Furniture Glossary

A-B - C-Com - Con-Flu . . . . . (editing)

Cabriole leg. The curving tall furniture leg used in American Queen Anne and Chippendale furniture, and almost universally used in the eighteenth century. The adjective is from the French noun, which is a dancing term meaning a goat leap, and is used in the idiom faire le cabriole to refer to the agility and grace of a person. The leg is inspired by an animal form, unlike the earlier scroll and turned shapes and is terminated in the claw-and-ball foot, the hairy paw, or the scroll in the Chippendale period and earlier the claw-and-ball, the pad, trifid, or slipper foot.

Camel back. Colloquial term for a chair or sofa, such as Hepplewhite, with the top curved somewhat like the hump of a dromedary.

Canapˇ. The ordinary French word for a sofa. Evolved in many forms during the Louis XV period. [p. 210]

Candelabrum. A lighting appliance with branches supporting sockets for more than one light. They took many forms, but are usually made of ormolu, sometimes with figures in patinated bronze. They were often made in pairs or sets of four.

Candle box. A cylindrical or square box, of metal or wood, widely used in the Georgian period for storing candles.

Candlestand. A portable stand [known also as a lampstand, guéridon, and torchère] for a candlestick, candelabrum, or lamp. After 1660 the fashion arose of having two candlestands flanking a side table with a mirror on the wall above; the stands usually took the form of a baluster or twist-turned shaft, with a circular or octagonal top and a tripod base. At the end of the century more elaborate kinds, copying French stands, became fashionable, with vase-shaped tops and scrolled feet, all carved and gilded. Other examples were of simpler design, but had rich decoration in gesso or marquetry. In the early Georgian period, when gilt stands followed architectural forms, the vase-shaped tops and baluster shafts were larger, and the feet curved outwards, replacing the scrolled French style. About 1750 stands became lighter and more delicate, many of them being enriched with rococo decoration. There was a distinct change in design in the later eighteenth century: the traditional tripod continued, often in mahogany, with turned shaft and a bowl or vase top in the classical taste; but a new type, which was originated by Adam, consisted of three uprights, mounted on feet or a plinth, supporting usually a candelabrum, or with a flat top. Smaller examples of the latter type were made to stand on tables. A much smaller version of candlestand was also popular after 1750--with a circular base and top, and sometimes an adjustable shaft.

Candlesticks [flambeaux]. A portable lighting appliance with one socket for a single light or candle. Large numbers were made almost exclusively of ormolu in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, usually in pairs or sets of four, but sometimes in larger quantities.

Cane chair. First produced in England in Charles II's reign, it was very popular in London because it was cheap, light, and durable. It was used in America first in about 1690, in William and Mary tall-backed chairs. The type occasionally occurred in Queen Anne, but was revived in the classical style. Duncan Phyfe used it. Caning was introduced from the Orient through the Netherlands.

Canted. Sloping, at an angle.

Canterbury. [1] A small music stand with partitions for music books, usually mounted on castors, and sometimes with small drawers, much used in the early nineteenth century; and [2] a plate and cutlery stand particularly designed for supper parties in the later eighteenth century, with divisions for cutlery and a semicircular end, on four turned legs. 'The name "Canterbury" arose', wrote Sheraton, 'because the bishop of that See first gave orders for these pieces.'

Carolean. Term of convenience strictly applicable to pieces made in the reign of Charles I [1625-49], those made under Charles II [1660-85] usually being dissociated. Actually the Carolean style is as much an extension of the Jacobean as the latter was of the later Elizabethan.

Cartonnier. A piece of furniture which took various forms. Usually it stood at one end of a writing table [bureau-plat] and was intended to hold papers. It was sometimes surmounted by a clock. Also sometimes called a serre-papier.

Cartouche. A fanciful scroll; used in America mostly as a central finial for the tops of Philadelphia Chippendale highboys, clocks, and, occasionally, mirrors.

Carver chair. Modern term for an early seventeenth-c. 'Dutch'-type armchair made of turned posts and spindles. It has three rails and three spindles in the back. Such chairs may be seen in seventeenth-c. paints of humbler Dutch interiors, though the source of the American ones was probably an English model. Usually of ash or maple, with rush seats. Named after John Carver, first governor of the Plymouth colony, who is said to have brought one to America with him in the Mayflower. Made until the end of the century. Many examples survive, the earliest dating perhaps about 1650. [See its variant, Brewster chair.]

