Antique English Pieces 6

and other subjects. At about this date, too, satinwood chairs were made, and these also were painted.

In the earlier years of the nineteenth century, chair backs were almost all nearly square, and the legs were curved forward—the 'sabre' shape. Mahogany chairs of this type, much smaller in size than those made in the years before, are very popular today, the most decorative, eagerly sought and, therefore, the most expensive, being those inlaid with brass lines. Rosewood was also a wood used for chair-making at this time, but it was imitated closely in painted beech.

Hall chairs were made during the eighteenth century and later. They were more for display than for comfort, with wood seats, and the backs were usually painted with the coat-of-arms or crest of the owner.

The Windsor chair was first made in the eighteenth century, and is still being turned out in large numbers. The arched back and shaped wood seat appear much the same in chairs of 1760 as in those made two hundred years later. They owe their popularity to their strength and lightness, and to the fact that they can be made cheaply. About 1770 they cost five or six shillings apiece, but they are dearer now.

Chests. The chest is agreed to be the most ancient form of furniture, and surviving examples go back in date to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Many of these extremely old ones are simple in design, and bear very little in the way of ornament. Others, however, are carved liberally, with strong iron bands to protect the contents from thieves. As long ago as 1166, Henry II commanded that a chest should be put in every church to collect money for fighting the Crusades, and that each should be fitted with three locks; each lock should be different, and each key held by a separate official. In 1278 a similar order related to the safe keeping of church books and vestments. In the same way, chests were used in houses for the storage of clothing and other property.

The early chests are seldom seen outside churches and museums, but later ones, dating from 1650 or thereabouts, are much less

English Pieces

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