Kinds of accessory furnishings » Clocks

Clocks are considered furnishings if the movement is enclosed within a case, which need not necessarily be of wood. Clocks can be divided into table clocks and tall-case clocks. There were two creative centres for table clocks, namely England and France. In 17th- and 18th-century France, the table clock became an object of monumental design, the best examples of which are minor works of sculpture. The actual movement is framed by a marble socle, and the clockface by a sculptural frame of solid bronze incorporating freely molded figures and ornamentation. Some of France’s best sculptors and bronze casters were engaged in the creation of decorative frames for clock movements. A French speciality, imitated elsewhere on the Continent, was the wall clock, or so-called cartel clock, the earliest examples of which were designed by a goldsmith and ornamentalist, Juste-Aurèle Meissonier. The clockface is the centre of an ornament, or rocaille-cartouche, cast in bronze, sometimes garnished with figures of symbolic significance; for example, Time, a man with a scythe, or a crowing cock. In England, where tastes were more bourgeois, the fine movements made by skillful London clockmakers were built into wooden cases, architectonic in composition and featuring pilasters (partly recessed columns) and cornices. Simple walnut cases could be adorned with metal ornaments and brass balls. The more expensive table clocks were concealed in cases embellished with inlaid wood or tortoiseshell.

Carving Furniture

There are examples of furniture carving in Egypt at the time of the pyramids: animal legs of cedarwood on biers, beds, and chairs; and ducks’ heads terminating the legs of folding stools. Elegant carved headrests took the place of pillows in this hot climate.

Whereas carving does not appear to have played a significant part in Greek and Roman furniture, it was a dominant feature of European furniture of the Middle Ages. The fronts of chests bear Gothic perpendicular tracery (decorative interlacing of lines) in imitation of the decorative stonework found in ecclesiastical architecture.

Another source of inspiration for carved ornaments in bourgeois furniture was the ecclesiastical wood carving found in choir stalls and altarpieces. The art of the wood-carver also flourished in Islam during the Middle Ages, especially in kiosks (open pavilions), oriel (large bay windows projecting from the wall and supported by brackets) windows, and Qurʾān lecterns. The most original and remarkable form of medieval carved ornamentation was the linenfold, which resembled folded sheets of linen laid on the surface of the wood. Although the motif was widely known, its origins are obscure.

Furniture Decorative processes and techniques

Whether constructional principles are exploited as a motif or elegance of overall shape is stressed through stylization, every piece of furniture can be embellished in one way or another. A piece of furniture may be embellished by effects produced in the structural wood itself or in another kind of wood added to the first; that is, by carving and turning or by inlay work. Alternatively, the piece can be decorated by the addition of materials other than wood, such as bronze, ivory, or marble. Finally, in the case of furniture meant for sitting or lying on, there is the possibility of textile enrichment in such forms as upholstery, loose covers, and cushions.

Furniture with Metal Materials

Metals have been used since antiquity for making and ornamenting furniture. Splendid Egyptian pieces, such as the thrones and stool that were found in the tomb of the youthful Tutankhamen (14th century bc), were rich in gold mounts (decorative details). In ancient Greece, bronze, iron, and silver were used for making furniture. Finds that were buried in the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy included tables with folding underframes and beds made partly or entirely of metal.

Throughout the Middle Ages the metal chair—for example, the 7th-century throne belonging to Dagobert I, king of the Franks—was used for special ceremonies.

Various examples of silver furniture have been preserved; not solid metal, they consist of embossed (decorated with relief) or chased (hammered) plates of silver fastened to a wooden core. Silver furniture was made for palaces in the days when monarchs amassed enormous wealth. In times of war, the silver mountings were melted down and turned into silver coins; it was thus that all the silver furniture disappeared from the royal palaces of France.

Furniture with Wood Material

Wood is the material most often used for making furniture. Although there are over a hundred different kinds that can be used for furniture, some woods have natural properties that make them superior to the others.

