A new chronology for English walnut - veneered furniture 1670 - 1740

Magazine Antiques, June, 2002 by Adam Bowett

The fourth and final phase of development has so far escaped notice, at least in published sources. This was the change from thin drawer blades to ones almost as thick as the walls of the case. Until the mid-1730s the typical ratio was seven- eighths-inch case walls and half-inch drawer blades. The thin drawer blades were merely tenoned into the case walls and failed to prevent the case from warping or spreading. The thicker blades were dovetailed into the case walls, tying them immovably together. No documented examples of cases with thick drawer blades are known before 1735.

Coxed and Woster, who worked at the White Swan until 1736, used only thin drawer blades, whereas Henry Bell, who worked at the White Swan between 1736 and his death in 1740, used both types. Furniture labeled by Bell's widow, Elizabeth, who took over the business in 1740, had thick drawer blades (see Fig. 4). (12) Other makers whose work spans the transition from thin to thick drawer blades include Belchier and Benjamin Crook (w 1732-1748) (1) The success of the thick drawer blades meant that they were almost universally adopted from about 1740 until the end of the century.

One of the most remarkable things about the furniture studied for this analysis is the extent of compliance with an accepted standard of construction and craftsmanship. There is a very high probability that any given piece of furniture will fit the proposed chronology which not only suggests that the chronology is substantially correct, but also reveals a great deal about furniture making in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century London. There must have been a high degree of consensus about how furniture should look and how it should be made, suggesting a well-trained, homogeneous workforce. The most likely reason for this is the continued operation of the apprenticeship system, requiring a minimum of seven years of training before qualification as a journeyman. The same system ensured that innovation, whether technical or stylistic, was rapidly transmitted from one workshop to another as apprentices attained their freedom and moved onto other workshops to pursue their trade. The uniformly good to hig h quality of the output also suggests some form of quality control, perhaps indicating that the regulatory role of the livery companies was far from over. It must also be remembered that this was an intensely competitive market, and that if any furniture maker fell short on quality or style, he was not likely to remain in business for long.

The proposed new chronology (see Fig. 2) implies a significant shift in the dating of English walnut case furniture. This is not merely an issue for dealers and collectors, but also for scholars and museums. The astonishing desk-and-bookcase made by Peter Miller, shown in Plate VI, is the preeminent surviving example of fine English cabinetmaking from this period. It suggests that the baroque forms popularly associated with the reign of Queen Anne (r. 1702-1714) more properly belong to the reign of George I (r. 1714-1727) and the early years of George II (r. 1727-1760). Miller is not an isolated example, for the majority of English desks-and-bookcases in the high baroque style have double-arched or ogee tops and second-phase cases and drawers, which date them to between 1710 and 1730. (14) Some examples are later still, with cock-bead molded or lip-molded drawers and bracket feet.