Caryatid. Upright carved in semblance of a human figure or, more frequently, a demi-figure on a terminal base. Strictly, Caryatid implies a female. Atlanta or Atlas figure a male figure, though Caryatid is used for either. The term derives from the legend of the women of Carya, enslaved and immured for their betrayal of the Greeks to the Persians. Atlanta refers to the myth of Atlas upholding the heavens.

Cassapanca. A wooden bench with a built-in chest under the seat. Early cassapanche, like that of the fifteenth century in the Ca' d'Oro at Venice or the magnificent sixteenth-century example in the Bargello at Florence, are in the form of a cassone [q.v.] with back and arms. After the cassone went out of fashion in the early seventeenth century the cassapanca survived as a useful piece of entrance-hall furniture. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-c. examples often have immensely high backs of thin wood painted with mythological beings or a coat-of-arms amid a profusion of scrolls.

Cassone. The cassone, or chest, was clearly one of the most popular pieces of furniture in fifteenth- and sixteenth-c. Italy. It was also the most richly decorated, and, for this reason, perhaps, numerous examples have survived. It was used to hold linen or clothes and might also serve as a seat--with or without the upright back which made it into a cassapanca [q.v.]. Cassoni are frequently referred to as dower chests, and although they were often made to hold the supply of linen which a bride took to her new home, there is no reason to suppose that the majority were intended for this purpose. The cassone nuziale, or dower chest, can be recognized as such only if it bears the coats-of-arms of two families between whom a marriage took place. [p. 211]

The earliest cassoni were probably very unpretentious affairs, but a few of the early fifteenth-c. examples which have survived are decorated with Gothic curvilinear carving or rough paintings of heraldic achievements. In the Renaissance period great ingenuity was expended on their design and adornment. Some were decorated with gesso friezes of putti sporting on the front and sides and others were fashioned like antique sarcophagi, but most seem to have been painted on the front [some were also painted inside the lid]. Several highly able Florentine quatrocento painters, like the famous Master of the Jarves cassoni, seem to have specialized almost exclusively in the decoration of furniture of this type: and some more important artists, like Bartolomeo Montagna, occasionally turned their hands to this decorative work. In Florence paintings of battles and the triumphs of Roman generals were in particular demand, elsewhere religious and mythological scenes seem to have enjoyed great popularity, but in Venice patterns of ornamental motifs were generally preferred. Intarsia views of real or imaginary architecture were also employed to decorate cassoni. In the sixteenth century the painted cassone seems to have gone out of fashion, and most surviving examples from this period are simply carved with abstract decorations. A few later sixteenth-c. cassoni are adorned with mannerist term figures at the corners and low reliefs in the same style on the front. The cassone survived the sixteenth century only in the form of the cassapanca or of a simple unembellished utilitarian traveling chest.

Cat. A stand used after about 1750 to warm plates in front of the fire; it had three arms and three feet of turned wood [or three legs of cabriole form]. The turning was well ringed to provide sockets for plates of various sizes.

Causeuse. A large chair or small sofa to accommodate two persons. Roughly corresponds to the small English settee. Sometimes referred to colloquially as a love-seat.

Cedar Handsome pieces of furniture were occasionally made of colourful red cedarwood, though cedar--both the red and the white--was usually set aside for drawers, chests, linings, etc.

Cellaret. The name given generally after 1750 to a case on legs or stand for wine bottles; prior to that date, from the end of the seventeenth century, the same kind of case was called a cellar. In the early eighteenth century cellarets, lined with lead and containing compartments for bottles, stood under side tables, and they were still made later in the century when sideboards, which had drawers fitted up to hold bottles, came into general use. Sheraton classified the cellaret with the wine cistern [q.v.] and sarcophagus, and distinguished them from the bottle case, which was for square bottles only.

