ebonized” spindles and
bos: es, chequered inlay, colourful paint and carved figures. Toward the
end of the century walnut gained favour, and veneers and dove-tails,
togi trier with new pieces such as chests-of-drawers, were introduced.
himigrants and imports took the primarily Flemish William and
Ma y Baroque style to America through English intermediaries.
American highboys, lowboys and tables were veneered simply with rich
Top: William and Mary table with
drawers, continuous curving stretcher and
turned legs; bottom: Queen Anne
walnut bureau cabinet.
walnut burls. European forms including cabinets with convex top
drawers and arched panels, and tables and flat-topped highboys with
curved stretchers and aprons were adopted, as were carvings of Flemish-
style strapwork on day-beds and chairs.
Germany also received the Baroque late in the century, but there the
style became rigid rather than relaxed. The small courts of Germany’s
many principalities translated the already exaggerated ceremonial
Baroque in dazzling statements of pomp and grandeur. Yielding to
Italian influence and then to the example of Versailles during the first
half of the 18th century, court rivalries inspired palaces such as Pommers-
felden, Charlottenburg and Belvedere, on which state rooms and suites
were lavishly decorated with mirrors, marquetry panels and collections
of porcelain.
Engravings of court interiors and furniture designs by Paul Decker,
J. J. Schiibler, Joseph Furttenbach and Friederich Unteutsch, circulated
widely along with pattern-books of designs showing the French influence
of Daniel Marot, Berain and le Pautre. Unteutsch’s Knorpelwerk, de-
signs of masks and other ornaments disseminated a taste for soft, earlike
forms. Especially successful in silver, this ‘auricular’ ornament was also
carved on walnut chairs and cupboards. Engraved and embossed silver
furniture was made in Augsburg and Nuremberg, where collectors’
cabinets, with miniature drawers and architectural details, were executed
in silver, gold, painted glass, boxwood, ivory and precious stones. In
Eger, now part of Czechoslovakia, similarly rich cabinets were faced
with mythological or Biblical scenes, executed in wood and intarsia in
low relief.
For the Brandenburg court, Gerard Dagly produced a refined
imitation of ornamental lacquer on various grounds, those on white
suggesting oriental porcelain.