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Furniture Finishing

The distinguishing characteristics of Renaissance include angular contours, lyre-shaped and colonnade supports for tables; floor runners, pierced stretchers and splats on chairs; fluted columns upholding the bed canopy; arms and backs on the lid of a narrow seat chest (cassa panca); scroll, claw and block feet, rosette and acanthus finials. Chairs grew into three types: the Dante or Savonarola curved X "sedia," the straight, square-padded seat with crowned uprights, and the small, curve-shape, developed from the stool and adapted in our time for telephone seats.

In the earlier years the Italians showed themselves artists first and wood carvers or cabinet makers secondarily. Hence their style quickly became rich and colorful. Where fine woods and skilled carvers were lacking, they painted or gilded cheap lumber and resorted to applications of a moulded plastic material, called "gesso duro," very hard and especially suited to bas reliefs. Chair seats were padded and covered with leather, painted in heraldic emblems of green, blue, red and gilt, fringed at the front and sides, and held in place by large round brass nailheads.

A favorite form of ornamentation for flat surfaces was "intarsia," consisting of geometrical designs set in ebony, chestnut and brown walnut. At first the inlay was bone or ivory, then different colored woods were employed to produce more elaborate designs, some beautifully pictorial, on the order of mosaics. In the sixteenth century "pietra dura" became the fashion, being an inlay of highly polished marbles, agates, hard pebbles and lapis lazuli, followed later by arabesques in tortoise shell, brass, silver and mother of pearl.

As previously indicated, the Renaissance in most other European countries followed Italian lines rather closely. The French from Francis I to Louis XIII (1315-1615) shows greater delicacy in carving and less reliance on color. In Germany (1525-1620) the style was characterized by fondness for rococo, architecture and close adherence to realism, preferring oak carved into coats of arms, biblical and classical scenes. Flemish (1520-1636) was geometrical in outline and carving, strongly influencing Elizabethan and Jacobean artisans across the channel. The Dutch (1520-1634) preferred plainer surfaces ornamented with colored woods brought back by traders from the East Indies—a style known as Dutch Marqueterie.