A relatively cheap material, wood lends itself to various kinds of treatment; for example, it can be stained, painted, gilded, and glued. It can be shaped by means of hand- or power-operated cutting and drilling tools. Heated, it can be bent to a certain extent into a predetermined shape and thereafter will retain the shape. The grain in wood creates a structure with varying character, which in itself provides a natural ornamental surface, in which patterns can be formed by means of precalculated juxtapositions. Colours range from white, yellow, green, red, brown, gray to black through countless intermediary tones. By juxtaposing wood of different colours, extremely rich effects have been achieved, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Wood, if stored under favourable conditions, is durable, and pieces of furniture from the oldest civilizations—Egypt, for example—are still extant. Lastly, most wood has an aromatic scent.

Developments in the sphere of craftsmanship and mechanical techniques, during the past 200 years or so, have made furniture production both cheaper and quicker. Using timber as a basis and applying techniques such as shredding, heating and glueing, it has been possible to evolve new materials. To an increasing extent, cabinetmakers and furniture factories are using semi-manufactured wood such as veneer, carcass wood, plywood, laminated board, and hardboard (fibreboard).

Storage Furniture (Chest)

The principal constructional features of early medieval chests lasted until the Renaissance. The so-called Oseberg ship, dating from the Viking era (9th century ad) and discovered in 1904 in Vestfold, Norway, included among the furniture on board a chest made of oak planks secured by iron bands. The planks are not mortised together, and the end sections stand vertical, thereby forming feet, wider at the bottom than above. The lid is formed by a single curved oak plank that has been roughhewn into shape. The bottom of the chest rests in a groove cut into the end sections. The wooden construction, a primitive form of carpentry, is held together by broad iron bands, the nails are tin-plated. In this Oseberg chest, the iron mounts essential to the construction constitute the decorative element as well. Medieval chests are developments of the same principle: a piece of carpentry with decorative iron mounts, but the principle found freer application in medieval church doors than in the chests of the period.

The chest often appears in portable form as a traveller’s trunk that can also serve as a stationary piece of furniture. A number of painted, parchment-covered Florentine chests dating from the middle of the 15th century have been preserved. These were used as trunks by young girls on their way to enter a convent and later stood in their cells as pieces of storage furniture for clothes and other personal belongings. A “nun’s chest” of this type is in principle quite different from the sumptuous cassoni of the Italian Renaissance that were adorned with gilded stucco work and painted panels. Cassoni were stationary pieces of palace furniture. Specifically designed for travelling, however, were Javanese camphorwood chests that made the long voyage round the Cape of Good Hope full of stuffs and spices and eventually came to rest in an English manor house or in a gabled Dutch mansion in Amsterdam. The plank construction with metal mounts is of primitive craftsmanship. The large, smooth expanses of reddish-brown wood, with their elaborate openwork brass mounts and big, chased bolt heads to take the brunt of rough handling, have a kind of sophisticated crudeness about them. On later camphorwood chests the brass mounts are sunk flush with the surface of the wood, just as on portable writing desks and toilet cases of the French Empire period. Veneered wood was not suitable for chests intended for travel purposes, but it was possible to cover the entire chest with leather fastened with metal nails, often forming a pattern. Several beautiful, leather-covered chests made in Italy and Spain in the 17th century are known, and the form persisted in the large wardrobe trunks of succeeding centuries.

Other accessory furnishings

Small utility objects constitute an important part of the furnishing of interiors. Several of them are the work of cabinetmakers; for example, boxes for writing paper and playing cards, caskets for letters and documents, trays for serving or presentation. Accessory furnishings include the various articles, large and small, that are employed in the course of domestic work—from small looms to lace pillows, spinning wheels, embroidery frames, and sewing tables. Women’s chattels, partly in the form of equipment for domestic needs and partly in the form of items of storage furniture for such small items as pins, scissors, wool, and materials, all had their place in the home.

Finally, the structure and decoration of the walls, ceilings, and floors—for example, panelling, stucco work, parquet flooring, carpets—can also come under the heading of accessory furnishings. Usually, however, they are considered under the subject of interior decoration.