The Furniture History Society May 2020

The Furniture History Society Newsletter 218 May 2020

n 1926, the Metropolitan Museum of provided an opportunity to undertake I Art acquired an early Georgian side a comparative study of all three tables table (Fig. 1), which combines a strong and compile important new information. architectural character with an orderly Combined with archival material, this expression of neo-Palladian vocabulary study has allowed for new observations and retains its original faux-painted and speculations with regard to the tables’ mahogany and parcel-gilt decorative provenance, manufacture and original scheme.1 decorative finishes. Executed in a similar style that evokes The Met side table, as well as the pair the work of William Kent (c. 1685–1748), of side tables at Temple Newsam,3 are a pair of almost identical white and gold attributed to Matthias Lock (c. 1710–70), side tables, originally from Ditchley after a design by Henry Flitcroft (1697– Park, Oxfordshire (Fig. 2) can be found 1769).4 Their design corresponds very at Temple Newsam House (LEEAG. closely to a pencil drawing by Lock for a FU.1954.0009), which is part of the Leeds side table in a drawing, now at the Victoria Museum collection in Yorkshire.2 and Albert Museum, London (Fig. 3).5 The three side tables may in fact be Several variants of this side table’s more closely related than previously design exist — all attributed to Lock on thought: recent visits to Temple Newsam the basis of the drawing — and many

Fig. 1 Side table. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26.45

2 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Fig. 2 Side table (one of a pair), Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire. © Country Life were destined for houses where Flitcroft worked.6 The Temple Newsam side tables come from Ditchley Park, a house designed by James Gibbs (1682–1754) and built for George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield (1690–1743).7 In 1736–41, Flitcroft was employed as Kent’s assistant, when the latter was asked to complete the interiors of the house, as well as the design and execution of the furniture.8 Flitcroft’s involvement as designer and architect is confirmed by original bills to the 2nd Earl of Lichfield, kept in the Dillon family archives in Oxford. One relevant bill relates to a commission for the design of table frames.9 Charges for designs for two sets of table frames appear in the accounts in March 1740, and for drawing three Fig. 3 Design attributed to Matthias Lock, pencil on paper. © Victoria and Albert tables and glass frames in March 1741. Museum, London, 2848:98 In addition, the contents of two separate inventories, dated 1743 and 1772, identify describes the tables with variations to a pair of side tables, most likely those the entries: the 1743 Ditchley inventory now at Temple Newsam. Each inventory includes ‘Two fine marble tables on rich furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 3 frames’ in the Great Room (or Dining East Dining Room at Ditchley, located on Room), while the 1772 inventory lists ‘two the main floor, perhaps a reference to its fine Egyptian marble tables on rich carved original function as a dining side table.12 and gilt stands’ in the Gilt Drawing Room, The first illustration of the Met’s table called the Great Room in 1743.10 was published in a 1919 Country Life In 1736–41, Flitcroft completed the article13 at Hamilton Palace, Lanarkshire, design of the interiors of the house, Scotland, since demolished, where it can including the new Great Room, the be seen near an expansive black Irish decoration of which was strongly marble staircase in the Great Stone Hall influenced by Kent. The room was (Fig. 4).14 converted into a Drawing Room in The original provenance of the Met side 1750.11 Alterations over time at Ditchley table, however, is unknown, although illustrate how changes in lifestyle led its appearance at Hamilton Palace may to a reconfiguration of the plan of the indicate a family connection, possibly with house and the use of its rooms. The an earlier Palladian house. The parcel-gilt White Drawing Room, as it is called and mahogany colour ornamentation of today, originally conceived as the Great the Met side table must belong to a specific Room by Flitcroft, has a repeated colour decorative interior. Technical examination scheme of white and gold punctuated of this table (Figs 5 and 6) indicates that with mythological masks. The pair of it consists of a frame made of pinewood Temple Newsam side tables would have constructed following the Classical order been well suited thematically with the of base, shaft, entablature, to which Classical iconography of this room and its decorative elements were applied.15 colour scheme. A photograph from 1945 It is held together with traditional shows one of the pair of side tables in the joinery including mortise and tenons with

Fig. 4 The side table in situ at Hamilton Palace, Lanarkshire, Scotland. © Country Life

4 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Fig. 5 The joinery of the side table from the back. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26.45

Fig. 6 The joinery of the side table. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26.45 wooden pegs. The double-console in the and carved details of all three tables have front is connected to the single console at matching dimensions, including Hercules’ the rear by one horizontal stretcher. The masks, and shells, which are similarly rear console suggests a production that executed in the carving.16 Decorative might have used a prototype template for details are affixed with nails and include the frame, which may have allowed easy a Vitruvian motif, floral details and a replication. Templates gave the technical running frieze. On the front apron, a ability to reproduce master furniture Hercules’ mask carved in high relief designs in workshops. together with lion paws are secured with On the Temple Newsam and the Met a single piece of wood nailed to the frame side tables, the entablature part of the from the back. A similar attachment is structure has additional decorative details used for the large central fluted scallop remarkably similar in their proportions shell on each side of the tables. The use and composition. The decorative elements of wrought-iron nails and screws for later furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 5 repairs are illustrated in X-ray radiography This decorative finish with its images of the Met’s table. juxtaposition of brown and gold On the underside of the Temple represented a specific style in the history Newsam and the Met side tables, the of English furniture.21 From the 1720s to main joints of the structural elements the 1750s, reddish-brown mahogany wood are marked with tool cuts to identify increasingly became the preferred wood the parts during assemblage in a very in furniture-making. The crisp carving similar way. In fact, close examination of enabled by the use of this fine-grained all three tables reveals a demonstrable wood was often picked out by oil gilding. relationship in term of dimension, Faux-painted mahogany and gilt furniture methods of construction — including mimicking the original parcel-gilt the correlation of the tool marks — and mahogany wood furniture of the period decorative execution.17 Additionally, in was fashionable for only a short period of selected background areas — that is, small time and few examples have survived. fields behind the carving — the wood Microscopic examination of paint surface was prepared using a similar samples obtained from the Temple technique consisting of a striking detail, Newsam side tables in 2018 revealed the a pattern creating a texture-like crossed intriguing possibility that these tables ridges rather than typical punch-work may have been initially decorated with into the wood; a detail strongly evocative the same colour scheme as the Met’s side of a prepared wood surface for paint or table. A residual reddish-brown layer gilding. The constrained areas where the containing hematite appears to have been wood is showing the prepared ground is applied as the initial paint layer.22 In areas, clear evidence that the tables were made both tables retain several applications following the same workshop’s practices. of paint layers illustrating the paint It appears, therefore, that all three tables layer history over diverse restoration are closely related. campaigns; the latest reflecting the actual The paint and gilded layers on the frames paint layer restoration. This finding Met side table were analysed in 2005 and invites further speculation regarding their further sampling in 2016 confirmed that its original finish as well as the decorative finish is consistent throughout the frame. design of the room in which they were The surface decoration began with the formerly displayed. application of an overall calcium carbonate Based on the comparison of the ground layer. The original reddish-brown dimensions, methods of construction, oil paint, pigmented mostly with hematite, decorative execution and the comparative a form of iron oxide,18 was applied directly analysis of the finishes, therefore, it is over the ground, while the oil gilding19 reasonable to speculate that a common was applied over a yellow mordant. workshop produced the three tables under The use of oil gilding corresponds with examination. historical descriptions and, where well At the same time, the complexity of preserved, remains astonishingly bright.20 how furniture was ordered during this

6 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 period makes a workshop attribution pp. 113–14; referring to the Met example very challenging. Wealthy patrons sent Curator Daniella O. Kisluk-Grosheide writes: ‘The table was intended for a dining room and orders to leading cabinet-makers, who in had no stretcher or connecting element at the turn may have given these commissions base between the two sides, leaving room for a wine cooler below’. to master carvers or independent 2 R. Edwards and M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet- journeymen craftsmen, making exact Makers (London, 1944), fig. 64. 23 3 The slabs that originally lay on the frames are attributions very challenging. The issue all replaced. In the eighteenth century, people of attribution is made more difficult by tended to value slabs, and they were often the connection to Kent’s widespread separated and sold — however finely carved, frames were less highly esteemed. designs for this type of furniture, which 4 C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House were executed at various times, as well and Lotherton Hall, ii (Leeds, 1978), 445–47. 5 P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of as the dissemination of Lock’s technical Eighteenth Century (London, 1958), fig. 48. drawings. In addition, Flitcroft’s role in the 6 Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House. From the several models, only a few examples designs for Ditchley has to be taken into offer a close analogy. The immediate parallels account. Several leading furniture-makers are a pair, originally made for Wentworth and master carvers of the period could Woodhouse, Yorkshire, and another pair, made for the Dining Room at Shugborough have executed very similar pieces. Hall, Staffordshire, associated with the Earl of The observations gathered have begun Lichfield, for whom Henry Flitcroft worked for other commissions. to reveal details about the creation of this 7 Ditchley House was built by Francis Smith group of architectural side tables, but there (1672–1738), master builder and architect, is undoubtedly more to discover … and designed by James Gibbs (1684–1754), architect. pascale patris 8 In 1725, Kent was paid for the painted hall Conservator ceiling, and in 1731, for two paintings on the hall north wall. Objects Conservation, 9 A handwritten bill to the Earl of Litchfield, Metropolitan Museum of Art signed by Henry Flitcroft, include the designs of five table frames in 1740–41. Oxfordshire County Council, Archives. 10 In the Dillon Archives, the inventory dated I would like to thank the Leeds Museums 1743 lists in the Great Room: ‘Two fine marble tables on Rich frames’. In the 1772 inventory: and Temple Newsam curators, especially ‘Two fine Egyptian marble tables on rich James Lomax and Rachel Convoy, for carved and gilt stands’. 11 J. Cornforth, Early Georgian Interiors (London the help that they have given me while and New Haven, 2004), pp. 290–95. studying the pair of side tables; and the 12 Antique Collector, January/February 1945, p. 10, a picture of one of the pair of side tables Metropolitan Museum of Art and the in Ditchley’s ground-floor Dining Room, Objects Conservation Department for their flanked by a set of chairs with carved legs encouragement and support throughout with masks and paw feet. In documentation at the V&A, a black-and-white photograph this process. shows a partial view of the pair of side tables in the main-floor Dining Room of the house. 1 One specific meaning of side table is related to 13 ‘Hamilton Palace, South Lanarkshire, dining or other rooms where meals are taken Scotland’, Country Life, 21 June 1919, p. 752; or served. D. Kisluk-Grosheide, W. Koeppe Country Life, 14 June 1919, p. 722, full-size and W. Rieder, European Furniture in the picture of the side table. Metropolitan Museum of Art: Highlights of the 14 Country Life, 21 June 1919, p. 752. Collection (New Haven and London, 2006), 15 Comparable construction to the Temple

