The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Furniture Finishing
Such pieces were carried out chiefly in the field of what is called novelty furniture, a trade term for coffee and smoking tables, end tables, nests of tables and the like. These appeared either in modern painted styles with characteristic decoration or in adapted animal forms of carved walnut, picked out in color. Both are rather too striking to blend in with other furniture even as purely occasional pieces.
THE FINISH
On a nest of tables, for instance, an enamel finish is used, banding the leg turnings in alternate succession with bright red, yellow and blue, separated from one another by rings of gold bronze. The top and aprons are painted or vein-lined with symbols in the same colors against a shade of background to harmonize, the whole softened with antique glaze.
The couch design illustrated was readily converted into a coffee or smoking table, the walnut being stained a dark tone, filled and finished with rubbed lacquer or varnish. The effect may be heightened by wiping in colors as follows: the dog's eyes green, the nose and muzzle red, the ears and mane yellow, all antique glazed. The flat table surface may be routed out in appropriate symbol patterns and colored in prior to the transparent finish coat.
Graeco-Roman (The classical period, 500 B. C.-500 A.D.)
GREEK and Roman homes, even of the better class, would seem according to our standards to have been sparsely furnished. The Greeks employed wood, bronze and stone according to the type of furniture; arch chairs (in the form of a curved X), couches, folding stools and tables with slender tripod legs. Severity of a pure type is the dominating note, expressive of a people to whom citizenship meant more than the comforts and relaxations of home life.
The wealthy Romans borrowed most of their furniture ideas from the Greeks and gave what little they had, tables, chairs and couches, a most elaborate character. The woods included cedar, elm. ash and beech, inlayed with box, holly, cherry, ivory, horn, tortoise shell, gold and silver. A single desk purchased by Cicero, including all of the above woods and metals, veneered and mounted to form intricate patterns, is said to have cost the modern equivalent of $45,000.
Marble-top tables had twisted bronze supports, largely in animal forms, chairs, as for example, the "curule" type, were backless and like the numerous stools, were built low. Bronze or wooden couches, overlaid with colorful textiles, were important pieces among a people to whom dining was a long drawn out and highly pleasurable function. Their artisans understood veneering, carving, engraving, damascening, gilding and painting, for which purpose they used earth colors mixed in the white of an egg or other glutinous substance.
