Featured The Real Object of the Objet D'art.

I mentioned in my intro that I was also a writer. I wrote this article some time ago. If it reads familiar to anyone its either because you read the newspaper in which it first appeared or else you read it somewhere else in cyberland.


With antique collecting very much in vogue, the words "Guerdon", "Chiffonier" and "Secretaire" will not sound unfamiliar to many people.

However, even many avid and knowledgeable collectors do not really know how these and other pieces of furniture were developed or for what purpose they were originally intended. For some of the answers we must go back through the ages.

During the 14th and 15th centuries furnishings, at least as we know them, were very sparse. The average house in fact contained little apart from some large trestle tables and benches, a few chairs, serving boards and sometimes a few carpets in the great hall.

In the bedchamber there was usually a chair or two, iron-bound chests, a tall candlestick, a row of wooden pegs on the wall for hanging up clothes and of course, the most valued piece of furniture in every home - the great bed.

Thanks largely to the writers of historical romances, the four-poster canopied bed has been endowed with an aura of mystique. Women the world over rave about this magnificent item of furniture and would love to own one, while most men would probably prefer the comely wenches carried to them nightly in the books written of that time.

Unhappily, the origin of the four-poster is anything but romantic. Firstly the curtains were not intended to shield the occupants from the eyes of those without, but rather to protect them from contracting pneumonia. It seems the bed was invented long before the windowpane and a biting winter wind is capable of dampening the ardour of even the most hot-blooded.

Alas, the story of the canopy is even worse than that of the drapes. Until the 16th century the canopy, usually made of a rich material, was attached to the ceiling above the beds by cords. Later it became a fixed part of the bed, but its purpose remained the same - simply to protect the sleeper from lice, dirt, spiders and the like which often fell from the ceiling. Not a very romantic thought, but considering that this was a far less hygiene-conscious time, a very sensible one.

It is generally recognised that a major stylistic change affecting all the arts occurred in most European countries shortly after the middle of the 18th century.

The French took the lead in the design and manufacture of furniture. After the death of Louis XlV in 1715, a radical change came about in French society. The last years of his reign had been a period of extreme solemnity and austerity and even in the King's absence, one was forced to bow down before the throne or royal bed. Upon his death the court lost no time in changing all this.

Fashion proved the tyrant of the age and at the forefront was a permissive courtesan named Madame de Pompadour. While not actually changing the destiny of France, there is no doubt that she greatly influenced it. Such was the splendour of Louis XV's court that one particularly cold winter, Madame de Pompadour filled the flowerbeds in her garden with porcelain flowers and sprayed perfume on them to complete the illusion. She was an ardent collector and when she died in 1764, the public auctioneers worked every day for eight months to dispose of her assets.

During this period furniture and in particular chairs, were designed for ladies in highly specialised forms. Since the early 17th century, back-stools, the first chairs to be made without arms, were designed for women wearing hoped skirts. Arm supports were set back from the front edge of the seats to accommodate the immense volume of material worn by the ladies of the time.

The only difference between the popular Victorian grandfather and grandmother chairs seen today is that one has arms and the other not. The bustle-back chair, as the name suggests, was also designed with the fair sex in mind. Almost all the chairs seemed to have been designed with the convenience of women as the motivating factor.

There were chairs with low backs and sometimes with the top rail curving downwards to facilitate the elaborate dressing of the hair then in fashion. Also chairs of this type with open, entirely unpadded backs were made and intended for use when the hair was being powdered.

During this period strict protocol divided chairs into two classes according to the position they occupied in a room – those that always stood against the wall and those, which were dispersed around the centre of the room and could be moved about. Among the second category were various types with padded top rails on which a spectator leaned his arms while watching others play cards or games of chance.

A similar design is the prayer or "Prideaux" chair on which one knelt and rested the arms on the padded back. When the armchair was enlarged to take two people side by side it became a Tête-à-tête. The variety of couches was great and the terminology used to describe them very elaborate and not always precise. The name usually varied with the form of the back and a "Chaise Longue" literally a long chair, had a back at one end only.

When the lower end could be detached separately and used as a stool, it became known as a "Duchesse Brisee". The couch with a back and armrests at each end was a "Canapé" but when the wooden structure was concealed by upholstery, it was called a "Sopha". The "Ottomane" was usually of an oval shape and derived its name and character from the Orient.

