Exploring English Baroque Furniture Styles

Let's take a look now at furniture and furnishings in the English Baroque. Although we consider English Baroque taking place primarily during the reign of William and Mary, it really begins under the reign of King Charles II. Sometimes this period is called the Caroline period. We're just going to refer to it as Charles II. But one of the things I want you to take a look at is how the style changes rather subtly. So you can see Charles II over there on the left-hand side. And he's got this, it's a caned chair, and it's got a caned back as well. And you can see just the kind of ornate, pierced work in the stretcher along the front of the chair and then the top and bottom of the back of the chair. And then when you look over at the next chair, it seems as if there's a great deal of similarity. So I want to kind of point out some of the... subtle changes. First of all, at the top of the chair we have this kind of curved crest rail now and instead of being the straight across piercing it becomes something that's more like a crown on the chair. We also see that as we move down the chair the side rails are no longer pierced and even the turning has become kind of quieter. It's become more of a balustrade as opposed to a barley turn. When we get down to the bottom of the chair, we see that that same arch that's at the top in the crest is now expressed in the stretcher that goes across the front. We still have the H-shaped stretcher at the bottom, but the feet have now become shaped and curved as opposed to just sort of straight turned feet that we have on the Charles II armchair. And even the armchair that just sits next to it has some of those same kind of curved elements. And you can see they're not exactly the same, but it's that curving that really tells us that the chair has fully entered the Baroque, because most of the forms in the Baroque have got some kind of a curve to them. And when we come down to the bottom of the chair, we can see it still has that stretcher right across the front there, but now it's actually not carved, it's turned. and it's turned with these kind of exaggerated balls and a disc in the center. And actually that is really much more the aesthetic of William and Mary, where we have kind of the turning becomes more sort of attenuated, and when we do have rounded elements, they're more exaggerated. By the time we get into Queen Anne, and we'll look more at Queen Anne when we get into English 18th century, we start to see a really big shift in the shape of the chair. And we've got the beginnings of these wonderful cabriole legs. And you can see that they've got these kind of high knees that kind of curve out and then come down to a padded foot at the bottom, a little pad foot. Sometimes it's an animal, sometimes not. But in the front, it's got a bit of an apron. And these still retain their stretchers at the base. By the time we fully move into Queen Anne, they won't have stretchers any longer. And at the back of the chair, we see this dramatic shift as well, where now instead of having two straight styles that come up the back and hold the back firm, we start to get this completely carved and shaped back that's sometimes referred to as a hoop back with this shaped splat that in this case is pierced and is really quite sculptural and wonderful. So, this is really the direction that we're going to be going in, but it's something that we see just beginning at the end of William and Mary and the start of Queen Anne. We also have more furniture forms. So for instance, we have this chaise that seems to be quite literally made up of a group of chairs with the back only of one of them and then the same kind of front stretchers running along the sides. And again, this has got caning on it, and it would have had cushions when it was in use as well. And we also see the French canapé in England becoming a sofa or a settee. And here we've got one that has three seats to it, and you can see that at the base it very clearly expresses that it's three seats wide. And you can also see that this particular settee is based on the idea of a wing chair. And this idea of kind of cutting off the breeze from either side is something that also gets developed during the Baroque and really becomes more instituted as we get into the 18th century. And in part it comes from a desire to kind of solve problems with particular pieces of furniture and then that kind of catching on. So for instance, we have this easy chair or invalid's chair that was certainly for a very important person. In this case, it was meant for a king. But it's essentially a chair that would make your life a little nicer in one of these breezy interiors. Now, one thing to think about when you're looking at interiors from this period is that you're looking at the same thing. that heating is always an issue if you're heating with a fireplace most of your heat is going out the window and up your chimney and if you're not sitting right in front of the fire you're probably cold and if you're sitting anywhere near where that air is escaping there's also air coming in in order to feed the fire and that's going to be whizzing past you so to be able to kind of close yourself in in a chair like this would have been especially comforting and once they develop this kind of chair. It then becomes fashionable. And you can see with this one that it's got the full Charles II base on it. It looks very much like that first chair we looked at, only it's got the arms and the wings. And here we can see a relationship of the Charles II chair really moving into the Baroque on the left-hand side with the open arms. And you can see how the arms have become very curved, and