Читать книгу Chats on Old Furniture: A Practical Guide for Collectors - Arthur Hayden - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Henry VIII. 1509–1547. Edward VI. 1547–1553. Mary. 1553–1558. Elizabeth. 1558–1603.

1525. Hampton Court built. 1566. Increased commercial prosperity. Foundation of Royal Exchange by Sir Thomas Gresham. 1580. Drake comes home from the New World with plunder worth half a million. 1585. Antwerp captured by the Duke of Parma; flight of merchants to London. Transfer of commercial supremacy from Antwerp to London. Beginning of carrying trade, especially with Flanders.

BENCH OF OAK. FRENCH; ABOUT 1500. With panels of linen ornament. Seat arranged as a coffer. (Formerly in the collection of M. Emile Peyre.) (Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh.)

The opening years of the sixteenth century saw the beginnings of the Renaissance movement in England. The oak chest had become a settle with high back and arms. The fine example of an early sixteenth-century oak chest illustrated (p. 59) shows how the Gothic style had impressed itself on articles of domestic furniture. The credence, or tasting buffet, had developed into the Tudor sideboard, where a cloth was spread and candles placed. With more peaceful times a growth of domestic refinement required comfortable and even luxurious surroundings. The royal palaces at Richmond and Windsor were filled with costly foreign furniture. The mansions which were taking the place of the old feudal castles found employment for foreign artists and craftsmen who taught the English woodcarver. In the early days of Henry VIII. the classical style supplanted the Gothic, or was in great measure mingled with it. Many fine structures exist which belong to this transition period, during which the mixed style was predominant. The woodwork of King's College Chapel at Cambridge is held to be an especially notable example.

PORTION OF CARVED WALNUT VIRGINAL. FLEMISH; SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (Victoria and Albert Museum.)

FRENCH CARVED OAK COFFER. Showing interlaced ribbon work. SECOND HALF OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (Height, 2 ft. 1 in.; width, 3 ft. 1 in.) (Victoria and Albert Museum.)

The Great Hall at Hampton Court dates from 1531, or five years after Cardinal Wolsey had given up his palace to Henry VIII. Its grand proportions, its high-pitched roof and pendants, display the art of the woodcarver in great excellence. This hall, like others of the same period, had an open hearth in the centre, on which logs of wood were placed, and the smoke found its way out through a cupola, or louvre, in the roof.

The roofs of the Early Tudor mansions were magnificent specimens of woodwork. But the old style of king-post, queen-post, or hammer-beam roof was prevalent. The panelling, too, of halls and rooms retained the formal character in its mouldings, and various "linen" patterns were used, so called from their resemblance to a folded napkin, an ornamentation largely used towards the end of the Perpendicular style, which was characteristic of English domestic architecture in the fifteenth century. To this period belongs the superb woodcarving of the renowned choir stalls of Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

The bench of oak illustrated (p. 60) shows a common form of panel with linen ornament, and is French, of about the year 1500. The seat, as will be seen, is arranged as a locked coffer.