Books about antiques

Magazine Antiques, June, 2003 by Alfred Mayor

Furniture history in miniature

In 1660 Charles II was crowned I in England after a decade of exile in Fiance, his mother's homeland. He brought back with him a strongly Francophile court and a taste for luxury and pleasure that was a pleasing antidote to Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth.

The book under consideration applies a strong magnifying lens to the furniture made in England under Charles and his successors James II, William and Mary, and Anne. It is a small slice of time, from 1660 to 1714--just about the life expectancy of a seventeenth-century man. Yet for the collector and student of the furniture of this period, lots happened, and lots more was said to have happened. The author discovered this early enough to declare: "I have attempted to write this book from first principles and, in the main, from primary evidence--bills, inventories and, of course, the furniture itself....Furniture history has a way of accumulating ideas and opinions rather as some submarine crustaceans build their houses, resulting in an ungainly accretion of traditions and half-truths cemented by doubtful snippets of received wisdom and all balanced on the back of a few overburdened facts. My primary task has been to dismantle this unwieldy edifice and put in its place something built on more rational lines."

He sets out to establish a solid stylistic chronology, relying heavily on dated objects or those with invincible provenances, tradesmen's bills, and house inventories. Aesthetic considerations play no part, for here furniture is considered historical evidence. That said, the many color photographs are crisp, detailed, and aesthetically gratifying, while thoroughly charting the evolution of styles and construction techniques. The book is divided into two parts. Part one treats the reigns of Charles It and James II, and part two the reigns of William and Mary and of Anne. In each section the furniture is divided into three categories: case furniture, seating furniture, and tables, stands, and mirrors. Part one ends with an asymmetrical chapter on lacquer; japanning, and varnish, gilding, and silvering. Therein are recipes for making and applying all of these finishes with photographs of how they should look on furniture. There are even photographs of the raw materials for Oriental lacquer, shellac, and various kinds of varnish. To enhance the color and figure of walnut before varnishing, for example, the author quotes the diarist John Evelyn as recommending baking the boards in an oven or nesting them in a warm stable and then polishing them with the oil that is coaxed to the surface to make them look "black and sleek" The author writes: "It is not clear how heat would encourage the wood to look 'black and sleek', but the effect of the ammonia rising from the floor of a warm stable would certainly tend to heighten the colour and figure of the wood. Modem furniture makers, restorers and fakers achieve the same effect by 'fuming' wood, particularly oak, with ammonia to make it look old."

Should it not already be apparent, the author, Adam Bowett, is a nuts and bolts sort of man. He claims he "first learned about antique furniture by carrying it up and down stairs every day for two years," as a salesroom porter. This practical, back to basics approach spills over into the minutiae of construction and the qualities of various woods, both seasoned and green. It is almost as though the author were himself a cabinetmaker. Thus, when considering the cases of tall-case pendulum clocks he remarks on their slapdash construction of butted and nailed boards. This he explains by writing, "since clock cases were intended to be static, there was no need for a strong but expensive dovetailed carcase.... English furniture makers rarely wasted effort where it was not needed."

Bowett is particularly eloquent about the techniques required for different kinds of marquetry and about the various ways of dyeing woods to create the naturalistic effects valued in floral marquetry. A section about hinges and locks, illustrated with excellent detailed photographs, explains the process of fonning a lock plate from sheet iron or brass with a cold chisel and then clamping it in a vise and hammering it over to form a right angle. He reasons that this hammering accounts for a slight splay in the plate from top to bottom. Like a careful antiques dealer he advises that "this splay is often so slight as to be imperceptible except by careful measuring, but it ought always to be there." In fact, this is only one of many wise counsels to the cautious buyer who fears being landed with a freshly minted or happily married antique.

On the historical front, Bowett appears to be particularly resistant to the accepted notions of a strong Dutch influence and the sovereign power of Daniel Marot's designs under William III. He notes that "Anglo-Dutch" is frequently used to include "furniture which is essentially English in form but whose baroque or mannered style is felt to be 'un-English'. In such cases the term is positively unhelpful, since it simply fudges the issue of correct identification." Turning to Marot, a Frenchman, he writes "that the phrase 'in the style of' or 'after' Daniel Marot is often used as a synonym for 'Anglo-Dutch'. This is surely nonsense." To those who propose that Marot "probably played a greater part than any other artist in introducing into England the classicizing baroque style which flourished in France during the last part of Louis XIV's reign," Bowett holds that "the sum total [of concrete evidence] is totally insufficient to justify the common assumption that Marot was the presiding genius of his age. In rea l terms his 'all pervasive' influence amounts to a few scattered documents, numerous tantalizing stylistic analogies, and a great deal of art-historical speculation."