then they come down to these... wonderful curving supports and then down into the legs at the base that are also curving. Everything's got this wonderful curve to it and it swirls or whirls right at the bottom of the foot. Now, if we're looking at the chair on the right-hand side, you can see how those wings develop into an actual part of the whole overall design. They no longer look like they were added on, but they continue the same kind of curve and movement that we see in the arms of the chair. And then as it comes down, that shaped apron, which we also saw a very similar shape at the top of the bed by Daniel Merot. So everything always relates one thing to the other. Very often, the way that the top of a piece is treated will then be repeated as we move down to the bottom of the piece. And here is another one of those beds by Merot. This one, really a very famous one. This was for Sir Melville. And you can see that the... The interior of this bed is equally as extraordinary as the exterior. This is really probably one of the most extraordinary of these kind of fully upholstered English beds. Lots and lots of detail to the architectural elements on the tester of the bed. And then on the interior, the upholstery work really replicates architectural details so that the bed itself becomes sort of a play of architecture in textile. And Daniel Murrow didn't just make designs that were then realized, he also made designs that were published. And publishing his work meant that his designs traveled all throughout England and very much influenced the work of cabinet makers, upholsterers, and designers who were working either as architects or specifically on interiors. And as we look at this interior, what we're actually seeing is his plan for a porcelain room and this was something that the wealthiest and definitely every monarch in Europe wanted to have in their home and this would have been the room where they would have kept their grand collection of porcelain and here what we see is how this kind of porcelain would be arranged. There's a very distinct garniture on the top of the mantelpiece. There's also a garniture in front of the fireplace. We assume that this is summer. But there are little shelves all over the room that also have pieces of porcelain tucked away on top of them so that when one entered the room, they would be sort of awestruck by not just the collection, but also the sparkle of light that would be reflecting off of these pieces. And that was a really important part of interior design. Something else that also comes over from Holland, not just with Daniel Moreau, but through the kind of trade that England has with the Netherlands and their interest in the Baroque as it's translated through Holland, is a love of marquetry. And there was certainly a love of marquetry in France as well, and we saw that with Boulle. But there's a kind of marquetry that develops in England that's very much influenced by what's going on in Holland. And... I also want to make clear that there's a relationship between what goes on in Holland and what goes on in France. The Baroque is a time when there's a lot of movement of artists and information from one country to another, so we're constantly seeing a point of give-and-take. Now this particular piece, this Baroque chest, and this is a chest on chest, so you've got the top part that would open up and be a desk in fact, so it's a fall front desk. and then the bottom part that's an actual chest of drawers, is covered with a kind of marquetry that really comes from the influence of the Dutch. And it looks as if it's kind of a burst of flowers coming out of a small vase, and the flowers themselves tend to, in this kind of marquetry, be tulips, or kind of abstracted tulip forms. And we see them coming out in these wonderful swirls, and then you can see on the bottom part of the chest, that they're in these reserved spaces on the front of each of the drawers. One of the things I want you to notice is that the cornice has a bluction molding, and that is that very large curving molding, and then it has a heavy cornice above, so it's got this kind of very sort of austere clear end to the top of it. It comes down with absolutely no carving on it at all. All of the ornament is in the marquetry, and then as we come down we've got again a molding that defines the top and the bottom of the chest and they most certainly would have come apart. You could have taken them apart and carried them separately. And then down at the base we have another row of molding at the bottom and then these big bun feet. And that's what those things are at the bottom there. Great big bun feet. And this all comes in part at least from the style that was popular in the Netherlands and it becomes quite popular in England as well. And here we see a slightly different interpretation. In this case, we've got a chest on stand. You could also say it was a chest on chest. It depends on whether you define the single drawer piece of furniture underneath as a chest or a stand. And it seems that this is really based on personal choice and vocabulary. I want you to note also that it's got these little teardrop handles on the drawer. These are the most typical for William and Mary. these little teardrop poles. And then the particular kind of marquetry that we're looking at, which is seaweed. And that's on the exterior, seaweed marquetry. And it's like vines with their tendrils all kind of growing out, and they're in these kind of oval patches on the face of the cabinet and on the sides. And then also take note that the legs themselves have that wonderful twisted turning to them. And then we've got... the crossed stretcher at the bottom, and