In the middle ages, as has been before said, tables were generally folding boards laid on trestles and moveable. The general disposition of the dining table was taken from those of abbeys and convents, and may be seen continued in some of our own colleges to this day. The principal table was on a raised platform or floor at the upper end of the hall, and thence called the "High" table. The guests sat on one side only, as in the traditional representations of the Last Supper, and the place of honour was the centre, the opposite side being left for the service. The principal person sat under a canopy or cloth of estate, either made for the occasion, or under a panelled canopy curving outward and permanent. Occasionally mediæval tables in England were of stone or marble. Of the former material a table is preserved belonging to the strangers' hall at Winchester; and a wooden one in the chapter-house at Salisbury. The tops of some old English tables are made with two thicknesses, the lower pulling out on either side to rest on supports drawn from the bed. A table of this description is kept at Hill hall, Essex; and the woodcut represents a folding table of the time of Elizabeth, long preserved at Flaxton Hall, in Suffolk. During the last century mahogany tables with delicate pierced galleries round the edge, and similar work to ornament the bed or frame, were made by Chippendale and his contemporaries. Many of them are light and graceful pieces of construction. Others were massively made with goat-footed legs that bulge well beyond the lines of the table top, which in these cases is often a slab of marble. The workmanship is admirable. Mahogany had then supplanted the use of oak for large tables.
Chests, Cabinets, and Sideboards.
The wardrobe, both in the Roman house and the mediæval castle, was a small room suitably fitted up and provided with receptacles. Chests, coffers, and caskets were also in use, and implied moveability. In later days the renaissance chests were either mounted on stands or gave place to mixed structures; and cabinets of various forms that could be kept permanently in the hall or chamber became the fashion. They were large, important objects, were never moved or carried abroad, descended from father to son, and were the monumental objects, as the panelled superstructure of the fireplace was, of halls and reception rooms. These pieces have various forms. In dining halls or rooms occasionally so used, they were cupboards, dressers, or places with a small receptacle to hold food, and a flat top with perhaps a step or shelf above it to carry plate, candlesticks, &c. When placed in receiving rooms or to hold dresses they were cabinets or wardrobes; for the conveniences of writing they are bureaux, sécrétaires, or escritoires.
We have early notices of the use of cypress chests, perhaps cabinets as some of them are fitted with drawers, in this country. John of Gaunt in his will, 1397, specifies "a little box of cypress wood;" probably something like the chest engraved from a manuscript of that date: out of which the servant is taking a robe evidently richly embroidered with armorial bearings. In the memoirs of the antiquities of Great Britain, relating to the reformation, we find an account of church plate, money, gold and silver images, &c., delivered to Henry the eighth: "Paid William Grene, the king's coffer-maker, for making of a coffer covered with fustyan of Naples, and being full of drawers and boxes lined with red and grene sarcynet to put in stones of divers sorts, vi. li. xviij. s. ij. d.," by which we may gather something of its costly construction, "and to Cornelys the locke smythe for making all the iron worke, that is to say, the locke, gymours, handels, ryngs to every drawer box, the price xxxvi. s. iv. d."
The marquetry invented or brought to perfection by Boule was displayed in greater magnificence on cabinets of various shapes than on any other pieces of furniture. The same may be said of the marquetry cabinets in wood executed during the eighteenth century in France by Riesener and David, with the help of the metal mounts of Gouthière and his contemporaries. In these fine pieces the interior is generally simple and the conceits of the previous century are omitted. Japan cabinets obtained through the Dutch were frequently imported into England. The hinges and mounts were of silver or gilt metal, richly chased. The bureau, escritoire, or office desk, called in Germany Kaunitz after a princely inventor, was a knee-hole table. These tall bureaux were of general, almost universal, use in England during the last century.
Sideboards.