Arthur Hayden

“ The greatness of Marlborough is indisputable. His fond love for his wife runs like a gold thread through the dark web of his life. His wife had, during a large part of Anne's reign, despotic empire over Anne's feeble mind. "History exhibits to us few spectacles more remarkable," says Lord Macaulay, "than that of a great and wise man who, when he had contrived vast and profound schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by inducing one foolish woman, who was often unmanageable, to manage another woman who was more foolish still." ”

“ Fashion, as we have shown, had a slow and impermanent effect upon village ideals. But the output of these great illustrated volumes, with working drawings, undoubtedly had a wide-reaching influence. The last quarter of the eighteenth century saw an intense outburst of interest in the arts of interior decoration. A great amount of finely designed and beautifully executed furniture belongs to those days, and the echo of the splendid achievements in mahogany and in satinwood is seen in the farmhouse and cottage furniture, which came singularly close upon the heels of fashion. ”

“ The permutations of form governing furniture are illimitable, associated as they are with so many details of construction. To take the chair—the leg, its shape, and the design of its turning; the style and character of the work on the stretcher; the form of the seat; the decoration and formation of the front; the back, its length, and the variety of splats and panels; and the top rail with its variations—these are only the salient features in which differences appear. ”

“ Solidity of English Joiners' Work.—The love of old country furniture of the seventeenth century is hardly an acquired taste. Old oak is at once a jarring note in a Sheraton drawing-room with delicate colour scheme of dainty wallpaper and satin coverings. But as a general rule, when it is first seen in its proper environment, in an old-world farmhouse with panelled walls, and mullioned windows, set squarely on an oak floor and beneath blackened oak beams ripe with age, it wins immediate recognition as representative of a fine period of furniture. ”

“ The finest classes of English furniture made by skilful craftsmen for wealthy patrons must always be beyond the range of the minor collector. Every year brings keener zest among those interested in furniture of a bygone day, and it is therefore increasingly difficult for persons of taste and judgment who cannot afford high prices to satisfy their longings. It is obvious that specimens of massive appearance finely carved in oak of the Tudor age, or of elegantly turned work in walnut of Jacobean days, must be readily recognised as valuable. Sumptuous furniture tells its own story. ”

“ To the lover of old oak, varied in character and essentially English in its practical realisation of the exact needs of its users, the seventeenth century provides an exceptionally fine field. The chairs, the tables, the dower-chests and the four-post bedsteads of the farmhouse were sturdy reflections of sumptuous furniture made for the nobility and gentry in Jacobean and Elizabethan times. ”

“ The eighteenth-century farmhouse varieties offer no great departure. They aim at being capacious and massive. They make no pretensions to approach the niceties of the sideboard in use in the better houses. They supply an undoubted want in the farmhouse for storage. There were cordials and home-made wines and much prized linen and a bright array of silver and Sheffield plate and pewter, and no doubt tea services or porcelain from the new English factories of Worcester, Derby, Bow, or maybe Plymouth or Bristol, to be shielded from breakage. ”

“ The passing of cottage and farmhouse furniture may be said to be like the disappearance of dialect. The modern spirit has entered into village life, the town newspaper has permeated the country-side and disturbed the old-world repose. ”

“ Thus the cottager did not feel the oncoming desire for the brass, or later silver and plated candlesticks, but remained firm in his affection for the rushlight-holders in iron, the same types which his ancestors had used, and the firedogs and firebacks of earlier type remained to decorate his hearth. Thus ironwork and rarely brasswork form the sum total of the metal portion of cottage furniture. ”

“ What earthenware is to porcelain, so cottage and farmhouse furniture are to the elaborate styles made for the use of the richer classes. The French insipidities and rococo ornament of Chelsea and Derby and the oriental echoes of Worcester and of Bow are as little typical of national eighteenth-century sentiment as the ribbon-back chair and the Chinese fretwork of Chippendale or the satinwood elegances of Sheraton. ”

“ Welsh Carving.—Wales is famous for the abundance of the oak farmhouse furniture proudly kept to this day in families who have held the same homestead sometimes for centuries. One of the most noticeable features is the elaboration of the carving and its native representation, coarsely carved, without foreign influence, of birds and beasts and heraldic monsters which largely figure in the decorative panels of chests, and especially dressers. So popular was oak that it might almost be advanced that there never was any mahogany in Wales. ”

“ His big head, his slobbering tongue, his quilted clothes, his rickety legs, stood out in as grotesque a contrast with all that men recalled of Henry or of Elizabeth as his gabble 141 and rodomontade, his want of personal dignity, his buffoonery, his coarseness of speech, his pedantry, his contemptible cowardice. Under this ridiculous exterior, however, lay a man of much natural ability, a ripe scholar with a considerable fund of shrewdness, of mother-wit, and ready repartee. ”

