As social peace and security became more established in the country, people began to be more lavish in all the articles of household furniture, which thus became much more numerous during the period of which we are now treating. It also went through its fashions and its changes, but in the progress of these changes it became less ponderous and more elegant. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, and perhaps later in some parts of the island, where social progress was slower, the old arrangements of a board laid upon trestles for a table still prevailed, though it was gradually disappearing; and, although the term of “laying” the board in a literal sense was no longer applicable, it has continued to be used figuratively, even to our own times. Richard Kanam, of Soham, in the county of Cambridge, whose will was proved so late as the 12th of April, 1570, left, among other household furniture, “one table with a payer of tressels, and a thicke forme.” The first step in the change from tables of this kind appears to have been to fix the trestles to the board, thus making it a permanent table. The whole was strengthened by a bar running from trestle to trestle, and ornamental wood-work was afterwards substituted in place of the trestles. A rather good example of a table of this description is given in the cut on the preceding page ([No. 295]), taken from that well-known publication, the “Stultifera Navis” of Sebastian Brandt. This, however, was a clumsy construction, and it soon gave way to the table with legs, the latter being usually turned on the lathe, and sometimes richly carved. This carving went out of use in the unostentatious days of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, to make way for plain table legs, and it never quite recovered its place.
No. 296. Henry VIII’s Chair.
We have seen already that in the latter part of the previous century, in the chairs and stools, the joinery work of Flanders was taking the place of the older rude and clumsy seats. This taste still prevailed in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, and a large proportion of the furniture used in this country, as well as of the earthenware and other household implements, during the greater part of that century, were imported from Flanders and the Netherlands. Hence, in the absence of engravings at home, we are led to look at the works of the Flemish and German artists for illustrations of domestic manners at this period. The seats of the description just mentioned were termed joint (or joined) stools or chairs. A rather fine example of a chair of this work, which is, as was often the case, three-cornered, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where it is reported to have been the chair of Henry VIII., on what authority I know not. It is represented in our cut [No. 296]. These “joined” chairs and stools were laid aside for furniture of a more elegant form, which was used during the reign of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, and of which examples are so common that it is hardly necessary to give one here. This fashion appears to have been brought from France. An example of rather peculiar style is given in our cut [No. 297], taken from a picture executed in 1587, representing Louis de Gonzagues, duke of Nivernois.
No. 297. Chair of duke de Nivernois.
Hitherto the cushions were merely adjuncts to the chairs, but by another advance in convenience the cushion was soon made as a part of the chair or stool, which at the same time became simpler in form again. Our cut No. 298, taken from one of the prints of Abraham Bosse, dated in 1633, represents the general character of the chairs and stools used in France at that date, as they are drawn in the works of this artist, and also the manner in which they were arranged round a room when not in use. On the left appears the end of a cushioned bench, which was generally of the length of two or three stools, and appears as a common article of furniture. Among other articles of furniture now introduced was the couch, or, as we should call it, the sofa. This was called, in the age of Shakespeare, a day-bed, and appears to have been in some discredit, as an article indicating excess of luxury. Large cupboards, usually termed court-cupboards, and often very richly carved, were now in general use, for containing, under lock and key, the plate and other valuables. In allusion to the carvings on these cupboards, which usually consisted of faces more or less grotesque, and not very artistically executed, Corbet, in his “Iter Boreale,” speaks of a person—
With a lean visage, like a carv’d face
On a court-cupboard.
No. 298. Stools and Chairs of the age of Charles I.