The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Furniture Finishing

These styles have been produced principally for the bedroom, dining and living room, executed in walnut and gum, and modified to a greater or lesser extent in point of design. For instance, the vargueno may become a dining room china cabinet as well as a living room wall desk, the metal mounts supplanted by scroll wood overlays, the iron underbracing imitated with a stipple-painted wood. The spindles, arcaded underframing, leather upholstering and diamond panelling are usually preserved intact.

The sombre oiled "patina" of originals is approximated by an antique walnut finish, the burl panels shaded almost to black around the outer edges, the turnings and raised parts high-lighted, and the final varnish or clear lacquer coat rubbed to a medium eggshell lustre. The vargueno is painted or lacquered red, the same vermillion color appearing on other pieces of the same set through the pierced design of the hardware mounts. Iron underbracing is polychromed here and there with red, green and gold, antique glazed and sometimes dusted.

Before closing the subject of Spanish furniture, reference should be made to its influence on the Mission style so popular in this country two or three decades ago. The direct inspiration was received from the Spanish seventeenth century arm chair, copies of which were constructed in a crude way by missionaries working up the California coast from Mexico where they naturally made pieces to which they were used at home. When discovered and exploited by American manufacturers, the latter unfortunately emphasized the crudeness and bulkiness of the copies instead of seeking out and patterning after the more graceful originals of Old Spain. As a consequence the style perished—crushed, as one might say, under its own cumbersome weight.


Tudor and Elizabethan (The english renaissance, 1485-1603)


THE battle of Bosworth' Field ended the long drawn out contest between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions for the English throne and brought about the accession of Owen Tudor as Henry VII. It also marked the close of the Middle Ages in England and the beginning of a much needed era of peace under succeeding sovereigns of the house of Tudor, Henry VIII, Edward IV, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. The latter, owing to the vigor and prosperity of her reign, gave her name to a distinctive period.

The introduction of Renaissance ideas into England is attributed to Henry VIII in that he imported Italian artists and artisans whose work naturally influenced that of native designers. There were no radical changes, however, until Flemish wood workers, fleeing across the channel from the persecutions of Spanish Alva, were given refuge by Queen Elizabeth. So marked was their impress on contemporary cabinet making that her name has been given to a distinctive period.