The Age Of Rococo - England - Part 2

Mahogany was to be the perfect material for the Georgian cabinet-makers. It was excellent for carving and the earliest supplies from San Domingo, Jamaica and Cuba had a light colour which gradually changed to a deep, lustrous patina. It had a variety of grain which lent itself to veneers, seasoned easily and was possessed of a strength unknown in walnut. Furthermore, cabinet-makers discovered in it a quality which was to influence important aspects of handmade furniture design towards the middle of the 18th century: it was about that time that the expansive widths of  mahogany board than being offered made its use ideal for large areas such as the doors of wardrobes and cabinets and the leaves of table tops, which could be made in one piece instead of in sections as in the age of walnut.

In the period to around 1750, it was the mahogany from San Domingo that was the most popular. San Domingo mahogany, from the tree Swietenia mahogani, was more lightly figured than types in later use, and appealed to craftsmen because of its denseness and suitability for carving.
As supplies became scarcer, Cuban wood from the same tree was employed. Later still, in the latter years of the century, Swietenia macrophylla, a softer wood from Honduras and other parts of Central America, was widely used especially in furniture carcases.
To follow the fortunes of mahogany through furniture design into the 19th century is to record the eventual introduction of an inferior type from Africa; it was lighter in weight and softer, but it frequently displayed interesting striped effects in its figure.

Coinciding with the adoption of mahogany, there was a trend towards decorative magnificence in fitted and non fitted furniture bred by a new prosperity in England. The new style denied the simple elegance of earlier work and its exponents have often been said to have been responsible for 'architects furniture' - a term used sometimes in admiration, sometimes in denigration.

William Kent, an archpriest of the new movement, so burdened his furniture with ornament that Horace Walpole called some of his designs 'immeasurably ponderous'. Despite such strictures, Kent was one of a band of architects who played a key role in the annals of English interior design during the formative years up to the middle of the century.

... to be continued tomorrow!