Neoclassicism - England - Part 3

Chairs in the Guide are notably lighter in style than those of 30 years before. Their backs are vase-shaped, shield-shaped or squared, with decorated splats in Neoclassical mood, or Prince of Wales feathers. They have stuffed seats (and sometimes stuffed backs) with close nailing along the front edge, and legs are generally square or round and tapered. Although mahogany was still used a good deal for chairs and other handmade furniture Hepplewhite mentions the 'new and very elegant fashion... of finishing them with painted or japanned work, which gives a rich and splendid appearance to the minuter parts of the ornaments, which are generally thrown in by the painter'. Indeed all kinds of furniture was by this time being decorated with painting. The backs of chairs, the friezes of tables, and the doors of round-fronted commodes were frequently embellished with flowers, arabesques, shells, Neoclassical motifs, or with figure subjects in the manner of Angelica Kauffmann.

Marquetry decoration was also used extensively, especially for furniture such as card and pier tables which had the minimum of wear and tear. Tea chests and caddies, dressing glasses and tea trays are among the smaller objects which were especially well suited to inlaid or painted decoration, and of tea trays Hepplewhite affirms 'this is an article where much taste and fancy may be shewn'. The gracefully curving serpentine form, for all its Rococo associations, was at its most popular at this time, and appears in a number of Hepplewhite's designs.

Many of the tried and trusted forms of earlier decades are shown in the Guide but there are new developments too. Among the sofas, the confidante and the duchesse make their appearance; the sideboard with a central drawer flanked by deep drawers has developed from the much simpler sideboard table; the secretary or secretaire bookcase and the tambour writing table and bookcase are shown with the old favourite the bureau bookcase; dressing tables and shaving tables have acquired complicated arrangements of partitions and cubby holes 'for combs, powders essences, pin-cushions, and other necessary equipage', but even these are overshadowed by 'Rudd's table, or Reflecting Dressing Table... the most complete dressing table made , possessing every convenience which can be wanted, or mechanism and ingenuity supply'. Margaret Caroline Rudd (1745 - 1799) was a courtesan with wealthy protectors, one of whom may have commissioned such a dressing table for her.

A good deal of fitted and non fitted furniture in Hepplewhite's Guide - desks, bookcases, library tables, chests of drawers, dressing tables, shaving tables, night tables, wardrobes and so on - is extremely plain and obviously intended for usefulness rather than show. Yet the elegant proportions and the judicious use of veneers and accessories like brass handles  give furniture in this style a most pleasing effect. Much has survived, and it is clear that Hepplewhite's Guide does indeed convey 'a knowledge of English taste in the various articles of household furniture'.

...to be coninued.

Neoclassicism - England - Part 2

Under Adam's influence the bold mahogany carving of the 1740s and 1750s gave way to inlaid decoration and besides mahogany, lighter woods such as golden-yellow satinwood made their appearance. Exotic timbers like the pinkish-hued tulipwood, kingwood and partridge wood were also used on occasions for handmade furniture veneers, with marquetry decoration of Neoclassical designs or flowers in contrasting woods such as sycamore or harewood, holly, box or ebony.

Adam was employed almost exclusively by the rich and fashionable. It was left to cabinet-makers of less lofty aspirations, mostly working in the 1770s and 1780s, to translate his style into more practical terms for the middle classes. Several of them also published design books, and among these George Hepplewhite's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide is the most famous. It was a posthumous work, Hepplewhite having died in 1786, and it was published by his wife Alice who apparently carried on his cabinet-making business after his death. Not a single stick of furniture firmly attributable to Hepplewhite's workshop has ever been identified, so it is indeed remarkable that this man should have lent his name to a whole period of furniture design. For the 'Hepplewhite style' sums up the range of furniture produced during the 1770s and 1780s. Restrained in its Neoclassicism and practical in its design, furniture of this period was, generally speaking, more graceful and refined than at any other time in the history of English cabinet-making.

