• Recently Written

  • Baroque Antiqies: Louis XIV Style
  • Antique Linen Embroidery
  • Renaissance Jewellery and Precious Stones
  • Antique Clocks. English and German Clocks
  • Antique Bohemian Glass
  • Antique Venetian Glass. Vases
  • Antique Tudor Furniture
  • Renaissance Antiques - Furniture, Glass, Porcelain, Pottery, Silver
  • Antique and Collectible Embroidery
  • 16-18th Century Jewellery

• Categories

  • ANTIQUE ARMS AND ARMOUR
  • ANTIQUE ARMS AND ARMOUR GLOSSARY
  • ANTIQUE BLANKET CHESTS
  • Antique Clocks
  • ANTIQUE CLOCKS AND WATCHES
  • antique furniture
  • Antique Glass
  • Antique Mahogany Chairs
  • Antique Periods
  • ANTIQUE TRAVELLING CHESTS
  • AUCTIONS
  • COTTAGE POTTERY AND POPULAR ART
  • Gold and Silver
  • Uncategorized

• Archives

  • September 2009
  • July 2009

• Blogroll

• Admin

  • Log in
  • Wordpress
  • XHTML

  Search

RSS

GLOSSARY
Act of Parliament Clock: a misnomer applied to a timepiece, usually weight-driven, with seconds pendulum having a large unglazed dial and a small trunk. According to legend, these clocks were first put into inns and post taverns for use of the general public, many of whom had sold their clocks and watches when Pitt introduced his Act in 1797 levying 5s per annum on all clocks and watches. Such distress was caused in the trade that the Act was repealed next year. Actually this design dates from about 1760.
Arbor: the shaft which carries wheels and pinions.
Architectural clock: a clock in which the hood, in long-case, and the top in mantel clocks, is in the style of a classical pediment, with or without supporting columns. Usually a sign of work in the third quarter of the I 7th century, although these pediment tops were revived for a short period early in the igth century.
Arch top, plain: a case, usually in bracket clocks, where the arch rises directly from the sides of the case.
Astrological dials: these are embodied in many early clocks and watches and reflect the important part that astrology played in the everyday life of the people. They show the relation or aspect of the planets to one another at any time. They are usually shown as related to the moon, whose phases are to be seen through an aperture in the dial for this purpose. The distances in degrees are shown by the Trines L (1200), Quartiles ❑ (go’), Sextiles * (6o’), Con-
junction I (o°), and Opposition 0 (18o°).
0    0
Automatic winding: a pocket watch which is wound up by means of a weight actuated by the motion of the body. A patent was taken out in London in 178o by Louis Recordon, but prior claim is made for Abraham Louis Perrelet, of Le Locle.
Balance: an oscillating wheel which, controlled by the balance spring, regulates the rate of going of a watch. It is, in a watch, the counterpart of a pendulum in a clock.
Balance spring: usually known as the hair spring today. It controls the balance.
Balloon: a type of waisted clock popular in the late i 8th and early zgth centuries.
Basket top: a pierced metallic and roughly dome-shaped case top current at the end of the 17th and early in the i8th centuries.

Basket top, double: two pierced metallic basket tops superimposed.
Basket top, wood: where a smooth wooden dome replaces the metallic bracket.
Bell top: the top of a clock case where the lower portion is shaped like the bell of a turret clock with concave sides.
Bell, inverted: as for Bell top, except that the lower portion has a convex outline.
Bezel: the metallic framing of a clock or watch glass.
Bob: the weight at the base of a pendulum rod. The earliest were pear-shaped or nearly spherical. Later the general form was lenticular; in some regulators and special clocks cylindrical.
Bolt and shutter: a form of maintaining power. The shutters cover the winding squares so that the clock cannot be wound without pushing them aside. This action brings into play a small subsidiary force that keeps the clock going during the period of winding.
Bow: the loop at the top of the pendant of a watch.
Bracket clock: many clocks of the 17th and 18th centuries were provided with their own brackets, usually designed to harmonize with the case. Only rarely have original brackets survived. They frequently contain a drawer to hold the winding key. Portable clocks are known as both mantel and bracket clocks.
Bridge: a shaped metallic support having two terminal plates.
Broken arch: an arch terminating on either side with a horizontal projection. There are broken arch dials and cases. If a full semicircle, they are known as deep; if less, and this usually applies to the earliest, as shallow arches.
Buhl: inlay of brass or silver, usually on a base of tortoiseshell. Invented by Andr6 Charles Boulle in the latter half of the 17th century.

Bun feet: small, circular, flat, ‘cheese-like’ feet, sometimes found on early long-case and bracket clocks.
Bushing: the filling up of worn pivot holes and their subsequent opening to size.
Cam: a part so shaped as to turn rotary motion into reciprocal or variable motion.
Cannon pinion: the pinion to which it is usual to fit the minute hand.
Cap (dust): a movable cap, first used early in the 18th century to help keep the movement clean. Only used in watches.
Cartel clock: a mural clock, usually of. somewhat flamboyant design. More often found in France than in England. English are usually of carved wood, whereas the French are usually of cast brass or bronze and gilt.
Cartouche: a decorative panel, sometimes applied, and framing an inscription.
Case, pair: for a century, beginning about the latter part of the 17th century, watches were usually provided with two cases, of which the outer was frequently highly ornate. In some instances a third case was provided to protect the decoration on the second.
Centre seconds: a clock or watch in which the seconds hand is placed on the same arbor as the hour and minute hands.
Champlev6: the cutting away of the dial of a watch, so that the hour numerals, minute ring and inter-horary marks remain raised.
Chapter ring: the applied circle, found in earlier clocks, upon which are engraved the hour numerals. Derives its name from the fact that hours are struck on a bell. Originally a clock served to rouse the sexton, who then struck the hour of the chapter, or religious office, on a bell.
Chiming clock: a clock which sounds at the quarters a chime on four or more bells in addition to striking the hour.
Circular error-. Christiaan Huygens, who invented the
pendulum, discovered that the truly isochronous swing of a pendulum was not the true arc of a circle but on a cycloid. The course of the latter is more U-shaped than the true circle; but fora short distance at the bottom of the swing the two paths coincide. Any lack of time-keeping due to a pendulum swinging beyond this common path is said to be due to circular error.
Clepsydra: a timekeeper motivated by water running either into or out from it. Water clocks are among the earliest forms known; before the discovery of the verge escapement and the weight as a motive power.
Cock (Clock): (a). the bracket that supports the pendulum, (b) a bridge with only one terminal plate.
Cock (Watch): the bracket covering and protecting the balance, it also supports the upper end of the balance staff.
Collet: (a) a domed-shaped washer used to render firm the hands of a clock (b) a flange.
Compensation balance: a balance that corrects the influence of heat and cold upon its timekeeping. Usually of bimetallic construction.
Compensation curve: a bimetallic curve in contact with one end of the balance spring. The action of temperature on the curve causes a compensating change in the effective length of the balance spring.
Contrate wheel: a wheel in which the teeth stand perpendicularly to the plane of the wheel. It is used to transmit motion from the arbor of one wheel at right angles to the first.
Count wheel: see Locking plate.
Cromwellian clock: see Lantern clock.
Crown wheel: the escape wheel of the verge escapement. Crutch: that part of the clock mechanism which, fixed to the pallet arbor, transmits the impulse to the independently supported pendulum.
Curb pins: two pins astride the outer end of a balance spring. These are moved by the regulating device, and so alter the effective length of the spring.
Cycloidal cheeks: curves fitted to a pendulum clock to overcome circular error. It was found, however, that the errors they introduced were greater than those they eliminated, hence they were soon abandoned. Only found in the very earliest pendulum clocks.
Cycloidal path: the curve described by a point on the circumference of a circle rolling along a straight line.
Day of the month: a clock with an indication of the date changing daily. Usually the adjustment for the short months has to be made by hand, but some systems provide for this and, in more exceptional cases, for leap year as well. (see Perpetual calendar).
Declination: the angular distance of a star north or south of the celestial equator. In clocks the star is usually the sun, whose declination varies between 231′ north and south of the equator.
Detent: that which detains. The term is applied to the pawl or click that takes into the ratchet wheel.
Dial: the face of a clock or watch on which are marked the hours, minutes and seconds. The division of the circle into 36o equal parts is believed to have originated with the Sumerians about 4000 B.C. Finding that to, the number of the fingers, was not easily divisible, they chose a unit of 6, divisible by 3 and 2. They then adopted a combination of 6 and io up to 6 x io=6o. This formed the basis for another series up to iox6o=600. This again formed a basis, but when they reached 6×600=3,600, they considered that they had reached finality or completeness, which they symbolized as a circle.
Dominical letter: the ist ofianuary is allotted the letter A and the six succeeding letters, B—G, assigned to the six succeeding days. The letter thus falling on the first Sunday of the year is the Dominical letter for that year. In leap years two letters are required, one up to February 29 and the next succeeding letter, if necessary recommencing with A, for the rest of the year. Used in connection with the fixing of Easter Day.
Dutch striking: the repetition of the hour at the half-hour on a different toned bell.
Ecliptic: the apparent orbit of the sun. Total eclipses of the sun or moon are only possible when the moon is in the plane of the ecliptic. The plane of the orbit of the moon is inclined at an angle Of 5° to that of the sun. Where the two intersect is termed the Nodes. They appear on clock dials as R.
Epact: the age of the moon on January I.
Epicycloid: the curve traced by a point on the circumference of a circle as it rolls around another circle. It is a curve used in the cutting of teeth for wheels.
Equation dial: a dial that records both Solar and Mean Time.
Equation kidney: a kidney-shaped cam, invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1695, which made possible the transformation of simple forward rotary motion into a backward or forward motion, varying daily, both in direction and amount, necessary to indicate the daily difference between Solar and Mean Time.
Equation of time: the solar day or time as recorded by a sundial varies each day in length; whereas Mean Time, or time shown by a clock, is exactly twenty-four hours each day. This difference, which varies irregularly daily, is known as the equation of time.
Escape wheel: the wheel that gives impulse to the balance or pendulum.
Escapement: the means by which the motion of a clock or watch is checked and the energy of the motive force, weight or spring, is transmitted to the controller, pendulum or balance.
ANCHOR: invented about 167o by William Clement. It revolutionized timekeeping. With it the pallets are in the same plane as the escape wheel, instead of being at right angles to it, as in the verge escapement. It largely eliminated circular error and also made practical the use of long pendulums swinging more slowly, hence with a lesser cumulative error. It is still used today for most domestic clocks and particularly in long-case clocks with pendulums beating one second. It is also known as the recoil escapement which recoil is seen in the slight shudder at each beat in the seconds hand of long-case clocks so equipped. The vastly improved timekeeping of this escapement made really practical use of clocks for astronomical purposes. Flamsteed, the first astronomer Royal at Greenwich, in 1675, used clocks made by Thomas Tompion, equipped with the anchor escapement. This largely accounted for the far greater accuracy of his observations as compared with his contemporaries. From this invention followed, directly or indirectly, practically all the subsequent improvements in timekeeping in clocks.
CYLINDER: a type for use in watches. A form of this escapement was patented by Tompion, Barlow and Haughton in 1695, but it was never developed. It remained for Tompion’s successor, George Graham, to perfect this escapement about 1725. Graham used it very extensively in his watches, and this greatly helped him to gain the reputation of being the best watchmaker of his day. As with the anchor escapement, the pallets are in the same plane as the escape wheel. This escapement remained the best for watches until supplanted by the duplex and the lever escapements about the end of the 18th century.
DFADDEAT: invented by George Graham about 1715. Graham was the leading astronomical instrument-maker of his day, and from his close connection with astronomers was, doubtless, aware of their demand for still greater accuracy than could be attained with the anchor escapement. The deadbeat escapement is an improvement on the anchor in that it eliminates the recoil, and remains steady at the end of each beat. It held the field for the most accurate escape for astronomical work for nearly two hundred years. It is still used today in high-grade clocks, both long-case and mantel.
DUPLEX: invention uncertain. Usually attributed to Pierre LeRoy, Paris, about 1750. The escape wheel has two sets of teeth, one long and pointed, the other short and triangular and rising from the plane of the escape wheel. The long teeth escape through a small notch in the balance staff, which also carries a long arm by which the impulse is given through the short triangular teeth.
LEVER: first invented about 1758 by Thomas Mudge and incorporated in a watch given by King George III to Queen Charlotte. Mudge only made one or two other examples and does not seem to have realized the importance of his invention, which lies in the fact that the balance is free from interference for the greater part of its swing, thus leaving it free to perform its true function as controller. From the commencement of the second quarter of the I 9th century the lever escapement, in one of its many forms, became the standard escapement for watches, and still is so today. Before that date, despite the appearance of the cylinder, duplex and lever escapements, the standard watch escapement was the verge.
PIN-PALLET: invented by Amant, Paris, about 1740. A type in which the pins stand out from the side of the escape wheel. Not much found in English clocks.
RECOIL: see Anchor escapement.
TIC-TAG: a modified form of the anchor escapement found in some early clocks. The ‘anchor’ only embraces two or three teeth of the escape wheel.
VERGE: this was the original escapement for mechanical clocks. Date of invention unknown, possibly 13th century.

The writer considers the inventor of this escapement one of the greatest men in horology, for he had nothing prior to guide him. Although it is an escapement in its worst form, in that it never leaves the pendulum or balance free for an instant, nevertheless it was in its day as revolutionary an invention as was, later, the anchor escapement. It held the field unchallenged for about four hundred years; even thereafter it remained in use for clocks and watches, along with better types, for another one hundred and fifty years. It was used in bracket clocks as long as there were only one or two in a house, and they were carried from room to room, since it does not need any very careful levelling.
Foliot: the earliest form of controller in a mechanical clock. Always found with a verge escapement. The balance wheel and, especially later, the pendulum so improved timekeeping that it is very rare to find a clock with its original foliot. Its origin is unknown, but presumably attributable to the inventor of the verge escapement. Consists of a horizontal rod fixed to a pivoted bar carrying the verge pallets. Regulation was by moving the weights carried at each end. The word may be derived from the French esprit foller, a goblin associated with Puck and represented by its to and fro motion.
Form watch: a watch made in some form that departs from the standard of the period, e.g. book, cruciform, skull, dog, etc. These are found in the 17th century, Later, at the end of the i8th century, there are lyres, mandolines, baskets of flowers, fruit, etc.
Fly: a rapidly revolving vane, the final component of the striking train, which acts as a governor for the rate of striking. Invention unknown, but presumably concurrent with the Locking plate.
Frets: pierced metallic decorative pieces, originally used to hide the balance in lantern clocks. Later, either in wood or metal, inserted into clocks cases to facilitate the elimination of sound.

