WELSH CUPBOARD.
With typical coarse style of carving. Should be 1650 at latest. Inscribed I.S. 1710.
This loving regard for the past is natural at a time when the rural population jealously feared the oncoming of the age of machinery, which threatened to supersede many of their local industries and finally succeeded in so doing. The obstinate adherence to old forms was possibly part of a nervous fear of the unknown future. The love for existing forms of furniture was therefore part of this apprehensive retention of tradition. Not only was the resistance of town fashions a strong feature, but local prejudices prevailed against the adoption of designs belonging to rival counties. To this day the Staffordshire clothes-horse, carried on pulleys to the ceiling when not in use, differs from the clothes-horse of the cottager in the South with no such mechanical device. In Edinburgh, in the narrow closes, there is a kind of gallows projecting from the windows.
These apparently minor details which find their embodiment in articles of everyday use, fascinate and hold the attention of the acute collector of cottage furniture.
The same local types apply to the art of the potter and are well known to collectors. There are Sussex "tygs" and Nottingham "bears" and Sunderland and Newcastle jugs and mugs. Bristol had its characteristic earthenware, and the Lowestoft china factory was strongly Suffolk in its homely inscriptions with a touch of dialect.
Welsh Carving.—Wales is famous for the abundance of the oak farmhouse furniture proudly kept to this day in families who have held the same homestead sometimes for centuries. One of the most noticeable features is the elaboration of the carving and its native representation, coarsely carved, without foreign influence, of birds and beasts and heraldic monsters which largely figure in the decorative panels of chests, and especially dressers. So popular was oak that it might almost be advanced that there never was any mahogany in Wales. But it is indisputable that the great outburst in carved mahogany chairbacks coincident with the advent of Chippendale and the publication of his Director, never penetrated Wales, although it led to the foundation of a remarkable school of woodcarving on the new lines in Ireland, known as Irish Chippendale, a study of which can be made in Mr. Owen Wheeler's volume on old furniture.
The intense love of the Welsh woodcarver for intricacy is hardly less than that of the sturdy Swiss craftsmen environed by mountains. Perhaps the long winters and the solitary life influence the development of individual character in the applied arts. The Welsh love-spoons of wood, linked together and exhibiting delicate pierced work and minute carving of no mean order, are among other attractive specimens of native art. Ironwork of fine quality is also to be found in Wales.