Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork

by John Hungerford Pollen

In the ancient Egyptian paintings at Thebes, and elsewhere, chairs are minutely represented like the throne or arm chair of the Greeks, each containing one person. Occasionally they used stools and low seats raised a little above the ground. Some sat cross-legged on the ground, though this is more rare, or kneeling on one knee. The men and women generally were apart, but in the same room, while conversing they sat, and did not recline. Wilkinson gives a full description of the old Egyptian chairs and stools.

The classical curule chairs were made of ivory; sometimes of solid and entire elephants' teeth, which seems to have been the typical idea of the ivory chair; sometimes the ivory was veneered on a wooden base. The foot or point of the tusk was carved into a head or beak. It is from this curved chair of state that the later chairs were derived, of which the form remained popular in Italy through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The mediæval name was faldistorium, rendered "faldstool," a stool or seat to support the arms when kneeling, or to act as a chair when sitting.

The earliest type of the architectural thrones or chairs of the middle ages is the ancient chair of St. Peter, at Rome, of which a woodcut has been given in p. 35. A full description and plates of it will be found in the "Vetusta monumenta" of the Society of antiquaries for 1870. Another famous chair, that of St. Mark, is preserved at Venice, in the treasury of St. Mark's. Anciently this chair, like that of St. Peter in Rome, was covered with plates of ivory, carved panels probably fitted into frame pieces of wood as a covering to the stone. As it is now seen, however, the work is of oriental marble. It is a rudely shaped arm chair, with high back sloping upwards in the form of a pediment, truncated and surmounted by a stone, cut into an imperfect circle or oval, and having an arm or volute like the reversed angle-volute of a column projecting from the lower part of each side. The chair of St. Maximian at Ravenna dates from the sixth century; this is described in Mr. Maskell's "Ivories." A magnificent fourteenth century architectural chair of silver is preserved at Barcelona. The supports represent window tracery. One large arch supplies the front support, being cusped, and these cusps are again subdivided. The two sides form each a pair of windows of two lights or divisions, with a circle above, the whole cusped and having trefoil leaves on the cusps. The back is open tracery work, representing three narrow windows, with two lights or openings each. They finish in three lofty gables, crocketed outside and divided into tracery within.

Chairs in England during the mediæval period were sometimes made of turned wood. Sometimes they were cleverly arranged to fold up, as in our own days: the engraving (p. 122) is from a beautiful manuscript of the fifteenth century. The chair known as that of Glastonbury is a square board on two pairs of cross-trestles, with a square board for a back, held to the seat by sloping arm pieces, shaped out to receive the arms of a sitter. On the edges of the seat and back tenons protrude, long enough to pass through mortices in the leg and arm pieces, which are pegged to keep them firm. Like the sixteenth century curule chairs these can easily be taken to pieces for travelling. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, high-backed chairs, richly cut and pierced, with wooden, afterwards with cane, seats were used and remained in use simplified and lightened during more than a century. The woodcut (p. 123) represents the fashion of chair common in Italy about the year 1620: and from thence introduced into England.

The use of marquetry was not confined to tables and cabinets. Rich chairs were made in this material (rarely in boule) during the eighteenth century in France, Italy, and Holland, from whence they came to this country. Light and very elegant yellow satin-wood marquetry chairs were also then in fashion. The use of mahogany for chairs, often delicately carved and admirably constructed, was general during the last century in England. The French carved chairs of the time of Louis the sixteenth covered with silk all but the legs and framework, and painted white or gilt, were made to accord with the sofas and carved woodwork of the rooms. This example was followed in England, with certain national differences.

Tables.

The ancient Egyptian tables were round, square, or oblong; the former were generally used during their repasts, and consisted of a circular flat summit, supported, like the monopodium of the Romans, on a single shaft or leg in the centre or by the figure of a man intended to represent a captive. Large tables had usually three or four legs, but some were made with solid sides; and though generally of wood many were of metal or stone; and they varied in size according to the different purposes for which they were intended. Often they were three-legged, the legs in a concave shape.

An antique marble table of Græco-Roman work is preserved at Naples, supported by a centaur in full relief at one end, and a sea monster, Scylla it is supposed, involving a shipwrecked mariner in the folds of her tail, with indications of waves, &c., round her body. Other Roman tables of larger dimensions had three, four, or five supports of sphinxes, lions, and the like. We give representations of three kinds of tables from paintings on vases; and another, on three marble legs, found at Pompeii.