“ Transition between Jacobean and William and Mary Forms.—The rapid growth of the finer specimens of furniture made in walnut brought a new note into the farmhouse variety. The elegance and grace of the newer styles were at once evident. In the same manner as the grandiose splendour of Elizabethan woodcarving was succeeded by a less massive style in oak, degenerating into a rude simplicity in farmhouse examples, so in turn Jacobean lost favour. Walnut lent itself to more intricate turning, and lightness and greater delicacy claimed the popular favour of fashionable folk. ”

“ The sublime indifference to passing fashions is astonishingly delightful to the student and to the collector.
There is nothing more uncertain than to attempt with exactitude to place a date upon cottage or farmhouse furniture. The bacon-cupboard, the linen-chest, the gate-table, the ladder-back chair and the windsor chair, were made through successive generations down to fifty years ago without departing from the original pattern of the Charles I. or the Queen Anne period. Oak chests are found carved with the Gothic linen-fold pattern. ”

“ Singularly enough, the most native furniture and that most typically racy of the soil has not hitherto attracted the attention of wealthy collectors. The plutocrats who buy only the finest creations of Chippendale, who have immediate private information when an exquisitely designed Sheraton piece is found, who amass a mighty hoard of gilt Stuart furniture, or who boast of an unrivalled collection of Elizabethan oak, do not touch the minor furniture made during a period of three hundred years for the common people. ”

“ In speech and song the transplantation is more rapid, but in craftsmanship, the studied work of men's hands, the use of novelty is against the grain of the conservative mind of the country cabinet-maker. Therefore throughout the entire field of this minor furniture it must be borne in mind that it is quite usual to find examples of one century reflecting the glories of the period long since gone. ”

“ Nowadays there are families in the shires whom nothing would induce to sell their old gate tables. Partly this is for love of the old home, but mainly is it the common-sense attitude which rebels against the sale of any piece of furniture which is in constant use. Many objects long gone into disuse, but really valuable from an artistic point of view, are readily dispensed with. The cottager imagines that if he disposes of a mere ornament for a sum of money with which he can buy something useful he has effected a good "deal." ”

“ So delectable are their soft, faded colours, so fascinating are the designs, and above all, so enchanting is the old-world musty scent which always clings to them, that it would be hard indeed to withhold one's affection from them. ”

“ In regard to launching another volume on the market dealing with old furniture, a word of explanation is desirable, for nowadays of making books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the collector.
In the present volume attention has been especially given to that class of furniture known as Cottage or Farmhouse. There is no volume dealing with this phase of collecting. Prices for old furniture of the finest quality have gone up by leaps and bounds, 28 and for those not possessed of ample means the collection of superlative styles is at an end. ”

“ Among the early forms of chairs falling under the category of farmhouse furniture may be noticed examples of rough and massive build, eminently fit to serve the purpose for which they were designed. Ornament is reduced to a minimum, and they stand as rude monuments to the cabinet-maker's craft in fashioning them and following tradition to suit his client's tastes.
In regard to the sixteenth century there cannot be said to be any type falling under the heading of cottage or farmhouse chairs. We have already illustrated (p. 35) an early form of Elizabethan days, but such examples are rare. ”

“ On the contrary, the designing of chintzes is an art of distinction, governed by canons which bear little 321 relationship to other decorative textile crafts. For where the silk-weaver is confined to solid patterns which will appear in his transverse threads, the printer of cloths can wander unrestrained into designs of wonderful intricacy and beauty: every colour in nature he can imitate, and no object is too delicate or too rich to stamp upon his cotton. ”

“ The country maker was slow to adopt the cabriole leg when it was fashionable, but when it became unfashionable he was equally loth to depart from his accustomed style. These clearly point to the transition between the cabriole leg and the straight leg of Chippendale, and are about 1760 in date.
The forms of design of tables of eighteenth-century date are extremely varied in character, denoting the rapidly changing habits of the people. The Queen Anne tea-table, with scalloped edges for cups, marks the note of preciosity creeping into country life. ”

“ The study of old farmhouse and cottage furniture has not been pursued in this country in so scientific a manner as in Sweden and in Denmark. The conservation of national heirlooms is a matter which must be speedily dealt with before they become scattered. It is a point which cannot be repeated too often. At Skansen, Stockholm, old buildings have, 41 under State supervision, been re-erected, and with their furniture they afford a practical illustration of the particular type of life of the district of their origin. ”

“ The seat is rush, and the maker has confined himself to his own limitations and avoided in the splat the too intricate work of more sumptuous models. He has arrived at a very finely balanced result. The heart cut out of the splat is frequently found in cottage examples, suggesting that some of the more ornate examples may have been made as wedding presents for young couples just setting up housekeeping, or possibly the village cabinet-maker himself had thoughts in that direction, and such work was destined to equip his own home. ”