Antique English Pieces 15

The love seat is a very narrow settee or sofa with only just suf­ficient space for two persons to sit on it; hence its name. Many early eighteenth-century armchairs were widened ruthlessly into love seats about thirty-five years ago, when the demand for them greatly exceeded the supply.

Settles. A settle is a bench with arms and a back. Many of them had seats that were hinged to reveal lockers. They date back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but most surviving examples are of seventeenth-century make and are usually of oak. By about 1700 they were being made on legs and without lockers beneath the seats, and cannot be distinguished from settees.

Sideboards and Sidetables. The dresser, mentioned earlier, before it was fitted with shelves, was a sidetable. Early in the eighteeenth century these were highly carved and often gilt, had no drawers, and were topped with a slab of coloured or white marble. By 1760, they were of mahogany with a top of the same timber, and Chippendale prints designs for several of this type. It was Robert Adam who added a pair of pedestals, one at either end of the table, but it was nearly 1780 before the sideboard was given drawers and became the article recognized today. One of the drawers was usually fitted with divisions lined with lead or zinc to hold wine-bottles. Until about 1800 they were supported on square tapered legs, but later these were turned. Great care was lavished by their makers on sideboards, and the choicest figured woods were chosen for veneering and inlay.

English Pieces

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