-shaned and spirally-grooved pulley Fusee: a con;-11 I
which, utilizing the principle of the lever, equalizes the pull of the main-spring of a clock or watch on the train. This has generally been attributed to Jacob the Czech, of Prague, based on the earliest known survival in a clock by him, owned by the Society of Antiquaries of London, dated 1525• Leonardo da Vinci had many sketches of the fusee in his note-books of about 1490. The writer’s researches have shown that there may be a possible connection between the two men through Bona, Queen of Poland, for whom the clock was made. Bona was a Sforza of Milan, at whose court Leonardo was during her girlhood. It is now thought that Jacob only put into practice Leonardo’s idea. This invention has not been bettered, and is still in use today in high-grade spring-driven clocks. Catgut was originally used to connect the fusee with the main-spring barrel, but from the end of the 17th century a chain is usually employed.
Gathering Pallet: a pin or finger that revolves when the clock is striking and gathers up, at each revolution, a tooth of the striking rack.
Golden numbers: see Metonic cycle.
Gong: a piece of hardened, tempered wire wound in a volute, on which the hours are struck, instead of a bell. First used in the last quarter of the 18th century.
Grandfather clock: properly known as a long-case clock. Came into existence directly after the invention of the anchor escapement, 1670. The narrow arc of swinging of this escapement made possible the enclosing of the weights and pendulum in a narrow trunk. When the term ‘grandfather’ clock first came into use is uncertain, but Barham uses the term in his Ingoldsby Legends, which date from about 1835-
Grandmother clock: a small long-case clock, not exceeding 6 feet 6 inches in height.
Grand sonnerie: a system of striking whereby the hour and the quarter are struck at each quarter. The earliest
known example is the movement with the silent escapement made by Tompion about 1676-80. This system of striking was rendered possible by the invention by Edward Barlow, in 1676, of the rack and snail method of striking.
Gregorian calendar: the old Church calendar assumed a solar year of exactly 356J days and that ig solar years contained exactly 235 lunation. Neither of these is quite accurate. By 1582 the cumulative error amounted to io days. Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar - or New Style - which brought the vernal equinox back to March 21 instead of March 11. This change was not adopted in England till 1752, by which time the error was 11 days. In that year September 2 was followed by September 14. The ignorant populace rioted, saying, ‘Give us back our eleven days!’. This change accounted for the financial year ending on April 5 instead of March 25 in 1753, and it has so remained ever since.
Hood: the upper removable portion of a long-case. In all, except very early cases, it draws forward.
Hood, rising: the earliest form, before the door was introduced in the front, in which the hood slides up on grooves in the back-board and is held in place by a catch, thus allowing access to the dial. As clocks increased in height, the rising hood became impracticable, and the draw forward type with door was introduced.
Hoop wheel: a wheel, forming part of the striking train of a clock, to which is affixed a narrow band, having a slot and projecting at right angles to the plane of the wheel. This serves as a regulator between each blow of the hammer.
Hour circle: see Chapter ring.
Hours, Babylonian: The Babylonians are believed to have divided the day into equal hours of sixty minutes, each of sixty seconds. For the origin of the sixty see Dial.
Hours, canonical: time signals were given in ancient Rome at three-hourly intervals, starting at 6 a.m. They were mane, tertia, sextes, nona and vespera and were later adopted by the Christian Church. In time other offices were added to the Church day, and the times of these offices or chapters advanced, until nona fell at noon. The original function of a clock was to let off an alarm every hour to warn the sexton to ring the bell for the office.
Hours, Italian: the Italians reckoned the time as twenty-four equal hours a day, starting from sunset. In some early Continental clocks dials were marked I to XII twice over and had a movable ring marked 1-24 in Arabic numerals, enabling the clock to be set daily at sunset for the Italian hour.
Hours, Nuremberg: in South Germany, until the early part of the 17th century, time was recorded as so many hours of daylight and so many of darkness. These varied from sixteen hours of daylight and eight of darkness in midsummer to the converse in mid-winter. Public tables told when an hour should be transferred from one section to the other. In the town of Rothenburg this system of time recording was retained up to the early 19th century.
Indiction: a period of fifteen years arising from Roman taxation laws. Used in ecclesiastical calculations. Dials marked 1-15, with a hand revolving once in fifteen years are sometimes found on astronomical clocks.
Involute curve: the curve described by a point on a taut line unwound from a cylinder.
Involute gear teeth: wheels having teeth cut on the principle of the involute curve.
Isochronous: performing the same motion in equal time, i.e. when the balance of a watch or the pendulum of a clock performs each vibration in the same time irrespective of the arc of vibration or swing.
Jewels: when the bearings of pivots are formed of jewels to reduce wear and friction. jewels were first introduced by Facio de Duillier in 1704; he was a Swiss settled in London.Rubies and sapphires are usually used. Jewels are sometimes found as pallets in very high-grade regulators.
Julian calendar: a system of time reckoning introduced by Julius Caesar to reconcile the civil and tropical years. It assumed a year of exactly 3651 days and 235 lunations to equal exactly ig solar years. These figures were not quite accurate; the accumulated error led to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.
Lancet clock: design of late 18th and early 19th centuries, in which a bracket clock has a pointed ‘gothic’ top.
Lantern clock: a typically English design evolved in the early part of the 17th century, and persisting, especially in the provinces, until well into the 18th century. Erroneously called a Cromwellian clock. Much copied today. All original lantern clocks are weight-driven and, with the rarest exceptions, never exceed a thirty-hour going period.
Lantern clock, Wing: a type, popular for about a quarter of a century, at the end of the 17th century, where the pendulum was placed between the going and striking trains, and took the form of an anchor, the flukes of which appeared each side of the main framework, and were protected by wings.
Lantern pinion: an early type in which the leaves are formed by wires affixed between two circular end plates.
Latched plates: the retaining plates of the movement where the distance pillars are secured at one end by swivelled catches instead of by pins passing through the head of the pillar.
Leaf, Pinion: the longitudinal teeth of a pinion are known as leaves.
Lenticle: the glass let into the door of a long-case clock to allow the motion of the pendulum bob to be seen.
Locking plate: a plate with notches set at increasing intervals around its circumference, which allows the striking train to sound the correct number of blows before the locking arm falls into a notch and stops the train. Invention unknown, probably i3th century, concurrently with the
verge escapement.
Long-case: the correct horological term for a grandfather or grandmother clock.
Lunar Dial: a dial which shows the lunar periods.
Lunar work: that part of the train which actuates the lunar dial.
Lunation: a period of 29 days 12 hours and 45 minutes, being the time taken by the moon to make a complete revolution round the earth and occupy the same position relative to the sun. Except in very special astronomical clocks, the period is usually taken as 291 days.
Maintaining power: a device used in weight clocks and in clocks and watches fitted with a fusee, whereby a subsidiary force is brought into play to keep the clock going while it is being wound. In early clocks the winding squares were often covered by shutters, which, when pulled aside, brought into operation the maintaining power, thus ensuring its use.
Mantel clock: alternative name fora bracket clock.
Matting: a system of rendering dull the surface of the brass dial plate. The art is now lost. Usually confined to the centre of the chapter ring. In some early pendulum clocks the dials are matted all over.
Metonic cycle: the Greek astronomer Meton discovered that the days of the month on which full moon accur constitute a cycle of 19 years. This was considered so wonderful that the Greeks had it carved on stone in letters of gold. Clocks are to be found with a dial marked i-ig, the hand revolving in ig years.
Minute wheel: the wheel which is driven by the cannon pinion and of which the pinion drives the hour wheel, to which the hour hand is attached.
Micrometer adjustment: a graduated wheel fixed to the pendulum suspension to give accurate adjustment for regulation. Early use of this was made by both Wm. Clement and A. Fromanteel, but who had prior claim is uncertain. Later replaced by a subsidiary dial on the clock face, the hand of which actuated a rack and pinion or a cam connected with the pendulum suspension.
Mock pendulum: a swinging bob attached to the escape arbor, which shows through a slot in the dial plate. Only used in clocks with the verge escapement. Sometimes called a false bob.
Month clock: a clock that goes fora period of one month with one winding. The usual period is 32 days.
Moon dial: see Lunar dial.
Moon work: see Lunar work.
Movement: the ‘works’ of a clock or watch.
Mural clock: a clock made to hang on the wall.
Musical clock or watch: one that plays a tune at each hour or other predetermined time, as opposed to a chiming clock.
Night clock: a clock that shows the time by night, usually by means of a light shining through a pierced dial. Nodes: see Ecliptic.
Nuremberg egg: a misnomer applied to early South German watches. Arose from the misreading and mistranslation of `Uhrlein’ into ‘Eierlein’ (little clocks into little eggs) These early watches were usually drum shaped.
Orrery: see Planetarium.
Pallet: that part of the escapement through which the escape wheel gives impulse to the balance or pendulum.
Parquetry: a type of veneer in which the applied woods are worked into a pattern with straight-sided components—e.g. squares, diamonds, rectangles, etc.
Pendant: the small neck of metal connecting the watchcase to the bow.
Pendulums
BOB: the earliest form invented by Christiaan Huygens in
1657 and used with the verge escapement. In England the
pendulum rod was usually fixed to the end of the escape pallet arbor, but on the Continent suspension was generally from a silk cord, the pendulum being actuated by a crutch. Regulation was by means of a fine thread cut on the lower end of the pendulum rod. The hole in the bob had a softwood core which ‘took up’ the threads on the rod.
DOUBLE BOB ‘. a spring-suspended type, appearing towards the latter part of the 18th century in which the rod carries two lenticular-shaped bobs.
HALF SECONDS: Length 9.8-in. beats twice a second. This is the longest pendulum normally found on verge escapement clocks.
SECONDS: this pendulum, 39.14 in- long, and those of longer length (see under) were made practical by the invention of the anchor escapement. The vastly improved timekeeping resulting from the adoption of the seconds pendulum and the anchor escapement in the early 1670s caused it to be called the Royal pendulum. It is the standard pendulum today for long-case clocks.
ONE AND A QUARTER SECONDS: 5 ft. z in. When the im-
proved performance of the seconds pendulum and anchor escapement were realized, attempts were made to increase this by using longer pendulums. Wm. Clement first made clocks with 11 seconds pendulums. The seconds dial Of a clock originally so made should have four divisions between each 5-second interval on the seconds dial. Sometimes clocks have their escapement sand pendulums altered from 1 second to 1I seconds in order to enhance their value. These will generally have their old seconds dials with five divisions. The base of a I i-seconds clock should have a door to allow access to the bob.
Two SECONDS: 13 ft. of in. When making the first two clocks for Greenwich Observatory, in 1676, Thomas Tompion introduced 2-seconds pendulums and year move-ments, in an attempt to secure the greatest accuracy. These are thought to be the first clocks so designed in England. When the clocks were removed from Greenwich they were converted to movements with I -second pendulums. 2-second pendulums are now only found in some turret clocks.
COMPENSATION: a pendulum which provides for the compensation of the effects of heat and cold.
CONICAL: a pendulum that rotates in a circle, the point of suspension being the apex of the cone. Robert Hooke experimented with conical pendulums in 1666. Huygens also made experiments, but it is seldom found in practice.
ELLICOTT: invented in 1752, utilizing the principle of the difference in the expansion between steel and brass. The heavy bob is carried on two angular hinged supports. As the length of the pendulum rod changes with temperature the vertical arms of the support are raised or depressed, giving a complementary movement to the horizontal arms carrying the heavy bob. Very expensive to make and not materially better than the gridiron, hence not extensively used.
GRIDIRON: invented about 1725 by John Harrison, a carpenter born in Soulby in Yorks, 1693. Sometimes attributed jointly with his brother James. Harrison discovered that brass and steel have an expansion ratio of 3 :2. This property is utilized in this pendulum, with its alternate rods of brass and steel. One side only is required, the other rods being put in for balance and symmetry. Still used today in high-grade clocks.
MERCURY: invented in 1726 by George Graham, who had previously experimented with brass and steel without conclusive results. The bob of the pendulum consists of a jar containing mercury. As the temperature changes the length of the pendulum rod, the level of the mercury in the jar alters in the inverse sense, thus keeping constant the
Still
centre of oscillation of the pendulum.    in use today in
high-grade clocks.
ROYAL: see Seconds pendulum.
SIMPLE: a theoretical conception consisting of a weight or mass suspended by a weightless thread.
WOOD: a pendulum rod made Of well-seasoned, straight-grained and varnished wood is little affected by temperature or humidity. It is sometimes used in high-grade clocks and
regulators.
Perpetual calendar: a calendar which corrects itself for the short months, and more exceptionally for leap year. Usually consists of a slotted wheel revolving once a year (or four years) with slots of varying length which control the movement of a lever, allowing it to pass one or more teeth of the calendar wheel at a time.
Pillars: the distance pieces separating the back and front (or top and bottom) plates of a clock or watch. Their style is a guide to the date of the piece.
Pin drum: the spiked drum of a musical or chiming clock, the spikes of which actuate the hammers as the drum revolves.
Pinion: a small-toothed wheel, in which the ratio of the axial length to diameter is greater than in a wheel. The teeth of pinions are called leaves. In clock and watch movements wheels and pinions alternate in the train.
Pivot: the reduced end of an arbor, round which it revolves.
Planetarium: a representation of the chief celestial bodies, sun, moon, earth and planets, which, when put into action, usually by turning a handle (although some are driven by clocks), shows the relative motion of these bodies. More usually called`Orreries’, after Richard Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery, in the mistaken beleif that the first of these was made for him. The first was made by Tompion and Graham for Prince Eugene in about 1705-
Plates, Back and front and top and bottom: plates between which are pivoted the trains of a clock or watch. Early back plates in clocks were quite plain, except for the signature; later they began to be decorated, and the decor-ation became more and more ornate, reaching a peak in the first quarter of the 18th century. From this point it declined until the last decade of this century saw the return of the plain back plate. These back plates are a useful guide to the date of a clock.
Plinth: properly speaking, the base of a clock, but more usually applied to its skirting.
Positional error: the variations in the rate of going of a watch due to change of position; pendant up, pendant down, dial up, dial down, etc.
Potance: the bracket supporting the lower pivot of the crown wheel arbor in a verge escapement.
Pulse watch: see Stop watch.
Pump across: in ting-tang quarter-striking clocks the quarters are struck on different-toned bells. Usually there are two hammers, one for each bell and the striking action is ‘pumped across’ from one hammer to the other.
Quarter clock: a clock striking at the quarters as well as at the hour.
Quoins: representations of the corner stones of a building. In almost all cases it will be found that the long cases so decorated originate in Lancashire, late 18th century.
Rack and snail striking: a system invented in 1676 by Edward Barlow which, except for turret clocks, has practically superseded the locking plate in this country. This type of striking made repeating clocks possible.
Rate: the regular amount by which a clock gains or loses in a stated period of time, usually per day.
Rating nut: the nut placed below the bob of the pendulum and used to regulate it. In some early 19th century clocks the rating nut appears above the bob, in these cases movement of the rating nut is inverse.
Regulator: a high-grade long-case clock with compensation pendulum and possibly other refinements, such as roller bearings and jewelling. The hour is frequently read off a disc revolving behind the dial proper, and showing
through an aperture.
Repeater: a clock or watch on which the hours, and generally also the quarters, and in rare cases the five minutes and even the minute, can be made to strike at will by the pulling of a cord, the pressing of a knob, etc. Repeating clocks were common until the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, when matches were introduced.
Repeating work: the motion work necessary to make a clock or watch repeat.
Ringing: the practice at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries of surrounding the winding square holes, and sometimes the seconds hand arbor, with concentric decoration.
Rise and fall: the subsidiary dial of a clock for pendulum regulation purposes.
Roman strike: a system devised by Joseph Knibb in the latter part of the r 7th century to reduce the power needed, in spring-driven clocks especially, to drive the striking train. The hours are struck on two different-toned bells, one striking up to III and the other once for V, and twice for X. In clocks so made the IIII is usually marked IV. Sometimes found also in long- case clocks.
Sand glass: an early form of measuring time by the period required for a given quantity of fine sand to pass from one bulb of the glass to the other, through a fine neck. Usually found in sets of four, the glasses recording the four quarters of the hour. In genuine early examples the two bowls are separate and joined by an applied band.
Seconds dial: the subsidiary dial on a clock on which the seconds are marked.
Sedan clock: a large-dialled watch some 4 to 6 inches in diameter, with bow for hanging in a conveyance. Usually has a small watch type of movement behind the much larger dial.
Self-winding watch: see Automatic winding.
Shagreen: a product made from shark skin.
Sheepshead: a lantern clock in which the chapter ring extends appreciably beyond the rectangular frame of the front dial plate.
Skeleton dial: one in which the metal is cut away from the applied chapter ring, leaving only the numerals, minutes and interhorary marks.
Spandrels: decorative corner-pieces found on clock dials for about one hundred years from 1675-80. Their design is a guide to the date of the clock.
Spoon: a hinged hook on the inner side of the top of the front of a long-case clock, so that when the door is closed the lower ’spoon handled’ part of the hook is pressed back and the upper hooked part pressed forward to keep the hood locked until the trunk door be opened again. Only found in early long-case clocks with rising hoods.
Stackfreed: an early South German device of unknown origin to be found in very early watches, whereby a roller attached to a strong spring bears against a shaped snail or cam, the radius of which decreases. The friction on the pivots of the snail and roller decreases as the spring is allowed to approach the centre of revolution of the snail; as the main spring is unwound and loses power the braking action of the roller decreases, tending to keep constant the force exerted by the spring on the watch movement. The principle of the lever underlies this as in the fusee. Both methods are found in the early 16th century, but the fusee ultimately supplanted the stackfreed everywhere.
Stop watch: one in which the seconds hand can be stopped or restarted at will without stopping the whole movement. In the earliest stop watches, c. 168o-go, the stop stopped the whole movement. They were used by doctors and were called ‘pulse watches’.
Strike-silent: any mechanism that stops at will the striking or chiming of a clock. The early forms had a pin  showing through the dial, attached to a lever, and had the dial marked ‘N’ and ‘S’ (Not and Strike). Later a subsidiary dial appeared for this purpose.
Sunray clocks: a type developed in the late 17th century at the time of the cult of the ‘Roi Solcil, Louis XIV. A central circular dial with carved wooden sun’s rays emanating therefrom. Much copied today. Original clocks have the rays of hand-carved wood.
Suspension: refers to the method of supporting the pendulum of a clock, spring, silk, knife-edge.
Table clocks: a clock with a horizontal dial, designed to be placed on a table and viewed from above.
Tidal dial: a dial that indicates daily the time of high tide at any given port. Not found on Continental clocks. The earliest English dials were made for London, and show high tide at new and full moon at 3 o’clock. Since the 24-hour cycle is completed each lunation, by having two circles, one fixed and marked 1-291 (the days of the lunation) and the other movable, marked 1-12 twice over; if the time of high tide at any port at new moon be known, by placing that hour under 291, the daily times of high tide for that port will be shown.
Time, Mean: time calculated on an average basis of a day of 24 hours exactly. A year contains 3651 mean days.
Time, Sidereal: time as calculated by the successive passage of a selected star across the meridian. A sidereal day is 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds of mean time. There are 366 sidereal days in a mean year of 365J days.
Time, Solar: time as calculated by the successive passages of the sun across the meridian, as shown on a sundial. This varies daily. See Equation of time.
Ting-tang: the sounding of the quarters on two different toned bells.
Tourbillion: a watch in which the escapement is mounted on a revolving carriage, which carries it round.
Invented by A. L. Breguet in 18o i to avoid positional error.
Train: a series of wheel and pinions geared together, forming the mechanism of a clock or watch. They are going, striking, chiming, musical, astronomical trains, etc.
Tropics: the interval in the celestial sphere between the parallels of latitude demarking the maximum declination of the sun north and south of the ecliptic. The Tropic of Cancer in the north and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south.
Trunk: that part of a long-case clock between the hood and the base.
Turret clock: a clock for use in a church tower or other building.
Up and down: a subsidiary dial in highest-grade watches to indicate the extent to which the spring is run down.
Warning: the partial unlocking of the striking train, which precedes the full release at the precise moment of striking.
Warning-piece: that which arrests the warning-wheel between the warning and the time to strike.
Warning-wheel: a wheel in the striking train which carries a pin and which is arrested and then released by the warning-piece.
Watch bow: the loop at the end of the pendant.
Water clock: a contrivance used in Egyptian, Greek and Roman times for measuring time by the regular flow of a stream of water changing the level in a container, on the surface of which floated a means of indication on a fixed scale. Water clocks in the 17th and 18th centuries were drums with internal pierced sloping divisions, causing the water to pass slowly from one to the other, making the drum revolve and its axis roll down a graduated framework. Very few genuine examples exist.
Wheel, Centre: the wheel to which the cannon pinion is attached.
Wheel, Count: see Locking plate.
Wheel, Great: that which is attached to the going barrel, fusee or, in weight-driven clocks, the gut barrel.
Year clock: a clock designed to go for one year with one
winding.
Year, Sidereal: the period of one complete revolution of the earth round the sun.
Year, Tropical: the interval between two successive returns of the sun to the same tropic, or equinox.
Yorkshire clock: a broad and ill-proportioned long-case clock made for some years towards the end of the 18th century and early 19th.
Zodiac: a belt of the heavens outside which the sun, the moon and the planets do not pass. Divided into twelve signs, each Of 3o degrees, termed in astrology Celestial Houses: Aries (The Ram), Taurus (The Bull), Gemini (The Twins), Cancer (The Crab), Lco (The Lion), Virgo (The Virgin), Libra (The Balance), Scorpio (The Scorpion), Sagittarius (The Archer), Capricornus (The Goat), Aquarius (The Water Carrier) and Pisces (The Fishes).

Tags: 18th century serving table, 18th century small georgen chest of drawers, 18th century tool chest, 18th century walnut gate leg table, 18th century worcester patterns, 18th century work tables, 18th century wrought iron strap hinges fishtail, 18th creamware turin, 18th tin glased pottery, 18thc french bedside table, 18thc pottery spongeware teapot for sale, 19 c library table, 19 c majolica teapot with stand, 19 century english furniture, 19 century furniture white french furniture, 19 century oak leaf table, 1900 century inlaid revolving bookcase, 1900 italian chair furniture design, 1900 moorish inlays, 1900 oak head dining table, 1900s pottery plates with flowers, 1900th century oak and upholstered rocking chair, 1900th century rocking chairs, 1920 3 leg fold-in spiral leg drop leaf table, 1920 antique secretary, 1920 art deco waterfall dining room, 1920 art noveau cabinent, 1920 genuine mahogany card table, 1920's art deco dressers, 1920's french console table with inlay, 1920's secretary desk, 1920s art deco drawing automobile airplane, 1920s desk side shelves, 1920s red maple dresser wooden pulls, 1930 art deco coffee table louis 14th, 1930 art deco wood cabinet, 1930 furniture style secretary, 1930 glass dressing table sets, 1930's english chairs designs, 1930's american art deco dresser, 1930's austrian furniture, 1930's buffet walnut veneer, 1930's scottish red oak draw leaf table, 1930's style german furniture, 1930s doulton art deco animals, 1930s mahogany desk, 1934 antique pedestal dining room table, 1940 art moderne furniture, 1940 furniture dresser deco, 1940 majolica umbrella urn, 1940's english deco sideboard, 1940's oak china cabinet painted design cabinet, act of parliament, aperture, apex, astronomical clock, balance spring, barrel, body, bracket clocks, century, change, construction, counterpart, error, escapement, everyday life, hair spring, invention, le locle, Lunation, mantel clocks, misnomer, Nuremberg, parliament clock, pediment, pendulum, pinion, pocket watch, quarter, ROBERT HOOKE, short period, taverns, THOMAS MUDGE, timepiece, triangular, trines, vibration, WILLIAM CLEMENT