The preface to Hepplewhite's Guide reveals the publisher's aims - 'to unite elegance and utility, and blend the useful with the agreeable... to produce a work which shall be useful to the mechanic , and serviceable to the gentleman... and convey a just idea of English taste in furniture for houses'. This latter objective was an allusion to the popularity of English fitted and non fitted furniture abroad: by the late 1770s, a great deal was being exported, especially to the Netherlands.

The preface also mentions the country cabinet-maker 'whose distance from the metropolis makes even an imperfect knowledge of its improvements acquired with much trouble and expense'. This was a time when provincially made furniture was becoming less and less distinguishable from that made by London cabinet-makers, and many firms based in other cities produced up-to-date furniture of a high quality. Such design books as Hepplewhite's must have been extremely helpful in disseminating knowledge of the latest designs.  

Neoclassicism - England - Part 1

By the mid 1760s the spirit of Neoclassicism - the disciplined antithesis to frolicsome Rococo - was stirring the interests of fashionable English cabinet-makers, and the new movement led to enormous changes in handmade furniture styles during the next ten years. For several decades an elite minority had concerned themselves with the study of classical ornament, but it was not until the 1740s and 50s, with the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, that a more general interest was stimulated.

In 1754 a young Edinburgh architect, Robert Adam, was sent on a grand tour which took him to Italy, at that time agog with interest in ancient Roman civilisation. There he met Giovanni Battista Piranesi whose highly imaginative approach to archaeology was the chief influence on Adam.
In 1758 he returned to his family architectural practice he shared with brother James in London and soon began to enjoy the patronage of the wealthy and fashionable. One of his first commissions was for the interior of Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, and this was followed by work for Harewood House (with Chippendale), Syon House, Osterley Park, Newby Hall, Kenwood and several others. For many of them Adam not only designed the decorations but also the furniture of the principal rooms. His concept of interior decoration as a total entity led him to design the smallest details like keyhole escutcheons for doors, and fireplace grates. Many of his ceiling decorations were complemented by carpets of his own design on the floors.

Adam's interpretation of the styles of ancient Greece and Rome involved decoration rather than form. Classical details such as rams' heads, urns, festoons, anthemion (honeysuckle), paterae (carved rosettes) and trophies were applied to shapes based on the rectangle, the square, the circle or the oval. It was a copying of the essence rather than individual examples of the antique. After the asymmetrical fantasies of the Rococo the elegant linearity of the Neoclassical 'Adam' style which swept England in the late 1760s and 1770s must have been refreshing indeed.

A good deal of Adam fitted and non fitted furniture is gilded, and the fashion for Neoclassical furniture which he began stimulating an increase in the number of carvers and gilders working in London and the provinces towards the end of the 18th century. Painted furniture also came into favour under his influence. The intricacy of his decoration on, for example, mirrors and girandoles led to the use of new materials such as composition on wire for tracery and filigree ornament.

Another of his innovations was the use of a sideboard table in conjunction with a flanking pair of urns and pedestals and with a wine cooler underneath. This imposing arrangement was at first found suitable for the grand interiors of Adam himself, but was later taken up by the cabinet-makers of the gentry. The urns or vases (a favourite classical form) were used for storing cutlery or as water cisterns, while the pedestals held cupboards for plates, bottles and sometimes a chamber pot.

Neoclassicism - Poland and Russia

Poland
In most countries, handmade furniture made on country estates has an honest but naive flavour. In Poland, estate-made pieces reached a remarkable degree of sophistication. Bureaux, commodes and sideboards were among the many things veneered in walnut, with wide cross banding dividing the ground in rectangular panels which in turn are decorated with neat floral marquetry. It is known collectively as Kolbuszowa work, after one of the estates near Rzeszow in Southern Poland where it was made.
Stanislaus II became king in 1764, thanks to the influence of Catherine II of Russia whole lover he had been. A romantic, well-meaning, if somewhat ineffective ruler, he was an enthusiastic art collector who encouraged fine craftsmanship. Warsaw became a major centre for furniture production and a number of workmen were brought from the Roentgen establishment at Neuwied, among them Andreas Simmler who founded a family firm which was later to become renowned. Warsaw produced two-drawer commodes of rather chunky form but elegance is present in more feminine pieces such as the bonheur-du-jour on tapering legs, the panels of the superstructure having painted flowers within rosewood cross banding. Production during the years 1780 - 1796 was considerable but the partitioning of the country in 1772, 1793 and 1795 between Austria, Prussia and Russia virtualy eliminated Poland as a sovereign state.