essentially small bun feet. On the interior of this piece, we have oyster veneering, and I'm going to give you some close-ups of these so that you can see just what they were. Veneering and marquetry become so important in this particular period. They all have names, and they all come from different parts of the trees and different types of woods and different ways of treating them. So what we've got here is oysterine and what oysterine is is when you take a branch and you cut the branch crosswise into little slices like almost as if you were slicing cheese and then you take those little pieces and you glue them down to the surface of the chest or the cabinet and arrange them in such a way so that they cover the whole surface completely and what you get are the rings of the tree essentially and that is what then is called oysterine and you can see that all over. this small chest of drawers, which again has those nice big bun feet and absolutely no carving or any other kind of applied ornament, which is typical. Here we have another chest on stand, this time no longer with those twisted legs, those barley twisted legs. Now we've got these curved shaped legs and it's quite a different feeling. It has a kind of more refined quality to it. and it is a little bit later that this style becomes really completely adopted. And you can see how the stretcher for this is very low, essentially right at the floor, and then there are bun feet beneath each one of the legs. The surface of this particular piece is completely covered with seaweed marquetry. And we're going to get a little close up here of it and you can see just what that looks like. It doesn't really look exactly like seaweed, does it? But it has a kind of plant-like quality to it and it's dispersed like seaweed all over and then it's in these beautifully shaped reserves. So the only real applied ornament that has any kind of sculptural quality is the uscussion and there what we see is a brass gilt uscussion which is really the only kind of applied. element. You can see the teardrop pull just up at the top of this image and you can see how that veneering isn't just on the large expanses of the cabinet but actually continues onto the legs and also onto the stretcher itself. And then here when the chest is opened what we have on the interior are a series of small drawers and these drawers would have capped letters or writing implements or precious items. And you can see in the center here, we've got yet another little cupboard that then has even smaller drawers inside of it and all of these could lock and often there were sort of complicated ways of locking these cabinets so that others couldn't get into them. But from an aesthetic point of view, what we really are concerned with is just how extraordinary this kind of veneering was and this kind of marquetry was. so that the very, very fine woods and the excellent cabinet-making skills would really be shown off. This is an example of Japanning. So you've got to think about Europe in the late 17th century acquiring all kinds of things from Asia but never being able to get enough to satisfy their intense interest and their intense love for these objects. And so they start to try to make them themselves. There's a long search for the formula for making porcelain. It takes a very long time before any European can figure that out. And there's a long search for perfecting ways of reproducing lacquer work. This is one of those. It's called Japaning, and it's done with a kind of colored paint that's got quite a lot of pigment in it. And then layers of it are put on. to the surface of the piece of furniture, but it never quite replicates exactly what is done in Japan and China. And then they used motifs that they had taken from actual examples that they had or from books that were published, because there were books published on this, and people would follow the formulas and the images, and they would try to kind of work that out on the piece of furniture. So what we've got here is this... double bonnet chest on chest and the bonnet refers to the way that the top is shaped. It's double bonnet because it's got two scallops. It has a kind of garniture to the finials that are on the top there and that really does replicate the craze for vases sitting on top of these kinds of pieces here. They're actually carved finials. And then we've got this Japaning all over the surface of the piece. But from the point of view of form, this is an extremely typical William and Mary piece. with the big bun feet and the double bonnet at the top and more unusual because of the Japaning. Here we have an even more extraordinary piece, this one with this gilt stand and a gilt crest at the top there so that we've got sort of a single bonnet but it really is more of a pierced crest and all of that highly highly carved this was an extraordinary piece, very finely Japaned. But all of this work being done in England. So to end this piece on English Baroque, I'd like to kind of bring home how the English during this period are growing tremendously in terms of economics, in terms of political power, in the sort of whole European theater. And they're also bringing together a lot of ideas, not just from Europe, which is certainly a strong influence, but also... through their trade with Asia and through their colonies. And it's kind of a melding of all of those ideas that ultimately brings about a really English style. It's not just an interest in collecting, although the collection at Burley House is a wonderful example of this interest in the Baroque, but it's also the fact that all of these ideas are synthesized by the English and brought into their own vocabulary of architecture and design.