CLOCKS AND WATCHES
WHEN clocks as we know them today, i.e. a series of wheels and pinions geared together with a weight as a motive force, first came into use is a matter of conjecture. The only early records are monastic manuscripts, and these use the term ‘horologium’ indiscriminately, whether referring to a sundial, a water clock, or a mechanical clock.
There are certain rough guides. Dante describes the motion of a clock in his Paradiso of 1321, and we have definite written evidence of a very elaborate astronomical clock being in existence in Strasburg about 1350. Around 136o DONDI DEL OROLOGIO (the title given him in recognition of his masterly production) constructed a clock in a seven-sided frame, with a complicated astronomical dial above each of the seven sides. If by the middle of the 14th century there were men capable of making very complicated astronomical clocks, we can assume that the earliest and simplest mechanical clock, with weight and foliot was evolved at least one hundred years earlier. At all events, the unknown inventor or inventors of the verge escapement with foliot and the locking plate striking arrangement, with its fan, or air brake, were geniuses; they had nothing prior to guide them.
Towards the end of the 15th century in Italy, and early in the 16th in South Germany, the coiled spring as a motive force was being brought into use. Heretofore it has been the custom to ascribe to PETER HENLEIN, of Nuremberg, the invention of the portable timekeeper driven by a coiled spring, but certainly LEONARDO DA VINci’s notebooks show this device, with the fusee to equalize its power, some thirty years earlier, although it is doubtful whether he applied it to timekeeping. The South German method of equalization of power was the stackfreed, and since this is much less efficient and was later universally replaced by the fusee, it seems likely that the two systems were developed independently and more or less concurrently; both localities were the cradles of early clockmaking.
The next development was the balance wheel to replace the foliot; the method of regulation thus changing from the alteration of the weights on the foliot bar to the adjustment of the amount of the driving weight. This change, however, did not materially improve timekeeping.
After this came the momentous discovery of the pendulum by CHRISTIAAN HuY(;ENS in 1657. Galileo had earlier perceived the principle of the pendulum, but there is no evidence to show that he developed it other than as an accurate recorder of oscillations to be counted by an observer. Huygens’s work can be described as independent, and certainly he was the first to apply the pendulum to clocks.
The vastly improved timekeeping of pendulum clocks, even with the verge escapement, over foliot and balance was due to the fact that the pendulum was the controller of the driving force, whereas formerly the driving force controlled the clock. Most clocks were converted to this new method of timekeeping, and it is very rare today to find a clock with its original foliot or balance.
Only thirteen years later came the revolutionary invention of the anchor escapement by WILLIAM CLEMENT. This largely abolished circular error and made timekeeping sufficiently accurate for use in astronomical observations; hence the superiority of the observations of the first English Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, over those of his contemporaries.
In 1675 Christiaan Huygens introduced the spiral balance spring for watches. This did for the watch what the pendulum had done for clocks in the matter of improved timekeeping. ROBERT HOOKE claimed priority and there are grounds for his support, but he did not make any public claim until after Huygens had published his invention, when he charged him with plagiarism. The truth is that both men probably worked independently.
Now comes the great age of English horology. THOMAS T o m P 10 N is justly famed as the chief contributor to England’s supremacy in clock-making at this time. Tompion’s main contribution to clockmaking was his genius in designing complicated movements and the meticulous finish to all his work. Later GEORGE GRAHAM and JOHN HARRISON made further improvements to timekeeping, as opposed to clockmaking, which kept England in the lead for the whole of the 18th century.
George Graham’s deadbeat escapement, about 1715, held the field for astronomical observations for over two hundred years. Graham’s mercury pendulum is still in use today, as is John Harrison’s gridiron pendulum. Graham’s cylinder escapement for watches, about 1725, put his work in the lead for eighty years or so, until the lever escapement, invented about 1759 by THOMAS MUDGE, became more generally adopted in the early part of the 19th century.
John Harrison’s name is always associated with the winning of the prize OfC20,000 for the solution of the problem of ‘the Longitude’, i.e. making a timepiece sufficiently accurate to enable mariners to ascertain their longitude when at sea. Harrison’s efforts, starting with long-case clocks made entirely of wood (he was a carpenter by trade), progressing through the three trial machines that took the form of clocks of unique design, and ending with his finally successful piece, in the form of a large watch, can properly be included in this brief survey. But Harrison’s work was too complicated and expensive for general use, and it remained for JOHN ARNOLD and THOMAS EARNSHAW to introduce the simplified types of chronometers that are the basis of those made today.
Between the last quarter of the 18th and the first quarter of the 19th centuries, the limit of the period we are con-sidering, there were no British inventions of fundamental or
revolutionary importance.
Up to the beginning of the 18th century astrology played an important part in day-to-day life, and clocks embodying the relative aspects of the planets are not infrequent. Clocks indicating the day of the month and those showing the phases of the moon are common. From time to time, but more rarely, we find dials to tell the time of high tide, at first for London, where the Thames was the main highway, and later for marine ports.
In the latter part of the 17th century and in the early 18th, when clocks were only to be found in the spacious rooms of large mansions, we find various systems of complicated striking, which indicate the hour at more frequent intervals than one hour. Until clocks became sufficiently cheap, handles were attached so that they could be carried from room to room. In those made towards the end of the 18th century the handles were ornamental, in keeping with the decoration of furniture at the time. Movement of bracket clocks from room to room accounts for the retention of the verge escapement in this type for a hundred years or so after the invention of the much superior anchor escapement – the verge does not require the accurate levelling called for by the anchor.
Again, we find repeating clocks in use until about the time of the invention of matches; the repeating watch, being carried on the person, indoors and outdoors, was favoured until a later period.

Tags: 14th century, 15th century, 1940's roll top desk, 1940's wood inlaid furniture, 1940s upholstered chair designs, 1950's porcelain table, 1950s electric clocks with swing, 1958 dressing table beech, 1965 dressing table, 19c scandinavian furniture, 19th c. russian papier mache, 19th century aaron willard tavern clock, 19th century american bedroom furniture, 19th century american work table, 19th century antique chinese teasets, 19th century antique chippendale armchairs, 19th century antique sideboard with mirror, 19th century austrian empire dining room cabinets, 19th century austrian empire dinning room cabinets, 19th century buffets, 19th century chests, 19th century commode chair, 19th century commode marble top marquetry and parquetry, 19th century court cupboard, 19th century dutch furniture, 19th century empire design furniture, 19th century empire furniture, 19th century english furniture, 19th century flat front desks, 19th century french black lacquer chairs, 19th century french furniture chairs, 19th century french gilt rococo revival, 19th century french pattern, 19th century french provincial china cabibet, 19th century french silversmiths, 19th century furniture leg style, 19th century furniture lion table, 19th century furniture patent 26, 19th century furniture styles sheave wheat, 19th century german roll top desk, 19th century hall seat, 19th century inlay tables, 19th century oak refectory table with carved pedestal l, 19th century portuguese chest wood, 19th century regency, 19th century secretary, 19th century sideboard with mirror, 19th century sofas, 19th century swedish interiors, 19th century tall baroque chest, 19th century time frame, 19th century victorian wine cooler, 19th century wine cabinet, 19th french serving cabinet oak with fish, 19thc french bedside table, 19thc french work table, 19thcenturybuffets, 2 tier antique carved edging table, 2 tier rectangular antique table, 20 th century antique natural wood cupboard modern, 20th century antiques oak, 3 leg fold-in spiral leg drop leaf table, 3 legged claw antique dining table, 3 legged round mahogany claw foot table with drawer, 3 tiered claw foot table, 4 foot wide walnut drop leaf table, 5 types of hepplewhite chair backs, 6 legged antique table, a blck nd gilt- japanned side cabenet, a decorative design to inlay with mother of pearl for a, a j wilkinson potteries biarritz range, air, arrangement, astronomical clock, balance, body, carpenter, clockmaking, dondi, Earl, English, escapement, field, fusee, geniuses, GRAHAM, invention, Italy, LEONARDO, leonardo da vinci, London, mahogony inlaid, matter, mechanical clock, motive force, nothing, one hundred years, Paradiso, peter henlein, pinions, ROBERT HOOKE, rough guides, some thirty years, south germany, strasburg, term, THOMAS MUDGE, timekeeper, water clock, WILLIAM CLEMENT

COTTAGE POTTERY AND POPULAR ART
GLOSSARY
Agate: salt-glazed stoneware or lead-glazed earthenware made in imitation of semi-precious stones by wedging together different coloured clays.
4Astburyl type: classification of Staffordshire pottery in
which red and white clays are combined under a transparent
lead glaze. Similar wares covered by a glaze splashed with
metallic oxides are generally styled ‘Astbury-Whieldon’. Ballot box: a common name for a Salt Kit.
Barra pot: pot for storing harm or yeast (see also Salt Kit).
‘Battle for the Breeches’: theme of popular imagery concerning marriage occurring on 17th-century slipware and as a subject for 19th-century spill vases. Possibly made by Obadiah Sherratt.
Bear jug: model in the form of a bear hugging a dog, illustrating the sport of bear-baiting. The detachable head serves as a cup. Made in Staffordshire and Nottingham, 18th century.
Bellarmine: big-bellied stoneware bottle with a bearded mask in relief, named after Cardinal Bellarmine (15421621). Frequently cited in contemporary literature and used in magic and witchcraft.
Bellringers’ jugs: jugs for serving ale to bellringers, kept in the church tower, as at Macclesfield, or in the home of a ringer.
Bird call: pottery whistle in the form of a bird. Sometimes built into old chimneys as a charm against evil spirits.
Bird fountain: wall bracket with a projecting socket for water, made in blue-printed, lustred, or enamelled earthenware, 18th and 19th centuries.
Black-printing: ‘A term for applying impressions to glazed vessels, whether the color be black, red, or gold’ (William Evans, t846).
‘Bocage’: foliage or tree background to pottery figures.

Body: mixture of clay from which pottery is made.
Bull-baiting: pottery groups showing a bull goring or tossing a dog, often upon table bases supported by six legs, popular c. 1830-35. Said to have been made by Obadiah Sherratt.
Bussa: large earthenware pot commonly kept in old Cornish cottages for salting down pilchards.
Butter-pot: cylindrical earthenware vessel made to hold fourteen pounds of butter, made at Burslem in the 17th century for use at Uttoxeter market. An Act of 1661 regulated abuses in the manner of making and packing the pots.
Capacity mug: cylindrical measure made in stoneware, earthenware, mocha ware, etc., from the 17th century. The presence of a Royal Cypher or an Excise Stamp provides a clue as to date.
Carpet balls: used in the Victorian game of carpet bowls, made in brown stoneware or white earthenware coloured with starry, ringed, or flowery patterns. A set comprised six patterned and one white or self-coloured balls. Made in Scotland and Staffordshire. The Parr family of Burslem specialized in them.
Castle Hedingham: pseudo-medieval and Tudor pottery was made here by Edward Bingham (b. 1829). Some- times mistaken for authentic ,1 5th-, 16th-, and 17th-century wares.
Cats: popular ornaments made in delftware, slipware, and salt-glaze, c. 1670-1750.
Chill: earthenware oil lamp shaped like a large candlestick with a lipped cup large enough to hold two cups of `train’ (pilchard oil), used in Cornwall before candles. Sometimes rendered STONEN CHILL.
‘China’ dogs: mantelpiece ornaments in the form of spaniels, Welsh sheep dogs, French poodles, greyhounds, etc., made in earthenware, and sold extensively in Wales and the West Country. Made by Sampson Smith, James Dudson, William Kent, and many others in Staffordshire and Scotland; rarely marked.
Christening goblets: footed four-handled loving cups with whistles attached for calling for replenishment, specially associated with Wiltshire, and used for christenings, harvest homes, etc. A favourite inscription is HERE IS THE GEST
OF THE BARLY KORNE GLAD HAM I THE CILD IS BORN.
Dates from 1603 until 1799 recorded.
Combed slip: a technique in which a marbled or feathered effect is achieved by brushing together, while wet, two or more different-coloured slips.
Costrel: flat, circular bottle with loop handles for suspension from the shoulder, used by field workers.
Cottages: used as night-light shields, pastille burners, and mantelpiece ornaments. The latter frequently represent the scenes of sensational crimes, such as the Red Barn at Polstead (Maria Marten) or Stanfield Hall (the Rush murders).
Cow-milk jug: model of cow with mouth and tail forming spout and handle. Filled from an aperture in the back. Based upon a Dutch model introduced into England about 1755. Made in Staffordshire, South Wales, Yorkshire, and Scotland.
Cradle: presentation piece for a newly-married couple, having the same significance as the `La F6condit6′ dish. Slip-ware specimens recorded from 1673 until 1839. Used as a hold-all or pipe-tray.
Crazing: fine network of cracks in the glaze caused by unequal shrinkage of body and glaze.
Cuckoo: bird call in the form of a large spotted bird perched upon a fence, with four smaller birds. Commonly made in slipware, 19th century.
Delftware: earthenware coated with a glaze made opaque by the addition of tin ashes, named after Delft in Holland, which became an important centre of manufacture
in the 17th century.
Dendritic: having tree-like markings.
‘Doctor Syntax’: fine underglaze blue transfer-prints representing the adventures of Doctor Syntax, used as tableware decorations by James and Ralph Clews, Cobridge, c. 1821. Pottery figures were also popular. The Tours of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque by Dr Combe, with illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, published 1815-21, were a satire upon the writings of the Rev. William Gilpin.
Egyptian black: hard stoneware body heavily stained with manganese.
Easter eggs: `nest’ eggs decorated, inscribed with the name of the recipient, and given as Easter and birthday gifts.
Feeding-bottle: flattish oviform article with a small circular aperture at the top and a small nozzle.
‘Female archer’: subject of ‘Pratt’ type jugs and earthenware figures intended as satire upon the smart archery parties popular in `high’ society, 1800-50- Sometimes known as the FAIR TOSCOPHOLITE or TOXOPHILITE.
Ferruginous: containing iron rust and, therefore, reddish brown in appearance.
Flasks: in form of fish, mermaid, constable’s baton, horse-pistol, boot, potato, cucumber, barrel, or a figure of some royal or political celebrity, commonly made in brown stoneware or ‘Rockingham’-glazed earthenware, early 19th century. Chief centres: Denby, Chesterfield, Brampton, Lambeth. (See Reform Flasks.)
Fuddling-cups: cups of three, five, or more conjoined compartments communicating internally, made at Donyatt and Crock Street, Somerset, 1 7t and 18th century.
Gotch: East Anglian word for a large stoneware jug.
Gretna Green: popular black-print showing a runaway couple being married by the Gretna blacksmith, accom-panied by the verse, ‘Oh! Mr. Blacksmith, ease our pains:/ and tie us fast in Wedlock’s Chains’. Known alternatively as `The Red Hot Marriage’.
Greybeard: a Bellarmine.
Grey hen: stoneware liquor bottle.
‘Greyhound’ jugs: jugs with greyhound handles and relief decorations of sporting subjects.
Hearty good fellow. Toby jug in form of a swaggering standing figure clasping a jug.
Hen dish: oval, basket-shaped egg-dish with cover in the form of a sitting hen.
Hen and chickens: emblems of Providence, hence frequent use as adornments of money-boxes.
Image toys: mid-18th-century description of small pottery figures.
Inlaid decoration: process used by medieval potters for decorating paving tiles (Cleeve Abbey, Westminster Abbey) and by Sussex potters, c. 1790-1850, for useful and ornamental wares. The decoration was formed by impressing the body with punches or with printers’ types, and filling in with clay of a contrasting colour, usually white on red.
Joney or joney grig: a dialect term for a chimney ornament in the form of a dog. A well-known Burslem pottery in the 19th century was known as a ‘doll and jona’ (figure and dog) works.
‘Keep within compass’: a popular ‘morality’ used as decoration for earthenware by John Aynsley (1752— 1829), showing the rewards of virtue and the punishments of sin.
Leeds horse: large model of horse on a rectangular plinth made specially at Leeds, and probably used as the sign of a horse leech.
Lustre: thin deposit of metal on pottery giving it an iridescent or metallic sheen.

Martha Gunn’. female Toby jug modelled in the likeness
of Martha Gunn (1727-1915), the Brighton bathing-woman.
Mocha: ware decorated with coloured bands into which tree, moss, or fern-like effects have been introduced by means of a diffusing medium, described by William Evans (1846) as ‘a saturated infusion of tobacco in stale urine and turpentine’, made from about 1780 until 1914. Named from mocha quartz.
Moco, Moko: buff or redware mottled by spattering various coloured slips over the surface before glazing. A cheap 19th-century substitute for mocha.
Money-boxes: made at most country potworks from medieval times. Usual forms comprise houses, chest of drawers, globes, fir-cones, pigs, and hens and chickens. Associated with the custom of the ‘Christmas box’.
‘Mr and Mrs Caudle’: relief decoration on brown stoneware spirit flasks, made about 1846 by Doulton of Lambeth, and based upon Douglas Jerrold’s Punch papers (`Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures’). One side shows ‘Mr and Mrs Caudle in Bed’ the other ‘Miss Prettyman’.
On-glaze: decoration applied after the ware has been glazed and fired.
‘Orange-jumper’: local subject on Yorkshire cream-coloured earthenware made at the Don pottery, c. 18o8, depicting a coarse-featured local horse-breaker who acted as messenger for Lord Milton Iton in the 1807 election. He is clothed in orange, the colour’ of Lord Milton. Orange-tawny was considered the colour appropriate to the lower classes.
Owl jug: jug with a separate head forming a cup, made in slipware, c. 1700, and white salt-glazed stoneware, c. 1720-75• The proverb ‘Like an owl in an ivy bush’, used of a vague person with a sapient look, may explain its convivial associations.
Pantheon: large shallow earthenware bowl with sloping sides used for settling milk.

Pap-dish: a shallow boat with a tubular spout for feeding infants.
‘Parson and clerk’: figure group showing a drunken parson being led home by the faithful Moses, first made by Enoch Wood (1759-1840) as a sequel to the ‘Vicar and Moses’. A satire on the drinking, hunting squarson type of incumbent.
Pastille burners: box-like containers, often in the form of cottages, churches, or summer-houses, with detachable perforated lids for burning cassolette perfumes. These consisted of finely-powdered willow-wood charcoal, benzoin, fragrant oils, and gum arabic. Extremely popular, 1820-50.
‘Paul Pry’: model for pottery figures and Toby jugs based upon the meddlesome hero ofJohn Poole’s comedy of that name, 1825.
Peasant style: ornament derived from peasant art: specifically earthenware painted in the ‘resist’ lustre style with a restricted palette of colours.
Peever: a piece of slate or stone used in the game of hopscotch, also a disc of pottery, so used, coloured and lettered with the name of the owner. Made at Alloa and elsewhere in Scotland, 19th century.
‘Peggy Plumper’: crude decoration showing Peggy Plumper sparring with Sammy Spar for mastership of bed and board, accompanied by a long rhyme ‘about wearing the breeches’.
‘Pelican in her piety’: a Christian emblem representing the old popular fallacy that the pelican feeds her young with her own blood. Used on Staffordshire slipware.
Penny bank: earthenware money-box in the form of a house or chest of drawers.
‘Pew’ group: figure group representing a man and woman sitting upon a high-backed settle, made in white salt-glazed stoneware, c. 1730-40.

Piggin: a small milk pail. A PIG-WIFE is a woman
who sells crockery.
Pilchard pots: made in North Devon, South Wales, and Cornwall for the West Country fishermen, and known by size as ‘gallons’, `bussas’, and ‘great crocks’, etc.
Pipkin: earthenware cooking vessel.
Pirlie-pig: earthenware money-box. ‘Pig’ is a North Country word for an earthen jar: `pirlie’ is a diminutive indicating something of slight value.
Pitcher mould: mould made of clay and fired.
Pope and Devil: reversible bell-shaped cup showing the Pope in his triple tiara when held one way up, and the Devil when reversed. Sometimes inscribed ‘When Pope absolves, the Devil smiles’. Late 18th century.
Porringer: child’s basin for broth, or porridge.
‘Portobello’ ware: made at Tunstall, Staffordshire, c. 1830, in imitation of banded and ‘Pratt’ type wares made at Portobello in Scotland.
Posset: beverage comprising hot ale, milk, sugar, spices, and small pieces of bread, toast, or oatcake, said to have been a common supper beverage in Staffordshire and Derbyshire on Christmas Eve. Enjoyed widespread popularity.
Posset-pot: straight- or curve-sided vessel with loop handles and spouts, generally covered with a slanting or dome-shaped lid, and occasionally crowned with an elaborate knob, used for posses, and made in delftware and slip-ware, 1 7th and 18th century.
Pottle-pot: quart pot.
‘Pratt’ type: wares made at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, decorated in a distinctive palette of colours, consisting of drab blue, dirty brown, ochre, orange, yellow, and dull green. Made in Staffordshire by Pratt and others; also in South Wales, Liverpool, Sunderland, and Prestonpans.

Punch: beverage consisting of spirits blended with hot milk or water, sugar, and flavoured with lemon and spice.
Punch-bowl: large basin for serving hot punch, sometimes called a ‘jorum’.
Puzzle jug: vessel made in earthenware, delftware, or stoneware with a hollow tube round the lip opening into three or more spouts, and connected with the inside by the hollow handle. Sometimes there is a hole under the top of the handle. The neck is pierced with ornamental motifs, and usually inscribed with a challenge to the drinker. To empty the vessel without spilling the contents it is necessary to stop all the apertures except one, and to drain it by suction.
Reform flasks: brown salt-glazed stoneware spirit flasks made by Doulton (Lambeth), Stephen Green (Lambeth), Oldfield (Chesterfield), and Joseph Thompson (Wooden Box Pottery, Hartshorne), in the form of prominent politicians and royalty, at the time of the Reform Bill, 1832- Personalities portrayed included William IV, Queen Adelaide, Lord Grey, O’Connell, Brougham, Richard Cobden and Lord John Russell.
‘Resist’ lustre: on-glaze decorative process used generally with silver lustre, giving an effect of a light or coloured decoration against a metallic background. The ornament is painted on the ware with a ‘resist’, covered with the metallic solution, and fired; the infusible ‘resist’ being removed by polishing with whiting afterwards.
Salt-glazed stoneware: stoneware in which the glaze is formed by throwing common salt into the kiln when it reaches the maximum temperature. The salt decomposes, forming sodium oxide and hydrochloric acid, the former combining with the alumina and silica of the surface of the wares to form a thin coating of glass.
Salt kit: dome-topped ovoid jar surmounted by a knob and loop-handle with a wide circular aperture at one side; used for storing salt, etc.

