The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Furniture Finishing
Egyptian-Assyrian (The dawn of history, 200-500 B.C.)
IT WAS in the valley of the Nile, the cradle of civilization, that archeologists discovered, both from excavated relics and mural reliefs showing artisans actually at work, that Egyptians in the dawn of history were the first to make furniture as we understand it today. With tools we would regard as hopelessly primitive, they practiced the arts of joining, carving, inlaying, veneering and painting, attaining a soundness of construction (as witness the bracing on the table illustrated) that remains a model down to the present age.
Since they were lacking similar burial customs and the same preservative climate, much less has been brought to light regarding the furniture of Assyria, Babylon and Persia, despite their known high level of culture. The artisans of Assyria were skilled metal workers and were also familiar with teak, walnut, cedar and ebony, but the meagre information left us is chiefly from bas. relief carvings in stone. It is in these that we find constantly recurring the characteristic lion's paw, pine cone and bull's hoof in chair feet, horses for chair sides and the ram's head at arm ends.
Squatted on his haunches, we see the early Egyptian joiner doweling and mortising, the upholsterer lacing leather to chairseat frames and the cabinet maker coating solid woods of the commoner sort with hot glue to receive the veneer, laying it with heavy flat stones in place of cauls. The results of their labors appear in a variety of stools, beds, couches and caskets. The former were provided with rope or rush seats or on richer styles hollowed out to receive cushions, or partially padded and covered, either with loose animal skins or colorful textiles.
DECORATION
The feet are mounted on bronze ferrules or terminate alone in shapes which include the dog's paw, the horse's hoof, the duck's bill, the lion's claw and slaves bound to curved swords. On couches and beds the animal forms are carried out very frequently by placing the fore legs as supports for the front of the piece and the hind legs at the rear. The backs of the more elaborate beds and chairs are carved in the forms of winged humans and divinities guarded by lions.
Where bronze was not preferred for the frame work, sycamore, cedar and ebony were employed, usually inlayed with ivory or silver and mounted at the corners with gold. Wood carvers and painters were strongly imbued with a racial belief that divinity expressed itself in nature. Thus we find them repeating again and again the beetle, the lotus, the scarab, the reed, the sparrow hawk, the serpent, the date palm, the papyrus bud and the lily pad, all of which possessed a distinctively symbolic character.
