English Furniture


Autumn 2014


Above Prized medullary rays are exemplified by this Tudor bench, c.1530-1540, Beedham Antiques Ltd.


Calamander, alongside our own beautiful native and European woods - walnut, oak, holly, yew, maple, elm, ash, box, mulberry - each, at different times and in dif- ferent ways, whether carved, veneered, inlaid or highly polished, has been brought forward to play a particular role in our furniture history. Each has offered new op- portunities and new challenges to the craftsman. Paul Beedham, a dealer who specialises in the very


earliest pieces to English furniture to have survived, from the 15th to the 17th century, claims that the peak of early English Furniture was the 1530s until the ear- ly 1600s. Although oak is the predominant material throughout this period, the 16th century pieces stand out from the 15th century on account of the jointing, the way the boards were prepared and the extent of the detailing. The pieces that have survived have tended to be those made with the best quarter-sawn oak boards, which resist warping and also display the beautiful fig- uring or medullary rays highly prized by joiners, as well as those with elaborate carving. Beedham also suggests that while by the mid-16th century the bottom and back boards of chests were fully framed, making them


very hard to dislodge, by the mid-17th century “you would be lucky if they put boards into a fully rebated channel and they’d be nailed at the back.” Moreover, owing to influxes of Flemish and German craftsmen into London, and exposure to the tastes of Renaissance France and Italy through trade and travel through- out the Elizabethan era, an exuberant variety of styles flourished. As he says, “Some of the Elizabethan furni- ture is very sophisticated, with great attention to the manufacturing detail.” Based in Derbyshire, Beedham also admires the very busy inlaid furniture - black and white, black and yellow, using bog oak or stained dark oak and holly or sycamore - which was in vogue there in the early 17th century. For many collectors and dealers, however, it is the


advent of true cabinet-making, after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, that marks the beginning of the fine English furniture tradition. With Charles’s return, and then later, with the arrival of William of Orange and his Queen, Mary, London was flooded with skilled craftsmen from France and the Low Countries and new materials, especially European walnut. They brought a variety of


Above A virtuosic Hepplewhite period mahogany sideboard, Patrick Sandberg Antiques. 26


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