Antique Collecting: Dictionary of English pieces

Antique Collecting: Dictionary of English pieces

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Desks. Like the davenport, above, a desk is a piece of furniture with a sloping-top for writing. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century examples were small, portable sloping-top boxes which would contain pen, ink and paper and provide for their use. Some early eighteenth-century examples were fitted with stands, but in Victorian times the original box-type returned to favour. These latter were of mahogany or rosewood and bound with brass. Nowadays the term desk is applied to almost any piece of furniture at which writing can be done, including what was once called a writing table. These have a leather-covered top and tiers of drawers below, often with a central knee-hole recess for comfort. Large, double-sided versions of this type are called partner's desks.

Dining Tables. The first dining tables of which survivors remain are the type known as refectory tables. They are made usually of oak, and one of the earliest, at Penshurst Place in Kent, has a typical thick top of joined planks supported on three separate trestles. Later, came a lower part in one piece with heavy legs united by stretchers at their bases and rails at the tops. The Elizabethan dining table, also of oak and constructed in this manner, was often carved and inlaid, the legs being turned into strikingly large bulbous swellings. An alternative type at this period was the draw table, which extended by means of leaves at either end sliding in and out from below the principal top.

Refectory tables stayed in use throughout most of the seventeenth century, but towards 1680 came large circular tables on gate-leg supports. Many of these are four feet or more in diameter, and it seems probable that their use was for dining.

Mahogany dining tables survive in large numbers, and are of many types. Early ones, of about 1740, have falling side-flaps supported by swinging outwards the hinged legs; others are in sections and become as many as four separate tables when taken apart. Late in the eighteenth century came the type with each section supported on a central pillar with splayed legs and brass-capped toes; a type that is very popular today for the practical reason that the legs are out of the way of the diners.

Dressers. A piece of furniture on which china or silver was displayed. In the seventeenth century it was a long table with drawers, usually raised on legs, and made generally of oak. In the eighteenth century came the fashion of fitting a superstructure of shelves, sometimes with small cupboards at either end, and these are often called Welsh dressers. Rare examples are made of yew wood.

Dumb Waiters. A set of revolving trays of different sizes supported on a central pillar, and used beside the dining table. Eighteenth-century mahogany examples had circular trays and tripod bases, some nineteenth-century rosewood ones were oblong and had four-legged supports.
Foot Stools. These came into use at the end of the eighteenth century, and continued to be popular from then onwards. The upholstered tops were often covered in needlework.

Gate-leg Tables. These tables, which have the distinctive feature of a gate-like hinged leg to support the top flap, have been made continuously in one form or another from at least the seventeenth century until today. The earliest were made of oak and are rare, but those of the middle and later years of the seventeenth century can be found sometimes. They vary in size from a large dining table some seven feet in length to small tea tables about three feet in diameter. In most instances the supports are turned. Somewhat similar tables were made also of walnut, but these are scarce. Small mahogany gate-leg tables are often of a type known as 'spider leg', because of their thin supports. Many gate-leg tables were made in Victorian times, when this method of construction was very popular.
Gout Stools. Stools that have adjustment to raise or lower their tops were made from about 1790 for the relief of sufferers from gout. Another pattern, of ‘X'-shaped construction, with thick padding, was made at about the same date.

Knife Boxes. Cases, with hinged lids, for holding knives, spoons and forks, were made of wood or of wood covered in shagreen (fish skin). Although existing from the middle of the seventeenth century, most of the surviving examples are of eighteenth-century date and made of inlaid mahogany. The most popular type had a sloping top and serpentine-shaped front, but others in the form of a vase on a foot are sometimes seen. Some of the latter were made from satinwood, inlaid or painted.

Lanterns. We do not usually think of a hall-lantern as a piece of furniture, but Chippendale has designs for them in his Director, and one made to his pattern is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Old wood ones are very rare, but gilt metal examples, especially of Adam design, are to be seen. Many of them date from long after the eighteenth century.

Mirrors. The first mirrors to be used in England were flat plates of highly polished metal—called 'steel', but actually an alloy of copper and tin—they were of small size and very heavy. Venice had a monopoly of making mirror-glass, and it was exported from there to the rest of Europe. In the seventeenth century Venetian workers began to make it in England, and the use of glass mirrors for personal use and for decoration became widespread.

At first they were framed in a similar manner to paintings, and it is difficult to decide whether a seventeenth-century frame was made for a picture or a mirror. Those known as 'cushion-shaped', with a deep rounded edge, veneered with walnut, carved, inlaid with marquetry or lacquered, were among the earliest made.

By the end of the century, very large mirrors had become fashionable. There was a limit to the size of a sheet of glass that could then be made, so a frame was filled sometimes with more than one sheet, and often bordered with a number of smaller ones. The mantelpiece in the principal room of a mansion would have a large mirror over it, and these overmantel mirrors were sometimes framed in walnut and gilt wood; the frame also incorporating an oil painting and filling the entire space above the fireplace. Overmantel mirrors continued to be made, and their styles followed those of wall mirrors down the years.

During the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, many small mirror-frames were made, and these were veneered with walnut sometimes enriched with gilt carving. Many of them survive today, but the greater proportion of so-called Queen Anne mirrors are little more than thirty years old.

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