The Renaissance - Spain and Portugal

Mouldings applied geometrically to panels and draw-fronts (in the style loosely known in England and America as 'Jacobean') probably owe their origin to abstract patterns introduced by Moors and Arabs in the Iberian peninsula which was in many ways, especially in the south from the 8th century to the final defeat of the Moors in 1492, more oriental than western.
The Portuguese added to this existing heritage by the establishment during the reigns of Manuel I (1495-1521) and John III (1521-1527), of settlements and colonies as far to the East as India and Japan, from which handmade furniture including lacquered beds were imported. What little Portuguese furniture survives from the period, taken together with written accounts of it, suggests that these mixed flavours from the Orient were combined during the earlier part of the 16th century with Italian and French Renaissance styles. Later, and especially after Spain and Portugal were technically united under Philip II of Spain in 1580, Spanish and Spanish-Moorish styles probably dominated the output of the Lisbon guild of furniture-makers, which was well established by the mid 16th century when the city was at the height of its wealth and power.

'Arabesque' was the name given to a complex pattern of inlaid scrolls, leaves and tendrils, probably deriving from Saracenic metalwork and forming part of the Spanish-Moorish repertoire of ornament that spread in the 16th century to many other countries, particularly those, like Spain, under Habsburg domination. In Spain, rich from conquests in South America, silver from that source was plentiful and was used for overlaying and inlaying fitted and non fitted furniture with arabesques and other devices. The style known as 'plateresque' (from plata: --silver), is extended to include pieces similarly decorated in other metals. A Moorish  form of inlaid work, closely related to Italian certosina employed ivory or bone for formal, all-over patterns.

Carving was often of a high order, whether following Moorish abstract designs, or figurative Italianate motifs such as portrait medallions which were sometimes carried out in a peculiarly Spanish way by carving them in relief and fret-cutting around the profiles. The medallions were then mounted on a ground of richly coloured velvet previously laid over the foundation. This kind of carved and pierced decoration was often gilded and further embellishment was provided by the addition of elaborate lock-plates, hinges and mounts, sometimes in silver, until economic crises made in necessary in the late 16th century to forbid such extravagance.

This kind of lavish treatment, sometimes used today in reproduction furniture techniques, was accorded most often to a characteristically Spanish prestige piece, the vargueno, a chest with a hinged fall-front that could be used as a writing leaf and which, when lowered, reveals an elaborate fitment of small drawers. Frequently the top of the vargueno also opens. A version without the fall-front, in which the draws are permanently exposed, is the papileira. Both types were normally supplied with stands, which take two main forms - one is the taquillion, essentially a chest of drawers often with geometrically arranged mouldings on the drawer fronts, the other is the pie de puente - a stand with trestle-ends for legs, strengthened either with a stretcher at the base and a line of turned uprights along it, or with a pair of finely-wrought bracing irons.

to be continued........