In carved ebony, part of the Indo-Portuguese Suite at Penshurst Place, with Flemish Folding Chair.
PERIOD: CHARLES II.
We may date from the Commonwealth the more general use of chairs; people sat as they chose, and no longer regarded the chair as the lord's place. A style of chair we still recognise as Cromwellian was imported from Holland about this time—plain square backs and seats covered with brown leather, studded with brass nails. The legs, which are now generally turned with a spiral twist, were in Cromwell's time plain and simple.
The residence of Charles II. abroad had accustomed him and his friends to the much more luxurious furniture of France and Holland. With the Restoration came a foreign Queen, a foreign Court, French manners, and French literature. Cabinets, chairs, tables, and couches were imported into England from the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal; and our craftsmen profited by new ideas and new patterns, and what was of equal consequence, an increased demand for decorative articles of furniture. The King of Portugal had ceded Bombay, one of the Portuguese Indian Stations, to the new Queen of England, and there is a chair of this Indo-Portuguese work, carved in ebony, now in the Museum at Oxford, which was given by Charles II. either to Elias Ashmole or to Evelyn. The chair is very similar to one at Penshurst; it is grouped with a settee of like design, together with a small folding chair which Mr. G. T. Robinson, in his article on "Seats," has described as Italian, but which we take the liberty of pronouncing to be Flemish, judging by a similar one now in the South Kensington Museum.
In connection with this Indo-Portuguese furniture, it would seem that spiral turning became known and fashionable in England during the reign of Charles II., and in some chairs of English make, which have come under the writer's notice, the legs have been carved to imitate the effects of spiral turning—an amount of superfluous labour which would scarcely have been incurred, but for the fact that the country house-carpenter of this time had an imported model, which he copied, without knowing how to produce by means of the lathe the effect which had just come into fashion. There are, too, in certain illustrations in "Shaw's Ancient Furniture," some lamp-holders, in which this spiral turning is overdone, a fault which is frequently to be met with when any particular kind of ornament comes into vogue.
The suite of furniture at Penshurst Place (illustrated), which comprises thirteen pieces, was probably imported about this time; two of the smaller chairs appear to have their original cushions, the others have been re-covered by the late Lord de l'Isle and Dudley. The spindles of the backs of two of the chairs are of ivory; the carving, which is in solid ebony, is much finer on some than on others.
We gather a good deal of information about the furniture of this period from the famous diary of Evelyn. He thus describes Hampton Court Palace, as it appeared to him at the time of its preparation for the reception of Catherine of Braganza, the bride of Charles II., who spent the royal honeymoon in this historic building, which had in its time sheltered for their brief spans of favour the six wives of Henry VIII., and the sickly boyhood of Edward VI.:—
"It is as noble and uniform a pile as Gothic architecture can make it. There is incomparable furniture in it, especially hangings designed by Raphael, very rich with gold. Of the tapestries I believe the world can show nothing nobler of the kind than the stories of Abraham and Tobit.[11]... The Queen's bed was an embroidery of silver on crimson velvet, and cost £8,000, being a present made by the States of Holland when his Majesty returned. The great looking-glass and toilet of beaten massive gold were given by the Queen Mother. The Queen brought over with her from Portugal such Indian cabinets as had never before been seen here." Evelyn wrote, of course, before Wren made his Renaissance additions to the Palace.
After the Great Fire, which occurred in 1666, and destroyed some 13,000 houses, and no less than 89 churches, Sir Christopher Wren was given an opportunity, unprecedented in history, of displaying his power of design and reconstruction. Writing of this great architect, Macaulay says, "The austere beauty of the Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was, like most of his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our side of the Alps has imitated with so much success the magnificence of the palace churches of Italy. Even the superb Louis XIV. has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison with St. Paul's."