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 7 Newsam side tables was observed from Scientific Research, Metropolitan Museum of visual examination on site, where it was not Art. possible to take pictures of the structure with 20 John Stalker and George Parker, A Treatise the slab removed. of Japanning and Varnishing (1688, reissued 16 However, variations appear in the artistic Oxford, 1971). carved expression of the masks, which may 21 Lucy Wood, The Upholstery Furniture in the have been carved by different hands. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool, i (New Haven 17 The baseboard plinths are reduced in height, and London, 2008), p. 330. Three chairs and a resulting in a slight difference in the overall settee, painted brown and gilded, attributed height of the Temple Newsam side tables to William Hallett. (Temple Newsam’s side tables: H. 86.36 cm 22 Samples were mounted in cross-sections and (34 in.); The Met’s side table: H. 90.8 cm analysed using reflected light microscopy (35¾ in.). Alteration to the dimension of the combined with visible and UV light baseboard plinths was likely done to fit in illumination, by Pascale Patris, Conservator, with corresponding panelling, originally or Metropolitan Museum of Art. Based on at a later time. On all three tables all other comparison of cross-sections, it appears that, decorative elements and carved details have overall, previous finish layers were removed matching dimensions. from the Temple Newsam side tables, 18 Cross-sections of finishes were analysed including the original ground layer. The using microscopic reflective light by Pascale baseboard plinths in both tables retain several Patris, Conservator, Objects Conservation, applications of paint layers illustrating the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The provided paint layers’ history over diverse restoration cross-sections were further analysed using campaigns, the latest reflecting the entire energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry in frames’ paint layers’ restoration. The foremost the scanning electron microscope (SEM- paint layer to be present on the primary ESD) to characterize the various layers, ground is a reddish-brown layer containing by Mark Wypyski, Research Scientist in iron pigments. the Department of Scientific Research, 23 H. Hayward, Thomas Johnson and English Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rococo (London, 1964), p. 36. 19 Provided cross-sections for gilded layers were analysed using SEM-EDS: the gold leaf alloy of 94.9% reflects almost pure gold leaf. Analyses were completed by Mark Wypyski, Research Scientist in the Department of

8 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Society News

Lecture: Gillian Wilson courageous, independent and determined in creating his collection. Memorial Lecture As Clarissa Ward noted after the This lecture has now been postponed; a Furniture History Society visit to John new date will be confirmed in September Scott in 2010: ‘[We] had a wonderful visit Anna Somers Cocks will give a lecture in to the collection last week — he did not honour of the life and achievements of draw breath for 2 hours as he took us the late Gillian Wilson at the Hochhauser round and then was v. generous with Auditorium, Sackler Centre, Victoria and wine/canapes’. John loved sharing his Albert Museum. By kind permission of collection in person with groups such the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert as the FHS, and was also a willing, if Museum, with support from the Gilbert demanding, lender to exhibitions in Trust and Adrian Sassoon. the United Kingdom and abroad. The The lecture will be followed by drinks in Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the foyer of the Hochhauser Auditorium. never did quite sell out of the postcards he Tickets for this event are free and will be insisted on having made as a condition for available to reserve; please follow this link: lending his Voysey clock to ‘Aluminum by https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/ Design’ (2000). furniture-history-society-9817476624 ‘Scott’ (the name by which he invariably referred to himself) was born A Tribute: John Scott in Birkenhead (hence his choice of ‘The Birkenhead Collection’ as the credit line (1935–2020) when making museum and exhibition No one who passed through the tempting loans). He was educated at Radley Gothic doors of the Westbourne Grove College, did National Service with the home shared by John Scott and his wife Gurkha Regiment in Malaysia and read Takko could forget the experience. The law at Corpus Christi, Oxford. A keen rabbit warren of rooms, created in a rugby player, he was awarded an Oxford sizeable lateral conversion, was furnished blue and, in 1958, was capped for England (or rather stuffed to the rafters) as a against France. He followed a career in tribute to the greatest achievements of property. Scott’s much-loved pantheon of mainly Collecting aside, Scott will be British nineteenth-century designers and remembered for his extraordinary manufacturers. And nor could anyone kindness and generosity in helping leave unmoved by the unbridled passion others less fortunate than himself. of a man who was, from a young age, For example, for a period of twenty

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 9 years he took children with physical No account of John Scott’s collection, impairments for swimming sessions. He in the form that it existed when it was was also punctilious with cards of thanks. (largely) sold off, would be complete Following the publication of an article on without acknowledging that there were his collection in The Magazine Antiques many on whom, in its creation, John (June 1995), he wrote to thank the author depended and whom he admired: for for ‘such a laudatory and gracious article’ example, Robert (Bob) Walker, Andy and continued to comment that, based Tillbrook and Richard Dennis. But it is on the way the photographs had been Michael Whiteway (outside whose much- assembled, he ‘hardly recognized the missed Kensington Church Street shop place!’. But, really, it is those of us who had John’s black bicycle was often to be seen) the good fortune to have known John and who was his most consistent advisor to have learned from his stories and his and valued friend. It was Michael who collections who should be grateful. It can masterminded the collection’s disposal also not pass without comment that Scott through the Fine Art Society. was famously and fearlessly opinionated Scott told the present writer that he was on a range of topics that might fall broadly ‘brought up in a family where collecting under the heading of ‘politics’, and friends rather than furnishing, was a way of and acquaintances had frequently to life’ and remembered his forebears as dodge verbal bullets. ‘mini Burrells’. While still at Oxford he Beyond the quiet and persuasive began collecting Piranesi etchings and campaigns that Scott undertook, most old rummers (which continued to be put recently to see that the railings outside to good use throughout his life). And Alfred Waterhouse’s Natural History glass remained an enduring passion, as Museum were correctly painted red and was demonstrated throughout the eight gold, rather than black, he was passionate sale catalogues of The John Scott Collection and vociferous about preserving and produced by the Fine Art Society between improving the area around Notting 2014 and 2015. Hill, where he lived. Notable battles Scott described his collection as include one to build a public lavatory ‘1830–1930 English Decorative art … and flower stall designed by Piers Gough roughly [with] extensions of time and in Westbourne Grove (2001); he took on place, for instance eighteenth-century Kensington and Chelsea Council and won, glass and Art Nouveau from the but not without making his own financial continent’ (The John Scott Collection, i, contribution. This delightful postmodern p. 7). There was no medium touched facility stands today as yet another legacy by the period that did not arouse his of Scott’s tenacity. Less successful was a curiosity: ‘furniture, ceramics, glass, later fight to prevent an arcade for traders sculpture, Art Nouveau and Gothic in antiques, on his beloved and regularly Revival’. Although these are the collector’s frequented Portobello Road, from being words, they hardly do justice to the demolished for redevelopment (2010). scale and ambition of his unique and

10 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 unrepeatable horde. John viewed the The Fine Art Society’s eight catalogues period of Empire as a triumphant one are, as Scott envisaged and was proud for Great Britain, one during which to have seen, a record of his decades designers and manufacturers, blessed of collecting. All the most admired with burgeoning markets domestically nineteenth-century designers are there: and abroad, achieved heights unsurpassed Pugin (A. W. N and E. W.), G. E. Street, since. Scott’s response to the question Owen Jones, Christopher Dresser, William ‘why collect?’ is rather poignant and De Morgan and so many more. But also, perhaps reveals a humble degree of self- particularly in A Christmas Spectacular (vol. knowledge. His answer: ‘loneliness’ (The vi), a wonderful miscellany of objects, John Scott Collection, i, pp. 7–8). He rather including many anonymous, damaged and confirmed this to Susan Moore: ‘I always even unexpected pieces that had piqued liked things. I was an only child and I Scott’s curiosity and acquisitive nature. think I was lonely’ (Financial Times, 13 June It is a testament to the quality of the 2014); his father left when Scott was aged collection that many pieces have since just three. entered public collections in the United Scott, on rare occasions, parted with Kingdom and in the USA (see Max major pieces from his collection, but not Donnelly, Decorative Art Society Newsletter, without good reason. An A. W. N. Pugin 119). With fortuitous timing, disposals armoire manufactured by George Myers from the John Scott Collection coincided and commissioned by Henry Sharples with plans by the Metropolitan Museum of Liverpool during the second half of of Art, New York, to create its new British the 1840s was sold to the Indianapolis Galleries (opened to much acclaim in Museum of Art in 1999. Why? In 1984, the February 2020). Advised by Charlotte collector had purchased, against familiar Gere and others the museum was able, opposition, an even more significant at a stroke, to bolster its holdings in the example of this form: Pugin’s own armoire area of nineteenth-century British design from The Grange. In 1991, this was put on and manufacture; the furniture in the loan to the V&A and was finally acquired galleries includes Pugin’s own prie-dieu by the museum in 2015; at each stage, with from Ramsgate, a Christopher Dresser- both armoires, Whiteway was the conduit. designed cast-iron chair and a ‘Klismos’ In 2013, Takko and John invited friends chair designed by G. E. Street for the to ‘a little memorial celebration’ to Law Courts in London, all from the Scott commemorate the gift of his unequalled tile Collection. The highlight, however, is collection to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum surely the Pericles sideboard designed by Trust at Coalbrookdale. The evening Bruce Talbert and exhibited by Holland was, typically for the collector, billed as & Sons at the 1867 Paris Exposition ‘a small token of thanks, remembrance, Universelle. wonder, delight and friendship …’. Equally This enormous piece was so large that characteristic was the instruction on the it was impossible for it to progress beyond invitation to ‘RSVP quickly’. the entrance hall in Westbourne Grove,

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 11 elements of the collection. However, a selection might include an early circular rosewood table designed by A. W. N. Pugin, the Wheel of Fortune table designed by William Burges for Charles Lygon Cocks, cast-iron chairs designed by Christopher Dresser and Thomas Jeckyll, an oak cabinet designed by Bruce Talbert as part of a commission for John Grant Morris, and ebony and ivory chairs designed by J. P. Seddon. It took the best part of the twentieth century for the decorative arts of the Victorian era to emerge fully from decades of cultural eclipse. There are, it might be argued, three key moments in this reappraisal. First, and of immeasurable significance, was the exhibition ‘Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts’ (V&A, 1952); second was the sadly posthumous The Pericles sideboard, now in the Met. Author’s image exhibition ‘Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Art, The Handley-Read Collection’ (Royal Academy, 1972), and where it provided an enticing foretaste of third (not to overlook many extraordinary what was to follow. Collectors are, by their collections created over the past four nature, competitive, and Scott derived decades) the formation and disposal of the particular satisfaction from having outbid John Scott Collection. the artists Gilbert & George when the As Stuart Durant and Michael sideboard was sold at Christie’s in 1986. Whiteway wrote succinctly in the As further confirmation of the sideboard’s ‘Introduction’ to The John Scott Collection, importance to the history of nineteenth- ii, ‘Great collectors are trailblazers. This century furniture, it was subject to a is one of the finest thematic collections of temporary export bar before being allowed the decorative arts to have been made by a to cross the Atlantic. private collector’. A fitting epitaph. It is only possible to be subjective in identifying highlights from the furniture martin p. levy