We're just going to refer to it as Charles II. But one of the things I want you to take a look at is how the style changes rather subtly. So you can see Charles II over there on the left-hand side.

And he's got this, it's a caned chair, and it's got a caned back as well. And you can see just the kind of ornate, pierced work in the stretcher along the front of the chair and then the top and bottom of the back of the chair. And then when you look over at the next chair, it seems as if there's a great deal of similarity.

So I want to kind of point out some of the... subtle changes. First of all, at the top of the chair we have this kind of curved crest rail now and instead of being the straight across piercing it becomes something that's more like a crown on the chair.

We also see that as we move down the chair the side rails are no longer pierced and even the turning has become kind of quieter. It's become more of a balustrade as opposed to a barley turn. When we get down to the bottom of the chair, we see that that same arch that's at the top in the crest is now expressed in the stretcher that goes across the front. We still have the H-shaped stretcher at the bottom, but the feet have now become shaped and curved as opposed to just sort of straight turned feet that we have on the Charles II armchair.

And even the armchair that just sits next to it has some of those same kind of curved elements. And you can see they're not exactly the same, but it's that curving that really tells us that the chair has fully entered the Baroque, because most of the forms in the Baroque have got some kind of a curve to them. And when we come down to the bottom of the chair, we can see it still has that stretcher right across the front there, but now it's actually not carved, it's turned. and it's turned with these kind of exaggerated balls and a disc in the center. And actually that is really much more the aesthetic of William and Mary, where we have kind of the turning becomes more sort of attenuated, and when we do have rounded elements, they're more exaggerated.

By the time we get into Queen Anne, and we'll look more at Queen Anne when we get into English 18th century, we start to see a really big shift in the shape of the chair. And we've got the beginnings of these wonderful cabriole legs. And you can see that they've got these kind of high knees that kind of curve out and then come down to a padded foot at the bottom, a little pad foot.

Sometimes it's an animal, sometimes not. But in the front, it's got a bit of an apron. And these still retain their stretchers at the base. By the time we fully move into Queen Anne, they won't have stretchers any longer. And at the back of the chair, we see this dramatic shift as well, where now instead of having two straight styles that come up the back and hold the back firm, we start to get this completely carved and shaped back that's sometimes referred to as a hoop back with this shaped splat that in this case is pierced and is really quite sculptural and wonderful.

So, this is really the direction that we're going to be going in, but it's something that we see just beginning at the end of William and Mary and the start of Queen Anne. We also have more furniture forms. So for instance, we have this chaise that seems to be quite literally made up of a group of chairs with the back only of one of them and then the same kind of front stretchers running along the sides. And again, this has got caning on it, and it would have had cushions when it was in use as well.

And we also see the French canapé in England becoming a sofa or a settee. And here we've got one that has three seats to it, and you can see that at the base it very clearly expresses that it's three seats wide. And you can also see that this particular settee is based on the idea of a wing chair. And this idea of kind of cutting off the breeze from either side is something that also gets developed during the Baroque and really becomes more instituted as we get into the 18th century.

And in part it comes from a desire to kind of solve problems with particular pieces of furniture and then that kind of catching on. So for instance, we have this easy chair or invalid's chair that was certainly for a very important person. In this case, it was meant for a king.

But it's essentially a chair that would make your life a little nicer in one of these breezy interiors. Now, one thing to think about when you're looking at interiors from this period is that you're looking at the same thing. that heating is always an issue if you're heating with a fireplace most of your heat is going out the window and up your chimney and if you're not sitting right in front of the fire you're probably cold and if you're sitting anywhere near where that air is escaping there's also air coming in in order to feed the fire and that's going to be whizzing past you so to be able to kind of close yourself in in a chair like this would have been especially comforting and once they develop this kind of chair. It then becomes fashionable. And you can see with this one that it's got the full Charles II base on it.

It looks very much like that first chair we looked at, only it's got the arms and the wings. And here we can see a relationship of the Charles II chair really moving into the Baroque on the left-hand side with the open arms. And you can see how the arms have become very curved, and then they come down to these... wonderful curving supports and then down into the legs at the base that are also curving.

