The Renaissance - England - Part 6

The settle type of chair has met with mixed fortunes in modern markets. Understandably, anything from the 16th century, which is frequently termed for convenience 'Elizabethan', and pieces from a similarly wide-embracing 'Jacobean' period command a high price. But settles, like some of the chests described in earlier articles, continued to be made throughout successive centuries. They epitomize country handmade furniture and their simple, joined construction offers no great challenge to the unsophisticated carpenter. They belong to the farmhouse kitchen but are equally at home in the country pub.

In a more exalted form, the 'joyned chair' has existed in the 15th century as a canopied piece of great height which stood on a small raised platform in the hall and from which the master could survey his household ranged on benches below. Sometimes they were made to be dismantled and were provided with leather packing cases into which the chair could be placed when the owner travelled from house to house. By the time of the Tudors, this travelling function had necessitated the emergence of a second type of chair, the X-frame, similar in construction to the modern camp stool and of a convenient form which lent itself to campaign and travelling non fitted furniture of wood and metal through several centuries up to the present. Originally of simple construction, with loose cushions provided for comfort, the X-frame was given a new lease of popularity in the mid 16th century, by which time it had developed into a luxurious piece in keeping with the mood of the time.

The woodwork was completely clothed in velvet, damask or silk and the loose cushions rested on a webbing support attached at each side to the rails of the frame. There is evidence of such chairs being provided in numbers for Henry VIII, wide, substantial examples ideally suited to the king's ample girth and weight, and richly fringed with gold silk. In the early years of Elizabeth's reign the court coterie vied with each other by ordering immensely costly examples in emulation of the queen's taste for X-frame chairs. They had frames which were gilded, painted and carved and often revealed the influence of the Italian style.

Winchester cathedral possesses an oak X-frame chair, somewhat bare in its unrestored state, but which once was covered in blue velvet secured with gilt headed nails and capped with metal finials, techniques and parts often used today with reproduction furniture. It dates from around 1550, the decade in which Elizabeth came to the throne. In this traditional form, the X shape is viewable from the front and rear. An oak armchair in the Victoria and Albert Museum, on the other hand, has X-shaped legs at the sides and the whole is meant to fold somewhat like a modern garden chair. It is a very early example of travelling convenience, dating from the turn of the 16th century.

to be continued......