‘Scratch blue’: decoration characteristic of white salt-glazed stoneware comprising incised floral arabesques and inscriptions into which clay stained with cobalt was rubbed. Examples dated from 1724 to 1776 recorded.
Sgraffiato: cutting away, incising, or scratching through a coating of slip to expose the colour of the underlying body. Popular technique in South Wales, Devonshire, Somerset, and Staffordshire.
Siamese twins: the ‘monstrous’ birth in Somerset, 19 May 168o, recorded on a sgraffiato dish and Bristol delft, platter. The Kentish Siamese twins, Eliza and Mary Chulkhurst (d. 1734, aged 34) occur on redware copies of the `Biddenden’ cake.
Skillet: earthen saucepan with three legs. Slip: clay reduced to a liquid batter.
Slipware: earthenware decorated with white or coloured slip. (See also COMBED SLIP, SGRAFFIATO, TRAILED SLIP, and INLAID DECORATION.)
Snufftaker: standing Toby jug in the form of an ugly man taking a pinch of snuff, usually with a deep purple-brown lustrous ‘Rockingham’ glaze.
Spinario: figure of boy extracting a thorn from his foot, copied fi-oin statue in the Capitoline Museum, Rome.
‘Sponged’ ware: a crude, easily-recognized peasant style originally made by Adams of Tunstall, and, because of its `bright fancy character’ (Dewitt), extensively exported.
Steen: originally an earthen vessel with two ears to hold liquids, later used for bread, meat or fish.
Stoneware: opaque, dense, intensely hard and completely vitrified pottery.
Sussex pig: pottcry jug with a loose head used as a cup, enabling the user to drink a hogshead of liquor without disquieting after effects. Peculiar to the Sussex factory of Cadborough, Rye, 19th century.

Iryg. beaker-shaped drinking vessel with from two to twelve handles.
Underglaze decoration: decoration applied to bisquit
pottery before the addition of glaze.
Venisons: bowls ‘made to fit into one another … in capacity ranging from a pint to a peck’ (George Bourne), made at Frimley, Cove, and Farnborough, c. i800-5o.
‘Vicar and Moses’: popular satire on the drinking parson, showing a clergyman asleep in the pulpit with the parish clerk conducting the service. First made by Ralph Wood of Burslem, c. 1775-
Wall pocket: flower or spill vase shaped as a mask, fish, or cornucopia, made in Staffordshire salt-glaze, and in Liverpool and Lambeth delft, 18th century.
Wassail bowl: two-handled loving cup passed clockwise around the company on convivial occasions.
‘Wassailing’: originally a rite to ensure fertility in cereals, fruit crops and cattle, but later a term of abuse to describe Christmas revels.
‘Welsh’ ware: shallow meat dishes with feathered slip decoration, in form like a gardener’s trug, commonly made in Staffordshire, Sunderland (Scott’s ‘Superior Fireproof’) and Isleworth, under this name.
‘Whieldon’ ware: ware made in cream-coloured earthenware under a glaze splashed with metallic oxides to give tortoise-shell or mottled effects, made by Thomas Whieldon (1719-95) at Fenton, and others.
‘Willow’ pattern: pseudo-Chinese under-glaze blue transfer-print first engraved by Thomas Minton (17651836), and known in numerous variants.

Tags: a style of this time showcasing curvilinear lines, aalto finmar table 81c, aaron burr table desk, abel cottey clock value, about blanket chests and mule chests, acanthus dining table, acanthus leather relief, acanthus neoclassical, Adam, adam characteristics, adam friedrich von lowenfink, aesthetic movement ebonized table gillows, Agate, agostino, agostino lauro art, agostino lauro furniture, albert stickley quaint rocker, alexander roux chair ebony, american antique art deco furniture, american antique butterfly tables with center leg, american antique mahogany console table, american antique reproduction dining tables, american art deco dining table folds and slides to cent, american bracket clock, american chair and table lion's paw pedestal oak, american empire mirror frames, american empire sofa 1930's antique-reproduction, american empire sofas with hairy feet, american mahogany secretary tambour, american sheraton style sideboards, american welsh dressers, ancient british portable campaign furniture, ancient chinese inlaid wood art, ancient gothic chairs, ancient gothic furniture, andre groult chair, angelica kauffman furniture, angelica kauffman small porcelain pot, anglo indian antiques, anglo indian bookcase, anglo indian furniture, anglo indian stool, anglo-indian antique, anglo-indian carved side table antique, anglo-indian interiors 1800s, antic brush used to power your face, antic center table, antic english chairs 17th century, antic porcelain, antieke splat back dining chairs, antigue break front sideboard, antigue display cases, antigue secretaries english mahogany, antigue twist leg dining table and chairs, antiqe tin pedestal by woods and willow, antiqe white clay pots, antiqu french porceliain figurines gold anchor, antiqu table designs, antique buffet spiral legs, antique dropleaf table with brass paws, antique hepplewhite style armchair, antique oval mahogany drop leaf gate leg dining tabl, antique pocket watches by christiaan huygens, art glossary, barrel, bellringers, black printing, cardinal bellarmine, cornish cottages, cucumber, decoration, East Anglian, evil spirits, floreale, Furniture, hand, hen, Joney, lauro, marc harrison, metallic oxides, Museum, philadelphia, popular art, pottery figures, pottery groups, Staffordshire, staffordshire pottery, surface, table bases, type classification, wall bracket

COTTAGE POTTERY AND
POPULAR ART
Tuts study includes country pottery produced for cottage, farm or ale-house use, as well as ‘wares of common stamp; copper lustre jugs, and tea things of tawdry colouring and coarse quality, and painted in flaring tints; painted pot marbles, and drinking mugs with names in letters of pink or purple’ which Chambers’ Edinburgh yournal, 23rd November
1839, said were manufactured in quantity at the smaller Staffordshire pot-works for use of the poor. These constituted the indigenous popular art of the people.
Slipware: apart from medieval pottery, English slipware reached its finest flowering at the end of the 17th century, and shares, with the contemporary Jacobean style, robustness of expression, lavish and sometimes unrestrained use of ornament and, more important, a certain crude vitality. While these characteristics are fairly constant, each district developed a well-defined local style.
The normal products of all country pot-works were lead-glazed utility articles, undecorated, or, at most, given a simple slip finish; and they often satisfy hand and eye because of functional honesty and simplicity.
DERBYSHIRE: the earliest clay-decorated pottery (apart from medieval and Tudor wares) appears to have been made at Tickenhall. Narrow dark tygs with applied pads of white clay shaped roughly into the form of flowers or stags’ heads are characteristic, but many of the notched dishes decorated with ‘trailed’ slip formerly attributed to Derbyshire are now generally accepted as Staffordshire wares. The Derbyshire slipware factories (Tickenhall and Bolsover) continued in operation until the end of the 18th century.
KENT : between 1612 and 1721 (possibly longer), bowls, candlesticks, cisterns, dishes, mugs, porringers, posses-pots, puzzle-jugs, tygs, and useful crockery decorated with various forms of slip were made at Wrotham. These have distinctive features: (I) applied pads inscribed with initials and dates surrounded by effects of `stitchery’, perhaps in imitation of appliques embroidery; (2) use of rosettes, stars, and masks; and (3) the occasional inclusion ofthe place-name (Wrotham) in the decoration.
Early products of this factory were simple in shape and ornament; later wares were generally over-elaborated in a rather tasteless manner. Two potters have been identified with certainty: George Richardson (1620-87) and Nicholas Hubble (d. 1689).
Something of the Wrotham flavour may be perceived in the red slipwares made at Brabourne, Deal, Dunkirk, High Halden and Pembury in the 19th century; there may have been some continuity.
NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE: the best English slipwares were made in the Potteries from about 166o onwards, and those associated with the name Toft represent the high-water mark of technical accomplishment. Of the three Tofts – Thomas, Ralph and James – the former died a pauper in 1689. There is no certainty that the wares marked Toft were made by them, although the balance of evidence supports this tradition. Hearth Tax returns for Shelton and Stoke parish registers prove that the family was living in Shelton at this period. Tiny fragments of a signed Toft dish have recently been excavated in Hanley.
Surviving signed pieces fall into two classes: (I) large circular dishes, (2) jugs, posset-pots and loving-cups. The latter are extremely rare. Analogous unmarked pieces include divided baking dishes, bleeding-bowls, cradles, egg-stands, honey-pots, owl jugs, Dutch ovens and posset-pots.
Toft dishes are usually encircled with trellis borders with a rim panel enclosing the name. Heraldic or figure motifs, usually Royalist in character, formed the centre decoration – the Royal arms, rampant lions, the Boscobel oak, the pelican in her piety, fleur-de-lis, cavaliers and mermaids.
Other names which occur on wares of similar type include  Meir, Osland, Simpson, Taylor, Wright, Chatterly, Heath, Ward, Wood and Ley. Women’s names, such as MARGERE NASH and MARY PERKINS, occur individually or as part of inscriptions. The style continued well into the 18th
century.
Posses-pots, bell-shaped or straight-sided, were attractively decorated by dividing the surface into zones of ornament and lettering, and counterchanging the colours; or by tiers of floral and conventional designs with suitable
inscriptions, such as THE . BEST . IS . NOT . TOO . GOOD . FOR . YO V.
The tulip is a frequent feature of decoration. Not uncommonly the lower portion was enriched with feathered or combed slip to contrast with the trailed or painted slip above. Dog-Latin inscriptions, names, initials and dates are frequent. Sometimes the name indicates ownership (MARY OUMFARIS YOUR CUP 1678), at others the maker. The initials I.B. and R.F. commonly occurring in association with others may stand for Isaac Ball and Robert Fletcher. Such wares were made as indications of loyalty or to celebrate birthdays, betrothals or weddings.
Dishes with notched edges, decorated in relief with conventional or figure subjects picked out with painted slip and roulette impressions, form a distinctive category. They were made by pressing a bat of clay upon a ‘pitcher’ mould in which the design had been incised before firing. The outline relief ornaments were filled in with patches and spots of various coloured slips.
Certain wares of this kind have been ascribed to a period before the Civil War on the strength of the costume of figures depicted upon them. But they are more likely of late 17th or early 18th-century date. Such archaisms are not uncommon. The initials R.S. (Ralph Simpson, 1651-1724) and i.s. (John Simpson of Rotten Row, Burslem) are to be found on dishes ornamented in this manner with fleur-de-lis and pomegranates. Samuel Malkin (1668-1741), parish clerk of Burslem, made similar wares decorated with sun-faced flowers or religious and proverbial subjects (’Burd in Hand’, Adam and Eve, ‘Wee three logerheads’, etc.). His usual mark was sm. Wares akin in treatment but of later date have been identified by means of a mould inscribed an dated 1751, made by William Bird.
Pottery decorated in the sgraffiato technique by scratching through a dark-brown coating of slip to expose the light-coloured clay beneath were made about 1725-3o. Hares, rabbits, dogs, birds and flowers vigorously incised through the slip coating are typical. The tool-marks of the potter, usually much in evidence, give a pleasant sense of surface texture. Another sgraffiato type of later date – c. 174540 –shows less vigorous and rather neater workmanship. The chief decorations compromise checks, stripes, wavy bands, and lines cut through a white slip over a deep-brown clay. The type is associated, erroneously, with Ralph Shaw.
These pottery styles were continued throughout the 18th and into the 19th century. Finely-feathered slip-dishes of the second half of the 18th century, with the letter ‘n’ inscribed upon them, have been excavated in Hanley recently. Other wares with individual but unidentified initials have been found upon other sites. These initials may be early factory or workmen’s marks. Redware factories were still working in North Staffordshire as late as 1834 at Goldenhill, Red Street, and in Shelton. A country pottery making bottles, pitchers, vinegar kegs and settling-pans also existed at Ipstones.
SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE: there is clear evidence of an early and extensive manufacture of slipwares in this area. Robert Plot (writing in 1677) refers to ‘divers sorts of Vessels’ made at Wednesbury `which they paint with Slip, made of a reddish sort of Earth gotten at Tipton’. These wares have never been identified, but probably resembled the slipwares of North Staffordshire in character. The industry lasted until the end of the 18th century, when the workers migrated to the north of the county.
Coarse earthenwares were made by a number of firms at Bilston (where the Myott family worked for several generations) and Kingswinford from the beginning of the igth century.
HEREFORDSHIRE : wares similar in character to those made in Staffordshire, comprising tygs, posses-pots (sometimes with pads of clay impressed with coats of arms), jugs, costrels, cooking stoves, skillets, Steens, piggins, candlesticks and dishes were made at Boresford, Whitney-on-Wye, and Upton Bishop; and at Dickendale, Deerfold Farm, and Shirley Farm in Deerfold Forest. A crude kind of sgraffiato consisting of scratchy zig-zag lines was usual on the plates. The glaze varied from pale straw to copper green. These farmer potters flourished from about 16io to 1750.
WORCESTERSHIRE: country crockery, including slip-ware, was made also at Gorsty Hill, near Halesowen, until comparatively recently, and at Polesworth in Warwickshire.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE : the brownish black manganese-glazed red earthenwares made at Aylesbury from c. 1701-93 (Thomas Brackley, potter) contrasts with the crockery made at Brill, ten miles east of Oxford from late 18th century until about I goo. Money-boxes, bottles and lampstands as well as ordinary kitchen crocks were made. The ware has a speckled dirty appearance. In the Ashmolean Museum there is a covered Steen, incised ‘Thomas Hullocks Brill 1791′ of rather finer quality. Late igth-century redwares were made also at Leafield near Oxford by George and Alec Franklin.
YORKSHIRE : pottery of a distinctly medieval character was made by John Wedgwood and his descendants at Yearsley near Easingfold. It included great pantheons and jars with names and dates inscribed under a strong green glaze. But in general the later products of the peasant craftsman have been overshadowed by the productions of th-, Yorkshire industrial potters. In all districts where suitabl— clay existed, coarse red, yellow, and black wares were made. The old saying ‘Like Falsgrave pottery, rough and ugly’ indicates the popular estimate of these wares. There were numerous little workshops in the Leeds and Castleford districts. Combed and mottled wares were made- at Norton) near Stockton, from about 1850 onwards. Pot Howcans, near Halifax, run by the Halliday family, made good trailed slipware, including salt kits, from about 1850 to 1890- Similar wares were made by the Catheralls at Swill Hill and Bradshaw Head; and by a factory at Midhope, near
Sheffield.
CUMBERLAND: slipwares, marked by dexterous use of the trailed slip technique, were made until late in the 19th century at Weatherigg’s Pottery, Penrith. These included salt kits decorated with cleverly disposed white wavy lines and dots upon a dark ground.
LANCASHIRE: at Blackburton simple slipwares were also made about the same time. These late slipwares are usually a little hard and mechanical in treatment. The old freedoms, which rendered the early slipwares so exciting, disappeared.
SUSSEX: numerous potworks were working in Sussex from the end of the 18th century, notably at Chailey, Brede, Rye, East Grinstead, Dicker, and Burgess Hill. The wares produced are usually sunny orange lead-glazed earthen-wares; darker pieces are not uncommon, and sometimes the glaze was flecked with minute iron spots.
Agate wares were made at Burgess Hill. Inlaid decorations, consisting of formal arrangements of sprays, leaves, rosettes and stars, formed with printers’ types and punches, are typical of the productions of the Norman family at Chailey: similar wares were made at Brede, Rye, and Dicker, and at Bethersden in Kent. Tea canisters, milk churns, flasks, tobacco-jars, fir-cone money-boxes, bird-callers and hedgehogs were made, as well as the usual farmhouse crockery. Cadborough specialized in ‘Sussex Pigs’.
HAMPSHIRE AND SURREY: extensive potteries existed at Frimley, Farnborough, and Cove at the beginning of the 19th century. Little is known of them. Pipkins, venisons, money-boxes, pitchers, bowls, bed-pans and stool-pans for sale to Whitechapel Jews were made by William Smith (1790-1858) at Farnborough. A family named Harris potted at Wrecklesham, Surrey, about the same time. Similar factories existed at Fareham, Hants., at Verwood, Dorset, and in Gloucestershire.
WILTSHIRE: ferruginous earthenwares with an iridescent brownish black glaze were made over a long period (c. 1600-c. 1800) near Salisbury. Incised decorations and inscriptions occur. The most distinctive products were the footed loving cups or christening goblets.
SOMERSET : the rough, vigorous pottery of Donyatt and Crock Street forms an important class in which fantastic forms were combined with a free vernacular sgra
g ffiato style.
Tygs with bird-whistle lids, fuddling-cups with intertwined handles, puzzle jugs, vases with several apertures, and money-boxes, as well as useful wares were made. They were lead-glazed and stained with patches of copper green. Dates from 1677 have been recorded, but the bulk of the pottery produced was made in the 18th and 19th centuries. Other Somerset potworks existed at Pill and Bridgwater.
DEVONSHIRE : a group of potteries flourished at Barnstaple, Bideford, and Fremington, making redwares for the West Country and South Wales markets from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In fact, some factories still operate in this district, although the character of the product has changed. Pilchard pots and harvest jugs were made as well as ugly elaborate watch-stands, honey jars and other vessels. The harvest jugs may be identified by the coil at the lower attachment of the handle and the bold chevron which often adorns the neck. The principal potters were the Fishley family. Similar sgrqfflato wares were manufactured at Honiton, where there are extensive clay beds.
CORNWALL: Truro alone survives of the dozen or so potworks which formerly made pantheons and pitchers in the Duchy.
CAMBRIDGESHIRE: at Ely Jabez Lucas produced red-wares at the end of the 18th century, inlaid with white clay. This unusual technique was otherwise almost entirely confined to Sussex.
SUFFOLK: at WattiSfield a redware factory has existed from the 17th century and is still flourishing. Brown-glazed gotches, breadpans, milk Steens, washbowls and frying-pans were the staple products. Some slipwares were probably made. The pottery was worked by the Death family, 17341808, and by the Watson subsequently. A I 9th-century pot-works making slipwares existed in the Rope Walk, Ipswich: W. Balaam was the potter.
EssEx : incised pottery with a purple-brown glaze was made at Gestingthorpe, near Halstead (dates recorded range from 1685 to 1770). Jugs with cylindrical necks, narrow tubular spouts and three handles have survived.
WALES: slipware potteries existed in Flintshire at Buckley Mountain (Joseph Hayes, 1756-1842, potter) and at Bagilt, near Flint, in the first half of the 19th century. In South Wales potworks flourished at Bridgend, Pencoed, and Ewenny, where useful crockery was extensively made, as well as puzzle jugs and many-handled wassail bowls decorated with name of owner and maker in sgralialo slip, for use in the Welsh custom of Mari Lwyd.
Peasant Styles: a considerable quantity of industrial cream-coloured earthenware in the closing decades of the 18th century was decorated in on-glaze enamels with stylized rustic and floral motifs in red and black. This restricted palette, occasionally diversified with other colours, particularly green and a striking but rather dissonant puce, was combined with spiky foliage and feathery scrolls. Leeds and Staffordshire were centres of this production. The motto `God Speed and the Plough’ indicates the class for whom it was made.
In the 19th century a peasant style based upon the type of painting used in the ‘resist’ lustre technique was developed by Staffordshire craftsmen. Three palettes of colour were employed: (I) monochrome blue; (2) black, sage green, dirty pink, and blue; and (3) yellow, orange, blue, and green. Floral arabesques, completely covering the wares, and built up by skilful brushwork, are characteristic decora.
tions. Hearts, initials, and dates occur with sufficient frequency to suggest that many of the pieces were intended as love tokens. Dates from 1814 to 1835 have been noted. Copelands, Rogers, and Adams are among the known makers, but quite a few pieces were probably bought in the white and decorated by outside enamellers.
Lustre pottery: lustre decoration on pottery became popular in the first half of the 19th century. Who invented it is not known with certainty. Josiah Wedgwood certainly experimented with lustre decorations from about 1790, and his successors made use commercially of silver, pink (gold), and ‘moonlight’ lustre from about 1805. John Hancock claimed to be the first to produce lustre in Staffordshire, while John Gardner has been credited with the earliest commercial use of silver lustre at Wolfe’s factory in Stoke. The early history of lustre decoration is therefore obscure. At least three other craftsmen made early contributions in this field: Richard Horrobin (1765-1830), of Tunstall, joiner, mechanic, organ-builder, whose obituary stated ‘he may be considered the reviver of gold lustre on china and earthenware’; John Aynsley (1752-1829), ‘the first lusterer’ at Lane-End; and Peter Warburton (1773-1813), who took out a patent in 181  for ‘printing landscapes and other designs from copper plates in gold and platinum’.
The English potters, once the secret of applying metallic solutions to china and earthenware became known, made extensive, and often non-ceramic, use of the material. The earliest wares are undoubtedly the best, but vast quantities were produced in the 1850s for export through the firm of Burgess, Dale, and Goddard to the United States. Later wares were produced for the fairground and the pot hawker.
The popular appeal of the material accounts for the allusive nature of the subjects chosen for decoration, which cover the whole field of contemporary life—politics, sport, religion, travel, domestic experience. Pious quatrains may be matched by crude licentious doggerel. The lustre decorator was certainly all things to all men. He smothered his wares with metal to provide the poor with imitation `plate’. For the religious he offered patterns of eminent respectability, but when the market demanded it he could descend to the earthy coarseness of a Bewick or a Rowlandson.
There are six classes of lustre: (I) plain (gold, silver or copper), evidently intended to imitate more precious materials; (2) painted; (3) decorated in ‘resist’, usually in silver but occasionally in purple or other lustre; (4) lustre in conjunction with transfer-prints or enamel decoration; (5) lustre on moulded relief decoration; and (6) on pottery figures, used to pick out armour, or all over to make them resemble precious metal. ‘Resist’ decoration was sometimes effectively combined with a coloured ground, yellow or buff.
The centres of manufacture were Longton, Burslem, Swansea (where good silver lustre was made), and Sunderland. Splashed and crudely mottled pink lustre was extensively used in the North East in conjunction with prints of the ‘Wear’ Bridge or ‘The Sailor’s Farewell’. Surprise mugs were ornamented in like manner. At these North Country factories the folk element was completely dominant.
‘Dipped’ pottery: a class of pottery which had a long vogue – from about 1750, when it was introduced by Thomas Heath of Fenton, until the death of King Edward VII – and which was made in Glasgow, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Swansea as well as Staffordshire, consisted of slip decorated pottery produced under industrial conditions for the dairy, tavern, and the farmhouse. Shrimp, nut and beer measures have survived in quantity, but `tea things’, toilet sets, tobacco jars, jugs and ornamental pieces were also made in it.
The earliest wares made in this category were marbled slipwares, dating from about 176o, and often surprisingly beautiful in colour: but other styles were quickly developed. Clean hygienic-looking band treatments in blue, ochre and dark brown, sometimes plain, occasionally with deftly-executed slip motifs superimposed, were popular. An attrac-tive decoration comprised coloured bands with added dendritic effects in brown, blue, or (much later) pink. This was known as mocha. Wavy bands of two or more coloured slips, worked together with the fingers (finger-trailing), or with a brush, were made in the 1830s. An imitation mocha, known as `Moto’, was made for export.
Dipped pottery was rarely marked, although the makers were numerous – Adams of Tunstall, J. and R. Riley of Burslem, Copeland and Garrett of Stoke, Broadhurst of Fenton, Tams of Longton, Green of Church Gresley, and Malings of Newcastle-on-Tyne among others. Few pieces can be dated with certainty. A small mug in the Christchurch Mansion Museum, Ipswich, lettered ‘M Clark 1799′ is believed to be the earliest surviving dated example of mocha ware.
Salt-glazed stoneware: most early salt-glazed stone. wares do not concern us, they were made for the upper classes. The popular will to form, however, is evidenced by the owl and bear jugs, the streaky blue-and-white agate animals, the bell figures and ‘pew’ groups, and the scratch blue loving cups, mugs and punch-bowls which confirm the traditional conception of the Englishman as hard drinking, hard living. While the inscriptions might be crude, even obscene, the forms were generally refined and the potting of the highest quality. What is said here of the white salt-glaze of Staffordshire is equally applicable to the nut-brown stonewares of Nottingham (Morley family, potters) and Derbyshire. It is, however, to the later products of these factories that we must turn for popular imagery. Spirit flasks in all sorts of quaint and unusual forms, mask mugs and pitchers, and Toby jugs were made by Bournes of Denby, Joseph Thompson of Hartshorne, Oldfield of Chesterfield, and by the London factories – Stephen Green, and Doulton & Watts of Lambeth. Reform flasks and greyhound jugs enjoyed enormous popularity in the r83os and later.
Transfer-printed pottery: this class of industrial pottery is of great importance because it made possible greater production, and so widened the potters’ market to include
even the poorest cottager. The earliest transfer-prints process was introduced before 1765) were done overglaze in black, more rarely in colour. Subjects were often crude popular moralities, pleasantries concerning marriage, caricature prints after Rowlandson or Gillray, and decorations commemorating national events or heroes, as well as floral and other more conventional styles of ornament. The work of the `black-printer’ had a considerable vogue which lasted well into the 19th century.
Underglaze printed decorations began to make their appearance towards the end of the 18th century. Blue, black, and brown were the first colours used, but blue soon ousted the less attractive tints, and between 1800 and 1830 vast quantities of blueprints were produced for home and overseas markets. All sorts of subjects were used for decoration, some taken from books of travel others from historical prints, portraits of celebrities, illustrated Bibles, or the works of famous painters. As the vogue for blue passed other colours were introduced – orange, mulberry, chrome-green, and rose-pink. The most popular pattern was the almost ubiquitous ‘Willow’. Nearly every early 19th-century industrial factory in Staffordshire and the Out-Potteries made blueprinted earthenware.
Figures: the image toys labelled ‘Astbury’ or ‘AstburyWhieldon’ are the most direct expression of pure clay technique in English pottery. They owe nothing to foreign influence, and are conceived in simple terms and worked out in a broad manipulative technique which died out about 1750.
The potters who made them knew little about the fashionable world and rarely attempted anything outside the range of their own experiences. Their best-known works are mounted hussars, grenadiers, topers, dancers, bands of musicians, or women seated upon high-backed chairs fondling pet dogs; and only occasionally do echoes of the fashionable world, in the form of opera singers or orators, occur. They were made, in fact, not for the big house but for the cottage or farm, and were evidently sold in the cheapest markets.
`Astbury’ or ‘Astbury-Whieldon’ are convenient labels covering many potters making similar wares, including John Astbury of Shelton, Thomas Astbury of Lane Delph, Samuel Bell of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Edward and William Warburton of Fenton Low, and Thomas Whieldon. It was probably Whieldon who was responsible for the more developed specimens. And with Whieldon we begin to notice the impact of the outside world in clumsy attempts to emulate classical sculpture (the ‘Spinario’) or Chinese porcelain figures.
The ‘pew’ and ‘arbour’ groups, made in salt-glazed stoneware and tortoiseshell-glazed earthenware, are extremely rare, and were evidently the work of potters of uncommon sensibility and skill. The names of those who made them are not known.
In addition to figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, cows and other animals were made. There is little to choose in quality between images made in stoneware and those made in common earthenware. The harder material was used expressively for depicting character and detail: the coarser body was perfectly suited to ‘pinching out’ droll characters to which life and colour were added by splashes of metallic oxides in the lead glaze.
Ralph Wood of Burslem lifted this ceramic sideline from its humble origin and developed it into a specialized craft –the craft of the figure-maker – and something was lost in the process. The humour of the Wood figures is quieter than that of the earlier pieces: a vein of sentiment creeps in, particularly with figures believed to have been modelled by John Voyez (c. 1735–i800), and in place of expressive manipulation we have careful character modelling and a closer regard for anatomical truth. Ralph Wood catered for more specialized markets, hence the changes in style and treatment. The best of the Wood figures are those which satirize contemporary events and personalities. The ‘Vicar and Moses’ and the original ‘Toby’jug deserved their widespread and long-lived popularity. They were original works of popular art. The chief characteristic of the early Wood figures is the clever tooling of the models to set off the lovely washes of translucent coloured glazes.
The younger Ralph Wood was responsible for a further development — the use of bright on-glaze enamels — which made previous figures seem dowdy and old-fashioned. The itch for novelty resulted in the multiplication of models and colour effects. Lustre and cheap gilding were introduced. By the end of the century dozens of factories turned to this lucrative trade, many backstreet potters turning out gaudy images for street hawkers, whose cry ‘Buy my images!’ became familiar in town and village.
The late 18th-century and early 19th-century figure-makers developed distinctive types. The makers of ‘Pratt’ figures used a palette of high-temperature colours dominated by yellow and blue. Enoch Wood made large lifeless statues of classical or literary subjects and competent busts of Wesley; tree background groups in gay enamels were made by Walton, Salt, Tittensor, Dale, and Selman; powerful but crude representations of popular sports were made by Obadiah Sherratt; the ubiquitous ‘china’ dogs and flatbacks of political, criminal, or military celebrities were turned out by the thousand from the factories of Sampson Smith, William Kent, and William Machin from 185o down to the Edwardian era. The trade did not die out until the First World War.
These were characteristic types: what Staffordshire did one day, Liverpool and Leeds, Sunderland, Swansea and Scotland did with variations the next.
This Victorian flowering of the craft of the image-maker gave rise to vast quantities of cheerful crudities which mirror perfectly the tastes and interests of common people. They were, in fact, the last expression of the folk will to form and colour.