Scribblomania was a disease of the age and the writing table was in great demand. Its great disadvantage was the necessity for clearing all papers from its flat top if privacy was desired when it was not being used. Around 1740 this problem was solved with the creation of the lean-to desk with a flat, sloping top, which could be locked against a set of drawers or pigeonholes resting on the back edge of the table.

Great pains were taken to make the "Secretaire" as secret as possible. Locks were strong and complex and concealed compartments were a regular feature. The "Secretaire" was intended for the use of women, for its size made it of little use to the businessman who required something larger. It is in fact quite a narrow piece of furniture made so that it could stand against a pier-wall, that is, between windows so as to get light from both sides.

It's near relation, the roll-top or cylinder-top desk, generally stood in the centre of the room and to ensure privacy was often fitted with a device by which the inkwell or inkstand could be withdrawn through the side of the carcass. This enabled servants to replenish the ink, sand and pens without obtaining access to the owner's private papers inside the roll-top.

Perhaps the intrigue that later culminated in the French Revolution had something to do with this obsession with privacy. The extreme instance of the trouble taken to ensure privacy while dining was a mechanical table, which sank entirely through the floor between courses, being replenished by the servants in the kitchen below. However, they were very expensive to produce and the mechanism often broke down.

There were in fact tables for practically every purpose imaginable. One known as a "Vuidepoche" was, as the name suggests, intended to take the contents of the pockets when emptied out at night before retiring. Men's pockets at the time were large and it was and it was not uncommon to carry several snuffboxes as well as other objects in them. The wine table or "Servante", a small circular or oval table, was placed beside each guest at dinner parties and, characteristic of the love of intimacy, they were intended to ensure that lackeys could be dispensed with.

A close relative of these was the "Guerdon" table, intended to support a candle or candelabra, and so named after a Moorish slave of Louis XlV. During this period candle stands were often made of wood carved in the form of a negro. Small oval or kidney-shaped tables were used for serving individual meals. Occasionally they were circular, perhaps to enable more than one person to eat at a time.

In France the dining table proper came into general use quite late on in the Louis XVl period; previously meals were served on portable trestle tables set up in a living room, covered with a tablecloth which came down to the floor all round. True dining tables only came into fashion about 1785 in direct imitation of English customs.

While on the subject of England, the popular Loo table has nothing whatever to do with the toilet, but gets its name from a card game that was called Waterloo. The other loo comes from the custom of long ago whereby slop buckets were emptied from the upper windows of the houses into the street below. Passers-by were warned of what to expect by a cry of "guardyloo", a corruption of the French phrase guardez leau. It translates to: “Beware of the water!”

Cupboards mentioned in early inventories were not the doored structures we know today. In its original meaning "cup-board" was a table or shelf for displaying the family plate. The "Chiffonier" as we know it today is usually a type of sideboard, though, as can be gathered from the name, it was originally intended to contain garments of chiffon and other light materials.

Back to England and the origin of the humble tea caddy. Tea was first tasted there in the early years of the Stuart regime, but not until the 1660's were its pleasures appreciated in the home. Tealeaves were very costly, the cheapest being around 10 shillings a pound, so the mistress of the house guarded them under lock and key in tea trunks, tea chests and caddies. Tea chests, lined with a foil of hard pewter containing no lead, held one and a third pounds of tea, equal in mass to the Malayan Kati (about 605 gram) - hence the name tea caddy.

If you think you paid too much for the last antique piece you bought, consider this. In 1775, a chest of drawers made for the King of France and veneered with Holly and Kingswood cost then what in today's currency would be around $56000. By the way, the word veneer was originally fineer and comes from the French word "fornie" meaning to furnish.

If the world of antiques and their names is baffling to you, then don't feel bad about it because you're in good company. The famous poet Robert Southey said in a letter to a friend in 1802: "An upholder (upholsterer) just now advertises commodes, console-tables, ottomans and chiffoniers - what are these you ask? I asked the same question and could find no person in the house who could answer me, but they are all articles of the newest fashion."


END

 

"guardyloo"...I'm gonna start yelling that everytime I take a whizz !!

 

Love your article, Dax!