Everything's got this wonderful curve to it and it swirls or whirls right at the bottom of the foot. Now, if we're looking at the chair on the right-hand side, you can see how those wings develop into an actual part of the whole overall design. They no longer look like they were added on, but they continue the same kind of curve and movement that we see in the arms of the chair. And then as it comes down, that shaped apron, which we also saw a very similar shape at the top of the bed by Daniel Merot.

So everything always relates one thing to the other. Very often, the way that the top of a piece is treated will then be repeated as we move down to the bottom of the piece. And here is another one of those beds by Merot. This one, really a very famous one.

This was for Sir Melville. And you can see that the... The interior of this bed is equally as extraordinary as the exterior. This is really probably one of the most extraordinary of these kind of fully upholstered English beds. Lots and lots of detail to the architectural elements on the tester of the bed.

And then on the interior, the upholstery work really replicates architectural details so that the bed itself becomes sort of a play of architecture in textile. And Daniel Murrow didn't just make designs that were then realized, he also made designs that were published. And publishing his work meant that his designs traveled all throughout England and very much influenced the work of cabinet makers, upholsterers, and designers who were working either as architects or specifically on interiors. And as we look at this interior, what we're actually seeing is his plan for a porcelain room and this was something that the wealthiest and definitely every monarch in Europe wanted to have in their home and this would have been the room where they would have kept their grand collection of porcelain and here what we see is how this kind of porcelain would be arranged. There's a very distinct garniture on the top of the mantelpiece.

There's also a garniture in front of the fireplace. We assume that this is summer. But there are little shelves all over the room that also have pieces of porcelain tucked away on top of them so that when one entered the room, they would be sort of awestruck by not just the collection, but also the sparkle of light that would be reflecting off of these pieces.

And that was a really important part of interior design. Something else that also comes over from Holland, not just with Daniel Moreau, but through the kind of trade that England has with the Netherlands and their interest in the Baroque as it's translated through Holland, is a love of marquetry. And there was certainly a love of marquetry in France as well, and we saw that with Boulle.

But there's a kind of marquetry that develops in England that's very much influenced by what's going on in Holland. And... I also want to make clear that there's a relationship between what goes on in Holland and what goes on in France.

The Baroque is a time when there's a lot of movement of artists and information from one country to another, so we're constantly seeing a point of give-and-take. Now this particular piece, this Baroque chest, and this is a chest on chest, so you've got the top part that would open up and be a desk in fact, so it's a fall front desk. and then the bottom part that's an actual chest of drawers, is covered with a kind of marquetry that really comes from the influence of the Dutch.

And it looks as if it's kind of a burst of flowers coming out of a small vase, and the flowers themselves tend to, in this kind of marquetry, be tulips, or kind of abstracted tulip forms. And we see them coming out in these wonderful swirls, and then you can see on the bottom part of the chest, that they're in these reserved spaces on the front of each of the drawers. One of the things I want you to notice is that the cornice has a bluction molding, and that is that very large curving molding, and then it has a heavy cornice above, so it's got this kind of very sort of austere clear end to the top of it. It comes down with absolutely no carving on it at all. All of the ornament is in the marquetry, and then as we come down we've got again a molding that defines the top and the bottom of the chest and they most certainly would have come apart.

You could have taken them apart and carried them separately. And then down at the base we have another row of molding at the bottom and then these big bun feet. And that's what those things are at the bottom there.

Great big bun feet. And this all comes in part at least from the style that was popular in the Netherlands and it becomes quite popular in England as well. And here we see a slightly different interpretation. In this case, we've got a chest on stand.

You could also say it was a chest on chest. It depends on whether you define the single drawer piece of furniture underneath as a chest or a stand. And it seems that this is really based on personal choice and vocabulary. I want you to note also that it's got these little teardrop handles on the drawer.

These are the most typical for William and Mary. these little teardrop poles. And then the particular kind of marquetry that we're looking at, which is seaweed. And that's on the exterior, seaweed marquetry. And it's like vines with their tendrils all kind of growing out, and they're in these kind of oval patches on the face of the cabinet and on the sides.

And then also take note that the legs themselves have that wonderful twisted turning to them. And then we've got... the crossed stretcher at the bottom, and essentially small bun feet.