12 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Society Events

Coronavirus Update a first come, first served basis, but that all applications are equally considered We are carefully following the unfolding following the closing date. coronavirus situation. At the time of going Please email: events@ to press, the events advertised are scheduled furniturehistorysociety.org to apply for to take place. If any events need to be events or telephone 07775 907390. postponed we will offer to those who have expressed interest the option of a refund or the chance to re-book at a later date. Please Cancellations also check the website for changes. Please note that no refunds will be given for cancellations for events costing £10.00 Bookings or less. In all other cases, cancellations will be accepted up to seven days before the For places on visits, please apply to the date of a visit, but refunds will be subject Events Secretary, Beatrice Goddard, to a £10.00 deduction for administrative providing either a separate cheque for each costs. Please note that in the rare instances event or indicating that you wish to pay where members cannot pay until the by card or online. For online payments day of a visit, they will still be charged you will be provided with a link to a the full amount for the day if cancelling payment page and an event reference. less than seven days before the visit, or Where possible, joining instructions will be if they fail to attend. This is necessary as dispatched by email, so please remember to the Society has usually paid in advance provide your email address if you have one. for a certain number of members to Applications should only be made by participate in, for example, a tour/lunch. members who intend to take part in the Separate arrangements are made for study whole programme. No one can apply for weekends and foreign tours and terms are more than one place unless they hold a clearly stated on the printed details in each joint membership, and each applicant case. should be identified by name. If you wish to be placed on the waiting list, please enclose a telephone number where you The Forty-Fourth Annual can be reached. Please note that a closing Symposium date for applications for visits is printed in the Newsletter. Applications made after George IV — 1820 to 2020: the closing date will be accepted only Fresh Perspectives on the if space is still available. Members are reminded that places are not allocated on King’s Furniture furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 13 the wallace collection, wednesday 1 july 2020 manchester square, london 11.00 am–4.00 pm w1u 3bn For over 600 years, the Wrest estate was saturday 3 october 2020 home to one of the leading aristocratic 10.00 am–5.00 pm families in the country, the de Greys, with In the context of the coronavirus outbreak, each generation leaving its mark on the we have moved our Annual Symposium estate. Thomas, 2nd Earl de Grey (1781– from 28 March to Saturday 3 October 1859) designed the current house at Wrest 2020, 10.00 am–5.00 pm. Tickets for the Park in the 1830s, set in an outstanding Symposium and for lunch (optional) are restored garden landscape originating in still on sale through the Events Secretary the seventeenth century. The house itself ticket prices: £60 members, is a near unique example of nineteenth- £35 members under 35 years, century English architecture following £80 non-members the style of an eighteenth-century French château. The Earl carefully furnished its interiors, scouring auction houses and dealers to find the perfect pieces to complement the eighteenth-century French style of the house. The Archaeological Collections Store at Wrest Park houses over 153,000 historical artefacts spanning over 2,000 years of England’s history and adds up to a third of English Heritage’s total stored collection. Our visit will also include a tour to the A pair of pedestals by Tatham, Bailey & Store in order to examine a selection of Sanders, c. 1811, carved and gilt wood, furniture. 99 × 68 × 68 cm (whole object). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen After lunch, we will visit Ampthill Park Elizabeth II 2020. RCIN 3202 House with Sir Timothy Clifford. In 1661,

Visit to Wrest Park and Stores, and Ampthill Park House wrest park, silsoe, bedfordshire mk45 4hr ampthill park house, ampthill, bedfordshire mk45 2hf Ampthill Park House

14 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Charles II handed the Great Park portion of the manor including the sixteenth century Great Lodge to John Ashburnham and extensive rebuilding of ‘Great Park House’ was done from 1686. The house was then altered and redecorated in 1769–72 for the 2nd Earl and Countess of Upper Ossory by Sir William Chambers and the grounds landscaped by Capability Brown. In 1979, the mansion was rescued from dereliction and divided into four large homes. cost: £50 (includes lunch and tea/coffee) limit: 20 closing date for applications: friday 15 may 2020

Clock designed for the Banqueting Room of the Royal Pavilion by Robert Jones, and Preston Manor and Royal made, or compiled, by B. L. Vulliamy, c. 1819. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Pavilion, Brighton Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020, RCIN preston manor, preston 30006 drove, hove, brighton bn1 6sd brighton pavilion, 4/5 The manor house passed through several pavilion buildings, brighton owners, including the Stanfords, after bn1 1ee several centuries of ownership by the tuesday 7 july 2020 bishopric of Chichester and a period in which it was Crown property. We will 11.00 am–5.00 pm have a house tour with an emphasis on Preston Manor is the former manor furniture with the curator of decorative art house of the ancient Sussex village and the venue officer. of Preston, now part of the Then, continuing the theme of this coastal city of Brighton and Hove. The year’s Annual Symposium on George IV, present building dates mostly from 1738, we will visit Brighton Pavilion. Begun when the Lord of the Manor, Thomas in 1787, it was built in three stages as a Western, rebuilt the original sixteenth- seaside retreat for George, then Prince century structure (part of which remains of Wales, later Regent in 1811. This visit, inside), and 1905 when Charles Stanley with David Beevers, Keeper of the Royal Peach’s renovation and enlargement Pavilion, will specifically examine new gave the house its current appearance. loans from the Royal Collection.

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 15 cost £65 (includes lunch and (now known as the Long Hall) in 1730. tea/coffee) The house was then extended limit: 20 by Matthew Brettingham in the 1740s, who added the Palladian family wing. closing date for applications: James Wyatt added a north wing in the friday 15 may 2020 1770s, nearly all of which was demolished in the late 1960s, except for the Tapestry Visit to Goodwood House Drawing Room, with its beautiful goodwood, chichester, west figural chimneypiece by John Bacon sussex po18 0px and set of Gobelins tapestries. Wyatt monday 7 september 2020 also added two new wings at the 10.00 am–1.00 pm beginning of the nineteenth century, primarily to house the art collection Goodwood, one of England’s finest from Richmond House, which had burnt sporting estates, lies at the foot of down in 1791. The new wings include the South Downs. Its three façades the Egyptian Dining Room, one of the with copper-domed turrets look out first rooms in this country to embrace the across a well-wooded park and it fashionable Egyptian style. The stable has been the seat of the Dukes of block was designed for the 3rd Duke of Richmond since the late seventeenth Richmond by Sir William Chambers. century. Originally a Jacobean hunting The house has a mixture of English lodge with gabled wings, it was given a and French furniture, including a set of Classical makeover when the 2nd Duke seat furniture by Louis Delanois, with its of Richmond employed the architect original Lyons silk cut-velvet upholstery. A Roger Morris to remodel the great hall highlight of our visit will be the Card

Tapestry Drawing Room, Goodwood House. Photograph: James Fennell

16 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Room, which contains the famous set cost: £40 (includes tea/ of Sèvres porcelain commissioned by the coffee) 3rd Duke when he was ambassador in limit: 20 Paris. closing date for applications: The house was extensively friday 17 july 2020 redecorated in the 1990s under the direction of the current Duke of Richmond. The family wing, which is Autumn Study Trip to still occupied by the Duke and Duchess Cardiff of Richmond, includes the Large and friday 16 october–sunday 18 Small Libraries. The latter contains october 2020 Napoleon’s campaign chair, given by the Duke of Wellington to the 4th Duke This two-night, three-day Study Trip and Duchess of Richmond as a thank will focus on William Burges and Welsh you for hosting the famous Duchess of furniture. Richmond’s ball in Brussels just a few days Our visits include Cardiff Castle, before the Battle of Waterloo. remodelled in a spectacular Victorian Our visit will be led by James Peill, Gothic style by William Burges for the 3rd Curator of the Goodwood Collection. Marquess of Bute, and Lord Bute’s country

Summer Smoking Room at Cardiff Castle furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 17 retreat Castell Coch, where Burges created century houses in Britain, with its a Victorian dream of the Middle Ages. magnificent state rooms, and the small but We are fortunate that Matthew Williams, important group of furniture commissioned former curator at Cardiff Castle, will by Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, held by the speak to our group. The trip will be led by National Museum of Wales. Kate Hay, V&A Department of Furniture, N.B. The whole weekend will be Textiles and Fashion and FHS Events strenuous, including many steep and Committee Co-chair. narrow spiral staircases, and long We will visit the nearby St Fagans distances to cover on foot at St Fagans. National Museum of History, an Please contact the Events Secretary for open-air museum of buildings from further details and an application form. across Wales, and winner of the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2019. After an introduction by the furniture Annual Lecture curator, we will tour the site, which art workers’ guild, 6 queen includes farmhouses furnished with square, london wc1n 3at vernacular Welsh furniture, industrial thursday 22 october 2020 ironworkers’ cottages, a school and many others. We will also visit the Museum’s 6.00 pm for 6.30 pm start recently opened and excellent galleries of We are delighted to welcome Bertrand de Welsh furniture and crafts. Royere, who will speak on Pelagio Palagi, Other visits will include Tredegar House, decorator of the royal palaces of Turin and one of the most significant late seventeenth- Piedmont.

The Etruscan cabinet room, c. 1833, by Pelagio Palagi, in the Castello di Racconigi, Piedmont

18 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Following Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel’s Royere’s lecture will provide an publication on the Napoleonic decorations of opportunity to study the plethora of the Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome, and Hugh Palagi’s designs for furniture, juxtaposed Roberts’s description of George IV’s private with pictures of the furniture itself. The apartments in Windsor Castle, Bertrand de designs were in competition with the Royere has studied the decorative schemes latest Paris fashions and in some cases commissioned by Charles Albert, King influenced French models, as seems to of Sardinia (r. 1831–49) for his three main have been the case with the cabinet-maker residences in Piedmont: Palazzo Reale, Jeanselme. Turin, the Castello di Racconigi and the Bertrand de Royere published his Castello di Pollenzo. Pelagio Palagi (Bologna research in Pelagio Palagi, Décorateur des 1775–Turin 1860), already well established palais royaux de Turin et du Piémont (1832– in Milan as a history painter and portraitist, 1866) (Paris: Mare & Martin, 2017), 400 pp. was appointed by the young King in 1832 Admission to the lecture is free, but as designer and impresario of the Palace attendance is by ticket only, which must be decorations. acquired in advance. Please apply to the Royere based his research on the Events Secretary. Numbers are limited to Palace archives in Turin, on Palagi’s 80. correspondence and drawings, which were bequeathed to the Archiginnasio Comunale in Bologna, and on the Annual General Meeting surviving decorations and furniture and Works in Progress made by highly talented craftsmen in the geffrye museum (museum Turin, Genoa, Milan and Paris, such as of the home), geffrye the cabinet-makers Gabriele Capello and almshouses, 136 kingsland Henry Peters (a native of Windsor), the road, hoxton, london e2 8ea bronze-makers Colla e Odetti in Turin saturday 28 november 2020 and Lerolle in Paris, and the silversmith 11.00 am–1.00 pm Charles Nicolas Odiot. Palagi’s decorations range from the The Annual General Meeting for the year Gothic to the Etruscan and the neo- ending 30 June 2020 will be held at the Classical, in an interesting mixture of Geffrye Museum (Museum of the Home). styles typical of the 1830s and 1840s. The AGM will start at 11.00 am (coffee His style is often a tribute to the interior from 10.30 am). Details on the meeting decoration of Charles Percier and Pierre and accompanying talks will be published Fontaine, but also to the eclectic models of in the August Newsletter and on the FHS Claude Aimé Chenavard and his Nouveau website. Recueil (1833–35), and to the highly The Museum of the Home reveals the talented Venetian Giuseppe Borsato (1770– ways we live and the many meanings of 1849), not to mention the scuola d’ornato home with evocative displays of rooms (ornate school) from Brera, in Milan. and gardens through time and dynamic

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 19 Museum of the Home development. Illustration of the new entrance opposite Hoxton Overground Station. Visual by Secchi Smith, design by Wright & Wright Architects

exhibitions and events. Its home is the Grants beautiful eighteenth-century Geffrye The Society makes grants to individuals almshouses and gardens in Hoxton, East and organizations from two funds, which London. have been established thanks to the The Museum will reopen in Autumn generosity of members of the Society. They 2020 after a major redevelopment that will are administered by the Society’s Grants greatly improve access and open up spaces committee (Chair: Adriana Turpin), which previously unseen by the public in its 100- meets quarterly to consider applications year history. Much more of the collection — either for independent travel or study will be on display in new galleries or research, or for participation in the highlighting touching personal stories and Society’s study trips, both overseas and in important universal themes relating to the the United Kingdom. home. See the Grants section for more After the AGM, attendees will be able to information. visit the Museum until it closes at 5.00 pm.

