Chest (furniture)

“ CHAPTER I CHESTS, CHESTS OF DRAWERS, AND DRESSING-TABLES
THE chest was a most important piece of furniture in households of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It served as table, seat, or trunk, besides its accepted purpose to hold valuables of various kinds.
Chests are mentioned in the earliest colonial inventories. Ship chests, board chests, joined chests, wainscot chests with drawers, and carved chests are some of the entries; but the larger portion are inventoried simply as chests. ”

“ In the bedroom, we always find a large “trussing chest,” used as a receptacle for the bed clothes, and there may be another chest for the preservation of wearing apparel. The latter is more likely to be a chest-with-drawers, consisting of the chest proper, below which are two long drawers, appearing to the eye as four on account of the panels, mouldings and knobs. ”

“ In the furniture of bedrooms linen chests and settles, cupboards and the beds themselves were of panelled wood. The next woodcut shows the interior of a well-furnished bedroom, from a manuscript life of St. Edmund written about the year 1400.
Chests served as tables, and are often represented with chess-boards on them in old illuminations, and husband and wife sitting on the chest and using it for the game, which had become familiar to most [pg 51] European nations. Chests of later date than the time of Edward, of Italian make, still show the same use of the lids of coffers. ”

“ In Flanders were made many fronts of chests only, quite elaborately carved, and sent to England, there to be fitted with the other parts. Among the guilds the chest-makers bore an important part, as chests, particularly of churches, were sometimes fastened with two locks, and the lock plates were often very highly and handsomely wrought. Of later years chests of every degree of elegance and beauty have found their way to America; some covered with carving of the florid style of the Renaissance, some still showing traces of the fine gilding with which they were covered. ”

“ Chests of drawers appear in inventories about [18] 1645. They were usually made of oak and were similar in design to the chests of that period.
The oak chest of drawers in Illustration 9 is owned by E. R. Lemon, Esq., of the Wayside Inn, Sudbury. It has four drawers, and the decoration is simply panelling. The feet are the large balls which were used upon chests finished with a deep moulding at the lower edge. ”

“ There are chests which are peculiar to certain localities, notably in New England, which were doubtless made by a single cabinet-maker, his workmen and apprentices. They are almost entirely confined to these localities, and are therefore of less interest to the collector in general than such pieces as are more widely distributed. Under this head comes that style of receptacle known as the Hadley Chest, and the Connecticut chest shown in Chapter V. The Dutch chests were often of pine, painted, only the choicest ones being of walnut. ”

“ It belongs to the Waring Galleries, London. Two drawers followed one, the chest portion still retaining its prominence, and in this simple way the chest of drawers grew from the box-like affair of 1600 and [Pg 20] later. By 1710 chests were looked upon as "old," and so advertised for sale, although they continued to be made until the middle of the eighteenth century. They were too useful to be abandoned by a people who were obliged to be often on the move, and who needed some stout receptacle in which to carry their household and personal goods. ”

“ The large chest shown on Plate XV really is a beautiful piece of furniture, complete with its imposing brass ring handles, original and perfect in every way just as I bought it. The workmanship is of high class, and the long secret drawer at the top has made a good hiding place for a large number of amulets. ”

“ Another class of chest is incised, sometimes rather roughly, but often with considerable geometrical skill. The more ordinary variety has been of great value to the forger of antique furniture, who has used its carved panels for conversion into cupboards and other pieces, the history of which is not easily unravelled by the amateur who collects old oak without knowing much about it. Towards the end of the 17th century chests were often made of walnut, or even of exotic woods such as cedar and cypress, and were sometimes clamped with large and ornamental brass bands and hinges. ”

“ There are various small details which are of assistance in determining the approximate period of a piece of furniture, and none of greater value than the handles. The different styles of these, particularly of brass, are quite definite. The earliest of them is the drop handle, shown in Figure 99, and also on the old oak chest depicted in Figure 5. The escutcheons were similar, and the material of the drops on some chests of drawers was iron, but brass was more commonly seen, and was either hollow or solid. ”

“ A most necessary piece of furniture which every housekeeper endeavoured to own was some form of "highboy," as it has come to be called, or a chest-on chest of drawers. Figure 64 depicts a fair example of the highest style of perfection to which these articles reached. Few are found more ornate than this. The wood is mahogany, and is richly carved on the knees, with the upper and lower drawers ornamented with shell and scrolls. The escutcheons and handles are original, and the only defect is the loss of the two ornaments which decorated either side of the top. ”

“ Fig. 57 is a less pretentious tallboy chest of six drawers, valued at ten guineas, in the possession of Mr. J. H. Springett, of High Street, Rochester. Like the majority of these old veneered walnut chests, the drawer fronts and sides of the main structure are veneered on pine, whilst the bodies of the drawers are of oak. The fretted escutcheons and cusped handles (unfortunately not quite uniform) are exceptionally good. There is interesting documentary evidence connected with this old piece of furniture. ”

“ A moulding incised with cuts edges the top slab. The chest-of-drawers stands on four turned knobs or balls. A specimen handle and key-plate of the period appropriate for chest, chest-of-drawers, or cabinet are No. 5 and No. 6 on Plate X. The case-of-drawers is also found in the bedroom, where the other furniture includes a dressing-table and glass, tables, chairs and stools, very often a cupboard, sometimes a desk or “screetore,” and always plenty of cushions. ”

