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PREFACE

Table of Contents

The number of works dealing with old English furniture has grown rapidly during the last ten years. Not only has the subject been broadly treated from the historic or from the collector's point of view, but latterly everything has been scientifically reduced into departments of knowledge, and individual periods have received detailed treatment at the hands of specialists.

Museums and well-known collections, noblemen's seats and country houses have furnished photographs of the finest examples, and these, now well-known, pieces have appeared again and again as illustrations to volumes by various hands.

It is obviously essential in the study of the history and evolution of furniture-making in this country that superlative specimens be selected as ideal types for the student of design or for the collector, but such pieces must always be beyond the means of the average collector.

The present volume has been written for that large class of collectors, who, while appreciating the beauty and the subtlety of great masterpieces of English furniture, have not long enough purses to pay the prices such examples bring after fierce competition in the auction-room.

The field of minor work affords peculiar pleasure and demands especial study. The character of the cottage and farmhouse furniture is as sturdy and independent as that of the persons for whom it was made. For three centuries unknown cabinet-makers in towns and in villages produced work unaffected by any foreign influences. Linen-chests, bacon-cupboards, Bible-boxes, gate tables, and other tables, dressers, and chairs possess particular styles of treatment in different districts. The eighteenth-century cabinet-makers scattered up and down the three kingdoms and in America found in Chippendale's "Director" a design-book which stimulated them to produce furniture of compelling interest to the collector.

The examples of such work illustrated in this volume have been taken from a wide area and are such as may come under the hand of the diligent collector in various parts of the country.

In view of the increased love of collecting homely furniture suitable for modern use, it is my hope that this book may find a ready welcome, especially nowadays, when so many of the picturesque architectural details of old homesteads are being reproduced in the garden suburbs of great cities.

It is possible that the authorities of local museums may find in this class of furniture a field for special research, as undoubtedly specimens of local work should be secured for permanent exhibition before they are dispersed far and wide and their identity with particular districts lost for ever.

In regard to the scientific study of farmhouse and cottage furniture, the ideal arrangement is that followed at Skansen, Stockholm, and at Lyngby, near Copenhagen. In the former a series of buildings have been erected in the open air, in connection with the Northern Museum, gathered from every part of Sweden, retaining their exterior character and fitted with the furniture of their former occupants. It was the desire of the founder, Dr. Hazelius, to present an epitome of the national life. Similarly at Lyngby, an adjunct of the Dansk Folkemuseum at Copenhagen, the life-work of Hr. Olsen has been given to gathering together and re-erecting a large number of old cottages and farmhouses from various districts in Denmark, from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and from Norway and Sweden. These have their obsolete agricultural implements, and old methods of fencing and quaint styles of storage. The furniture stands in these specimen homes exactly as if they were occupied. It is a remarkable open-air museum, and the idea is worthy of serious consideration in this country. Old cottages and farmhouses are fast disappearing, and the preservation of these beauties of village and country life should appeal to all lovers of national monuments.[1]

In connexion with farmhouse furniture, old chintzes is a subject never before written upon. A chapter in this volume is contributed by Mr. Hugh Phillips, whose special studies concerning this little known field enable him to present much valuable information which has never before been in print, together with illustrations of chintzes actually taken from authentic examples of old furniture.

A brief survey is made of miscellaneous articles associated with cottage and farmhouse furniture. Some specimens of Sussex firebacks are illustrated, together with fenders, firedogs, pot-hooks, candle-holders, and brass and copper candlesticks.

The illustrations have been selected in order to convey a broad outline of the subject. My especial thanks are due to Messrs. Phillips, of the Manor House, Hitchin, for placing at my disposal the practical experience of many years' collecting in various parts of the country, and by enriching the volume with illustrations of many fine examples of great importance and rarity never before photographed.

To Messrs. A. B. Daniell & Sons I am indebted for photographs of specimens in their galleries.

In presenting this volume it is my intention that it should be a companion volume to my "Chats on Old Furniture," which records the history and

evolution of the finer styles of English furniture, showing the various foreign influences on English craftsmen who made furniture for the wealthy classes.

ARTHUR HAYDEN.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
NOTE

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The minor collector—The originality of the village cabinet-maker—His freedom from foreign influences—The traditional character of his work—Difficulty to establish dates to cottage and farmhouse furniture—Oak the chief wood employed—Beech, elm, and ash used in lieu of mahogany and satinwood—Village craftsmanship not debased by early Victorian art—Its obliteration in the age of factory-made furniture—The conservation of old farmhouses with their furniture in Sweden and in Denmark—The need for the preservation and exhibition of old cottages and farmhouses in Great Britain.

In regard to launching another volume on the market dealing with old furniture, a word of explanation is desirable, for nowadays of making books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the collector.

In the present volume attention has been especially given to that class of furniture known as Cottage or Farmhouse. There is no volume dealing with this phase of collecting. Prices for old furniture of the finest quality have gone up by leaps and bounds, and for those not possessed of ample means the collection of superlative styles is at an end. Singularly enough, the most native furniture and that most typically racy of the soil has not hitherto attracted the attention of wealthy collectors. The plutocrats who buy only the finest creations of Chippendale, who have immediate private information when an exquisitely designed Sheraton piece is found, who amass a mighty hoard of gilt Stuart furniture, or who boast of an unrivalled collection of Elizabethan oak, do not touch the minor furniture made during a period of three hundred years for the common people.

The finest classes of English furniture made by skilful craftsmen for wealthy patrons must always be beyond the range of the minor collector. Every year brings keener zest among those interested in furniture of a bygone day, and it is therefore increasingly difficult for persons of taste and judgment who cannot afford high prices to satisfy their longings. It is obvious that specimens of massive appearance finely carved in oak of the Tudor age, or of elegantly turned work in walnut of Jacobean days, must be readily recognised as valuable. Sumptuous furniture tells its own story. It is unlikely nowadays that such wonderful "finds," concerning which imaginative writers are always telling us, will occur again—except on paper. Popular enthusiasm has been awakened, and more often than not the possessor of some mediocre piece of furniture or china attaches a value to it which is absurd. The publication of prices realised at auction has whetted

the cupidity of would-be sellers who convert early nineteenth-century chairs by a nod of the head into "Queen Anne," and who aver with equal veracity that ordinary blue transfer printed ware has "been in the family a hundred years."