Jul
26
ANTIQUE BLANKET CHESTS
July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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’.