Medieval tables had been solid baulks of timber placed on trestles, the whole being removed and stacked against a side wall when the hall had to be cleared for dancing or other purposes. From the beginnings, Tudor England inherited the long refectory table, which had a rectangular top with fixed, simple supports united by four stretchers used as foot rests.
The mid 16th century saw carving appearing on the legs and on the frieze below the table top. Only rarely was there inlay of holly and bog oak. When not in use, the tables were covered with what William Harrison has referred to as 'Turkey work', which was a type of heavy fabric woven with knotted pile in imitation of carpets from Asia Minor and Persia. Similar pieces continued to be used as table coverings and drapes for chair backs and seats until well into the 17th century.
Table legs were carved in baluster form or bulbous shapes, the latter being of enormous proportions in Elizabeth's time and giving oak tables of that period a very distinctive appearance.
Expanding tables, non fitted furniture, appeared in Italy and France and then England early in the 16th century, the draw-top being among the commonest. Later came centre-opening tables and towards the close of the century, the new, more intimate living styles produced the drop-leaf type. Also introduced was the gate-leg table, a species which, however, has more in common with Stuart times than Tudor. Side tables were extremely rare, the buffet and court cupboard fulfilling the function of serving surfaces.
In all the new variations of the table, the carver of Elizabethan England was finding new and exciting opportunities to show off his talents. The vase-shaped and massively bulbous legs showed Flemish and German origin. On rare occasions mythical beasts formed the supports of tables. An elaborate, draw-top table from around 1600, now in private collection, has intricately carved supports of winged monsters to which lion cubs have been added on the four corners at floor level. In the Burrell Collection of the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum there is an oak hall table bearing the typical six legs of bulbous form and sporting a very 'avant garde' set of claw like feet which predate the claw and ball foot by well over a century. Elizabethan exploration was not limited to seagoing ventures in gold-laden hemispheres.
Nowhere was 16th century experiment and change more apparent from the cabinet-makers point of view than in the making of storage furniture, which was used as an adjunct to the dining table and the bed chamber. As before, the church had played an important role. The cupboard of today owes its early development to a very large degree to ecclesiastical requirements and usages. A board for cups was originally an open structure of shelves. The idea of a closed structure, to which access was by a door or doors in the front, was expressed in the French term 'armoire'.
Differing and sometimes quite arbitrary translations have helped confuse the issue and early invoices and household accounts juggle with such words as ambry, aumbry, aumbrie, cupboard, book-presse, and press. The French dressoir, denoting a closed cupboard on a stand, gives us the dresser which developed from Jacobean origins in Britain.
The word aumbry was most frequently used for a type of wardrobe before Tudor times. It has several compartments with hinged doors and was used in churches as a safe. In a bewildering variety of spellings, a nunnery at Boston in Lincolnshire recorded in a 1534 inventory 'a playne arombry' with 'two lockes' for altar utensils, which a Durham monastery had 'almeryes of fine wenscote (boarding) being varnished and finely painted and guilted finely over with little images, very seemly and beautiful to behold, for the Reliques belonging to Saint Cuthbert to lye in'. Such pieces continued to be used in churches for books, vestments and relics until the Reformation, after which they gained a wider domestic use.
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