Word of the Week

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Word of the Week: Canterbury

February 24, 2014 in Decorative Accessories, Furniture, Word of the Week by hdavis

Furniture: Wine Stand; Chippendale, Mahogany, Shell Carved, Shaped Handle, Cabriole Legs, Trifid Feet, 25 inch. Canterbury is one of those terms that, when the piece to which it originally applied fell out of fashion, was simply picked up and applied a second time to another form that was at least in some ways similar to the original. A canterbury in the 18th century was a low wooden stand, typically on casters, with a divided top, the purpose of which was to be set near the dining table and hold plates and cutlery. The form’s name is said to be a nod to the Archbishop of Canterbury who was an early adopter.

At some point, someone took the idea of the divided tray, deepened the wells, and, in some cases, added more compartments to create another portable piece of furniture, this one with slatted spaces for most typically sheet music or magazines and newspapers. These pieces are the forebearers of the modern magazine rack and in typical Victorian fashion, the form gets more elaborate as the 19th century wears on. By the latter part of the century, canterburies have end panels with music-inspired shapes (treble clefs or lyres/harps) and an upper shelf or tray top has been added.

Canterburies still have solid value with collectors, as they remain very useful for holding the exact things they were originally designed to hold and because they were used for the better part of two centuries at the very least, they’re available in a variety of styles and conditions.

Word of the Week: Chinoiserie

February 3, 2014 in Word of the Week by hdavis

A rare Queen Anne japanned maple and pine [highboy or] high chest of drawers, signed "Rob Davis" in script, Boston, Massachusetts, 1735-1739.Chinoiserie (pronounced shin-wah-zah-REE) is like so many French words – it makes the very ordinary, in this case “Chinese-esque,” sound lyrical. Chinoiserie entered European decorative arts in the 17th century, as fascination with the region grew despite the fact that trade with much of the East, particularly China and Japan, was often historically heavily regulated and very restricted. Artists and craftsmen did their best to mimic the examples of Chinese style they encountered.

Chinoiserie reflects the fantastical element in the Western imagination of China and as a result often contains rather fanciful versions of the country. It also mimics traditional Chinese art in terms of the attitude towards scale and perspective and in the use of stereotypical design motifs (pagodas, dragons, cranes, etc.). The mimicry also extends to attempting to replicate materials as well across a variety of media. Artisans attempted to create Chinese-esque porcelain, decorated wallpaper sheets with Chinese scenes, and used lacquer-like materials to finish furniture and also tinwares in a style known as “japanning.” The term chinoiserie is also occasionally, although less accurately, used in describing the form or shape of a piece.

The fascination with the East would shift in and out of fashion over the years, but chinoiserie decoration is most commonly associated with the Rococo period, particularly in France and with the court of Louis XV, during the third quarter of the 18th century, but it also experienced a resurgence roughly 100 years later as one aspect of the Aesthetic Movement, sparked in part by the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 and peaking in popularity in the 1870s and 1880s. Aesthetic Movement decorative arts feature ebonized wood with gilt decoration, draw heavily on the Eastern natural world (flowers and peacocks, for example), and revisit the classic blue-and-white style of porcelain. While the Aesthetic Movement was mostly driven by the opening of trade with Japan and a style that is more “Japonesque,” chinoiserie is still periodically used to describe items of the period with a generic “Asian style” of decoration.

18th-century japanning happened in such a small region of America, at least in regards to furniture, and was confined primarily to major urban centers so when pieces that early appear on the marketplace, their age alone often confers value, but particularly if they retain any original decoration. 19th-century objects with chinoserie decoration are more common and, coming from a more industrialized age, they appear all along the range of quality and condition, so Aesthetic Movement chinoserie is available at almost any price point.

Word of the Week: Hobnail

January 13, 2014 in Glass, Word of the Week by hdavis

A Fenton glass cruet and stopper, French Opalescent, Hobnail pattern. Hobnail glass is glass with a knobby surface, with an organized pattern of evenly spaced raised bumps. It takes its name from hobnail boots, work boots that were made more durable by the addition of hobnails in a regular pattern on the soles. (As mass production became more involved in the production of footware, the quality deteriorated and a rough sole of hobnails gave shoes a much-needed boost in terms of durability.)

Production of hobnail glass involves either pressing or blowing glass into a mold and while others produced hobnail glass during the late Victorian era, it was the West Virginia-based Fenton Art Glass Company that would ultimately become synonymous with hobnail.

Fenton, founded in 1905, got a solid start with their innovative production of carnival glass, but by the 1930s, the Depression was threatening to “shatter” the glass industry. Glass had long offered smaller profit margins and the Depression-necessitated production of “Depression glass,” thin, inferior glass in washed out colors, left most glass companies struggling. Fenton had begun manufacturing some hobnail glass in 1935 and the company offered a hobnail design to the Wrisley Perfume Company in 1937. Wrisley, also desperately in need of a boost, felt the unique appearance of hobnail glass would boost sales, and when production started in 1938, no one was disappointed. The bottles manufactured for Wrisley sold with such success that Fenton opened up other lines of hobnail products, ultimately offering not just perfume bottles but ashtrays, candlesticks, lamps, vases, pitchers, jars and much more, all of which they would eventually offer in their iconic hobnail milk glass line, introduced in 1950.

In general, the ubiquity of hobnail glass keeps prices for pieces fairly affordable. Hobnail glass, Fenton’s pieces included, crowds the shelves at antique malls across the country. There are however some rarities, most notably Victorian-era pieces from the early years of production, typically hanging lamps, which can fetch several thousand dollars at auction. Rarer colors also confer the value of their association on hobnail designs, so colors like plum, which are seen less frequently than milk glass or cranberry, appeal to collectors and their pocketbooks.

Word of the Week: Schrank

December 16, 2013 in Furniture, Word of the Week by hdavis

A highly important Berks County, Pennsylvania, painted schrank dated 1775, inscribed "17 Philip Detuk 75".Schrank is a German word that is actually a diminutive form or abbreviation of Kleiderschrank. (Kleider means “clothes” and schrank means “cabinet,” so literally a clothes cabinet.) These massive pieces of furniture (schrunken is the plural), like the one pictured here, are essentially wardrobes that were made in America in Germanic settlements in Pennsylvania and then later in the Midwest and Plains states. It is speculated that they were often “coming of age” pieces or wedding gifts to couples setting up housekeeping together, because they frequently appear with names or initials and are often dated. Pennsylvania Germans typically made them in cherry and walnut often with very “architectural,” dramatic panels and/or decorated them with light wood and sulphur inlay. When “plainer” woods such as pine and poplar were used, they were often painted with vibrant colors. The example here has all the classic elements of a schrank: heavily paneled; elaborate cornice; paint decoration in red, yellow and green (a popular color scheme in Germanic communities); and a name and date.

Word of the Week: Monteith

December 9, 2013 in Pottery & Porcelain, Silver, Uncategorized, Word of the Week by hdavis

A Chinese Export porcelain blue and white monteith, circa 1690A monteith is a large center bowl (usually silver, occasionally porcelain, rarely glass) designed to be filled with ice and with a scalloped, shaped rim to allow a set of wine glasses to be suspended around the rim by the foot of the glass, so the bowl of the glass can be chilled. While extant silver monteiths can be dated to as early as 1666, the more “modern” version of the form, which is essentially a punch bowl with a removable rim, saw the height of its popularity from the 1680s to the 1720s. Obviously, the silver forms were often reworked as they lost popularity and the porcelain versions would of course have been quite vulnerable to damage, so as a result, the form is relatively rare.

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