By permission of the proprietors of the "Connoisseur."
CHAIR USED BY JAMES I.
In the possession of Lord Sackville.
From the wealth of Jacobean furniture at Knole it is difficult to make a representative selection, but the stool we reproduce (p. [90]) is interesting, inasmuch as it was a piece of furniture in common use. The chairs evidently were State chairs, but the footstool was used in all likelihood by those who sat below the salt, and were of less significance. The stuffed settee which finds a place in the billiard-room at Knole and the sumptuous sofa in the Long Gallery, with its mechanical arrangement for altering the angle at the head, are objects of furniture difficult to equal. The silk and gold thread coverings are faded, and the knotted fringe and gold braid have tarnished under the hand of Time, but their structural design is so effective that the modern craftsman has made luxurious furniture after these models.
By permission of the proprietors of the "Connoisseur."
JACOBEAN CHAIR AT KNOLE.
In the possession of Lord Sackville.
By permission of the proprietors of the "Connoisseur."
JACOBEAN STOOL AT KNOLE.
In the possession of Lord Sackville.
UPPER HALF OF CARVED WALNUT DOOR.
Showing ribbon work.
FRENCH; LATTER PART OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(Height of door, 4 ft. 7 in.; width, 1 ft. 11 in.)
(Victoria and Albert Museum.)
Carved oak chests were not largely made in Jacobean days—not, at any rate, for the same purpose as they were in Tudor or earlier times. As church coffers they doubtless continued to be required, but for articles of domestic furniture other than as linen chests their multifarious uses had vanished. Early Jacobean coffers clearly show the departure from Elizabethan models. They become more distinctly English in feeling, though the interlaced ribbon decoration, so frequently used, is an adaptation from French work, which pattern was now becoming acclimatised. The French carved oak coffer of the second half of the sixteenth century (illustrated p. [61]) shows from what source some of the English designs were derived.