20 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Other Notices

Please note that these events/notices are a superb Florentine pietre dure table not organized/issued by the Furniture top, with inserted Paston coats of arms, History Society. Information/booking probably acquired by William Paston instructions will be found under (1610–63) when he visited Florence in individual items. 1638 (illustrated). Members were urged to support this appeal. It is gratifying to ‘One rich stone table report that the daunting target of £895,000 was met at the end of November, and inlaid’ – A Happy Francesca Vanke, Keeper of Art, has Outcome asked that the Museum’s gratitude for In the August 2019 issue of this Newsletter the generosity of several members of the (215, pp. 20–22) a short illustrated Society, who contributed to this total, article drew attention to Norwich should be put on record. Castle Museum’s campaign to acquire ssj

Table top with the Paston arms, pietre dure, Florence, probably around 1625 and 1638 (the arms). Length 4 ft ¾ in. (124 cm); width 2 ft 6¼ in. (77 cm) furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 21 Lecture: Neo-Classicism Position Available: in the North, by Hakan Administrator Groth hatfields restoration, 26/28 lassco, brunswick house, sidney road, london sw9 0ts vauxhall, london sw8 2lg Hatfields are looking for someone to work wednesday 27 may 2020 closely with two pivotal members of the 6.30 for 7.00 pm team to maintain the smooth running of the business. Permanent salary based on Hakan Groth, author of Neoclassicism in the experience. North (London, 1990) will discuss how the Job description: Scandinavian countries in the eighteenth • Supporting project management and nineteenth centuries adopted the neo-Classical narrative of their neighbours • Process invoicing and estimating to the South — England, France, Holland • Professionally managing telephone and Germany. He will also discuss how answering, system and messages the Scandinavians developed their own • Inventory management elegant versions. • Data entry to internal database and This is a Salon Wednesday Talk, Sage organized by Historic Decoration, at • Liaising with the workshop teams LASSCO, Brunswick House, Vauxhall, and job sheet management London. Historic Decoration is run by • Filing and record keeping interior designer Caroline Percy and • Pr eparing presentations and client architectural historian Oliver Gerrish. communications They organize an annual series of talks • Maintaining communication with on aspects of historic architecture and subcontractors and suppliers interior design, plus regular four-day • Managing petty cash and workshop courses, exploring historic interior design supplies and its reinterpretation for the twenty-first • Managing building H&S, fire plan century. To obtain tickets for the talk and and security courses, contact info@historicdecoration. com. For more comprehensive • Undertaking any other reasonable information, see www.historicdecoration. task com • Skill requirements: • Advanced level MS Office and, At the time of going to press, the events preferred, PowerPoint, Photoshop advertised are scheduled to take place. and Excel Please check independent websites for • Proven ability to work autonomously further updates. and as part of a team

22 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 • Excellent communication skills: Exhibition: Objects from written, verbal and interpersonal skills the Kelmscott Manor • Ability to develop strong working Collection relationships internally and society of antiquaries, externally burlington house, piccadilly, • Excellent planning, time- london w1j 0be management and organizational This exhibition, originally scheduled for July– skills August this year, has now been postponed to • Flexible, driven and self-motivated either later in 2020 or to 2021; see website for To apply, please email a CV and short any update. introductory statement to [email protected] This summer, the Society of Antiquaries All applications will be considered. is holding a one-off exhibition of objects from the Kelmscott Manor collection. This includes works created by William Morris, Congress Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Philip Webb and The Association for Furniture Studies Edward Burne Jones, amongst others. will be hosting the third bi-annual They will be showcasing some items Congress on the History of Furniture that have never been on public display from 16–19 September 2020 at the in London before. This specially curated Design Museum in Barcelona. The 2020 exhibition will be held in the Society’s theme is ‘Connections’, which will historic apartments in Burlington House, focus on temporal, spatial, material and Piccadilly. formal connections within the history In 1871, the designer, poet, of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin conservationist and social activist William American furniture from antiquity to the Morris discovered Kelmscott Manor, modern day. The Congress includes an which became his Cotswolds home. He exclusive behind-the-scenes visit to the instantly fell in love with the seventeenth- Museum of Design, Barcelona, amongst century house, describing it after his others. For more information, see: first visit as ‘a heaven on earth’. See: https://www.estudidelmoble.com/en/ https://www.sal.org.uk/event/a-house- connections-2020/overview/ that-i-love-william-morris-kelmscott- manor/2020-07-13/

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 23 Book Reviews

Suggestions for future reviews and The original took Racknitz seven years publishers’ review copies should be sent to produce. Only twenty-three copies, to Simon Swynfen Jervis, 45 Bedford two, remarkably, in Sir John Soane’s Gardens, London w8 7ef (tel. 020 7727 library, have been located in present-day 8739; email: [email protected]). institutions. Racknitz’s entry in Jervis’s 1984 Dictionary of Design and Designers, Simon Swynfen Jervis (ed.), A Rare Treatise probably the first modern mention on Interior Decoration and Architecture: outside Germany, described it as ‘the Joseph Friedrich zu Racknitz’s Presentation earliest comprehensive history of interior and History of the Taste of the Leading Nations decoration and furniture’. Forty-eight (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, hand-coloured plates present twenty-four 2019). 349 pp., 57 col., 59 b. & w. illus. isbn ‘tastes’, in pairs, a first illustrating interior 9781606066249. £65 decoration and architecture and a second furniture. Simon Swynfen Jervis noticed Joseph Racknitz, who ensured that his book Friedrich zu Racknitz’s Presentation and achieved the highest production standards, History of the Taste of the Leading Nations refusing to publish a cheap edition, would (four volumes, Leipzig: Georg Joachim have been delighted by the Getty Research Göschen, 1796–99) in the Victoria and Institute’s re-publication, especially the Albert Museum Library ‘perhaps in reproductions of his beautiful colour 1969’. This discovery determined him plates. The translation of the text of to project an edited translation, an Racknitz’s Darstellung und Geschichte des ambition triumphantly fulfilled in 2019. Geschmacks comprises 217 pages of 349, a book within a book. The preface asks: ‘Why Racknitz? Indeed, who Racknitz?’. Joseph Friedrich Freiherr [Baron] zu Racknitz (1744–1818) was a nobleman, whose family was seated in Styria from 1224. His courtier father died when Racknitz was fourteen so he was close to his mother, who gave Frederick the Great his first flute. He was — in Jervis’s words — ‘rich, although not very rich’. The family seat was Schloss Lockwitz, south of Dresden, where Racknitz was brought up. A Protestant

24 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 freemason, he served from 1761 in an Uhlan regiment and the Life Grenadier Guards. Leaving the army in 1769 he was appointed a junior gentleman of the chamber in Dresden. By 1790 he was Marshal of the Household and in 1800 was appointed Court Marshal and directeur des plaisirs, responsible for the kitchens and opera, in addition to the decoration and furnishing of electoral palaces. The colour plates’ theatrical quality anticipates this operatic responsibility. Racknitz East Indian plate 39 was a polymath: composer, geologist, mineralogist, botanist, gardener, collector, art historian and curator. In 1808, Johan Friedrich Reichardt, friend of Goethe and Schiller, described him as ‘a sensitive and committed connoisseur and protector of the arts’. He was later called the ‘Maecenas of Saxony, Dresden in particular’. Racknitz’s magnum opus — he published widely otherwise — originated in the East Indian plate 40 Elector’s project to renovate Schloss Moritzburg, near Dresden. Racknitz Christian Friedrich Schuricht. proposed redecoration in sixteen ‘tastes’, Racknitz’s text comprises essays on each including Chinese and Gothic. This still- taste. They incorporate observations on art, born scheme was transmogrified into his architecture, decoration and landscaping, Presentation and History of the Taste of the but may also present history, topography Leading Nations (with twenty-four tastes). and anthropology. Apart from Europe, The Elector’s favourite, Count Camillo Racknitz included Near and Far Eastern Marcolini, Great Chamberlain and head countries, Mexico and Tahiti. His essays of the Meissen factory, was a supporter. lengthened as the book developed. Thus Racknitz’s house, designed and decorated Egypt and China have 700 words each, ‘in his own fine taste’ for his marriage in whereas Siberia has 12,000. His description 1796 to Charlotte von Bülow, daughter of primitive Kamchatka, arguably of the Danish ambassador, stood next to irrelevant to taste or interior decoration, the Japanisches Palais, which housed the was lampooned by Schiller and Goethe, electoral library, an essential source for his who admired the plates, while the architect far-ranging research. The painter Samuel Heinrich Gentz coined the ironic adjective Benedikt Arnold worked chez Racknitz on ‘Racknitzisch’. The author’s voice prefaces the colour plates, designed by the architect his twenty-four bibliographies: ‘The works