“ In mid-seventeenth-century days the well-known gate-table was introduced.
Of early pieces we illustrate a few examples, though in connection with farmhouse and cottage, the early days afford a poor field, as the furniture of those days now remaining was mostly made for great families. The two sixteenth-century chests illustrated (p. 29) are interesting as showing the early styles. The upper photograph is of a middle sixteenth-century chest, with Gothic carving and solid wood ends forming feet. This type of chest is made from six boards. ”

“ The plain box, or chest, was the origin of all the developments of Mediaeval furniture. It had many uses: it contained the treasures and valuables of the lord; it was used as a packing-case or trunk for travelling; with supports at the four corners and back, and arms added above, it served as a chair or settle, with a seat that could be lifted on hinges; raised also on legs and supplied with a daïs, it became a dressoir, credence, or sideboard; chest-upon-chest superimposed, developed into the elaborate armoire ”

“ It can be easily seen how necessary a part of the household goods a stout chest for valuables was, especially in remote parts of the country, where access to the cities was not easy. Not alone in houses was the chest a necessary article; one or more were a part of every church's furniture, and in them were kept the vestments, church linen, the plate, and other valuables. ”

“ The veneer is of richly figured walnut banded with herring-bone inlay. It is furnished with brass handles and engraved escutcheons.
[70]
We begin to see how increasing wealth in clothes called for more commodious furniture. This piece has six drawers in the upper carcase in addition to the five small ones in the stand: altogether a very considerable storage capacity as compared with the dumpy chests of drawers of earlier make.
By easy stages we arrive at the tallboy pure and simple, sometimes called "double chest" or "chest on chest." The term "tall" is obvious, but "boy" is not so clear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chests, more or less carved, and ornamented with iron work, settles of oak or of chestnut, stools or benches with carved supports, a bedstead and a prie dieu chair, a table with plain slab supported on shaped standards, would nearly supply the inventory of the furniture of the chief room in a house of a well-to-do merchant in France until the fourteenth century had turned. ”

“ The chests of the Jacobean time, enriched with mouldings, panellings, and drop ornaments, are by no means unknown in America. They are furnished with drawers, cupboards, and then drawers above, making them massive and useful pieces of furniture. They stand upon large round legs, and the handles to drawers and cupboards are drops. In Italy marriage chests were beautifully painted, often by famous masters, and sometimes gilded as well. ”

“ When such a skeleton is on the body it will be observed that the center of the back is on a plumb line from the shoulders down to over the seat and the bottom of the coat, and that at the side it tapers outward from under the arm to over the largest part at the thigh, and down to the end of the coat, but does not touch the hollow of the waist anywhere, running straight downward. In front it will taper outward but fit the whole chest above the pit of the stomach ”

“ I have seen patients with chest complaints literally labouring under the weight of clothes placed in exactly the wrong place. In illness, as a rule the feet need extra covering, and the breathing organs no more weight of clothes than is absolutely necessary. The upper-sheet being light, may be allowed to turn over for neatness, but blanket and counterpane must only come up to the patient’s neck. ”

“ I believe the great fault to be that when the corset is laced on it is very generally open an inch or so from top to bottom. The consequence of this is, that when the wearer [167] is sitting down, and the pressure on the waist the greatest, the tendency is to pull the less tightly drawn lace at the top of the corset tighter; on changing the posture this does not right itself, and consequently an unnecessary and injurious compression round the chest is experienced. ”

“ The next pair are rather longer, the third longer still, and thus they go on increasing in length to the seventh pair, or last true ribs, after which the length diminishes, but without materially contracting the size of the cavity, because the false ribs only go round a part of the body. Hence the chest has a sort of conical shape, or it may be compared to a common beehive, the narrow pointed end being next the neck, and the broad end undermost; the natural form of the chest, in short, is just the reverse of the fashionable shape of the waist ”

“ Where wood is burned, no better wood-box can be found than an old carved chest, either one of the Italian cassoni, with their painted panels and gilded volutes, or a plain box of oak or walnut with well-designed panels and old iron hasps. The best substitute for such a chest is a plain wicker basket, without ornamentation, enamel paint or gilding. ”

“ The spine may become curved and the pelvis deformed owing to the way the body is twisted. The chest is also compressed by the weight hanging over it, and breathing becomes laboured—an accident which brings with it a whole train of evils, of which the chief is general debility, brought about by insufficient aeration of the blood. The weight of the clothes is, moreover, rarely supported on the shoulder arch, but on the upper part of the arm itself, which it pinions to the side. This is caused by the bad way in which clothes are generally cut. ”

“ The armholes are cut round, and the sleeves are cut in one piece with the garment itself, or sewn in regardless of any shape. This prevents the arms from being raised unless the chemise can be dragged up with them, which it rarely can, as it is generally fixed down by the pressure of other clothes round the waist. Any garment which impairs the free movement of the arms is objectionable, as such movement is necessary to the proper development of the chest. ”

“ Joined and wainscot chests were framed chests with panels, distinguished clearly from the board chests, made of plain boards. The latter were often called plain chests, the former panel chests. Carved chests were much rarer. William Bradford, of Plymouth, had one in 1657 worth £1. Dr. Lyon also gives as possibly being carved these items: "wrought chest," "ingraved," "settworke," and "inlayed chests." Chests were also painted, usually on the parts in relief on the carving, the colors being generally black and red. Chests with drawers were not rare in New England. ”