Tags: 17th century, Adam, Agate, ale house, antique cross leg small end table wooden, antique qianlong scroll painting, antique wooden cradle with rockers and handles for car, antique zebra ceramic, antique 16th century wardrobe, antique 1800's silver basket with blue glass liner, antique 1810 silk tapestry french aristocrats, antique 18th century birdcage table, antique 18th century chippendale bed, antique 1920s art deco furniture, antique 1930 drop leaf dining room table trestle legs m, antique 2 drawer claw foot side table, antique 3 drawer sideboard on casters, antique 5 legged tables with wooden wheels, antique 6 leg side table, antique 6 legged table, antique american empire mahogany ladies writing desk, antique american hepplewhite armchair, antique american linen press, antique american mahogany davenport desk, antique american pine drop leaf table, antique american sheraton chest of drawers, antique anchors drawing, antique arita china, antique art deco bronze 2/chrome candlesticks, antique art deco cabinet ma, antique art deco doors, antique art deco dresser, antique art deco dresser with carvings and veneer, antique art deco mermaid figurine, antique art wood furniture, antique art works in marble, antique arts and crafts trestle library table, antique athens serving table, antique austrian china rh, antique ball dining table legs, antique banded pedestal table, antique barley twist pedestal is expensive back in 1920, antique bedroom furnature with inlaid wood, antique bedside cabinet wash basin, antique bedside mirror with ceramic flowers, antique bedside wash basin, antique belgian breakfast hutch, antique bentwood chair austria, antique bentwood chair manufacturers, antique bentwood rocking chairs, antique bible box, antique biscuit porcelain busts, antique black horse card tilt table, antique black lacquer chinese flower armoire, association, body, bolsover, Brede, Brown, Cadborough, comb, copper lustre, country pottery, crockery, distinctive features, drinking mugs, effect, Fareham, Hants, jacobean style, Josiah Wedgwood, lustre jugs, Mari Lwyd, Mary, medieval, medieval pottery, ornament, robustness, Staffordshire, staffordshire wares, stitchery, tints, West Country, white clay, Whitechapel

BLANKET CHESTS
Heavy and rich, laboriously woven or embroidered) sumptuously lined and trimmed, the fabrics of earlier centuries were made to last for generations – and presented the housekeeper with the monumental problem of their safe keeping from the ravage of moth and the tarnish of damp. Chests were evolved as a refuge centuries before wardrobes became pieces of furniture instead of rooms, or chests of drawers broke free of the lidded-box design, and they have never entirely disappeared from use.
Very many of the splendid chests in churches were required for robes and vestments, even to the inclusion of a few quarter-circle and half-circle designs for most highly treasured copes. In 1480 the Pewterers’ Company had streamers made to decorate their barge in a water pageant, and at once the accounts recorded the consequence: ‘Item, payed for a cofyn for the sayde strem’s xijd.’ In 1550 this typical guild owned a wainscot chest for napery, and their records even included occasional payments for ‘bagges of Rose leaves and lavender ffor tje chest of lynnen xviijd.’
As late as Tudor and early Stuart days, every room in the old rambling self-sufficient house might have its bed pitched like a tent and with a tent’s semi-privacy among the tools of the establishment’s innumerable trades, and more often than not every bed had its own accompanying furnishings, a blanket chest at the foot and probably another alongside serving instead of chair or table, such as Robert Belassis of Morton recorded, ‘the great Danske chest at the bedde feete and a littell Chest at the bedd syde’. Inventories give fascinating glimpses of this confusion. They also testify to the importance of chests as furniture. Robert Barker, for instance, mayor of Newcastle from 1577 to 1585, had two danske chests in the nursery in 1588, a danske chest and a danske coffer in the fore parlour, and two more danske chests, one of fir, a little counter and a banded chest in the back parlour. In the previous year an inventory of a Newcastle merchant, William Jeneson, furnished a servants’ chamber solely with two beds, four cupboards and five
danske chests.
The mid- 17th century introduced mule chests and the gradual evolution of the big chest of drawers, but even in the i8th century’s more polished household blanket chests received the consideration of good design and excellent workmanship. Evelyn and his daughter, in Mundus Muliebris, described the bed-chamber of a late Stuart society lady, and among the expected cabinets, tea tables, and all the rest she was furnished with ‘trunks on stand’. It must be remembered, of course, that household linen was stored in immense quantity by every lady of any substance, and handed down from generation to generation.
The contemporary names of many of these chests indicate that they were imported from abroad—Danske, Spruce, Flanders and so on. The Act of Tonnage and Poundage, 1689, indicates that they came in nests of three, fitting inside each other, and duty rates were calculated on this assumption; whereas chests of iron were dutiable singly, and small painted chests and gilt-leather covered coffers by the dozen. The duty on cypress-wood chests was more than five times as great as on spruce or danske chests or iron-bound coffers. While many were specifically for blankets, linen or napkins, this style of chest was widely used for household storage. Cedar-lined chests have never been ousted for protection against moth and damp.
Carved Chests: it is impossible to differentiate entirely between ecclesiastical and domestic chests. Surviving medieval specimens probably represent only the finest work. Some of the earliest ornament consisted of chip-carved roundels. Always the tendency has been for the ornament to suggest, superficially, the architectural construction of building in stone: thus an early panel would have chamfering on the top edge of the lower rail because this allowed water to drain off a stone sill. Until well into the 16th century foreign influence was mainly Flemish. Some of the richest remaining 14th- and 15th-century chests are ‘Flanders chests’ carved with representations of ‘Gothic window’ tracery, although attention has been drawn to the fact that in some instances a chest’s frontal carving may originally have formed the reredos associated with a church’s stone altar.
Other low-relief carving more simply followed linenfold and similar fabric patterns. High-relief carving was used for naturalistic ornament. In medieval and early Tudor chests various real and mythological creatures were carved and occasionally there were even pictorial scenes, followed by more sophisticated pilaster figures, caryatides and the heavy round-headed Roman arch that has become symbolic of Renaissance decoration. Soon this Roman arch was surrounding panels of inlay instead of carving. In the 17th century there was a vast amount of dull repetitive work, much of it lacking even surface modelling. After the interruption of smooth-faced veneers and lacquers there came a return to some heavy architectural carving in early mahogany and by the mid-18th century some good cut-card work was appearing on mahogany chests, but it became more usual to fret-cut and apply it, instead of carving from the solid and smoothing the background. Late-18th- and 19th-century oak chests were often coarsely carved, being only faintly reminiscent of simple work of earlier centuries.
Casson: a pair of Italian dower chests constituted important furnishings in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some were elaborately painted, the wood covered first with glue-on canvas, then perhaps with gesso, then with paint. Others were richly carved or decorated with marquetry. The Earl of Leicester in 1588 had `tower faier Hatt [i.e. not rounded trunk-tops] Venetian chests of Walnut tree carved and gilte’. English work is occasionally noted in similar vein.
Cedar Chests: Cedar veneer made an excellent lining for a blanket chest. John Houghton stressed in 1727 that the wood ‘is of so very dry a nature that it will not endure to be fastened with nails, from which it shrinks, therefore pins of the same are better . . .’ Cedar chests were extensively imported from Holland in Queen Anne’s reign.
Chest Stands: towards the end of the 17th century many blanket chests were fitted with stands. These resembled their period’s side-tables, with trumpet-shaped legs, waved diagonal stretchers and heavy ball or bun feet. Soon after the turn of the century, low cabriole-legged stands might be used, or a chest might be mounted merely on plain bracket feet. Oriental lacquered chests were mounted on stands made in England, first with heavy naturalistic carving and then in more formal designs. Some were gilded but many more were silvered to accord with the late 17th century’s craze for silver furniture, and only assumed a golden tone as the protective varnish lost its original clarity. Around the mid-18th century some blanket chests were mounted on straight-legged, fret-cut stands in the English ‘Chinese’ manner.
Commodes: Sobry in Architecture (1718) stated that ‘coffers and arks are commonly called commodes. Some have a lid, others have drawers’. But the term is more usually restricted to a cupboard design with doors and drawers. While bedrooms remained customary visiting and reception rooms, all bedroom furniture tended to be disguised and some bedroom commodes were constructed to resemble chests or trunks.
Cypress Chests: introduced early in the 16th century, but by the late 17th century were subject to heavy import tax. Some bore all-over ornament in low relief, incised or in cheap poker work. John Houghton reported in 1727 that such chests were made in Venice for the wood ‘resists the worm and moth, and all putrefaction to eternity … nothing outlasts it, or can be more beautiful, especially than the roots of the wilder sort, incomparable for its crisped undulations’. Houghton also referred to the use of juniper wood for
chests.
Danske Chests: frequently appear in Elizabethan records and might be assumed to be imports from Denmark, but probably there was more or less generalized use of the terms spruce (Prussia), danske and danszig for chests of Baltic fir wood.
Dowry Chests: for centuries a chest of linen was a bride’s usual contribution to her new home, but the term dowry chest appears of comparatively recent popularity.
Feet: early chests merely had their corner stiles prolonged to raise them from the floor, a frequent detail consisting of a semicircular shaping on the inner side of each front stile partly filled with a turned spindle or a vestige of such ornament. In heavily carved Elizabethan chests, the feet might continue the pillar motif. But during the 17th century separate feet were often applied, consisting of balls or bun shapes. In 1633 the turners complained that the joiners were wrongfully making their own. Low cabriole and simple bracket feet, sometimes on a separate stand, carne with the 18th century.
Flanders Chests: more vaguely defined as overseas work in some inventories. They were in great demand by the 16th century; as early as 1483 the Cofferers’ Guild was protesting at their importation. Inventoried specimens were generally priced at about five shillings in the late 16th century, and were in general use throughout the house. Some remaining specimens may have been preserved because of the exceptional richness of their traceries ‘church window’ carving, attached sometimes instead of carved from the solid. In the 17th century the ornament associated with Flanders included a range of unambitious glued-on decoration intended to simulate elaborate constructional work.
Gesso: among the richest, most ornate furnishings of many a flamboyant late Stuart and early Georgian house-hold were chests covered with gilded gesso. These tended to follow the heavy baroque designs of other gesso furniture, contrasting with extremely delicate work in low relief on the lid where intertwining arabesques shaped by brush in the gesso composition were set off by the customary ground of subdued matting. The gesso was suitably coloured and then covered with gold or silver leaf, and this protected with varnish.
Inlay: pieces of contrasting wood about one-eighth of an inch thick sunk into the solid oak or walnut of the chest. It was associated especially with the 17th century, but introduced much earlier, at first with native wood, then with ebony, with ivory and mother-of-pearl fostered by the monarch’s associations with Spain in Mary’s and James I’s reigns, with silver, pewter and the ubiquitous tortoiseshell. John Houghton in 1727 referred to the practice of inlaying holly under ivory ‘to render it more conspicuous’. An alternative term was set-work. Thus Robert Atkynson, a former sheriff of Newcastle, owned a ‘great Danske Chyste with sett wourke’, valued at k5 in 1596 when a more usual valuation of a danske chest was five shillings.
Joined Chests: see section on Plate Chests.
Jousting Chests: an attractive name given to chests carved in high relief with naturalistic scenes of secular subjects, such as jousting and hunting. These may have been created as early as the 14th or 15th century, but they have prompted many 19th- and 2oth-century copies.
Lacquer: first the Dutch and then the English East India Company imported great quantities of Oriental lacquer boards in the later 17th century, and these were often made into handsome blanket chests. Pepys in 1661 wrote of the Duke of York’s ‘many fine chests covered with gold and Indian varnish given him by the East Indy Company of Holland’. Lacquer trunks were listed in 17oo among the goods sold at East India House. But many more were made up in England. Some Oriental lacquer panels were framed up in English japanned work, usually an unattractive combination. Others were wholly of English japanning. ‘Lackered Ware Trunks’ were advertised in the London Gazette in 1687. The liking for Chinese work never entirely disappeared, and around the mid-18th century many Chinese rooms were created with lacquer or japanned chests among their handsome furnishings.
Leather: some blanket chests were covered with leather, closely studded with nails but lacking the metal angle-pieces and bandings that would fit them for travel. Some were mule chests.
Lids: for household use chests had flat table tops, the flat boards secured by cross battens fitting outside the chests themselves. Stuart chests had thinner lids from about 1600, and they might be framed up in loose panels after about 1625.
Mahogany: by George II’s reign these chests ranged from extreme plainness to the most richly carved work. A mule chest, for instance, might be entirely plain save for the metal mounts and the cock’s head beading around the drawers, and many depended upon the beauty of their rich Cuban veneers.
Marquetry: achieved much the same effect as inlay (q.v.), but the contrasting pattern and its background were both created in wood veneer thinly covering the wood that formed the chest. Veneering proved the most successful method of using the hard, brittle ebony that came into fashion in the 17th century. Inlay usually appeared on panelled chests and in association with carving; marquetry required a flat, unbroken surface. Nothing elaborate was attempted on chests and much of the naturalistic flowerand-bird work that remains appears to be Dutch.
Metal Mounts: Wrought-iron, often gilded, largely ceased to ornament chests during the 14th century, apart from security bandings and heavy lock-plates, and the strap hinges that were replacing wooden pin hinges. Iron was costly and the wood was smooth enough for carving. Some Elizabethan hinges were decoratively shaped to form a pair of rounded Es, one in reverse. Handles were of iron until the mid-’ 7th century when brass might be used. Screws were cut and filed by hand, and were rough and less perfectly regular than modern machine work. Their heads varied perceptibly in size and their ends were blunt.
Mule Chests: here the usual box construction was combined with one or two drawers below. Some were of oak, many more of walnut; mid-i8th-century work might be in mahogany.
Nonsuch Chests: decorated with a kind of wood mosaic known as intarsia, a geometrical inlay prepared in bulk and cut off into lengths as required to fill hollows sunk in the wood. This work possibly dated to about 1500 onwards. In the Nonsuch designs quaint buildings were portrayed, perhaps, as Fred Roe has suggested, intended to represent the Nonsuch House on old London Bridge, a timber construction brought over from Holland in prefabricated sections early in Elizabeth I’s reign.
Ornament: probably the earliest chests were brightly painted : the Carpenters’ Company paid 13s. 4d. for a chest to be painted and gilded in 1484- Carving observed a sequence of modified Gothic and Renaissance Greco-Roman styles followed by much raised applied ornament. Inlay appeared in the i 6th century and was developed in the I 7th, and there was some intarsia work in the Continental manner. There was some simple marquetry, and a little sumptuous silvered or gilded gesso, as well as much English japanning. Early Georgian mahogany might bear such simple classic enrichment as dentil moulding, and there was some midx8th-century pseudo-Chinese cut-card work.
Settles: often merely chests with tall panelled backs and arm-rests, and sometimes placed at the bed-foot.
Spruce Coffers: see Danske Chests.
Trunks: this term is so usually associated today with travelling that it is well to realize its wider implication, as in G. Greene’s reference, 1591: ‘At the bed’s feete stood a hansome truncke, wherin was very good linnen.’ Even the Carpenters’ Company in 1648 used it as a term for linen chest, and the Company’s writings, too, were ‘locked up in a truncke’.