On the interior of this piece, we have oyster veneering, and I'm going to give you some close-ups of these so that you can see just what they were. Veneering and marquetry become so important in this particular period. They all have names, and they all come from different parts of the trees and different types of woods and different ways of treating them.

So what we've got here is oysterine and what oysterine is is when you take a branch and you cut the branch crosswise into little slices like almost as if you were slicing cheese and then you take those little pieces and you glue them down to the surface of the chest or the cabinet and arrange them in such a way so that they cover the whole surface completely and what you get are the rings of the tree essentially and that is what then is called oysterine and you can see that all over. this small chest of drawers, which again has those nice big bun feet and absolutely no carving or any other kind of applied ornament, which is typical. Here we have another chest on stand, this time no longer with those twisted legs, those barley twisted legs. Now we've got these curved shaped legs and it's quite a different feeling. It has a kind of more refined quality to it.

and it is a little bit later that this style becomes really completely adopted. And you can see how the stretcher for this is very low, essentially right at the floor, and then there are bun feet beneath each one of the legs. The surface of this particular piece is completely covered with seaweed marquetry. And we're going to get a little close up here of it and you can see just what that looks like. It doesn't really look exactly like seaweed, does it?

But it has a kind of plant-like quality to it and it's dispersed like seaweed all over and then it's in these beautifully shaped reserves. So the only real applied ornament that has any kind of sculptural quality is the uscussion and there what we see is a brass gilt uscussion which is really the only kind of applied. element. You can see the teardrop pull just up at the top of this image and you can see how that veneering isn't just on the large expanses of the cabinet but actually continues onto the legs and also onto the stretcher itself.

And then here when the chest is opened what we have on the interior are a series of small drawers and these drawers would have capped letters or writing implements or precious items. And you can see in the center here, we've got yet another little cupboard that then has even smaller drawers inside of it and all of these could lock and often there were sort of complicated ways of locking these cabinets so that others couldn't get into them. But from an aesthetic point of view, what we really are concerned with is just how extraordinary this kind of veneering was and this kind of marquetry was. so that the very, very fine woods and the excellent cabinet-making skills would really be shown off. This is an example of Japanning.

So you've got to think about Europe in the late 17th century acquiring all kinds of things from Asia but never being able to get enough to satisfy their intense interest and their intense love for these objects. And so they start to try to make them themselves. There's a long search for the formula for making porcelain. It takes a very long time before any European can figure that out.

And there's a long search for perfecting ways of reproducing lacquer work. This is one of those. It's called Japaning, and it's done with a kind of colored paint that's got quite a lot of pigment in it.

And then layers of it are put on. to the surface of the piece of furniture, but it never quite replicates exactly what is done in Japan and China. And then they used motifs that they had taken from actual examples that they had or from books that were published, because there were books published on this, and people would follow the formulas and the images, and they would try to kind of work that out on the piece of furniture. So what we've got here is this... double bonnet chest on chest and the bonnet refers to the way that the top is shaped.

It's double bonnet because it's got two scallops. It has a kind of garniture to the finials that are on the top there and that really does replicate the craze for vases sitting on top of these kinds of pieces here. They're actually carved finials.

And then we've got this Japaning all over the surface of the piece. But from the point of view of form, this is an extremely typical William and Mary piece. with the big bun feet and the double bonnet at the top and more unusual because of the Japaning. Here we have an even more extraordinary piece, this one with this gilt stand and a gilt crest at the top there so that we've got sort of a single bonnet but it really is more of a pierced crest and all of that highly highly carved this was an extraordinary piece, very finely Japaned. But all of this work being done in England.

So to end this piece on English Baroque, I'd like to kind of bring home how the English during this period are growing tremendously in terms of economics, in terms of political power, in the sort of whole European theater. And they're also bringing together a lot of ideas, not just from Europe, which is certainly a strong influence, but also... through their trade with Asia and through their colonies.

And it's kind of a melding of all of those ideas that ultimately brings about a really English style. It's not just an interest in collecting, although the collection at Burley House is a wonderful example of this interest in the Baroque, but it's also the fact that all of these ideas are synthesized by the English and brought into their own vocabulary of architecture and design.

Transcript for:Exploring English Baroque Furniture Styles

Transcript for:
Exploring English Baroque Furniture Styles