EARLY ANTIQUE EUROPEAN CUPBOARDS AND ARMOIRES
About 1300-1630
Vertical storage or display pieces with doors, as distinct from chests with lids, made from early Middle Ages onwards.
Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic: Early surviving examples; armoire about 1176, arched doors and ends (Abbey Church of St Etienne, Obazine); sacristy cupboard, about 1200, massive plank construction, painted over coating of gesso with figures of saints (Cathedral Museum, Halberstadt); armoire, about 1240, since altered but originally composed of numerous small compartments, each with its own door (Bayeux Cathedral).
Survivors mostly oak, but other local woods, including soft ones, probably used. Wrought-iron for hinges, scrollwork.
Mortise-and-tenon joints used but planks sometimes pegged to face of frame. Doors are planks joined edge to edge.
Painting over gesso ground. Wrought-iron scrolls nailed to doors on Gothic types.
Survivors in churches and museums not normally for sale.
The terms cupboard and cabinet are virtually interchangeable as applied to any pieces of this period with doors; armoire, dressoir and buffet are also freely substituted for each other and for their approximate English equivalents.
German marquetry cabinet,about 1610 Gothic and Renaissance: Design affected by Italian Renaissance in 14thC. Ideal described in 15thC as ‘harmony and concord of all the parts’, but Gothic persists in northern Europe. A German cupboard with doors above and below, carved with typical Gothic arches and tracery (National Museum, Munich) was made about same time (1470) as the study in the palace of Urbino, fitted with built-in cupboards matching walls decorated in Renaissance style with intarsia (inlay). A later German cupboard (1541), made to a published design by I is similar in construction to the Munich example, but carved with Renaissance urns in place of Gothic arches. In 16thC Spain, Gothic merges with Renaissance and abstract Moorish patterns are carved on cupboard doors.
Shortly after 1500, Renaissance style promoted in Burgundy; mannerist elements in Sambin’s designs are combined with architectural features in Du Cerceau’s. French armoire-j-deux-corps is a two-door cupboaru at on another, slightly larger. Some French typ. rest on stands with carved or turned supports. By mid-16thC Italy has developed a waist-high sideboard (credenza) with cupboards flanked by columns; heavier version in Netherlands about 1625, also a two-stage cupboard, upper stage smaller than the lower, often with carved figures supporting a canopy.
Local timbers, e.g. oak, walnut in France, walnut and cypress in Italy, lime in southern Germany. Mixture of woods for cupboards meant to be painted. Doors are always wood, never glass (the term ‘cabinet’ might
misleadingly suggest otherwise).
Panels of carcases and doors set in mortisedand-tenoned frames. When on stands, turned or carved supports end in squares with mortises into which rails are tenoned. No glue; joints secured with pegs.
Construction of stand for cabinet Gothic carving: Pointed arches, tracery, birds, animals, linenfold panels.
Renaissance carving: Classical urns with flowers, mannerist grotesques, nude or draped figures with elongated limbs, strap-work or scrolled borders, 16th century oak.
Renaissance: Intarsia; still-life and architectural subjects in wood mosaic, creating trompe loeil effects.
Gothic: Many cupboards vividly painted; highly valued when new and probably kept in closed areas of churches.
Renaissance: Woods stained for intarsia work only. Otherwise oiled, varnished or left in natural state.
Late Gothic cupboards appear on the market at prices within reach of anyone who can afford, as well as or instead of, a good car. Many late Renaissance cupboards sell for less than the price of a second-hand family
saloon.
In 1922, a collection of Italian Renaissance furniture, bought in Victorian times by a national institution, was found to have been largely made up from fragments. Sadly because the fragments would be worth having all were destroyed on the orders of an outraged Establishment; but many such pieces are still around.
An oak Court cupboard no not a buffet of the early seventeenth century. The shelves at the front are supported by the typical bulbous carved form seen on refectory tables of the period. At the back the flat supports are fluted on the front surface. Variations to be found include human and animal forms such as gryphons acting as front supports. Some pieces show very fine examples of rich carving but on the whole this is not a popular piece of furniture considering its antiquity, due to the modern avoidance of heavy forms.
An oak hall cupboard probably of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A piece of furniture used in halls and living rooms of the seventeenth century which was made on into the eighteenth century by country craftsmen. In the early forms the turned pendants, which appeared in Cromwellian times, were replaced by the turned bulbous pilasters seen on court cupboards and tables of the first half of the seventeenth century.
Baluster forms continued to appear however, as well as turned pendants, until the end of the century. In Wales similar pieces were made on into the mid-eighteenth century but in England they were gradually
superseded from the beginning of the eighteenth century by the farmhouse dresser.