The Renaissance - England - Part 7

The 'turned' chair was the third type which made enormous strides in design during the century and became the basic form of seating in Elizabethan England. It was constructed of separate pieces, socketed together and the turning was of the knobbed or ringed variety. Its construction had become more open and the seat was usually of ample dimensions to take the voluminous clothing of the time.
Frequently it had a raked back for comfort and embodied four plain, stout stretchers. These were now about two inches above the floor, earlier stretchers having been at floor level. Originally designed as a foot rest and a protection from the cold of stone floors whose only covering would have been rushes, stretchers were gradually raised as carpets became more prevalent.

By the 17th century the function of stretchers as foot rests had disappeared completely and they remained as essential units of construction and vehicles for decoration. The discerning collector knows that the faker, using reproduction furniture techniques, can never successfully reproduce the scuffed, worn look of early oak stretchers, caused by the feet of generations; stools and chairs, benches and forms sold as examples of 15th and 16th century oak handmade furniture are immediately suspect if the stretchers present a telltale unused appearance.

A common feature of chairs was their display of two turned legs at the front and plain ones at the back. There are records of many with triangular seats, a style which continued into the 17th century, and often sloping arms swept down from the top corners of the back. All chairs had loose cushions; upholstered chairs began to appear late in Elizabeth's reign, although strictly this was a development of the 17th century. A contemporary observer wrote in 1597 that 'the fashion of cushioned chairs is taken up in every merchants house'. Large cushions, satin embroidered and edged with gold or silver lace, were used extensively for window seats in Elizabethan mansions.

Clues to everyday life in Elizabethan times have come down to us through invoices, household books and, frequently, from contemporary diarists. A prolific writer was William Harrison, topographer, chronologist, parson and scholar (1534 - 1593), who, in The Description of England, had ranged over a wide variety of topics. On the subject of domestic life-styles in the steadily prospering upper and middle class society of England he is at his most enlightening - he wrote:

The furniture of our houses also exceedeth and is grown in manner even to passing delicacy: and herein i do not speak of the nobility and gentry only, but likewise of the lowest sort in most places of our south country that have anything at all to take to. Certes in noblemen's houses it is not rare to see abundance of arras, rich hangings of tapestry, silver vessel and so much other plate as many furnish sundry cupboards to the sum oftentimes of a thousand or two thousand pounds at the least, whereby the value of this and and the rest of their stuff doth grow to be almost inestimable. Likewise in the houses of knights, gentlemen, merchantment and some other wealthy citizens it is not geson (rare) to behold generally their great provision of tapestry, Turkey work, pewter, brass, fine linen, and thereto costly cupboards of plate.

Harrison is using the term 'cupboard' - literally cup board - in its widest sense to denote any wooden structure with open display spaces on which to place plate and other utensils. In many Elizabethan inventories to words cupboard, aumbry and press seem to have been interchangeable.
Harrison provides interesting background information about developments in household fashions - many of which affected the progress of fitted and non fitted furniture design - when he touches on the question of glassware. Amid the increasing affluence of the more fortunate classes, glassware was apparently very fashionable, infinitely more fashionable than everyday gold and silver.

tomorrow, to be continued with 'tables'................