Russia
During the long reign (1762 - 1796) of Catherine II ('the Great'), French and English fashions were introduced both directly and indirectly into Russia. The French architect Vallin de Mothe was Director of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, while the Scot, Charles Cameron, designed palace interiors with Pompeiian decor in the manner of his countryman Robert Adam but also with personal knowledge of the classical world gained in Italy.

Catherine herself imported furniture from other Paris makers as well as many pieces sold to her by David Roentgen. Many of these pieces were then copied using reproduction furniture techniques by Russian craftsmen with varying fidelity to the originals. Sometimes the design, if too complex, was simplified; sometimes, if too austere for Russian taste, it was embellished with ornamentation that would have been thought excessive in whichever country the design had originated.

Commodes of serpentine shape, basically in the English manner, were raised on high legs, armoured with heavy bronze mounts and fitted with a superstructure in the form of a small cabinet derived from German models. As in Poland, a considerable quantity of fitted and non fitted furniture was produced on country estates. Ostankino near Moscow and Okhta near St Petersburg were two of the more important centres where furniture was made not only for the use of the landowner but also for sale. The majority of pieces made for middle-class homes were heavy in appearance, sporting various Neoclassical details of ornament but lacking any kind of grace.

Originally founded as a small arms factory by Peter the Great, the Tula Ironworks in central Russia had in part been taken over c.1725, for making steel furniture, fireplaces and ornaments. In Catherine's time, armchairs on X-shaped supports and occasional tables were among the items produced in cut steel with elaborate fretting patterns inlaid with copper, pewter and sometimes even silver.

Neoclassicism - Germany and Austria

The greatest German furniture-maker of the Neoclassical period, David Roentgen (1743 - 1807), seldom stamped or signed his products, even though officially required to do so after becoming, under pressure, a member of the Paris guild in 1789. He is often classed with the German cabinet-makers who settled in Paris, but after taking over control the family business at Neuwied, near Coblenz, in 1770, he never transferred his workshops elsewhere. As a very shrewd businessman, was of his first acts was to raise capital by running a lottery with handmade furniture as the prizes, which proved highly successful.

In 1774 he visited Paris for the first time, returning five years later with a large consignment of furniture, and thereafter maintaining a depot in the city from which he supplied his customers including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Both spent huge sums with Roentgen, the King finding something to interest him in the ingenious mechanical contrivances devised for Roentgen by by Peter Kintzing. who also made clocks, and the Queen being attracted to elaborate marquetry based on the careful drawings of Januarius Zick (1730 - 1797).

Roentgen spent much of his time travelling abroad, cultivating his rich customers and setting up other depots. He visited Italy and the Netherlands and made seven trips to Russia, supplying many pieces to the Empress Catherine II. In 1791 he was appointed 'Court Furnisher' to Wilhelm II in Berlin, which helped him to survive the disaster of the French Revolution when he lost not only the vast sums of money owing to him in France, but also the stock he had in store there.

The contrast between early, highly decorated Louis XVI furniture and the much simpler, later style in mahogany relieved only with bronze mounts is clearly seen in the development of Roentgen's products. Marquetry dominated his work from 1770 - 1780 and mahogany from 1780 - 1790. Unquestionably, until faced with ruin in France, Roentgen was the most successful manufacturer of fitted and non fitted furniture in Europe before 1800.

The phenomenon of the Roentgen organisation apart, Germany was rather cautious in its acceptance of the Neoclassical style. Even allowing for the customary time-lag between the establishment of a fashion in any metropolis and its acceptance in the provinces, there was a marked inclination at such centres as the Prussian Court to retain the Rococo style. Strong elements of the Rococo are present for instance, in furniture made by J.C. Fiedler for Frederick the Great in 1775. It wasn't until 1787 that a magazine published in Weimar presented a fully developed Neoclassical style which shows English rather than Louis XVI influence.

