The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Furniture Finishing
As previously indicated, the classic note dominates and pervades the Adam style, architecturally in outline and ornamentally in detail. As an example of the former may be cited a typical sideboard with its massive end cabinets surmounted by knife case urns, the grooved columns supporting a console or the sturdy proportions and studied cornices of a bookcase. The hand of the architect is noticeable everywhere in hexagons, ovals, octagons and tapering columns, many of which are but miniatures of what we see today on the facade of almost any fine public building.
As a general thing straight lines were preferred to curves, the exceptions occurring in oval and square scrolled chair backs and on consoles and side tables with swelled or "bombe" fronts. Chair legs were apt to be round, fluted and tapering in the front, flaring and square in the back; table legs were more likely to be square, slightly less tapering and ending in spade block feet. Tables show four or six legs; day beds as high as eight, frequently mounted with rosettes carved in flat relief.
Perhaps the most characteristic example of Adam design i I embodied in the side board. Two massive pedestal cabinets are joined to a curve fronted center piece supported by four tapering square legs and composed of two large and three small drawers flanked in turn by two smaller cabinets. Brass rails run around the top at the back and large knife cases in the classic urn design surmount the pedestal cabinets. The whole appears to be made up of three distinct sections and is freely but not excessively ornamented.
Most Adam decorations were carved in low relief, small and extremely refined in detail. Ordinarily carving was executed in wood and then applied, but for very delicate work, composition was used. These details took the form variously of egg and dart moulding, loops and festoons of ribbons and leaves, oval and round sun bursts, vases, wreaths, the acanthus, the honeysuckle, masques and beaded moulding.