Tags: 16th century, 17th centuries, 17th century, antique black lacquer inlaid oriental table, antique black lacquered mother of pearl japanese table , antique black vase slovakia pottery, antique blue white japanese cup wheat motif, antique bocage staffordshire figures, antique bohemian china, antique bone china tea set doric, antique boulle cabinet console, antique bow front cabinet types regency louis, antique box sofas, antique box stool seat hinged lid, antique brass 4 feet fold down tables history, antique brass bed with painted uprights, antique brass figurines from india'man lying on bed of , antique brass lion's foot casters, antique brass mermaid laying down on rocks, antique bread cabinet, antique bread making, antique bread tables, antique breakfast table with pull up sides, antique british drop leaf table with cabinet, antique british west indies dining room table, antique british white clay dish, antique buffet with lion feet, antique burmese lattice chairs, antique burr walnut sewing table dropleaf, antique butterfly drop leaf table, antique butterfly drop leaf table with spindle legs, antique cabinet maker chests, antique cabinet with gold birds, antique cabnit, antique cabriole cabinets, antique campaign furniture, antique campaign secretarie, antique campaign-chair, antique candle boxes, antique candle labr, antique candle snuffer -ebay, antique candle stand table brandt furniture of characte, antique card table with legs to hold spittoons, antique cardinal's chair marquetry, antique cardinal's chair marquetry british, antique cardinal's chair marquetry dutch, antique carpets istanbul, antique carved dark wood two piece cupboard, antique carved ivory inlaid wood tables, antique carving drawings, antique caspian pots, antique caucasian rugs, antique cedar inlaid drop leaf table, antique ceramic figurines, antique ceramics imari brocade, antique chair leg design, antique chair looks like a tripod, antique chair tapered seat narrow back, background, barge, blanket chest, blanket chests, Cedar, century, chests, chests of drawers, chin, coffer, construction, decoration, design, Dowry, Earl, Elizabethan, faier, france, Furniture, glimpses, Gothic, Holland, housekeeper, John Houghton, lid, mahogany, marquetry, Mary, medieval, monumental problem, moth, napery, Newcastle, occasional payments, payed, quarter circle, Queen Anne, ravage, reference, return, robert barker, safe keeping, self sufficient house, Spain, surface, tower, vein, veneer, vestments, water pageant, way, wood

TRAVELLING CHESTS
CHEST is a term that has been applied to a number of articles more or less box-shaped and opening with a rising lid. Records of the craftsmen who made chest furniture and of the guilds and companies, the churches and great houses, that used them, all contribute terms and definitions but constantly contradict each other. In this survey of chest furniture, this wide application of the word chest is accepted. Even as late as 173o Bailey’s dictionary made no attempt to be specific: a coffer was a chest or trunk, a chest was ‘a sort of box, coffer or trunk’. Addison in 1700 used the term for a basket, ‘a chest of twining osiers’, such as one must assume Lady Grisell Baillie meant by her Dutch basket ‘for my cloathes’ in 1693. Moreover, chests in their hey-day served a multitude of purposes. Throughout the Middle Ages a man’s possessions travelled with him, but when he settled down the chests in which they were packed or trussed became the furniture that displayed them.
The very word trunk indicates how early and primitive were men’s first attempts to make stronger luggage than skin-covered osier baskets. A few ancient dug-outs remain, usually of oak, occasionally, as in Ackington Church, Worcestershire, of elm. The oldest dug-outs were succeeded first by the carpenter’s hammered-up constructions, then gradually by the joiner’s framed work until the cabinet, the chest at its most refined and most perfectly individualistic, became recognized as the most highly skilled creation in the whole craft of woodworking. But for the travel chest in particular the ancient rounded top of the dug-out was preserved. Since to truss was a familiar word meaning to pack or bundle goods, the traveller’s chest was probably most frequently specified by the prefix ‘trussing’. Numerous references may be found to trussing chests, such as in 1540, in an Act of Henry VIII. In the early 17th century Howard Accounts, with their frequent references to freight, boat-hire and portage of luggage between London and the North, trunks and trunk chests appeared accepted terms.
The other term particularly associated with travelling chests is coffer. The cofferer was long recognized as the craftsman who covered chests and other furniture with leather. As early as 1483 the Guild of Cofferers protested against the competition of imported Flanders chests, and, until late in the 18th century, coffer-makers were listed among the officers of the royal household. But in common usage the term appears generally to have indicated a wide variety of strongly built chests, and will find further mention in later sections.
Boarded Chests: early, poor alternatives to the framed or jointed chest, the horizontal planks of wood forming the front and back being hammered to the vertical end-pieces or flush with heavy corner stiles, and frequently reinforced with corner-pieces of iron. As wood tends to shrink across the grain, the result was never satisfactory, and the horizontal planks usually show signs of splitting. Oak might be used, or planks of elm, large and comparatively little given to warping. The flush construction as contrasted with the loose panels of the mortise-and-tenon jointed chest offered a smooth surface for covering with leather or hair cloth.
Busse Chests: buscarles’ or seamen’s chests.
Close Nailing: brass convex-headed nails of a darkish tint of brass hammered with great exactitude by the cofferer, head beside head, were used all around the edges of the leather-covered chest and in sufficient numbers over the body of the piece to avoid any loose flapping of the inelastic cover. Similar treatment was given to hair cloth.
Coffers: a term that must be considered also in connexion with Plate Chests, but has always had particular association with the leather-covered travelling chest, the work of the cofferer. Randall Holme, in 1662, made the distinction that a coffer was called a chest if it had a straight and flat cover, a chest being like a coffer ’save the want of a circular lid or cover’.
Fitted Chests: coach travel became more popular and widespread in the 17th century, the experienced traveller taking his own fitted chest or case containing drinking glasses and square glass bottles, or a silver dining set consisting of a nest of tumblers, and knife, fork and spoons. Some 18th-century cases contained porcelain tea equipages. Doctors travelled with essential surgeons’ chests, and craftsmen with tool chests that represented their livelihood.
Hair Cloth: cloth woven with horse-hair was strong and rain-repellent, and was used like leather to cover wooden travelling chests and trunks. As it had no elasticity in the weft threads, it was close-nailed like leather. There is reference in the Verney Memoirs, 1653, to ‘yelowe haire Sumpter trunkes’. Some 17th-century writers specified fustian, others merely cloth to cover trunks, sometimes scarlet and even crest-embroidered, requiring an outer casing of leather. In the later 18th century hair cloth was available in a wide range of colours and stripes, and many a hair trunk studded with brass rosettes in a sqmewhat medieval manner was manufactured for the rough and tumble of coach travel in the early 19th century.
Hinges: pin hinges – the early medieval chest might have a rather clumsy pivot arrangement for opening the canted lid. A pair of horizontal pivots worked in slots cut in the back stiles of the chest. Often small iron plates were introduced, to protect the pivots, Strap hinges – these, of iron, were usual after the end of the 13th century.
Leather: cowhide close-nailed was the most usual covering for travelling chests, both standards and trussing coffers. Early leather might be enamelled and gilded, imported from Spain and Holland until an Englishman, Christopher, discovered their methods in 1638. Leather treated with oil and spirits was known as cuir bouilli, the applications rendering it supple enough to take incised ornament in addition to paint and gilding. The Dictionary of Furniture lists Richard Pegge, coffer-maker to Charles II, and Edward Smith, 1750-6o, among suppliers of trunks to the royal household, covered in Russia leather (scented with oil of birch-bark). Pegge’s were supplied with and without drawers, and included such details as one lined with sarcenet and quilted, and two covered with sealskin and bound with girdles of ox leather.
Linings: trunk lining became a specialized job, and in travelling chests particularly the work was important if the chest contents were to be protected from the drifts of dust that constituted roads and the rushes and rubbish scattered over flagstones or wooden flooring. Linen has always had terminological association with lining, and was the most suitable fabric until 18th-century cotton became strong and Closely woven enough to be considered as a possible alternative. Paper, hand-made and soft textured, soon rubbed, but was widely used. It may be of particular interest to the collector; for sheets of unsaleable books were used when available, the plain backs printed in wood-block patterns.
Metal-work: travelling chests were frequently ironbound, sometimes almost covered in iron; but these may be regarded as travelling safes and receive further consideration under the section on Plate Chests. The close nailing that protected the leather covering was reinforced with corner-straps, and often with a massive and handsome lockplate, early work being shaped cold by sawing like wood. Pepys mentioned in 1662 that ‘we were forced to send for a smith, to break open her trunk’. Remaining specimens tend to have replacement locks, often with hinge pins too easily removed or damaged for any security.
Panelled Chests: typified joiners’ as distinct from carpenters’ furniture. The horizontal rails and vertical stiles and muntins that formed the framework to the loose panels of the chest were held together by mortise-and-tenon joints, allowing the wood to respond to atmospheric changes.
joiners’ work in 1632 was defined to include dovetail joints, and the wide early style of dovetail may be noted down the corners of some chests in walnut, cypress and other woods that could be undercut in a manner impossible with oak. Plat in 1594 made reference to a ‘foure square chest .. . close the sides well with dovetails or cement’. But corner dovetails in view on the outside of a chest are usually taken to indicate Continental work.
Pegged Chests: occasionally a chest is noted which can be dismantled for travelling or store by removing wooden pegs in the style of many early table trestles. Some are authenticated, but obviously the design was very much in the mood of the 19th-century’s pseudo-medievalism.
Portmanteaux: a term introduced about the mid-16th century, applied to cases specifically for horse travel yet large enough for bulky clothing. In the 162os, for instance, the Howard Accounts refer to a leather portmanteau priced I os. Id., and in 1611 Cotgrave noted ‘a portmantse with chaine and Locke’. There are numerous references to portmanteau saddles, even to portmanteau horses, in the 17th and 18th centuries. Thus the London Gazette referred to ‘a coloured leather Portmantle Saddle’. Such a saddle, according to Randall Holme, had ‘a Cantle behind the seat to keep the Portmantle . . . off the Rider’s back’.
Royal Crown on Travelling Chests: this may be found in close nailing or engraved on metal fittings, and is often assumed to indicate personal association with a monarch. It is thought more likely to indicate that the chest may have been used on Government service or by one of the palaces.
Standards: when a wealthy family travelled, their household goods might be conveyed in huge leather-covered, iron-bound, vividly painted standards. Here again is a term that must receive consideration also among other types of chest furniture.
Sumpter Trunks: a usual term for the pairs of travelling chests carried by Sumpter- or baggage-horses or mules, or in the late 18th-century Sumpter cars. Lady Grisell Baillie paid four pounds fora pair in 1715. Sumpter-horses were comparable with pack-horses. Bailey, in 1730, defined a pack as a horse-load of wool – about 240 pounds. Sumpter-cloths frequently bore the crest or cipher of their owner.
Tills: forerunners of the fitted tray in a modern trunk. Inside many a 17th-century chest a small tray was fitted on the right near the lid. Sometimes it was itself lidded, the lid hingeing into the framework of the chest; sometimes it was locked and occasionally had a false-bottomed hiding-place. Catharine of Aragon in 1534 had ‘one cofar having four tilles therin, the forefronte of every one of them gilte’. The lidded box-like tills in a chest might be called drawing chests or drawers, although the chest-of-drawers, as a considerable piece of bedroom furniture and as distinct from a cabinet of tiny drawers, was evolved only in the 17th century. Thus, in 1599, Minshen referred to ‘a great chest or standard with drawing chests or boxes in it’.
Trenails or Treenails: the old term for the cylindrical pins of hardwood used for fastening timber together, mentioned for instance in an inventory of 1571: ‘iij houndrethe treenales viijd’. Square wooden pins might be used green, driven into round holes for greater firmness.
Trunks: probably the most common term for a travelling chest, leather-covered and with a rounded top to suffer as little as possible from wet weather. It was used in association with a number of terms regarding such chests. Thus the brass convex-headed nail used by the cofferer was a trunk nail, and there was a trunk saddle recorded as early as 1569. Moxon in 1677 distinguished between trunk locks, chest locks and padlocks.
Trussing Coffers: a frequent term for leather-covered travelling chests, usually implying smaller articles than standards; as, for instance, was indicated in a reference of 1622: ‘Commodities packt up in Bundels, Trusses, Cases, Coffers, or Packes.

Tags: 16th century, 17th century, addison, antique chair w/ inlaid mother of pearl flowers and sat, antique chair w/spiral legs & metal lions heads, antique chair with face carved back, antique chair with motif, antique chairs art nouveau, antique chairs made with straw and horse hair, antique chairs with carved fish heads for arms, antique chairs with fish arms, antique chamber chair, antique chamber pot cabinet, antique chamber pot chair, antique chamber pot chairs, antique chamber pot set, antique chamber pot striped, antique cherry drop leaf table, antique cherry stretcher base table, antique cherub relief carved drinking cup, antique chess tripod table, antique chest of drawers carved eagle, antique chest trunk with a picture of chickens inside , antique chicken coop, antique chicken coups, antique china made in czechoslavikia, antique china rockingham, antique chinese bedside tables, antique chinese black earthen kettle, antique chinese carved table timber inlay, antique chinese ceremonial furniture brass, antique chinese lead line tea box, antique chinese lead tea caddy, antique chinese silver 5 claw dragon round pot, antique chinese table glass carving, antique chinese tapered cabinet, antique chipendale wing chairs, antique chippendale 18th century mahogany serpentine si, antique chippendale 8 feet boardroom table, antique chippendale chair, antique chippendale furniture, antique chippendale furniture pictures, antique chippendale serving table, antique churca altars items, antique circular sewing table, antique circular bookcase, antique circular revolving book case, antique circular table fake drawers, antique clarise cliffe bay u k, antique claw foot chippendale wing chair, antique claw foot drop leaf table drawer, antique claw foot end table with drawer, antique claw foot hope chest, antique clawfoot game tables, association, baillie, body, Busse, carpenter, chests, coffer, connexion, construction, constructions, craftsmen, design, dovetail, Edward Smith, frequent references, Furniture, gilding, guilds, Holland, Howard Accounts, luggage, medieval, metal, middle ages, multitude, ornament, osiers, possessions, prefix, Randall Holme, reference, Richard Pegge, Russia, Spain, term, treatment, want, woodworking, word meaning