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 25 I have used are: …’. Having recommended arabesque decoration as ‘suitable for living and reception rooms where amusing and pleasant subjects are acceptable’, he tells his readers: ‘Available in Leipzig now are East Indian cotton fabrics which go well with arabesques’. His enthusiasms sometimes tempt Racknitz off piste and the logic of his book’s structure is not always evident. In a recent lecture Jervis aptly dubbed this idiosyncratic world-view from 1790s Saxony an ‘Enlightenment Kaleidoscope’. Racknitz’s text reflects contemporary knowledge of subjects both de rigueur (Greece and Rome) and exotic (Tahiti and Mexico). His book garnered immediate local acclaim followed by oblivion. Jervis has set it in context in three chapters elucidating commemorative exhibition in Leicester. It Racknitz’s social and intellectual inheritance is piquant to revisit the Guardian review by and career, while assessing the significance Fiona MacCarthy, who did much to revive and structure of his book. interest in the Arts & Crafts and who died ‘Racknitz Redivivus’ may be on 29 February this year. After praising recommended to anyone wishing to Gimson and the exhibition, her conclusion expand their understanding of the German is delightfully phrased: enlightenment. Racknitz’s masterpiece has As we eat off wooden platters bought been rescued from obscurity, translated, at Habitat, then surely we should remember Gimson taking lessons in edited and lucidly, authoritatively and making the traditional rush chairs, entertainingly explained to a twenty-first- singing ‘Birds of a Feather’ with the century audience. cottagers around him — a performance christopher rowell which apparently he frequently repeated — and manfully leading the village in a Morris dance. Surely Ernest Annette Carruthers, Mary Greensted Gimson was not just a fine designer but and Barley Roscoe, Ernest Gimson, Arts the first and greatest pseudo-country craftsman of them all. & Crafts Designer and Architect (Newhaven and London: Yale University Press, 2019). Gimson was first memorialized in 1924, 372 pp., 220 col., 99 b. & w. illus. isbn 978- five years after his death, in Ernest Gimson, 0-300-24626-1. £50 (HB) His Life and Work, beautifully printed essays by W. R. Lethaby, Alfred Powell and In 1969, fifty years after Ernest Gimson’s F. L. Griggs, who supplied seven evocative death, Lionel Lambourne organized a drawings, accompanying collotype plates 26 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 by Emery Walker. This new centenary election to the Art Workers’ Guild as volume also has three impeccably ‘Decorator’ are elements in a rich preamble qualified authors: apart from their writings to his move to the rural Cotswolds in 1893, Annette Carruthers and Mary Greensted aged twenty-eight. have looked after the principal Gimson The Pinbury workshop shared with collections in Cheltenham (and Leicester, the Barnsley brothers, the later more in the case of Carruthers), while Barley organized furniture business at Daneway Roscoe has a career in the crafts, is herself House, with Peter Waals as foreman, and a Gimson, and knew Stoneywell long Gimson’s building of his own ‘cottage’ before its 2013 acquisition by the National also at Sapperton, The Leasowes, are Trust (see Furniture History, 50 (2014)). the background to deep involvement in Their book, divided between Life village life, while maintaining contacts and Work, is handsomely designed and with the Arts & Crafts establishment richly illustrated, with comprehensive — hence a London exhibition in 1904 notes, index and bibliography. An image and displays in Ghent in 1913 and Paris of Leicester Secular Hall, with busts of in 1914. Although furniture is rightly a Socrates, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Robert dominant theme, Ernest Gimson puts his Owen and Jesus Christ, built in 1881 identity and achievement as an architect at the suggestion of Gimson’s father, fully into focus, an appendix listing eighty- Josiah, whose engineering firm then eight schemes, including an ambitious employed 270 men, is a telling emblem design for Canberra with a neo-Byzantine of the Nonconformist, freethinking, flavour, alongside better-known projects entrepreneurial background which such as Stoneywell and Bedales. Varied informed his attitudes and brought him a church work and involvement with the private income. Indeed, the importance of Society for the Protection of Ancient family connections emerges throughout Buildings are recurrent themes. Metalwork (ten Gimsons subscribed for twenty-two and plasterwork constitute predictably copies of the 1924 book!). The electric rich chapters, but embroidery may be influence of William Morris, encountered unexpected, predominantly white-on- in 1884, the example of his architectural white work, delightful but unflashy. master J. D. Sedding’s engagement with Building on its predecessors, Ernest craft (and Gimson’s early hands-on Gimson is now the standard account of his plasterwork), the foundation in 1891 of life and achievements, fully worthy of his Kenton & Co., a short-lived furniture- 2019 centenary. making collective, and Gimson’s then simon swynfen jervis

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 27 ECD News and Report

Early Career Development on the main techniques involved with furniture-making, including woods, Group marquetry, carving and gilding. The As part of its core aims, the Furniture second and current series, ‘Beyond Wood’, History Society created an ‘Early Career has been looking at techniques such as Development’ (ECD) group to focus japanning and gilt-bronze mounts, and on younger members and emerging materials, whether pietra dura or plywood. scholars. It aims to encourage their Each summer, thanks to the generosity of interest in furniture studies and a deeper the Masterpiece art fair, students enjoy a understanding of the object as well as privileged visit to the fair, led by furniture providing a networking forum. ECD conservator Peter Holmes. events focus on three main activities: Anyone interested in joining these evening visits and lectures, research sessions must be a paid-up junior member conferences and curatorial visits to the of the Society and should apply to European Art Fair at Maastricht (‘TEFAF’). Charlotte Johnson, coordinator of the ECD There is no charge for participation in events: ecdvisits@furniturehistorysociety. the ECD group, but attendees must be org members of the Society. The research aspect of the ECD activities The ECD group began with a series of takes the form of a conference or study visits on weekday evenings, focusing on day by emerging scholars. These are held a close examination of a piece or a small approximately every eighteen months, group of objects, whether in museum alternating between London and New stores, restoration workshops, dealers’ York. The London conferences are held at galleries or art fairs. When offered funding the Wallace Collection, while those in New from the Oliver Ford Trust to further the York have been held at the Metropolitan careers of young professionals, it was Museum of Art and the Frick Collection. agreed that the Society would set up a These conferences are intended to support research forum for emerging scholars to new research and bring the work of present their work. The Oliver Ford Trust students and young scholars to a wider also supports an annual two-day visit by public. four or five curators from UK museums The visit to TEFAF enables junior and galleries to TEFAF. museum curators and those taking The evening visits take the form of a on responsibility for historic furniture monthly series of talks and visits based on collections to spend two days looking at looking and learning about materials and furniture closely under the guidance of techniques. The first series concentrated Yannick Chastang, a leading furniture

28 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 conservator, who also vets for the Fair, and afterwards. The papers that follow show Adriana Turpin, Chairman of the Society’s the wide range of interests and approaches Grants Committee. Those attending are to be found in the field of furniture and not only able to handle furniture and other interiors, covering French, English and objects closely but also to learn about the Dutch topics, patronage and collecting and workings of the art fair and discuss the finally twentieth-century design. objects with the dealers and with their The Manufacturing Network of Louis XIV’s peers. Silver Furniture The ECD group has grown each The silver furniture produced for Louis year, offering younger colleagues an XIV between 1666 and 1689 was a marvel opportunity to learn and to socialize. It of the French court, which wowed visitors now has a chapter in New York, led by and inspired a fashion for silver furniture Kelly Konrad, who regularly leads similar at courts throughout Europe. At Versailles, events to those in London, bringing the royal apartments glittered with together new members not just from New gigantic silver tables, chandeliers, orange York but also from various other US cities. planters, guéridons, stools, ewers and more. For further information about the ECD After Louis ordered, in December 1689, or the Society’s research and travel grants, that all large silver, including his own please apply to Jill Bace, Grants Secretary: collection of some 20 tonnes, be melted [email protected] down, the loss of this magnificent silver was mourned at court. Within a short time, Research Symposium the furniture took on a legendary status, which has more or less persisted until friday 22 november 2019 today. The symposium is part of the Early Career The accepted narrative for the Development initiative inaugurated by manufacture of the furniture is that the FHS to create occasions for emerging the design of the pieces can be entirely scholars to meet and learn about credited to Le Brun and their manufacture furniture. Our fifth conference, hosted to a small group of royal silversmiths who, by the Wallace Collection, brought seven although highly skilled, simply followed speakers from several different countries Le Brun’s directions. Furthermore, as the to speak on subjects ranging from the royal silversmiths were all French, it has seventeenth century to the present day. been suggested that the furniture stems As an important forum for emerging from a purely French tradition. scholars to present their research in public, A re-examination of the documentary it is also an opportunity for them to meet evidence suggests that some elements of contemporaries engaging in the subject. this legend are questionable. As has been We were delighted that this year more noted, Le Brun’s designs for the silver are than forty young members attended the rather sketch-like in nature and do not day, bringing their friends and colleagues provide precise technical details. It is likely to enjoy the day and the reception that the silversmiths translated Le Brun’s furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 29 designs into technical drawings, even Indeed, we can probably assume that adapting them to enable the designs to be the ébénistes played an even greater role created in metal. in the production of some of the silver There is also evidence for extensive furniture. While many of the pieces were collaboration between the silversmiths simply upscaled versions of traditional themselves. There are numerous silversmithing work, other pieces, such examples of multiple silversmiths as tables, stools and balustrades, require working separately on matching sets of a knowledge of furniture engineering items, and even working together on the and construction that silversmiths’ same piece. One set of payments recorded training does not encompass. The royal in the royal accounts reveals an even ébénistes must have been consulted during more complex network of production. the design phases of such pieces and, From 1684 to 1685, five silversmiths, consequently, had some influence over the Alexis Loir, François de Villers, Pierre design of the furniture. Considering the Merlin, Nicholas Delaunay and the multicultural nature of the royal ébénisterie widow of Pierre Germain, were paid workshops — the Italian Cucci and Dutch for two sets of three silver guéridons. Pierre Gole being prime examples — it An ironmonger, Henry Vautrain, was becomes more difficult to argue that paid for six iron armatures for the Louis’ silver furniture was purely a guéridons, and a joiner, Galiot, and the French accomplishment. As was the case sculptor Étienne le Hongre were paid for with royal painting, sculpture, tapestry, providing wooden and wax models for ébénisterie, stone carving and so on, royal the manufacture of the guéridons. This set silversmithing also benefited from the of payments is also the only documentary innovations and expertise imported with evidence to support the theory that the migrant artisans. Rather than the silver furniture, or at least some of it, was furniture being a purely local manufacture, fabricated by casting. The wooden and dominated by Le Brun and restricted to the wax models of the guéridons were almost workshops of a handful of silversmiths, it certainly used for the lost-wax casting was the cross-trade collaborative project of process. However, the surviving probate a broader network of artisans. inventories of royal silversmiths show christina clarke that they did not own the equipment Centre for Art History and Art Theory required for casting such works, and the Australian National University casting must have been outsourced to other artisans. The strongest contenders Aristocratic Interiors and Anglo-Franco- for casting works of this scale and Dutch Court Style in Late Stuart England quality were not sculpture founders, as ‘In a monarchy every nobleman ought to one might have expected, but the royal model himself on the fashion of the Court’, ébénistes such as Domenico Cucci and wrote Michel de Montaigne in 1580 from André-Charles Boulle, both of whom the tower of his Périgord château, and the created significant work in ormolu. court has traditionally been seen as the

30 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 arbiter of taste. This paper examined the Personal connections also facilitated influence of the court on the furnishing the acquisition of luxury furnishings. of the town and country houses of the Through the Duchess’s stepfather Ralph 6th Duke and Duchess of Somerset Montagu, the 6th Duke and Duchess of (Petworth and Northumberland House) Somerset were able to commission a set of and 1st Duke and Duchess of Devonshire ‘Grotesques’ tapestry designs from Jean- (Chatsworth and Devonshire House) in the Baptiste Monnoyer, a French decorative late seventeenth century. painter who was working at Montagu This international courtly style House in London during the summer of permeated into aristocratic interiors in a 1690. A previously unexamined contract variety of ways. In some cases, courtiers in the Petworth House archives shows directly imitated what they had seen at that these tapestries were worked in 1691 court. Squab couches or daybeds enjoyed by royal arras-worker John Vanderbank; a resurgence of popularity in 1689 when their dimensions accord with the walls Queen Mary ordered four for her closets of the ‘Tapestry Room’ in the principal at Hampton Court, Holland House, enfilade at Petworth, now incorporated into Kensington House and Whitehall. This the enlarged Carved Room. This was the was quickly followed by the Duchess of first time the design had been worked in Somerset, who commissioned four similar England (as the contract makes clear), and squabs from several different makers, it was clearly something of a fashion coup two of which were destined for her ‘Great for the Duke and Duchess. Apartment’ at Northumberland House. Just as the English court was part of a Queen Mary’s Water Gallery at Hampton European stylistic network, wealthy and Court exerted a direct influence on the powerful courtiers saw themselves as 4th Earl (later 1st Duke) of Devonshire. part of a European elite. They drew on He commissioned a lacquer-panelled local and immigrant craftsmen, imports, closet with mirror-glass pilasters from personal connections and foreign travel Gerrit Jensen in November 1692, just a few to source the finest and most fashionable months after Jensen had installed a similar furnishings that Europe had to offer, closet in the Water Gallery. projecting a personal magnificence that Sometimes, aristocratic patrons could echoed that of the monarch. draw on migrant craftsmen to introduce amy lim new styles into England. Thus, Gerrit DPhil in History Jensen was employed by the Duchess of University of Oxford Somerset from at least 1681, enabling her to be among the first to acquire new types From Craftsmen to Patrons – Transmitting of furniture, such as the ‘fowlding righting Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century France Table markatree lined with velvit and Pieces of furniture were part of an Gould Galoome’, purchased in February overwhelmingly masculine professional 1688, the first recorded instance of this constellation. Although female presence type in England. in workshops is documented, the legal

