Day 362 - "Baroque" [?] home furnishings, 1690-1750



 

June 20, 2024

Gallery 713 is a good-sized space containing numerous examples of furniture, mostly chests and chairs, made at the turn of the 18th century. Introductory signage talks about the movement away from strict rectilinearity toward a freer style  that was influenced by Baroque artists in Europe. It also notes that new techniques in cabinet-making (e.g., dovetailing) made it possible to incorporate longer, flatter surfaces that were often veneered.

I don't understand the technique involved and frankly don't care to learn more,  but I do know what I like.  One such piece is a high chest of drawers made in Boston in the first decades of the 18th century. Perhaps 5 1/2 feet high and 4 feet wide, the body of the chest is raised above the floor on turned legs and includes eight drawers of varying sizes with bras pulls. What makes the chest special for me is the beauty of the veneers. A placard says that the woods include black walnut, maple, poplar, hickory, and Eastern white pine but doesn’t specify which woods constitute the veneer. For me, the beauty comes from the relative simplicity of the lines combined with the lovely veneer. 

A second piece I like is a small cabinet, perhaps 18 inches high and almost as wide, made around 1750 in Chester County, Pennsylvania  of walnut, yellow poplar, and ash, and probably probably used to hold money, jewelry, and other valuables. Again, what I respond to are the simple lines and the delicate decoration. Actually, the piece grabbed me when I read on the placard that the maker used a compass to inscribe half-circles and then inlaid them with a “line-and-berry” design. There’s that compass again! I remember with pleasure drawing circles with a compass as a kid; I wonder if children today still do that.

I find a third piece surpassingly but exuberantly ugly. Made in Boston about the same time as the first chest of drawers, it is, I read, an example of “japanning,” a varnish-based finish inspired by Asian lacquer. The placard says that the maker “ebonized” the surface of the chest and then applied gilt gesso to create scenes of people, plants, ,Japanese-y shelters, birds, and other animals, including, of all things, a camel. It’s all  over-the-top in its effort to be exotic.  But I can imagine that to its owners, it seemed the height of worldliness and sophistication.



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