Mail: armour made of interlinked rings which, on most European examples, are riveted. It was known in Europe at least as early as the 2nd century B.C., and was the normal defence during the early Middle Ages. It was relegated to a subordinate role with the general adoption of plate armour in the 14th century, but nevertheless remained in common use until well into the 17th. The extension of the term to cover all forms of defensive armour and the word chain-mail are both of comparatively recent date.
Match-lock: the earliest form of mechanical ignition for a gun, introduced late in the 15th century, in which an arm holding a lighted match (cord made of tow soaked in a solution of saltpetre) is brought into contact with priming powder at the touch-hole by pressure on a trigger. Despite the invention of the wheel- and flint-locks, it remained in use for military purposes, on account of its cheapness, until the end of the 17th century.
‘Maximilian’ armour: a modern term for the style of fluted armour which came into use in Italy and, more particularly, in Germany during the reign of the Emperor Maximilian I (1494-1519)- It is rarely found after c. 1540, but examples dating from as late as c. 1560-7o are occasionally encountered. Modern writers sometimes use the rare 16th-century English term for fluted, crested, to describe this style.
Morion: an open helmet much used by foot-soldiers in the second half of the 16th century. Contemporary texts mention two forms: (i) the Spanish-morion, called a cabasset by many modern writers, with a pear-shaped, pointed skull and a narrow, flat brim; (ii) the comb-morion, with high comb and a curved brim peaked before and behind. The modern term peaked-morion refers to an intermediate type with a curved brim, and a pointed apex terminating in a small stalk.
Musket: a military match- or wheel-lock firearm introduced in the third quarter of the 16th century. It was heavier than the arquebus (q.v.), and consequently was usually fired from a forked rest. After the introduction of the flint-lock (q.v.) the term was used loosely to describe any portable firearm larger than a pistol.
Musketoon: a short, heavy flint-lock gun with a large bore, generally used for discharging shot.
‘Pappenheirner’: a heavy rapier with a form of swept hilt (q.v.) incorporating two large perforated shells. It was used during the first half of the 17th century and was named after the celebrated imperialist general of the Thirty Years’ War, Gottfried Heinrich, Count von Pappenheim (d. 1632). Sometimes referred to as a Walloon sword.
Percussion lock: the latest form of ignition for a firearm, involving the use of a detonating compound. The first patent for a lock of this type was taken out in 1807 by the Rev. Alexander Forsyth (d. 1843). As put on the market, this had a small, flask-shaped magazine which could be rotated on a central spindle, and which contained detonating powder in the lower end and a spring-loaded striker in the upper. By turning the magazine through 18o degrees a small amount of powder was deposited in a recess in the central spindle, connecting through a channel to the touch-hole; when the magazine was returned to the normal position this powder was detonated by the striker, which was itself struck by a hammer-like cock.
Improvements made on the Forsyth lock included the pellet- or pill-lock, in which the detonating powder was replaced by a pellet, sometimes enclosed in a paper cap, and the tube-lock, which used a tubular metal primer held by a spring clip. All types were superseded by the percussion-cap system, apparently invented between 1818 and 1820, in which a thimble-shaped copper cap containing detonating powder was placed on a hollow nipple communicating with the chamber, and fired by the action of the cock. Many flint-lock guns were converted to this system, which remained in use until the second half of the 19th century.
Petronel: a large pistol, or short arquebus, fitted with a match- or wheel-lock and used in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It had a curved stock, which was rested against the chest when fired.
6in __5 armour: a misleading modern term for a type of late 16th-century armour, apparently produced chiefly in Milan and Brescia. Its chief characteristic consists of bands of coarsely etched decoration of confused design.
Pistol: the smallest type of firearm, designed to be fired with one hand, introduced c. 1520- It was fitted at first with a wheel-lock and subsequently snaphaunce, flint- and percussion-lock, but in Europe never with a match-lock. The earliest pistols were used chiefly by the cavalry, being carried in large holsters attached to the saddle, but in the late 16th century smaller forms were devised to be carried in the belt, and later in the pocket. Numerous attempts were made to produce a revolving pistol, but none was really successful until the invention of the Colt percussion-revolver, patented in 1836.
Pole-arms: a modern term connoting any type of cutting or thrusting weapon mounted on a long handle. They can be divided into the following classes: (i) thrusting weapons, including the spear in all its forms; the horseman’s lance, at first simply a long spear, but later fitted with a large metal guard for the hand (vamplate); the pike, a long spear, often measuring as much as 22 feet in the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was used by the infantry to forma ‘hedge’ against cavalry; the partizan, which had a long triangular head, usually with two pointed lugs at the base; (ii) percussion weapons, consisting mainly of the various forms of club (including the horseman’s mace), the axe and the hammer, the last two often having a sharply pointed fluke at the rear of the head; (iii) weapons designed for cutting and for thrusting, including the halberd, which had a flat axe blade balanced by a fluke and a long, sharp spike above; the bill and the guisarme each with a cutting edge curving up to form a short hook, a fluke at the rear and a spike above; the glaive, with a large cleaver- or scythe-shaped blade.
Pot: a term used in the 17th century apparently to designate any type of open helmet. Modern writers usually confine it to the large, wide-brimmed variety used by 17th-
century pikemen.
Powder-flask: flask for carrying the black powder used for charging muzzle-loading guns. It was made in a variety of different shapes and materials, and was usually fitted with some kind of measuring device. A smaller flask was often carried for the finer powder used in priming.
Rapier: a sword with a long, straight blade, introduced in the 16th century. It was at first designed for thrusting and cutting, but as the science of fencing developed emphasis was laid increasingly on the former. It was primarily a civilian weapon and in the 16th and 17th centuries was usually used in conjunction with a dagger or a cloak held in the left hand.
Sabre: a heavy, curved, single-edged sword used chiefly by cavalry from the late 16th century onwards.
Sallet: the characteristic helmet of the 15th century, usually worn with a deep chin-piece (bevor). Its form generally followed that of the modern sou’wester, although it comes well down over the face, either having a movable visor, or a vision slit in its forward edge. The German type usually has a long, graceful, pointed tail, often laminated. The barbute (q.v.) is one of the forms of this helmet.
Schiavone: a basket-hilted sword with a straight, two-edged blade, used during the late 16th and early 17th centuries by the Dalmatian troops (stradiots) in the employ of Venice. It is often erroneously described as the prototype of the Scottish basket-hilted broadsword.
Shield: probably the earliest form of defensive arm. Shields have been used from prehistoric times, and made of a variety of materials, including wood, leather, wicker-work, metal, etc. They were usually attached to the left arm by straps (enarmes) or, when not in use, hung round the neck on a sling (guige). The earliest shields seem to have been mainly circular, oval or rectangular, but in the 11th century the tall kite-shape appears, remaining in use until the 13th century, when the ‘flat-iron’ (heater) form was introduced. This survived until well into the 15th century, when a large variety of shapes appeared, many of which had a notch (bouche) cut in the upper edge for the lance. In the 16th century the majority of shields were circular, one of the most popular types being the buckler (introduced as early as the 13th century), which was held in the left hand by means of a crossbar on the inside. Shields have at all times been the subject of adornment, particularly with the owner’s coat-ofarms or personal device after the introduction of heraldry in the I 2th century. Many of those made for parade purposes in the 16th century were of metal elaborately embossed or etched and gilt.
Smallsword: a light civilian sword with a simple hilt, often richly decorated, which succeeded the rapier (q.v.) in the third quarter of the 17th century, with the beginnings of fencing as it is known today. The slender blade, although designed principally for thrusting, was at first double-edged, but from c. 1700 one of hollow triangular section became almost universal. The modern term colichemarde is often used to designate a blade which is wide near the hilt and narrows suddenly half-way along. The smallsword remained in active use until the end of the 18th century, and still survives in the sword worn with modern court dress.
Snaphaunce: the earliest form of the flint-lock (q.v.), introduced apparently in the middle of the 16th century. It is regarded by many writers as a distinct type, its chief difference from the flint-lock being that the pan is fitted with a separate sliding cover opened, when the steel is knocked back by the cock, by the action of a cam. Most surviving examples date within the 17th century.
Spurs: early spurs were of the prick type, with a single spike, usually pyramidal or cone-shaped and often mounted on a ball to prevent deep penetration. There is some evidence for the introduction of the rowel spur, with a wheel equipped with points instead of the single spike, in the middle of the 13th century, but it did not become common until the second quarter of the 14th. In the second half of the 15th century spurs had straight necks of great length, while those of the 17th had their necks bent down almost at right angles.
Swept-hilt: a modewi term for the type of rapier hilt, introduced in the 16th century, in which the guard consists of a complicated series of curved bars.
Sword: throughout the whole of the medieval period the commonest type of sword was cruciform with a straight two-edged blade. As early as the 14th century, however, an additional guard was occasionally provided in the form of a single loop alongside the base of the blade; this enabled the user to get a better grip on the sword by looping his finger over the cross-guard (quillons). During the 16th century the introduction of the practice of duelling as opposed to armoured combat in the lists, and the corresponding development of the science of fencing led to the adding of more supplementary guards, finally producing the swept-hilt rapier (q.v.) of the second half of the century. This remained in vogue until the second quarter of the 17th century, when a lighter form of rapier was introduced with a simple shell-guard and a single curved bar over the knuckles, ultimately developing into the smallsword (q.v.). In Southern Italy, and particularly in Spain, at this period the swept-hilt was superseded by the cup-hilt, with a guard formed by a circular bowl supplemented by straight quillons and a knuckle-guard, which remained in use until the 18th century.
The two-hand sword enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the 16th century, picked men being specially trained to its use. The basket-hilted sword, usually with a broad blade, was introduced at the end of the 16th century, and was much used by cavalry in the 17th; it has survived in a modified form until the present time (see also Backsword, Broadsword, Cinquedea, Claymore, Cutlass, Falchion, Hanger, Heading Sword, ‘Pappenheimer’, Rapier, Sabre, Schiavone, Smallsword, Swept-hilt.
Tschinke: a light wheel-lock gun, generally rifled, used for bird-shooting in the area of Germanic culture during the 17th century. The butt usually takes a sharp downward curve while the lock has an external mainspring.
Wheel-lock: mechanism for igniting a gun, in which a piece of pyrites, fixed between the jaws of a cock, is pressed against the grooved edge of a wheel projecting through the bottom of the priming pan. The wheel is forced to rotate by a spring, released by the trigger, and rubs against the pyrites, causing a shower of sparks which ignite the powder. The lock is usually wound by means of a spanner, but on rare examples this is effected automatically when the cock is drawn back.
The earliest known illustration of a wheel-lock mechanism is that in the Codex Allanticus of Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519). There is, however, no evidence to show that this was ever made, the first practical wheel-lock apparently having been produced in Germany in c. 1520. It is rarely found on military weapons, probably on account of the expense of manufacture, but it was much used for sporting and target guns until well into the 18th century.

Tags: 14th century, 15th century, 17th centuries, action, antique clawfoot pedestal tables, antique clawfoot tables, antique clawfooted library table, antique clay pottery makers that start with c, antique clear vase with feet, antique coffee table made by imperial furniture, antique coffee tables with four legs brass feet, antique coimbra porcelain, antique collecting blogs, antique collectors brass beads, antique collectors in portugal, antique collectors sheffield, antique commode chest with brass ladies, antique communion table, antique confidante settee, antique confined spaces military stretchers, antique copper and iron oxide chinese vase, antique corner cupboard, antique couch 1925 rolled colomn ends, antique couch carved wood trim paw feet feathers, antique couchette, antique court cupboard, antique court cupboard reproduction, antique creamware tureen, antique creamware wicker pattern, antique cross 18th century, antique curved edged coffee table with floral carved ap, antique curved leg sideboards, antique cutlery cabinet, antique daum crystal collectors, antique deco mirrored bedside table, antique decoupage deers on pine tree slices, antique dent glass dome clock, antique desk with attached side seat, antique desks lion paw legs, antique desks with uneven top, antique dictionary stands, antique dictionary stands wrought iron and wood, antique dining room table 1930 with grooves, antique dining table double v base, antique dining table louis xiv, antique dining table v-shaped leg base, apex, ARMOUR, arquebus, brim, cavalry, cock, comb, effect, emperor maximilian, firearm, fluke, foot soldiers, hand, horseman, intermediate type, mail armour, match, metal, Milan, military purposes, musket, nipple, plate armour, point, Rapier, Snaphaunce, sword, term, way, weapon, word chain

GLOSSARY
The glossary which follows includes all major technical terms which the beginner collector will encounter in a study of European arms and armour. Oriental armour has not been included. Most of these terms have their individual translations in French, Italian, German and Spanish. These will be learned by the serious student in the course of acquiring knowledge.
Arinet: a term used in x5th- and early 16th-century texts, apparently to denote a close-helmet (q.v.). Modern writers generally confine it to the early form of this helmet with hinged cheek-pieces overlapping and fastening at the chin, and usually having at the back a steel disc (roundel) on a short stem.
Arquebus: a term occurring as early as the 14th century referring to some type of hand-gun. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries it was applied to the earliest type of portable gun fitted with a shoulder-butt and a match-lock (q.v.). In the late 16th and early 17th centuries it was applied loosely to almost any type of light wheel- or matchlock gun.
Backsword: a sword having a blade with a back on one side and a single cutting edge on the other.
Barbute: a 15th-century open helmet of Italian origin, one of the forms of the Ballet (q.v.). It was tall, at first with a pointed apex, later becoming rounded, and extended over the cheeks, leaving only the eyes, nose and mouth exposed. Some examples closely resemble the classical Greek Corinthian helmet, on which they may perhaps have been directly based.
Bascinet: the characteristic light helmet of the 14th and early 15th centuries. It was conical in shape and usually had a mail curtain (aventail) laced to its lower edge, protecting the throat and neck. In the second half of the 14th century it was often worn with an acutely pointed ‘pig-faced’ visor, a form for which the rare medieval term `hounskull’ is now generally used. In the 15th century the helmet became more rounded, and the aventail was replaced by a plate gorget; in this form it remained in use for fighting on foot in the lists until the beginning of the 16th century.
Bayonet: a dagger, or short sword, fitted to a musket to convert it into a pike. Known early in the 17th century, it was not generally adopted for military purposes until the second half of that century. At first simply a dagger with round grip, tapered to fit into the musket muzzle, a form which remained in use until well into the 18th century, but this was gradually superseded by the socket-bayonet introduced in the late 17th century. This had a tubular hilt fitting over the muzzle, the blade being set to one side so that the musket could be fired with the bayonet fixed. It was superseded in the 19th century by the sword-bayonet, attached to a lug on the barrel by a spring-catch and with a hilt like that of a sword.
Blunderbuss: a short musket with large bore widening at the muzzle, designed to fire shot. Apparently introduced into England from the Continent in the middle of the 17th century, it was used principally by civilians as a protection against thieves until well into the 19th. Many blunderbusses are equipped with a hinged spring-bayonet, which is thrown forward into the fixed position when a catch is released.
Brigandine: a light, flexible body defence consisting of small, overlapping metal plates riveted to the interior of a canvas or leather jacket. It was usually covered with coloured silk or velvet, the rivet heads on the exterior being gilt to produce a decorative effect. The term first occurs at the end of the 14th century, but the majority of surviving examples date from the 16th and early 17th centuries.
The jack was a cheaper form of the brigandine, its plates, which were often of horn, being held in place by stitching.
Broadsword: a sword with a straight double-edged blade. The term is applied chiefly to the basket-hilted cavalry sword of the 17th and 18th centuries. It survived in the Scottish basket-hilted sword, often erroneously called a claymore.
Buff-coat: a coat of thick buff-leather, usually with full skirts and often sleeved. It was thick enough to withstand a sword-cut and became very popular, particularly for cavalry, when armour was falling into disuse in the 17th century.
Burgonet: an open helmet, used chiefly by light-horsemen in the 16th and early 17th centuries. It usually had a peak (fall) over the eyes and hinged cheek-pieces fastening under the chin. It was sometimes worn with a deep chin-piece (buffe).
Cabasset: see Morion.
Chanfron: the plate defence for a horse’s head, introduced early in the 14th century and remaining in use until well into the 17th.
Cinqueda: a short sword, or large dagger, with a flat triangular blade some five fingers in width near the hilt (hence the name from the Italian Cinque dei), and often elaborately etched and gilt. It was essentially a civilian weapon, and was used chiefly in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
Claymore: from the Gaelic claidheam-mor (great sword). The Scottish two-hand sword introduced in the 16th century. Of very large proportions, it usually had straight quillons inclining at a sharp angle towards the broad, straight blade. In the 17th century the quillons became curved and were supplemented by two (sometimes only one) large solid shells bent towards the hilt. Since the 19th century the term has been applied erroneously to the basket-hilted Scottish broadsword.
Close-helmet: a close-fitting, visored helmet completely enclosing the head. The term is now usually confined to the type of headpiece introduced early in the 16th century, with the visor and chin-piece pivoting at the sides, as opposed to the armet (q.v.), which has hinged cheek-pieces fastening at the chin.
Cross-bow: a bow mounted at right-angles upon a stock, which is grooved for the arrow (bolt), and fitted with a trigger-mechanism so that it can be discharged from the shoulder like a gun. The bow was made variously of wood, steel, or a composition of layers of wood, horn and sinew glued together; it could be spanned by hand, a stirrup at the end providing purchase for the foot by a forked lever, or by various forms of windlass. It was known in Europe as early as the 4th century, but did not become popular until the loth. Its use against Christians was prohibited by the Church in 1139, but despite this it was used extensively in warfare throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages. As a sporting weapon it has remained in use until the present time, especially in Switzerland.
A light version of the cross-bow fitted with a sling to fire bullets or stones, and known as a prodd or stone-bow, was much used from medieval times onwards for shooting small game. It remained popular, particularly in Lancashire and East Anglia, until well into the 19th century.
Cuirassier armour: armour for the heavy cavalry of the first half of the 17th century, consisting of a close-helmet and defences covering the whole of the body down to the knees.
Cutlass: a term first appearing in the 16th century, denoting a short, single-edged sword, usually curved, the successor of the medieval falchion (q.v.). In the 18th and early 19th centuries it was a standard naval weapon. Dagger : the diminutive of the sword, designed to be used
chiefly for thrusting, and common in a variety of forms from the earliest times.  The main types are: (i) the quillon dagger, with a simple cross-guard; (ii) the ballock-knife (called by modern writers the kidney-dagger), which had a guard formed by two lobate protuberances; it was probably from this that the Scottish dirk developed in the 17th century; (iii) the rondel-dagger, with disc-shaped guard and pommel; (iv) the ear-dagger, with pommel formed by two flattened discs set at an angle and resembling ears; it is of Eastern origin and, when found in Europe, is usually Venetian or Hispano-Moresque; (v) the left-hand or main-gauche dagger, used in conjunction with the sword in 16th-and early 17th-century fencing; it usually had quillons (often strongly arched to entangle an opponent’s sword-blade), and a side-ring, but a special form, with a triangular knuckle-guard, was used in Spain during the last three quarters of the 17th century; in conjunction with the cup-hilt rapier. (vi) the stiletto, a variant of the quillon-dagger, first introduced in the 16th century with a stiff, narrow blade designed for stabbing only; the gunner’s stiletto has a scale on the blade for converting weight of gun-shot into diameter of bore.
Falchion: a short, curved, single-edged sword, known as early as the 12th century. The medieval form had a broad, cleaver-like blade.
Flint-lock: a type of gun-lock developed from the snaphaunce (q.v.) in the first quarter of the 17th century. It is fitted with a pan (holding priming powder round the touchhole), with a hinged cover from which rises a flat steel. When the gun is discharged, a specially shaped flint, held in the jaws of a spring-operated cock, strikes the steel, throwing it and the pan-cover back, and at the same time sending a shower of sparks into the priming.
In its earliest form this lock had a horizontal scear, the tip of which projected through the lock-plate and engaged with a projection on the heel of the cock, holding the latter back until released by the trigger. There was no half-cock (safety position), although on English locks this was provided by a dog-catch, a small pivoted hook which engaged in a notch at the rear of the cock. The flint-lock proper, with a vertical scear engaging in one of two notches in an internal tumbler, giving respectively half- and full-cock, appears to have been invented in France about 1610-15, possibly by Marin le Bourgeoys of Lisieux (d. 1634). This form became increasingly popular and virtually superseded all others in the second half of the 17th century, remaining in use until well into the 19th. A special type of flint-lock used in Spain and Southern Italy was the miquelet, which had an external mainspring and a scear operating through the lockplate.
‘Gothic’ armour: a modern term for the style of plate armour, characterized by slender elegant lines, and decorated with cusped borders and shell-like rippling, developed particularly in Germany in the 15th century. The term is extended to cover the 15th-century Italian style, which was rounder in form than the German, and usually had smooth, plain surfaces.
Greenwich armour: armour made in the only English royal workshop, founded at Southwark by Henry VIII in 1511, and subsequently removed to Greenwich Palace, where it remained until closed in about 1637. It was staffed largely by foreign workmen, of whom one of the most important was Jacob Halder, master workman, 1576-1607. He was almost certainly responsible for an album of drawings of armours made at Greenwich, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which has made possible the identification of a number of surviving suits, several of which are in the Tower of London.
Half-armour: a light armour covering the whole body excepting the legs, and often also excluding the arms.
Hand-gun: the earliest form of hand firearm, introduced early in the 14th century. It consisted simply of a tubular barrel attached to a long wooden stock designed to be held under the arm, and ignited at the touch-hole by hand.
Hanger: (i) a light, curved, single-edged civilian sword used by horsemen, huntsmen and sailors in the 17th and i8th centuries. The term when first used appears to be synonymous with falchion and cutlass; (ii) the triangular buckled sling attached to the belt, in which a rapier was carried in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Heading sword: an executioner’s sword, usually with a plain cruciform hilt long enough to be used with two hands, and a broad, straight, two-edged blade with a rounded or squared point. It was employed on the Continent, and especially in Germany, from the 16th to the early 19th century.
Helm: a large headpiece, covering the entire head and face and reaching nearly to the shoulders, introduced at the end of the 12th century. The top was at first flat but by the middle of the 13th century had become conical, giving an improved glancing surface. During the first half of the 14th century the helm was often worn over the bascinet (q.v.) in warfare, but was subsequently relegated to the tilt-yard, where it remained in use until well into the 16th century. In its later form it was usually bolted down to the breast and back.
‘Lobster-tail’ helmet: a modern term for a form of burgonet (q.v.) worn by cavalry in the 17th century. It had a laminated tail, hinged cheek-pieces and a peak (often pivoted), with one or more bars extending from it over the face. The English form with three bars was the characteristic helmet of the Civil War.