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 31 and social frames defining work and property excluded them from the space of the ateliers as it was perceived and represented. As implied in the Guild’s statutes, the menuisiers concentrated on the carcass of the piece, and on its assemblage. They portrayed themselves not so much through their tools or workshops, but through the act of production, through this embodied knowledge. An image such as Larmessin’s 1695 Habit du Menuisier-Ebéniste linked the artisan’s body directly with his tool and products. Yet, it placed his identity neither as the production, nor the structure, but instead camouflaged it. Heavily indebted to fashion plates and caricature, the picture’s vocabulary substituted the set of mechanical tasks that characterized the identity of the joiner with fashionable symbols of ornaments and tools. Larmessin’s 1695 Habit du Menuisier- Furniture thus appeared as a portable Ébéniste garment. In the Encyclopédie, the depiction of the Roubo’s 1769 treaty L’art du Menuisier, menuisier shows a subtle but powerful aimed to define the process of making attempt to expropriate an otherwise furniture more precisely. Despite Roubo’s tacit artisanal knowledge and adapt it personal views on the menuisiers en meuble, for its elite readership. The Menuiserie en he rightly highlighted the preponderance meuble section conveyed very little sense of internal structure over ornament. His of the practice. While tools and objects use of a gender-specific vocabulary linked were widely described and depicted, the producing body with the product’s the particular processes associated with body. Particularly representative was the making furniture were absent. The joiner’s depiction of the hand as quintessential masculinity was reduced to his tools synecdoche of the menuisier. and a generic workshop. The Encylopédie The type of hand shown in his moreover suggested a perceived illustration, however, hardly resembled gendering of furniture-making. The sexual that of a labourer. Instead, Roubo was division of labour appeared bound to concerned with presenting an elite type parts of the chair, with men taking care of artisan who could serve elite readers, of the menuiserie and women focusing on linking the quality of the hand with the the tapisserie. A third text, André-Jacob quality of the craft.

32 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 In all these examples previously cited that contemplated the benevolence and were cases where the menuisiers were not personability of Henri IV, as well as in control of their image. Self-portraits, his agenda of state reform. Meanwhile, however, both textual and pictorial, Parisian theatres presented fifteen stage allowed some menuisiers to create their productions on the subject of the monarch own personal representations. Charles between 1775 and 1782. This surge in Cressent distinguished himself from other popular enthusiasm for Henri IV in the joiners by highlighting the solidity of his last quarter of the eighteenth century pieces’ manufacture in the catalogues of is reflected in the production of French his sales, which he organized at his home. decorative arts of the period, which Furthermore, he published an engraving of included the replication and repurposing David Tenier’s Les Compagnons Menuisiers, of a medallic image of the King that had a painting he owned, thus creating a been created in 1606–07 by the sculptor link between the work and the domestic Guillaume Dupré (1574–1643). spaces, and taking masculine identity Drawing on surviving objects, archival beyond the professional sphere. sources and historic sales catalogues The birth of the artisan as a masculine that were examined in preparation, this identity in the eighteenth century was paper surveyed the practice of fitting contiguous with the development of Dupré’s medals of Henri IV to furniture the personal, masculine spaces. As can be seen in the Marquis de Marigny’s correspondence with his menuisier Pierre Garnier, once included in the interior, pieces then came into the artistic ownership of the patron. Male patrons saw themselves as the creative power that produced the pieces, and the image of the menuisier discursively and visually confirmed this fiction. leo stefani Phd Student Courtauld Institute of Art

Guillaume Dupré’s Image of Henri IV in French Eighteenth-Century Decorative Arts An interest in Henri IV (1553–1610) flourished in French literature from the early eighteenth century, beginning in 1723 with Voltaire’s ten-canto poem, La Henriade. However, the years between 1766 Levasseur Cabinet. © The Wallace and 1770 saw a proliferation of panegyrics Collection

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 33 and assessed how they were collected, son Johannes van Venedien (1753–1810). reproduced in a variety of media and A second son of Reijnier, Hendrik van formed part of a much larger trend in Venedien (1744–1812), also worked as a French decorative art objects that were cabinet-maker in The Hague. With guild created to interpret and perpetuate the regulations in mind and from an economic memory of the King and his reign. point of view, producing both chairs and alexander collins cabinets was a very successful option. Riesener Project Leverhulme Fellow Having both master titles enabled Reijnier The Wallace Collection and Johannes van Venedien and Matthijs Horrix to offer a more complete range of Van Venedien, Patriotic Cabinet-Makers in furniture to their customers. Unfortunately, Late Eighteenth-Century The Hague no furniture by one of the van Venedien The Hague has been the location of the cabinet-makers has survived, as far is Dutch court since the Middle Ages, known. However, it is certain all three making the city internationally orientated made high-quality furniture and had a and a political centre where many prominent clientele, amongst them the diplomats and noblemen settled because former grand pensionary of the Dutch of the presence of the Stadtholder and Republic Pieter van Bleiswijk (1724–90) his family. The wealthy citizens of The and members of several prominent noble Hague were a sought-after clientele for families. Archival research has also shown the many craftsmen in the city. Many of that the van Venediens were also active far these craftsmen moved from elsewhere to outside of The Hague. Both Johannes and The Hague for economic opportunities. Hendrik van Venedien sold their furniture Among them was the famous furniture- in the latest fashion across the country maker Matthijs Horrix (1735–1809), who at fairs in Middelburg, Rotterdam and moved from Germany to The Hague and Amsterdam, and even exported furniture had a flourishing career as the preferred to Rostok, Germany, for example. By doing purveyor of furniture for the court of so, these craftsmen showed an unusual Stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange level of entrepreneurship. (1748–1806). During his career, Horrix It is remarkable that, despite their became both a master cabinet-maker and successful careers, none of the van a master chair-maker. Besides Horrix, Venediens supplied furniture to the only two other furniture-makers in The court of the Stadtholder. The court may Hague, who also probably originated from have shunned them because of their Germany, are known to have been both involvement in the patriotic association master cabinet-makers and master chair- in The Hague. In the last quarter of the makers in the second half of the eighteenth eighteenth century more and more citizens century. These are Reijnier van Venedien of the Dutch Republic became dissatisfied (c. 1720–65), who produced a second with the way Stadtholder William V ruled masterpiece, for the Chairmakers’ Guild, the country and united themselves in sixteen years before Horrix would, and his so-called Vrijkorpsen, ‘Free Corps’. These

34 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 armed associations strove to democratize Over the past eighteen months, the the government of the Republic and their MFA Boston has been working on the members became known as Patriots. The reinstallation of a period room that has Patriots in The Hague distributed many been in the Museum’s collection since pamphlets, requests and membership 1924. Working with the architectural lists and in several of these Johannes and restoration firm, Traditional Line, the room Hendrik van Venedien are mentioned, just was reassembled piece by piece in a new like many hundreds of other craftsmen in gallery space. Through the process, we had The Hague. In most cases the members the opportunity to examine the physical are listed with their name, street name boiserie for the first time in almost a and profession. For now, it cannot be hundred years. Close examination showed concluded yet that the court did indeed that panels in the room dated from two shun the van Venediens for their political distinct time periods: the eighteenth activities. In any case, the demographic century and the early twentieth century. data in documents published by the The reinstallation of the room in the patriotic association is a particularly recent past afforded the opportunity interesting source to gain more insight to delve more deeply into the room’s into the networks of craftsmen, their history prior to its arrival at the Museum. clients and political and social activities in It came from an important — but short- eighteenth-century The Hague. lived — Gilded Age mansion on Fifth sebastiaan van venetien Avenue in New York City built by banker Leiden University William Salomon. The room — the ‘Grand Salon’ — is comprised of white Patrons, Period Rooms and the Museum: and gold wooden panelling with an The French Salon at the Museum of Fine eccentric purple, grey and pink marle Arts, Boston

Drawing Room decorated by Jules Allard et Fils (active in New York and Paris), c. 1903. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 35 baseboard. There are three large sets Administration Building metal furniture to of double-glazed doors, complete with the open offices of the Googleplex. Beyond gilded bronze hardware supplied by the outlining the changes in physicality of firm Bricard of Paris. These three doors office spaces and furniture, this paper would have originally looked out over also questions conventional narratives 83rd Street. Additional interior doors led of design changes and proposes that the into the room from the entrance hall of the evolution of office furniture can be tied to mansion and on into a smaller room — a need for capitalistic control over labour the ‘Petit Salon’. A number of decorative in the workplace. overdoors of pastoral scenes lend the In this paper Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1904 room a playful and lively air. Complete Larkin Administration Building is used as with a carved white marble mantelpiece a starting point for the modern office. This and large mirror, the entire space is both office-as-factory featured large open spaces impressively grand and subtly intimate. with standardized metal desks in straight After Salomon’s death, the mansion was rows, complete with affixed, cantilevered dismantled and sold off piecemeal before seats allowing only for movements Wright it was demolished. Notorious dealers believed would be necessary. French & Company purchased the room Regimented office spaces remained and sold it directly to wealthy Boston art relatively standard until the introduction collector Mrs Harriet J. Bradbury who, of Bürolandschaft (Office Landscaping) in turn, donated it to the MFA, where it by the German Quickborner Consulting has lived ever since. The room’s status Group in the late 1950s. Bürolandschaft in the collection has fluctuated from designs maintained wide open office genuine eighteenth-century room to spaces, but instructed that desks and early twentieth-century fake, and is now potted plants be deployed in order to acknowledged to be a mixture of the two disrupt lines of sight and create a facsimile time periods. The reinstallation of the of privacy. Bürolandschaft served as the room in 2018–20 included the addition inspiration for the next office furniture of period appropriate parquet de Versailles benchmark — Action Office. Developed flooring. Two cut-glass and amethyst and sold by Herman Miller, Action Office chandeliers will be re-wired and installed introduced modularity to the office, to provide subtle atmospheric lighting to allowing companies to buy a matching the space. suite of furniture to be adjusted and courtney harris rearranged as needed. Action Office Museum of Fine Arts, Boston achieved workspace division through a series of purpose-built dividers, available Where Can You Cry in an Open-Plan Office? in many shapes, colours, sizes and Office Furniture 1904–2019 potential usages. This paper details the changing nature The popularity of Action Office of office furniture and interior design prompted a proliferation of similar from Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1904 Larkin partition-based office furniture systems,

