Jacobean Furniture and English Styles in Oak and Walnut

by Helen Churchill Candee

Plate XII—OAK CHAIRS

Called both Wainscote and Yorkshire chairs

Plate XIII—SPIRAL TURNED CHAIR, CHARACTERISTIC OF FIRST HALF OF CENTURY

The ornamentation of the back was done with the light spirit that distinguished early Jacobean styles from the preceding Italian models, yet without the elegance that appeared later in the century. These chairs undoubtedly have charm and interest, but as works of art they are not comparable to those which preceded, nor to those which followed. They were, however, distinctly English, and as such, command interest.

A close study of the motifs used by the wood-carver shows all the favourite lines, the guilloche, that ever interesting play upon circles, the S curve in pairs, the rounded arch, the half-circle, the rose and the tulip. Cushions were a part of the chair's equipment. The tired ladies of the seventeenth century were not asked to recuperate on a thick oak plank unsoftened by padding. Loose cushions of velvet and of embroidery were usual, for this was an age when handsome fabrics were made all over Europe, and freely used in flashing blue and ruby red against the oak.

Nearly allied to the wainscote chair, yet infinitely more refined, is the chair of spiral parts, with back and seat upholstered. Without arms it was favoured by ladies of voluminous petticoats who pattered about the thrones of James I and Charles I. With arms it is sometimes called Cromwellian, suggesting that the doughty Dictator ruled therefrom. But the austerity of the wainscote chair seems more fitting to his resolute manner.

This turned chair with its padded back and seat, so often dignifies our modern interiors that it is worth our while to know about it. While the wainscote chair belonged more especially to cottage furniture which was made all over England according to varying local taste, this chair was more or less of an aristocrat, and furnished the halls of wealth. Its origin is Italian. France used it freely, but she too got her first model from the Italians. In the time these chairs prevailed, England outside of London was scant of luxury. The homes of all but the wealthiest were short of the comforts that ameliorate the jolt of life's car in these our modern days.

But the whole country was sprinkled with inns and taverns wherein were gathered such luxuries as the times afforded, and thither went the man of the family, bored by the too rigid manner of the home. Those who travelled, too, in the saddle or by lumbering coach, fell happily into the warm embrace of the chairs at the hospitable inn at each stop on the journey. The post-road made the string, the inns the pearls, and in this way the surface of England was covered with a net for the delectation of the restless. But old-time descriptions of the highways, their ruts and sloughs, their highwaymen even, show how laborious were the journeyings and how more than glad were travellers to alight.