Upholsterers and Interior Furnishing in England 1530-1840. - book reviews

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1997 by Alfred Mayor

Geoffrey Beard, one of the founders of the Furniture History Society in London, has called upon his abundant resources of tenacity and patience to trace the story of upholstery in England from 1530 to 1840. The resulting book won the 1996 international award from the Confederation Internationale des Neociants en Oeuvres d'Art (CINOA).

One of his immediate challenges was tracing the early history of the trade - a record largely destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666 and another in 1812. On the other hand, the material evidence of period upholstery survives in England in rewarding abundance beginning with the early seventeenth century.

One of the watersheds in the upholstery trade was the restoration of Charles II (1630-1685) in 1660. Before that time the London craft guilds held stoutly to their archaic practices. The restoration brought not only the king but also an influx of craftsmen from France and Holland, where he had passed part of his exile. The need for extensive re-upholstering of royal furniture created a thriving trade in opulent coverings of silk and velvet, both imported and domestic. The increased use of the winged easy chair in the eighteenth century popularized needlework covers, which found an ample canvas on these chairs. Later, architects such as Robert Adam (1728- 1792) and Sir William Chambers (1726-1796) became increasingly involved in upholstery, and before long Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806), Thomas Hope (1769-1831), and George Smith (c. 1786-1828) issued design books, which upholsterers had only to open for inspiration.

In the late 1820s changes came and, as Beard writes "all was overlaid by the ornamental excesses of Gothic, Louis quatorze or one of the fashionable revivals." But he adds, ever the optimist, "For all of it there was a suitable upholstered form, capable of keeping the back morally upright or of sensuously enfolding its occupier in near-oblivion."

The book is greatly enriched by ample appendixes. The larger contains excerpts from a number of documents relating to upholstering jobs from 1509 to 1816 -1820. The smaller appendix contains excerpts from R. Campbell's London Tradesman of 1747, which define the remarkable diversity of trades drawn upon by the upholsterer, from the "Fringe, Frog, and Tassel Maker," to the "Wire-Drawer." Finally, there is a splendid glossary, which, among other salutary corrections, defines a 'Bed Tick" as "A case containing feathers, stuffed to form a bed."