36 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 quickly termed ‘cubicles’. Unlike Action the spaces in which we work. Applying Office, cubicles offered little design merit a paradigm of control, offices and their of their own, frequently appearing in furniture have not changed in the same shades of grey or beige and lacking the way for all office workers because not research-based ergonomic features of all office workers need to be controlled. Action Office. In cubicle layouts dividing Control and power dynamics within the walls, originally intended to provide office provide answers as to why the privacy, modularity and personalized cubicle and open office were slow to catch spaces were heightened, lengthened on in northern Europe, where organized and fixed into place. While the cubicle labour exerts more control over office remains a prevalent design fixture in office proceedings. The need to control workers spaces, furniture and interiors more akin can also account for why office designs to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin designs are re-invigorated and re-introduced, and have recently gained tremendous ground. why employees in 2019 sit in offices almost Termed the ‘open office’, these designs identical to their 1904 counterparts. feature rows of frequently narrow desks This paper concludes by arguing that with minimal or no divisions. office furniture serves as an omnipresent Such an account of the evolution physical reminder to office workers that of office furniture raises several key the space in which they work, and in fact questions: why has the office not changed their existence during working hours, is in the same way for everyone, why has not their own. And, further, that continued the office not changed in the same ways close study of office furniture and the everywhere and why have these ‘changes’ spaces in which it is situated has the seemed to repeat themselves? This paper potential to provide important insights challenges accepted understanding of the into our labour system, priorities in the role of technology in directing changes to workplace and the role of design and office furniture, suggesting instead that the designers in enabling such a system. concept of capitalist control over workers petra seitz has been the core motivator of changes to MA, Royal College of Art/V&A

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 37 Reports on Society Events

Members will have noticed that the and his wife Hélène de Rothschild, new Newsletter includes many more daughter of Salomon de Rothschild. photographs than before. The Editor Originally in the hands of the De Haar would be grateful if members could send family and from 1440 onwards with the as separate files high quality digital van Zuylen van Nijevelt family, today it photographs, 1MB minimum, taken is a private foundation. For its design, the during Society visits and events that can Baron and his wife had turned to Pierre be used to illustrate the reports. Where Cuypers (1827–1921), an architect whose indicated, a longer version of a report is recent works, the Rijksmuseum and the available from the Events Secretary, email: Amsterdam Central Station, had made him [email protected] famous. Its careful and thorough ten-year restoration project was completed in 2011. The Netherlands Study The large scale of the interior is Trip dramatically established upon entering the truly ‘Great Hall’, corresponding to thursday 19 september–sunday the inner courtyard of the medieval castle, 22 september 2019 which turns out to be also refined in its Our first day started with a visit to the carved decoration, its numerous windows Atelier Building of the Rijksmuseum, enhanced with stained glass and its partly Amsterdam, led by Paul van Duin, Head gilded wooden ceiling featuring coats of of Furniture Conservation, to see work arms of families related to the van Zuylen. in progress on two seventeenth-century Cuypers not only designed the architecture Japanese lacquer cabinets from the Dutch and the ceiling plasterwork but also Royal Collections and a Japanese lacquer many furniture pieces and wainscots, of chest, the so-called ‘Mazarin chest’, from the which the Dining Room retains several collection of the Rijksmuseum. It concluded examples both in wood and wrought iron. in Utrecht with a lecture, ‘Looting Het Loo’, In the Great Hall also stands a series of by Prof. Dr Johan de Haan, Head Curator at late Renaissance and Baroque cupboards, Museum Paleis Het Loo. among them a rich late seventeenth- century Hamburg example in walnut, with De Haar Castle allegories and peopled scrolls carved in De Haar Castle is a large neo-Gothic high relief. residence, a restoration and reconstruction of a fourteenth-century ruin, built and Museum Huis Doorn furnished between 1892 and 1912, for The mid-fourteenth-century fortified Baron Etienne van Zuylen van Nijevelt castle, largely rebuilt from the seventeenth

38 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 One of a pair of chest of drawers by Spindler to the nineteenth century, and restored Highlights included in the ‘Gobelins in 1991, has been the residence in exile Room’ are the pair of richly adorned chests from 1920 of Wilhelm II (1859–1941), of drawers by one of the Spindler brothers the last German Emperor, following the (Johann Friedrich or Heinrich Wilhelm), proclamation of the German Republic and one of the most admirable examples of his abdication in November 1918. Berlin Rococo inspired by French Louis Wilhelm was allowed by the German XV models, combining here notably government to furnish Huis Doorn with elaborate floral veneer and bronzes, both numerous furniture pieces, works of art gilded and silvered. This pair was made and personal objects from the private c. 1767 for the New Palace in Sanssouci rooms of his formal palaces in Berlin and epitomizes the kind of works they (Stadtschloss, Bellevue and Monbijou made for Frederick the Great. In the same Schlösser) and Potsdam-Sanssouci (Neues room hangs an equally amazing KPM Palais). Cornelis Van der Bas, curator chandelier of about the same date, made of this house museum, pointed out that of porcelain and bronze branches, signed the choice of objects and furniture items by Pierre Geoffroy. In the Dining Room, was guided by three criteria such as late eighteenth-century Berlin furniture the reminder of the ties of the House of relating to the reign of Frederick William Orange and that of the Hohenzollern. They II of Prussia (1786–97) is of particular testify to Wilhelm’s admiration for his interest both for its design and the quality ancestors, particularly Frederick the Great, of its execution. This includes a suite of while other objects, such as portraits, are eighteen chairs, designed by the architect reminders of the ties of his family with the Carl Gotthard Langhans and executed great royal houses of Europe. in the 1790s, in mahogany with marble

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 39 medallions and gilt bronzes, with a design house designed by Maurits Post was on their pierced backs which derives from built between 1673 and 1685 for Godard Thomas Sheraton’s The Cabinet-Maker and Adriaan van Reede (1621–91) and his wife Upholsterer’s Drawing Book. A pair of side Margaretha Turnor (1613–1700) after the tables of the late 1780s, also in mahogany, previous castle was burnt down by the has been attributed to the most prominent French invaders in 1672. From that family Berlin cabinet-maker of the period, namely it passed down to the Bentinck family in Johann Gottlob Fiedler, after a design by 1879. And in 1976 the house, inventory Karl von Gontard. and gardens were sold by the family to the In several other rooms are to be found Castles of Utrecht Foundation. typical furniture from Berlin of the 1730– The most exceptional group of furniture 40s, with cedar veneer: a chest of drawers, of the house is to be found in the Grand possibly designed by Georg Wenzeslaus Salon (Grote Zaal). It is a rare seventeenth- von Knobelsdorff, with distinctive curving century veneered set including two of body and legs a well as of bronzes; a large cabinets on stands, one table and pair of bookcases with writing desk in a two candle stands (guéridons). Because pull-out drawer, made for Queen Elisabeth of its sumptuous and highly skilled Christine of Prussia (as shown by the floral marquetry covering all the visible heraldic cartouche of the pediment), outer surfaces, it has been attributed c. 1733–40, the veneer of which also to the cabinet-maker Jan van Mekeren features contrasting bands of padouk. Two (1658–1733) from Tiel (Gelderland), more late eighteenth-century neo-Classical who had set up in Amsterdam c. 1687. A style pieces of contrasting technique comparable study of both the Amerongen and effect are noteworthy: a mahogany and the Rijksmuseum cabinets by use of veneered side table with bronzes and sensors measuring the inner and outer an Italian scagliola top featuring a climate-related changes and cracks has picturesque ruin; a rare pair of chests of been carried out by the Climate4Wood drawers with red lacquer ground and Research Project. Also noteworthy in the painted landscape medallions and stylized same room are two suites of Louis XVI scrolls, produced by the Braunschweig settees including two sofas and armchairs Stobwasser factory, which opened a branch (fauteuils and bergères), stamped by the in Berlin in 1771. Fine furniture made by French joiner Jean-Baptiste III Lelarge. the Berlin cabinet-maker Julius Zwiener c. In the Portraits Gallery, our attention 1900 is also to be found in several rooms of was also drawn to a rare travel chest of the house. the second half of the seventeenth century, painted in brown and featuring crowned Amerongen Castle interlaced initials (G A V R M T), which are We were met by Curator Lodewijk those of Godard Adriaan van Reede and Gerretsen and Paul van Duin (Head of Margaretha Turnor. Furniture Restoration of the Rijksmuseum). marc-henri jordan This great seventeenth-century Dutch

40 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 De Wiersse from the Alto Adige, decorated with On Saturday, we started at the moated curiously Dutch-looking male figures. The brick manor house of De Wiersse, noted Dining Room walls were hung with inset for its English-style gardens. Rebuilt landscape paintings of 1822 by Willem after 1678, De Wiersse came, in 1893, Uppink, bought by Alice in 1916, while in into the possession of Victor de Stuers, the Music Room members were attracted the founder of monument protection in by a Roentgen writing-cabinet of c. 1770 the Netherlands and the moving spirit and an English writing desk of 1690–1700 behind the building of the Rijksmuseum. with arabesque marquetry. De Stuers restored the house between 1907 and 1912 and his memory is kept Jachthuis Sint Hubertus alive by his Grote Zaal, hung with gilded A complete contrast was formed by the leather from Mechelen, transferred by his tough, modernist Jachthuis Sint Hubertus, daughter, Alice, from his town house in where we were shown round by the The Hague. Alice and her husband, the curator, Yuri van der Linden, from the English Major W. E. Gatacre, gave the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency. garden and park their present structure. The Jachthuis is a hunting lodge, We had the good fortune to be shown designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage for round by the present owner, Mary Gatacre, Helene Kröller-Müller, and her husband granddaughter of Alice, and by Cornelis Anton, whose collection now forms the de Bas, curator of Huis Doorn. The Salon Kröller-Müller Museum at Otterlo. Built (south room) with an eighteenth-century between 1915 and 1920 of brick and slate, overmantel taken from a demolished with the brick inside the building glazed, building in Leiden, had an armchair of the lodge is dominated by a central 1640–50, possibly from Norwich, with tower 31 m high, giving extensive views original turkey-work covers and wool over the surrounding De Hoge Veluwe fringe, and a Lombardy chest, probably National Park. Berlage also designed

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 41 the interiors, with all the elements, tiles, which the room contained a fine collection lamps, furniture, crockery and cutlery with twist stems. In the Library, the books coordinated. In plan, the lodge is shaped included Diderot’s Encyclopédie, which like a letter ‘Y’, with the two arms of that had been judiciously left in its original letter embracing the courtyard like the paper covers, while a further bedroom antlers of a stag and with the north side was furnished with a four-poster bed with of the courtyard enclosed by the former a brocade velvet bedspread and with yet dog kennels. The main range towards the another Louis XVI Dutch secretaire en lake consists of the Dining Room, flanked suite with those in the Green Drawing at one end by the apsidal Smoking Room, Room. with its Art Deco humidor, veneered with Biljoen Castle Coromandel ebony and lined with zinc, at the other by the identically shaped Tea Biljoen Castle, built around 1661 by Room. The furniture, largely of Macassar Alexander van Spaen, came onto the ebony, was supplied by the firm of Mutters market in 2006 after the death of the in The Hague, the Dining Room table last private owner and was bought by having the cross of Saint Hubert on its the Geldersch Landschap & Kasteelen legs. The doors in the grander rooms were Foundation on condition that the building of the same wood, with a characteristic should remain inhabited. The tour ornament of three chamfered verticals. members were graciously entertained to dinner in the castle by the present Middachten Castle tenants, Marnix and Mary Heersink, who At Middachten Castle, a late seventeenth- have given major support towards its century brick building, built on the site of restoration. Before dinner, the Foundation’s an earlier castle for Gode van Rede, Earl of Curator, Jorien Jas, showed us the Ballroom Athlone, victor of the Battle of the Boyne, of 1780–82 on the first floor, with its stucco we had the privilege of being shown decorations of the Pantheon, the Ponte round by the present owner, Count zu Milvio, the pyramid of Cestius, the tomb Oldenburg. The castle has a magnificent of Cecilia Metella and the temple of the staircase, with carved balustrades, Sybil at Tivoli after Piranesi’s Vedute di contained within an oval well surmounted Roma. The late nineteenth-century seat by a stucco dome and enclosed by an furniture, which still has its original pale arched gallery at first-floor level. In the blue silk covers matching the Ballroom Blue Drawing Room was a small cabinet curtains, was acquired from an exhibition with a corner marble chimneypiece at Arnhem in 1879. The eighteenth-century displaying porcelain. The Green Drawing parquetry floor has a late nineteenth- Room and the Dining Room contained century heating system inserted into it, attractive Louis XVI marquetry furniture, with metal grilles fitted into the earlier presumably Dutch, notably drop-front Greek key border. The Tapestry Room secretaires and a sideboard fitted with a was hung with panels of seventeenth- zinc-lined sink for rinsing wine glasses, of century verdure tapestry woven in Delft

