COURT CUPBOARD, CARVED OAK.
ENGLISH. DATED 1603.
Decorated with narrow bands inlaid, and having inlaid tulip between drawers.
(Victoria and Albert Museum.)
In contrast with this specimen, the elaborately carved Court cupboard of a slightly earlier period should be examined. It bears carving on every available surface. It has been "restored," and restored pieces have an unpleasant fashion of suggesting that sundry improvements have been carried out in the process. At any rate, as it stands it is over-laboured, and entirely lacking in reticence. The elaboration of enrichment, while executed in a perfectly harmonious manner, should convey a lesson to the student of furniture. There is an absence of contrast; had portions of it been left uncarved how much more effective would have been the result! As it is it stands, wonderful as is the technique, somewhat of a warning to the designer to cultivate a studied simplicity rather than to run riot in a profusion of detail.
COURT CUPBOARD, CARVED OAK.
ABOUT 1580. (RESTORED.)
(Victoria and Albert Museum.)
Another interesting Court cupboard, of the early seventeenth century, shows the more restrained style that was rapidly succeeding the earlier work. This piece is essentially English in spirit, and is untouched save the legs, which have been restored.
By kind permission of T. E. Price Stretche, Esq.
COURT CUPBOARD, EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
With secret hiding-place at top.
The table which is illustrated (p. [78]) is a typical example of the table in ordinary use in Elizabethan days. This table replaced a stone altar in a church in Shropshire at the time of the Reformation.
It was late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth that upholstered chairs became more general. Sir John Harrington, writing in 1597, gives evidence of this in the assertion that "the fashion of cushioned chayrs is taken up in every merchant's house." Wooden seats had hitherto not been thought too hard, and chairs imported from Spain had leather seats and backs of fine tooled work richly gilded and decorated. In the latter days of Elizabeth loose cushions were used for chairs and for window seats, and were elaborately wrought in velvet, or were of satin embroidered in colours, with pearls as ornamentation, and edged with gold or silver lace.