Tags: 14th century, 16th century, 17th centuries, antique dining table with 4 large lion paws on legs, antique dining table with barrel base and 4 lion head a, antique dining table with sliding spiral legs, antique dining tables walnut straw, antique display cabinet, antique display cabinet paw feet bow front, antique display cabinet with felt shelf liners, antique display cabinets, antique door converted into a table, antique double dutch doors, antique dovetail coffin tub, antique drawers how were they made in 18 century, antique drawing boards, antique dresser, antique dresser drawer handles, antique dresser with reeded columns, antique dresser yorkshire, antique dressers, antique dressers 1600, antique dressers 1800's, antique dressers inlaid wood, antique dressers with winged animals, antique dressing mirror clawfoot, antique dressing table 1910 art decco, antique dressing table with dropped area in middle, antique drop leaf rectangular table, antique drop leaf claw foot table, antique drop leaf gate leg table porcelain casters, antique drop leaf gateleg table, antique drop leaf paw foot table, antique drop leaf six leg spindle table, antique drop leaf six leg spindle table with drawer, antique drop leaf table designs, antique drop leaf tables information, antique drop leaf with gate legs dining room table valu, antique drop side tables with casters, apex, ARMOUR, aventail, beginner collector, brigandine, cavalry, cheek pieces, chin, conjunction, corinthian helmet, curtain, disuse, East Anglia, effect, Europe, fastening, french italian, fruit decoration, gorget, Gothic, hand gun, inlay, italian german, italian origin, light helmet, London, mail, Museum, oriental armour, point, roundel, stiletto, sword, tower of london, triangular, wales, weapon

ARMS AND ARMOUR
THE collector of arms and armour has to contend with one problem that is not common to any other of the collectors’ subjects dealt with in this encyclopaedia. This is the very small smanumber of antique dealers, specializing in their sale. The usual advice given to the new collector to consult the recognized authorities in the trade is less relevant in this field. Information must be gained by study of the various public collections in the Tower of London, the Wallace Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum and their catalogues, or the Scott Collection in the Art Gallery at Glasgow.
The lack of specialist dealers has, however, from the collector’s point of view, its advantages as well as its disadvantages, since it adds greatly to the field of search. Practically any antique shop may contain something, and the collector must be prepared to enter every shop, no matter how discouraging its exterior. Furthermore, while the auction sales are, in other spheres, not attended by the average collector, in the armour field the converse is true. Private collectors regularly attend the public auctions; furthermore, a great many of the pieces offered for sale are put in by private collectors, who, in the absence of specialized antique shops, use this method of disposing of duplicates and other pieces. The arms and armour collectors form a closely organized group, and it would not be too much to say that a large proportion of the transactions which take place consist of direct exchanges between collectors without the assistance of the dealer as intermediary. In these circumstances, it is a great advantage for the collector to become a member of one or other of the societies existing in London for the encouragement of the collection and study of ancient The large-scale arms and armour dealer died out with
the generation of American millionaire collectors who
dominated the market during the twenties and thirties and made armour-collecting the preserve of the very rich. The situation is now radically altered to the advantage of the small collector, and firearms, though not fine armour and swords, have never before been available in such quantity. The immensely valuable harnesses, such as Gothic armours from the Churburg, armours from the Greenwich royal armouries, or from the Vienna armoury of the former Holy Roman Emperors, many of which were looted in the 19th century and so came on the art market, have now almost without exception been acquired by permanent national collections or protected by export licensing legislation.
But while such objects, in any case out of reach of the private collector in England, are no longer offered for sale, in other respects the modern collector is far better off than his 19th century predecessor. Throughout the 19th century fine arms and armour were in extremely short supply. When in the early decades of that century the romantic Gothic fashion manifested itself in the building of mock-Gothic castles and the reconstruction in the ‘Gothick’ taste of manor houses all over the English countryside, authentic armours and weapons to decorate their great halls were not to be had. The aristocratic owners of hereditary armouries were not disposed to break them up to satisfy the dealer, and the latter was therefore forced to fall back on the resources of the faker. It is difficult now to say whether the large numbers of armours and weapons turned out to furnish neo-Gothic castles were at the time intended to pass as genuine and merit the description ‘fake’ or not. But they cannot now, after over a hundred years of patination, well be distinguished from the true fake, made with the intention to deceive.
One of the greatest of the mid-19th century assemblages Of works of art, the Bernal Collection, while immensely rich in most spheres of applied art, was weak In swords and firearms*. and many of the former, made up from ill-assorted pieces, would not be acceptable to the modern collector. Even during the latter part of the i9th century, when the Baron de Cosson was combing Europe for the two remarkable collections he sold at Christie’s, it was still difficult to find good-quality pieces which had not been altered or reassembled by some previous owner. At the same time the Rothschild phase of armour-collecting, which placed a premium on highly embossed pieces in the taste of the High Renaissance, gave new scope to the faker.
Parts of armour, but not complete suits, swords, daggers and firearms were turned out by highly skilled Milanese fakers in large quantities during the last quarter of the 19th century, and are occasionally to be encountered on the art market still. They carry an air of conviction which is lacking in earlier fakes, since their designs were based on the series of original designs for armour and for swords, facsimiles of which had been published during the second half of the century. In spite of this, they do not exactly resemble authentic pieces of the period; their makers forgot that artists rarely take account of technical problems of manufacture and function, and that it is the craftsman’s function to modify their designs accordingly. The 19th-century craftsman was unable to foresee functional difficulties and could surmount all manufacturing problems, and his productions reproduce all those fantasies of ornament which his Renaissance ancestor would have omitted.
It was not until after World War I that arms and armour became really plentiful. Not only in England but throughout Western and Central Europe, noble families disposed of their hereditary collections, sometimes being forced to do so by financial necessity, sometimes being tempted by the enormously high prices created by the competition of a small number of English and American millionaire collectors. What might be called the millionaire phase of armour-collecting lasted until shortly before, the outbreak of World War II. It resulted in the transfer of some of the finest armours in existence either direct to America or first to England and thence to America. Not only were the armouries of noble families broken up, but also considerable numbers of duplicates were sold from the newly nationalized, former royal, collections of Germany, in particular those of the Saxon Royal House.
Many of these pieces, especially those from Dresden, had been preserved in very nearly pristine condition, and for the first time it became possible for the collector to secure fine arms in admirable state and with known provenance. The pre-war generation of collectors which absorbed these pieces is now dying out, and many of them are coming back on the market again, often at prices below those they fetched between the wars. The appearance of fine and authentic weapons in pristine condition in the sale-rooms relieved the fakers of one of the more tedious tasks of their profession, that of ageing their products. A Dresden faker continued over a period of some twenty years to put on the market convincing copies of the fine silver-mounted Saxon rapiers of the 16th century, authentic examples of which were at the same time being disposed of, though only in small numbers, from the Dresden collection. These are the most dangerous fakes still about on the armour market, and any Saxon sword or rapier with hilt of blued steel enriched with mounts of engraved silver must be regarded with suspicion.
There still exists amongst the uninformed a certain prejudice against the collection of arms and armour on the ground that they represent the least sympathetic aspect of man’s evolution. Whatever one’s moral judgement of the preoccupation of the nobility in the past with the profession of arms may be, it should not be forgotten that until nearly the end of the eighteenth century a finely ornamented sword or dagger performed a decorative function in male costume analogous to that of jewellery in the female costume of the time. Particularly is this true of the period when the sword provided almost the only note of contrast to the sombreness of the black court dress in the Spanish fashion. The decorative qualities of armour tend also to be forgotten, since most of the surviving suits have been so often cleaned that the bright gold, purple, blue or black colours of their surface have been irretrievably lost, and though they may preserve their grace or their grotesqueness, they lack the gaudy splendour which they once possessed.

Tags: advantage, advice, american millionaire, antique dealers, antique dropleaf table designs, antique drum table, antique drum tables with claw feet, antique dual purpose furniture table chair, antique dual purpose table armchair furniture, antique duncan phyfe pedestal drop leaf table 4 chairs, antique dutch oak table, antique dutch wardrobes for sale, antique eagles head dining table, antique early american bed side table, antique earthenware barrels, antique earthenware jug, antique east german leaf shaped dishes ceramic, antique egyptian game tables ivory inlay, antique elm three front panelled one each side , antique empire dragon head arm chair pictures, antique empire style mahogany chest, antique empire winged figure candlesticks, antique empirepier pier table, antique enamel frame -ebay -purse -worthpoint -strongwa, antique enclosed beds, antique end table louis xv inlay oval, antique end table octagon shaped claw feet, antique english windsor chairs narrow, antique english bowfronted commode, antique english card table example elizabethean period, antique english chairs jacobean, antique english china red and white, antique english country style cabriole leg chairs, antique english ironstone, antique shop, antique shops, ARMOUR, armour dealer, Art Gallery, assistance, auction, Bernal Collection, catalogues, century, Christie, design, encouragement, encyclopaedia, fashion, field, Information, large scale, leather top, London, matter, method, Museum, ornament, point, private collectors, public auctions, situation, specialist dealers, spheres, taste, tower of london, twenties and thirties, wallace collection

DECORATION
Fret-work: this form of decorative work was popular in Chippendale’s time, particularly to show Chinese patterns. Fret designs could be either open or applied. The open fret was seen on table and cabinet tops and the applied fret was found on the flat surfaces of chairs, tables, cabinets, etc.
Inlay: Robert Adam revived fine inlaid work, which in technique resembled 17th-century marquetry (see Walnut) but differed from it in the use of classical designs and figures, and of new, lighter-coloured woods. An effective form of inlay much favoured by Sheraton was stringing, or lines of inlay in contrasting woods or brass, some of the work being of extreme delicacy.
Metal Mounts: these were made of brass and were fine gilt, which gave them a rich and golden appearance. They were used for work in the rococo style and decorative effect in the Regency period.
Veneers: mahogany had a variety of beautiful figures or mottles. Some of the early San Domingo wood had ‘roe’ mottles, dark flakes running with the grain, giving attractive effects of light and shade, and at their best when the lines of figures were broken, they then varied in appearance according to the angle from which they were viewed. Cuban and Honduras mahogany, however, had a wider range of figures and were in great demand for veneers after 1750. Cuban (curls’ were highly prized. Their feather was obtained by cutting the tree where a large branch joined the trunk. This limited their size, and made them expensive and somewhat brittle (’Cross and unpliable’ – Sheraton), unlike most mahogany veneers. The ‘fiddle-back’ came from the outer edge of the trunk and had even streaks running across the grain. The ‘rain’ mottle was similar but had wider and longer streaks. The ’stopped’ or ‘broken’ mottle had irregular but brilliant flame-like markings. Dark and oval spots in the wood produced the ‘plum’ mottle. All these veneers were saw-cut and thick enough by modern standards to be considered more as facings than veneers.
Bureaux, Cabinets, Desks, Book Cases, etc.
Endless varieties of writing, display and cupboard furniture were produced in the mahogany period, many of them being directly descended from the walnut prototypes. Bureaux followed very much the same development as contemporary chests of drawers. Mahogany was a favourite medium for these until Sheraton’s time, as the figure of the wood, especially Cuban curls, made a fine show on the flaps and drawers. A newer development was the desk, which had taken its place in the rich man’s library by
175o. This was usually solid in appearance, with side drawers or cupboards of similar proportions to the classical pedestals of early sideboards (see Tables). Other kinds were serpentine-fronted and often had canted corners with rococo carving like the commode. Mahogany was particularly suitable for all kinds of library furniture, and both Hepplewhite and Sheraton stressed this in their design books. Sheraton, however gave his bureaux a lighter appearance. Many of them were intended for ladies’ use, and he favoured the employment of satinwood. He also preferred the tambour or cylinder front instead of the flap.
But what specially exercised the best Georgian cabinetmakers were the combined pieces - the bureau-bookcase, cabinet, press and their variations - which demanded the highest skill in design and decoration. Their size encouraged an architectural treatment. Such pieces in the walnut period had been topped by arched curves, but these were replaced in early Georgian times by forms of broken pediments, angular or swan-neck. The open space in the centre was filled with a carved piece, or left free. Kent emphasized his pediments, and used classical pilasters on the corners of the doors, with much gilding. Many cabinet-makers, however preferred a simple straight cornice, and one effect of the wider use of mahogany was the return to a general lighter style. Pediments were retained but often their only decoration was carved dentil mouldings, also found on the cornice. Towards 1750 mirror plates on cabinets doors were going out of fashion. They gave way either to clear glazing or to panels of carefully-chosen mahogany framed in applied mouldings or in stiles with curved inner edges.
The mid-century Gothic and Chinese fashions affected these pieces in several ways. The glazing bars of glass-fronted cabinets formed geometrical patterns or pointed arches. Carving or fret-work with similar designs was applied to the frieze and bottom edge of the cabinet, and to the frieze and feet of the bureau. A pagoda roof was sometimes added, and the pediment was pierced with fret-cut outlines. Rococo treatment might be found in ornate carving or fine gilt mounts.
Chairs
In the traditional period between walnut and mahogany the graceful Queen Anne hooped-back chair had become more ponderous in appearance, with an emphasis on the carving of ornament. At the same time Kent was designing his elaborate chairs for wealthy clients, making use of walnut or mahogany partly gilt, or of softwoods entirely gilt, for scroll-shaped legs, or versions of the cabriole, and a great deal of flower, fruit and mask ornament. This vogue was passing about 1745, when mahogany really came into its own in chair design. The general effect was to re-emphasize form and proportion, and to initiate an era in which much ambitious splat-work became the fashion. Chippendale used the rococo, Chinese and Gothic motifs in a great variety of chair backs. The typical rococo chair consisted of
a back framed by two outward curving side-rails meeting in a Cupid’s-bow top (which had made its appearance some little time before Chippendale), usually with scroll-work on the corners, and the splat pierced with interlaced strap-work. The back legs tended to curve away noticeably. The cabriole leg was lighter in treatment than the Queen Anne variety and the ball-and-claw foot, though it was found on many chairs, was sometimes replaced by the French knurl or scroll toes. The famous `ribband-back’ chairs showed mahogany carving and rococo decoration in perhaps their most dazzling forms, the ribbons and bows forming intricate patterns which in some chairs joined up with the side-rails. This was an extreme form. In general, Chippendale avoided the excessive ornament of the Continental rococo. In some of his chairs he showed the craftman’s eye for a well-balanced design. These had carefully restrained rococo carving in the splat, which tended to be narrower in shape, and straight legs, sometimes fluted, joined by plain stretchers, which were now being reintroduced oil chairs of this type. The contrast between straight legs and curved backs and the use of carefully-chosen upholstery for the seat (including plain leathers) was pleasing. The characteristic features of the Chinese chair c. 1755 are the pagoda cresting-rail, the the splat pierced and carved with geometric patterns, the fretted work in similar designs on the back uprights, legs and feet, the cluster column legs, and the bracket between legs and seat. Other chairs of this type had stretchers which, together with the front legs and brackets, might be pierced and fretted with patterns, or, alternatively, applied ornament might be found on legs, stretchers and seat front. In the case of Chinese armchairs, lattice work also filled the space between arms and seat. Gothic chairs showed interlacing pointed arches in the splats, or covering the whole of the back. Another attractive chair design was the ‘ladder-back’, taken from a traditional country style. At its best it showed undulating curves on the cross- and cresting -rails, which were pierced and carved and often had a small carved
emblem in the centre.
The interest of the Adam brothers in classical art influenced chair designs by introducing a lighter type of chair, emphasizing oval lines in the backs and using straight legs tapering from square knee blocks to feet set upon small plinths. The construction of chair backs changed, as the splat gradually lost its link with the back rail of the seat and became enclosed within the uprights. In this, again, the strength of mahogany was a definite factor. There was a sympathy for delicate fluting and channelling on the back, arms and legs, and the addition of classical ornaments on the seat-rail and (especially carved paterae) at the top of the front legs. But another kind of chair which enjoyed a long vogue was the ‘French Adam’ type. Dating from about the mid- I770s, it shows the cabriole leg in its final form, ending on scrolled feet. This chair is distinguished by the use of gentle curves, of gadrooning on the edges of the legs, arms, seat and back and of beautiful upholstery, all treated with the utmost refinement. Other French-style chairs had straight, tapering legs, usually fluted, and some of the backs were square in shape, with a lyre, including brass strings, for the splat. The versatility of form cannot be over-stressed. Adam liked both painting and gilding; beech was used if chairs were to be gilded, and satinwood was becoming popular for fragile-looking drawing-room chairs. He also reintroduced cane seats.
As Hepplewhite’s chairs are famous, it is worth noting his own directions for making them: ‘Chairs in general are made of mahogany, with bars and frame sunk in hollow, or rising in a round projection, with a band or list on the inner and outer edges. Many of these designs are enriched with ornaments proper to be carved in mahogany.’ The shield backs is his most celebrated form (which he varied with heart or oval shapes). The top rail rises in the centre over a splat consisting of narrow curving bars which terminate in a carved wheat-ear design. The bottom of the shield is just above the back of the seat. The arms add distinction to the chair, with the pronounced backward-sweeping curve from the top of the front legs straightening out at the arm-rests which join the shield about half-way up. The tapering legs and plinth feet, the carefully limited carving on legs and arms, the channelling throughout, the serpentine front to the seat, overstuffed, are all typical of Hepplewhite’s work. Other carved ornaments in the back included the Prince of Wales’s feathers, leaves, vases and drapery. He also used satinwood inlay on a mahogany background and, like Adam, designed some lyre-backs.
The refinement in chair designs reached it peak with Sheraton. He preferred rectangular shapes to emphasize lightness. The wide cresting-rail overrunning the uprights and shaped for the sitter’s back is particularly worth noting, as this was a novelty in chairs and was found in wide use after 1800. The back has merely a single rail, and the legs are forward splaying, with little attempt at foot design. Carving is replaced by clear, straight-lined inlay, in a contrasting coloured wood, on the cresting-rail. For upholstery a striped material was popular, in keeping with the general rectangular effect of the rest of the chair. Like other designers, Sheraton did not confine himself to one pattern. On the whole he preferred to leave the back of his chairs as open as possible, and broke away from the vertical splat designs of his predecessors. He brought in a revival of painted chairs (of beech), usually decorated with bright floral devices on a black background and having plain cane seats and turned legs. He did not neglect carving by any means, but he is particularly noted for his employment of stringing as decoration. He carried it to extreme delicacy by using very thin lines of wood or brass. Chair arms often took a wide sweep upwards immediately above the legs, and another at the back to join the uprights at the cresting-rail.
Sheraton’s work already reflected many features of the so-called French Empire style, which blossomed out fully in the Regency period. Painted chairs remained popular, and the sweeping forward of the front legs, balanced by a similar outward curve on the back legs, was accentuated because of its resemblance to the chair figured on classical Greek vases. The cresting-rail, in a variety of shapes, was a prominent feature, and the whole back was often given a very pronounced rake. Much of Sheraton’s lightness disappeared with the extended use of lion’s-paw designs for legs and arms, and the addition of gilding and novelties like Egyptian motifs. A throne-like arm-chair, in which the whole sides—front and back legs, uprights and arms—were made in units, into which the back and seat fitted, tended to give this type a somewhat heavy and ornate appearance.

Tags: 1841, Adam, angular, antique english oak bookcase secretary desk sideboard, antique english oak draw leaf table, antique english plate rack, antique english red oak draw leaf table, antique english stoneware, antique epergne, antique epergne vase styles, antique extension tables steuben, antique fauteuils design, antique federal furniture marquetry designs, antique federal slant front desk, antique fish shaped bird cage, antique fish slice set with bone handles, antique five legged table, antique five legged writing table, antique flat wall cupboards, antique flute collectors, antique fold over card table with cup rests, antique folding campaign bed/settee, antique folding dining table fits over buffet cabinet, antique folding game tables cabriole legs clawfoot, antique folding wooden book stand, antique foot locker c. 1880, antique foreign game tables, antique french 18 century rectangular dining tables, antique french birdcage brass for sale mechanical, antique french breakfast tables, antique french butlers table 2 tiered with wheels, antique french commode-rococo period, antique french empire style rosewood tables, antique french rococo sevres style, antique french rotary phone arabesque, antique french silver spoons knives forks xviii, antique french sofa hairy clawed feet, bureau, chippendale, classical designs, cornice, decoration, design, effect, extreme delicacy, facings, fashion, flat surfaces, gilding, golden appearance, Gothic, honduras mahogany, inlay, Kent, mahogany veneers, mottle, ornament, outer edge, oval spots, pagoda, Pediments, Queen Anne, regency period, robert adam, Rococo, rococo style, san domingo, streaks, treatment, upholstery, walnut, way