42 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 and Amsterdam. From 1849, Biljoin was occupied by Anna Pavlovna, widow of King William II of the Netherlands, who found the castle reminiscent of Pavlovsk, and we were able, thanks to the kindness of our hosts, to drink coffee in her private apartments, which have been furnished with nineteenth-century furniture by François Linke and others. peter hughes

The Rietveld-Schröder house in Utrecht In 1924, Truus Schröder asked the well- known furniture designer in Utrecht, Gerrit Rietveld, to design her new home. She had recently become a widow with three young children. She wanted a special together with, of course, the use of only house and had very definite ideas on the primary colours with white, grey and subject. Both Schröder and Rietveld hated black. traditional designs, so they formed a Truus Schröder was born in 1925 and perfect partnership. Mrs Schröder played died, in her house, in 1985. Initially, she an important role when designing the lived there with her three children and layout of the house. Instead of following then with Gerrit Rietveld, following the rules, she wanted simplicity and a free the death of his wife in 1957. Rietveld way of living. continued to live and work in the house At that time, Gerrit Rietveld had only until his death in 1964. made the special furniture in primary colours, red and blue, for which he was ‘Het Raadhuis’ in Hilversum well known. He had never designed a This town hall was built by the former house. For him the commission was a city architect and director of public dream come true, and it was an exciting works of Hilversum, Willem Marinus challenge to create a house that would be Dudok. Dudok was given free rein in his totally in the style of ‘De Stijl’. ‘De Stijl’ is design of the building, which was to be an art movement named after a modern situated in a residential area just outside art magazine, which was first published in the city centre. The result is a sculptural 1917. Rietveld was an important member building, constructed in the period of that movement. 1928–31, consisting of cubist volumes, and What makes the design of the Rietveld- still today the foundations are visible in Schröder house so special is the fluent the basement of Witten Hull Mansion on composition between inside and outside, which site the town hall was built. ‘Het the strict horizontal and vertical lines, Raadhuis’ is considered to be Dudok’s best

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 43 Visit to the Frederick Parker Collection wednesday 22 january 2020 The Frederick Parker Collection, after multiple shifts in location and management, seems finally to have found a perfect home. The 200-odd chairs and company archive are housed in London Metropolitan University’s Aldgate site as part of their special collections, which includes other archives such as and most important work and is now a that of furniture-maker Atkins Atcraft. national monument, also housing Dudok’s The collection has been owned by the Architecture Centre. Worshipful Company of Furniture Dudok developed a different kind of Makers since 2013. A selection of the most brick for the construction of the town hall, interesting and best-preserved chairs is an oblong format in a yellow colour. On viewable in three attractive display areas, the inside of the building, with bell tower with the less well-preserved and the usual and two courtyards, one can see the idea store-room candidates well cared for in a of a medieval town hall. On the outside, it separate accessible store room. has an almost strict militaristic appearance, Frederick Parker set up the company asymmetrical, imposing and exciting. in 1870 and by the 1880s was living The interior is more intimate and and manufacturing from Curtain Road, colourful and the ambiance has been moving on soon after to Drummond carefully adapted to the intended function. Street, just two in a succession of company The hand of the architect can be found moves. Finally, in 1898, he abandoned in every detail, in the use of materials the difficulties of London and moved for upholstery, decorations and so on, construction to High Wycombe, where and, consequently, the interior blends extra space allowed the production to harmoniously with the exterior. Dudok be modernized. A London link was kept resisted unnecessary changes and, as in the form of a showroom in Newman a result, the building has retained its Street, indicative of Parker’s ambition to authenticity for almost a century. be more than an anonymous small-scale anne faber supplier to outlets such as Maples or Liberty. With grateful thanks to Saskia Broekema Several significant large-scale contracts and Steven Coene for organizing buoyed the business as it entered the and leading this visit. Full reports for twentieth century. From the archive we individual visits are available upon saw a weighty photo album depicting request to the Events Secretary. images of the company’s furniture on 44 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 the Cunard’s RMS Aquitania – vast is that this collection was exploited in a rooms with white linen-covered dining creative way — legs were swapped to tables surrounded by chairs repeating create better models and new prototypes as far as the eye could see. Contracts for were constructed (see fpf106), a chair built BBC Broadcasting House and the NHS around an original splat (fpf380), and a followed in later decades. By this time the new model built from antique parts kept company’s identity had settled itself as in stock. Others were invasively restored. producer of solid, well-made, conservative This extensive use supports Parker’s but comfortable furniture. Their emphasis supposition that actual chairs were far and expertise in comfort is largely due easier to copy than two-dimensional to the arrival of Willi Knoll in 1931, who drawings. brought a patented coiled wire spring The catalogue of chairs is recommended system to the company which was used and available online via the Furniture unsparingly on their upholstered seat Makers’ Company (www.furnituremakers. furniture. org.uk). Many thanks to Jo Sovin, the As the collection was for study, Parker’s Frederick Parker Collections Manager, motivation to buy differed from the David Dewing Chair of the Committee, average customer and condition was not a Dr John Cross, Honorary Curator, and concern. Its potential for copy was, on the Christopher Claxton Stevens of the other hand, crucial. Unusual or even odd Committee who gave up their time and items were of interest (a bed back-rest, a helped make the visit so interesting. child’s correction chair or a double-scroll victoria bradley arm). Although the small 1954 catalogue claims the chairs were used ‘in every detail, […] faithfully as models’, the reality

The Frederick Parker Collection

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 45 Grants

The Society makes grants to individuals required to acknowledge the assistance and organizations from two funds that of the Ingram Fund in any resulting have been established thanks to the publications, and will be required to make generosity of members of the Society. They a short report on completion of the trip. are administered by the Society’s Grants committee (Chair: Adriana Turpin), which meets quarterly to consider applications Oliver Ford Trust — either for independent travel for study The Oliver Ford Trust supports research or research, or for participation in the by emerging scholars and junior museum Society’s study trips, both overseas and in professionals in the fields of furniture the United Kingdom. history, the decorative arts and interior design, mainly by sponsoring places on the Society’s study weekends or foreign Tom Ingram Memorial tours. Recent awards have included grants Fund to enable participation in the Society’s symposium at the Frick Collection in Grants are awarded from the Ingram Fund New York; a weekend visit to TEFAF (The towards travel and associated expenses European Fine Art Foundation) fair; and for the purpose of study or research into international conferences. Applications the history of furniture. These grants are from individuals who are not members of offered, whether or not the applicant is a the Society will be considered. member of the Society, where travel could For further information or to download not be undertaken without funding from a grant application form, please go to the the Society; and only where the study or Grants page of the Society’s website at research is likely to further the Society’s www.furniturehistorysociety.org/grants/ objectives. Applications towards the cost enquiries. Enquiries should be addressed of the Society’s own foreign and domestic to the Grants Secretary, Jill Bace, at grants@ trips and study weekends are particularly furniturehistorysociety.org or at 21 Keats welcome from scholars and museum Grove, Hampstead, London nw3 2rs. professionals. Successful applicants are

46 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 Publications

As a leading publisher in the field of Index volumes for Furniture History, vols furniture history, the Society offers for i–x £5, xi–xv £5, xvi–xxv £5, xxvi–xxxv £5 sale a wide variety of publications to both including post and packaging members and non-members. Among the publications that are currently available The following back numbers of Furniture are the following: History are available for purchase: xi (1975)–xix (1983), xxii (1986), xxv (1989)– Index to the Dictionary of English Furniture liv (2018). A full list of articles published Makers, £20 (members £18) in these editions may be found on the Pat Kirkham, The London Furniture Trade Journals page of the website. 1700–1870, £20 Francis Bamford, Dictionary of Edinburgh Prices including post and packaging UK Furniture Makers 1660–1840, £20 £28.00; Europe £32.00; Rest of the World Jacob Simon, Thomas Johnson’s The Life of £35.00 the Author, £7.95 Judith Goodison, Thomas Chippendale the To order these or any other FHS Younger at Stourhead, £6.95 publication, contact the Society’s Simon Swynfen Jervis, John Stafford of Publications officer, Jill Bace, at Bath and his Interior Decorations, £6.95 [email protected] Simon Swynfen Jervis, British and Irish or 21 Keats Grove, Hampstead, London Inventories, £12 (members £10) nw3 2rs. On receipt of your order, she Morrison H. Heckscher, ‘Chippendale’s will send you an invoice. Upon receipt Director: The Designs and Legacy of payment (which may be made by of a Furniture Maker’, Bulletin of the cheque, debit or credit card), orders will be Metropolitan Museum of Art (May 2018), despatched by the Society’s printers. £15 The Chippendale Society, Thomas Chippendale 1718–1779: A Celebration of British Craftsmanship and Design, £5

Post and packaging for the above UK £5.00; Europe £7.50; Rest of the World £10.00

furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020 47 Officers and Council Members council members: Wolf Burchard, Adrian Hume- president: Sir Nicholas Goodison Sayer, Barbara Lasic, Christophe de Quénetain, Mark Westgarth, Esmé Whittaker chairman of the council: Christopher Rowell newsletter editor: Sharon Goodman honorary secretary & website editor: Megan Wheeler events committee chairmen: Kate Hay, David Oakey honorary treasurer: Martin Williams grants committee chairman: Adriana Turpin honorary editorial secretary: Megan Aldrich finance and membership officer:Keith Nicholls, 37 Railway Road, Teddington tw11 8sd. Tel. 0208 287 2098; email: [email protected] events secretary: Beatrice Goddard, Westfield Cottage, 150 Bloomfield Road, Bathba2 2at. Tel. 07775 907390; email: [email protected] tom ingram memorial fund/fhs grants secretary: Jill Bace, 21 Keats Grove, Hampstead, London nw3 2rs. Email: [email protected] publications secretary: Jill Bace, 21 Keats Grove, Hampstead, London nw3 2rs. Email: [email protected] Council members can be contacted through the Events or Membership Secretaries, whose details are shown above. Contributors can be contacted through the Newsletter Editor, who is Sharon Goodman, 26 Burntwood Lane, London sw17 0jz. Tel. 07855 176779; email: [email protected] The views expressed in this Newsletter are those of the respective authors. They are accepted as honest and accurate expressions of opinion, but should not necessarily be considered to reflect that of the Society or its employees Registered UK Charity No. 251683

Copy should be sent, preferably by email to Copy Deadline Sharon Goodman, email: [email protected], or by post to The deadline for receiving material to 26 Burntwood Lane, London sw17 0jz. be published in the next Newsletter is Tel. 07855 176779. 15 June 2020.

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48 furniture history society newsletter, no. 218, may 2020