The drawing-table was much in vogue. It was composed of extra leaves superimposed on lower ones that could be drawn forward so that the top leaves could fall into the space they made and form with the lower leaves, thus lengthened, one continuous surface. The mechanism by which these leaves were lengthened and dropped was very intricate and ingenious. Jacques Wecker, a physician of Colmar, in his treatise De Secretis (Bâle, 1582), says: “One must not despise the make of these tables that I have often seen in Ghent in Flanders.”
The tables designed by De Vries and reproduced in Figs. 20, 21 and 22, are a great advance on the one that appears in his Cubiculum. (Plate [X].) The form is much the same as those in Figs. 20 and 21, but the linenfold has given way to panels and pilasters of pure Renaissance character and the corner supports of sphinxes and animals and vases have no memory of the Gothic age. Fig. 22 shows us a table of an entirely different character. It is much lighter and has drawers. With its foot-rails it is well adapted for a dining-table.
A much more ornate specimen of this period called a “fan-shaped table,” (“table à l’éventail”) is owned by the Dijon Museum. It is of Burgundian workmanship. The support, which still shows traces of gilding, is formed of an eagle with outspread wings standing between two winged chimaera with lions’ paws, these paws connected with a straining-rail, or stretcher. The open-work shelf is ornamented with leaves and a mascaron, and the two upper and lower straining rails are ornamented with a very clearly defined and handsome decoration. The top of the table is surrounded by a thread of marquetry.
Folding-tables were also in use; in Margaret of Austria’s inventory, mention is made of “a little table in the Spanish fashion which opens and closes.”
Plate XIV.—Bedstead.
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM.
Chairs are still heavy and carved more or less richly. Two typical specimens appear in Plate [XII]. As shown in these examples, the seats and backs were often covered with stamped leather, velvet, silk, or some woollen material and ornamented with tassels. The covers are tacked to the frame by means of large-headed nails that also form part of the decoration. A chair and footstool by Vredemann de Vries, of very characteristic model, are shown in Fig. 23. The chair is three-cornered, with a triangular seat, and the legs are connected with straining-rails. It much resembles the voyeuse of which Cardinal Mazarin had several; and which was again popular in the days of Louis XVI, in France and elsewhere. It was essentially a chair for a man, who faced the back and rested his arms on the top rail.
A Flemish chair of the second half of the sixteenth century is reproduced in Figs. 24 and 25. This is pure Renaissance in its simplest and certainly its least elegant form. The legs consist of Doric columns connected by stretchers close to the ground. The back slants, and is of somewhat confused carved decoration consisting of a mascaron and Classic architectural and floral motives.
When not built in the panels of the room, the armoire bears a very close likeness to the large double cabinet with doors, which is, as we have seen, merely a chest-upon-chest, and which we shall find developing into the great Dutch kas of the seventeenth century. Plate [XV] shows the great double cabinet, or armoire, of the Renaissance with carved panels, pillars and caryatides. This stands on ball feet. It is of the same period as the bed represented in Plate [XIV].
A magnificent specimen of the late sixteenth century, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, is reproduced in Plate [XVIII]. This is in two stories and is frankly architectural. The doors of the armoire, or cabinet, are decorated to look like windows, and the niches and pilasters lend their aid in making the front of this piece of furniture look like the façade of a handsome Renaissance residence.