Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork

by John Hungerford Pollen

When we consider the rapacity of the barbarian inroads into Italy and Rome, and the amount of spoil carried bodily away from Constantinople, Rome, and the great municipal centres of Italy, it is remarkable that so little precious furniture should have survived in other parts of Europe. The Goths under Adolphus in the fifth century carried an immense plunder into Gaul and Spain. "When the treasuries, after the conquest of Spain," says Gibbon, "were plundered by the Arabs, they admired, and they have celebrated, a table of considerable size, of one single piece of solid emerald [that is, glass], encircled with three rows of fine pearls, supported by three hundred and sixty-five feet of gems and massy gold, estimated at the price of five hundred thousand pieces of gold,"—probably the most expensive table on record. It is the value of the materials that has prevented the preservation of many such objects, while the chair of Dagobert is of gilt bronze only.

Early mediæval art, included under the general name of Gothic, continued down to the twelfth century full of Romanesque forms and details. Figures were clothed in classic draperies, but stiff and severe with upright lines and childish attempts to indicate the limbs or joints beneath. Nevertheless, the work of these centuries, rude and archaic as it is, is full of dignity and force. The subjects were often sacred, sometimes of war or incidents of the chase. These last were commonly mixed with animals, lions and dogs, or eagles and hawks, or leaves of the acanthus and other foliage. Throughout these ages the foliated sculpture, the paintings of books and carving of ivory, and no doubt of wood also, was, moreover, composed in endless convolutions, such as may be seen on sculptured stones in Ireland and on the Norwegian doors of the twelfth century. Whether the different convolutions are formed by figures or dragons, or by stalks of foliage twined and knotted together in bold curved lines, symmetrically arranged, each portion is generally carefully designed and traceable through many windings as having a distinct intention and purpose. Ornamental work was thus apparently conventional, but made up of individual parts separately carried out, and in some degree, though not altogether, realistic: a character gradually lost after the early thirteenth century till the new revival in the sixteenth.

The tenth century was not favourable to the development of the requirements or comfort of personal life. Towards the year one thousand a superstition prevailed over many parts of Europe that the world would come to an end when the century was completed; and many fields were left uncultivated in the year 999. The eleventh century made a great advance in architecture and other arts, but down to the Norman invasion our own country was far behind the continental nations in the fine arts; metallurgy only excepted. The Anglo-saxons perhaps advanced but very slowly, as the century wore on to the period of the Norman conquest; and manners remained exceedingly simple.

Early illuminations, though conventional, give us some details of Anglo-saxon houses. They were of one story, and contained generally only one room. The addition of a second was rare before the Norman conquest. The furniture of the room consisted of a heavy table, sometimes fixed; on which the inhabitants of the house and the guests slept. A bedstead was occasionally reserved for the mistress of the house. Bedsteads when used by the women or the lord of the house were enclosed in a shed under the wall of enclosure and had a separate roof, as may be seen in many manuscripts. In the Bayeux tapestry a bed roof is tiled, and the framework shut in with curtains. In many instances such a design represents only a tester with posts. Otherwise beds of straw stuffed into a bag or case were spread on the table, and soldiers laid their arms by their heads ready for use in case of alarm. Benches, some with lion or other heads at the corners, like elongated chairs or settles (with backs, for the lord and lady of the house), were the usual seats. Thrones, something like that of Dagobert, were the property of kings. King Edward the Confessor is seated on such a chair (metal, and in the Roman shape) in the Bayeux tapestry, and folding chairs of various forms, more or less following classical types, were used by great personages. Benches were also used as beds; so were the lids or tops of chests, the sack or bag being sometimes kept in it and filled with straw when required. The tables were covered with cloths at dinner. Stained cloths and tapestries, commonly worked with pictorial designs, were used to hang the walls of the house or hall. They were called wah-hrægel, wall coverings. Personal clothing was kept in chests of rude construction. Silver candlesticks were used in churches. Candles were stuck anywhere in houses, on beams or ledges.

With regard to carriages during the Saxon and Anglo-norman period, carts on two wheels were common for agricultural use, and served to transport the royal property. Four-wheeled cars drawn by hand labour are used for carrying warlike stores in the Bayeux tapestry. In the battle of the Standard the standard of the English host was carried on a wheeled car or platform, and remained as the head-quarters or rallying point during action.

The Norman invasion of England caused a new advance in the luxury and refinement, such as it was, of daily life. The houses began to grow—upper rooms or rooms at the side of the great hall were added, called solars (solaria), the sunny or light rooms. These seem to have been appropriated to the ladies. In due time they added a parloir or talking room, a name derived from the rooms in which conversation was allowed in monasteries where silence was the general rule. In the upper rooms fireplaces were made occasionally, but not always chimneys. In the halls, when the upper room did not cover the whole under room or when an upper room was not constructed, fire was made in the centre of the floor. Stairs were of wood. Glass was all but unknown in the windows of houses, and wooden shutters kept out the weather.

The houses of landowners in England were called manoir or manor. The furniture was simple and consisted of few objects. The table was on trestles; the seats were benches. Armaria, armoires, cupboards or presses, either stood in recesses in the wall or were complete wooden enclosures. These had doors opening horizontally. The frames were not panelled. The doors were ledge doors of boards, nailed to stout cross bars behind, and decorated with iron hinges and clamps beaten out into scrolls and other ornaments.

Bedrooms were furnished with ornamental bed testers, and benches at the bed foot. Beds were furnished with quilts and pillows, and with spotted or striped linen sheets; over all was laid a covering of green say, badgers' furs, the skins of beavers or of martin cats, and a cushion. A perch for falcons to sit on was fixed in the wall. A chair at the bed head, and a perch or projecting pole on which clothes could be hung, completed the furniture of the Anglo-norman bedroom. In the foregoing woodcut from Willemin there is no tester, but carving on the posts, and the coverings are of the richest description.

Woodwork was decorated with painted ornament or with fanciful work on the hinges; and nails and clamps were applied to hold it together, rather than with sculpture, down to the fourteenth century; and in England, France, and Germany, oak was the wood employed for furniture. Both in England and in the countries which had retained old artistic traditions on the continent, such as Italy, France, and Spain (which profited by the skill of the Moors in painted decoration), colour was used not less on walls and wood than on metal and pottery. Tapestry was an important portion of the furniture of all houses of the richer classes.