The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Furniture Finishing
The triumph of Gothic ornamentation lies in its carving, for construction and contour were crude and bulky. All flat spates were systematically divided into rectangular shapes and filled with geometrical tracery, twisted vines, roots, leaves, arches and the familiar linen fold pattern. As the Gothic style grew out of the spread of Christian religion it is also replete with Christian symbolism. Thus the carved trefoil represents the Trinity, the quarter foil the four gospels and the cinque foil the five epistles; the dove is the Holy Spirit, the lily, purity, the rose, the sweet odor of sanctity, the circle, eternity. The ivy expresses the clinging of the Christian to his religion and the oak leaf the strength and endurance of divine power. On more elaborate pieces, the panels are carved in relief or painted to show landscapes, castles. scenes from tournaments, the chase, the battlefield and biblical history.
Gothic originals were of oak (English), chestnut (French), and walnut (Italian) ; modern reproductions are chiefly in oak stained any deep brown color, shellaced without filling and waxed or given a coat of flat varnish. The age-old dignity of the style renders it particularly effective in spacious libraries and shadowy halls, appearing in scattered pieces—a hall chest here, a wall cabinet there with a joint stool in the living room to serve as a coffee table. Attempts to adapt it to modern walnut dining room suites, while executed with considerable skill, have not succeeded in attaining any widespread popular recognition.
Italian Renaissance (The classical revival, 1450-1650)
RENAISSANCE, a French word, meaning literally "rebirth," refers to a period in European history when artists and thinkers sought to revive the charm of Greek and Roman classic forms in art, literature and decoration. Scorning the narrowness of medieval superstition and ignorance, they dubbed its creations Gothic, a term of disdain, signifying barbaric, coarse and crude. The practical adventurous mind, too, was stimulated—the printing press came into use, gunpowder was invented, and Columbus initiated his voyages of discovery.
Encouraged by an accompanying period of peace, Italian artisans created designs of great beauty, and as their apprentices travelled to other countries to set up for themselves, the original style was modified in their reproductions until museums show an array of pieces all suggesting one another, but labelled variously as Italian, Spanish. English, French, Dutch, Flemish and German. Because of distinctive departures, the furniture of Renaissance England and Spain requires separate treatment.
Furniture remained massive and architectural, but became more diversified as the gloomy medieval castle gave way to the more spacious Renaissance "palazzo." Seats increased in number, if not in comfort, tables became more ornate and the cabinet (credenza) and chest (cassone) were greatly elaborated. Later in the period, sofas and consoles were created—in fact, during these two centuries, many of the forms with which we are now familiar first came into being, no longer unrelated, but grouped tor use in certain rooms.