Neoclassicism - Sweden

The leading Swedish cabinet-maker of the Neoclassical period was Georg Haupt (1741 - 1784), who was born in Stockholm. He was the son of a carpenter from Nuremberg and was apprenticed in Germany until 1763. He then worked in Holland for a time before moving on to Paris, where a piece of non fitted furniture, a desk at the Institut Geographique bears an inscription stating that he made it in 1767. In 1769 he visited London, returning in the same year to Stockholm. In 1770 he submitted his masterpiece to the guild - a splendid writing-table topped with a cartonnier at one end. The table stands on square tapered legs and has a generally severe outline, relieved with restrained marquetry decoration with its main feature a panel depicting books, pens and scattered papers. This became the property of the new King, Gustav III (reigned 1771 - 1792) and is still in the royal Palace, Stockholm. In 1773 - 1774, Haupt made an equally magnificent cabinet for a mineralogical collection for the king to give to the Prince de Conde. It is preserved at the Musee Conde, Chantilly.

The Swedish court continued to adopt, quite consciously, the Louis XVI style but at less august levels, German and English influences were also felt. In the early 1790s Gotlob Iwersson, who had been a follower of Haupt's style, began to adopt a more severe manner with an English flavour to it; his bureaux however, have drawer-fronts with a framed effect achieved with wide beadings, much more pronounced than the English style of cock-beading. The feet on his carcase pieces are turned and tapered and look too delicate for the weight they have to support.

Oval chair-backs, certainly, of the late 1790s are reminiscent of the Hepplewhite style, but a characteristic Swedish feature, a transverse channel cut into the seat rails, is seen on many of them. The same detail is found on various other items of handmade furniture. Chairs made in Stockholm after 1765 were required by the guild to bear a stamped label but this has survived on comparatively few examples.

Neoclassicism - Denmark and Norway

The formal introduction of Neoclassical decoration to Denmark occurred in 1757 when the French architect Nicolas Jardin employed it in a scheme for a room in the palace of a Copenhagen nobleman. His pupil, C.F. Harsdorff (1735 - 1799), subsequently designed some agreeable not fitted furniture in rather plain mahogany relieved with classical columns set at the corners of carcase pieces and with deep friezes carved with Greek key and anthemion patterns.

High standards of craftsmanship were maintained by the guilds and by the Academy of Copenhagen, set up in the 1750s under the direction of the sculptor Jacques-Francois Saly (1717 - 1776). The system whereby a 'masterpiece' has to be submitted to the guild before its maker was accepted as a member was made more strict, designs for the piece first having to be approved by the Academy. Saly, who had first come to Denmark in 1753 to make a statue of King Frederick V (reigned 1746 - 1766), did not return to Paris until 1774.

Three years later, the Kongelige Meubel Magazin (Royal Furniture Emporium) was established. Georg Roentgen, one of the famous family of German cabinet-makers, made a visit to this factory, and although his stay was a short one, he helped to revive interest in the neglected art of floral marquetry. The directorship was taken over in 1781 by the Norwegian statesman Carsten Anker. Norway was still tied politically to Denmark and contributed many men of great ability to the government as well as the cultures of the two countries. Perhaps due partly to the influence of the queen (who was a sister of the English King George III, who reigned 1766 - 1808), Anker was an enthusiast for English styles and despatched craftsmen from the Emporium to London to improve their skills. Jens Brotterup was one such craftsman who, on his return to Copenhagen, passed on his knowledge to others. The result was the production of a great deal of handmade furniture of basically English design (especially chairs with square backs having vertical struts and standing on square tapered legs), but which also demonstrated the Danish liking for clean lines uncluttered by excessive decoration.

Norwegian furniture of the period tends to follow Danish styles very closely, but the proportions are a little different, resulting in a heavier, more sturdy style.