Chair. In its old sense chair meant, as like as not, an armchair, what is now called a single or side chair being a backstool [stool with a back]. ['Back chaier' occurs (e.g. Unton Inventory, 1620).] To what extent the chair originated from such box forms as the chest is suggested by early surviving example of box-like structure. Development from the wainscot chair to the open-framed variety with paneled back belongs in general to the late sixteenth century. Folding or rack chairs and X chairs [so called from their shape] have also a long history. Certain sixteenth-c. chairs with narrow backs and widely splayed arms are known as caqueteuses or caquetoires. The so-called farthingale chair [a term freely applied to many pieces, mostly of the earlier seventeenth century] has its back support raised clear of the seat. Upholstery [not unknown earlier] had arrived, seats and back pads being covered in velvet or in 'Turkeywork'. Leather was used, especially on Cromwellian chairs, some of which date from the Interregnum, though the type endured until relatively late in the seventeenth century. Leather or Russia chair are old terms for such items. About the middle of the seventeenth century are found what are often termed 'mortuary' chairs, a term of doubtful origin for chairs with a small moustachioed and bearded head [supposedly allusive to Charles I] in the centre of the shaped and scrolled back rails. Similar chairs occur without the masks, and the type is a variation of Yorkshire or Derbyshire chair, the geographical distribution of which is undefined.

Cane chairs [q.v.] achieved main popularity in the second half of the seventeenth century, their backs and seats being caned. Scrolling, curlicues, boys and crowns, etc., were favoured as carved ornament. Backs lengthen, assuming the form of a narrow panel or centre [often caned or stuffed] flanked by uprights. Already had been reached the period of barley-sugar turning [see Twist turning]. [p. 212]

Corner chairs, some of triangular formation, and sundry related types, were already in being. A later variety has the seat disposed diagonally to the low, rounded back. Elbow chair and roundabout chair are synonyms in use. An allied type is the circular chair [with circular seat], often Dutch, and known as burgomaster or [again] roundabout chair, such terms being jargon. Thrown chairs of various shapes, with much turnery, have been often assigned to the sixteenth century, though many are certainly later. Though scarcely belonging to the Age of Oak, the Windsor chair [q.v.] may have owed something to older types. The basic characteristic of Windsors is not the bow or hoop back, but the detail that back and underframing are all mortised into the wooden seat, itself frequently saddle-shaped and 'dished', but sometimes circular, etc. The bow-back type [late eighteenth century and later], preceded by the comb or fan back [early eighteenth century and later], was itself followed by other formations on more or less 'Regency' lines. Types are many with much overlapping; woods are mixed. Scole or Menddlesham chairs are East Anglian types on Windsor lines. Yorkshire and Lancashire Windsors usually show 'frilly' splats and developed turnery, but the type was not confined to the North of England. In America, Windsors were made from the early eighteenth century, and include some fine types. Lancashire chair is also applied to an extensively made type of bobbin back, much favoured in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but, here again, as with Yorkshire and Derbyshire chairs in general, the geographical location has been overstressed [see Close chair and stool; also Restoration].

In the Renaissance period those made in France were on the whole very simple, constructed of plain wood, usually walnut, and carved with conventional motifs in the Italian style. Often they are of the ecclesiastical type with high backs carved in relief. Others have carved arms and stretchers. These types continued into the early seventeenth century, usually accompanied by some upholstery.

Such chairs of the Louis XIV period as have come down to us are also almost always of plain wood, carved in the classical manner. The backs are high, often with elaborately carved cornices. The legs are also elaborately carved and are often joined with stretchers. The chairs are upholstered on seats and back, either with embroidery, velvet, or with cane. Tapestry does not appear until later in the eighteenth century.

In the Louis XV period the design of chairs became less formal and the carving soon began to be carried out in the rococo manner. The outlines of the upholstered backs and seats, and the legs, gradually became curved and bowed until there is not a straight line in the whole design. Often chairs of the Louis XV period are of considerable size and of rather a heavy appearance. They are upholstered usually with silk, velvet, or brocade, but sometimes with tapestry, which begins to make its appearance at this time.

In the Louis XVI period chairs, in particular, take up the prevailing neoclassical style, the change being noticeable soon after 1755. Legs gradually become straighter, as do the outlines of backs, seats, and arms, and the motifs employed in the carving derive from classical sources, the most commonly found being the acanthus leaf in various forms, the wavelike band and the Ionic capital, as well as symmetrical garlands of flowers. It was at this time that the carving of chairs, particularly those produced by G. Jacob, reached the very greatest refinement, both of design and detail.

The frames of chairs of the Louis XV and Louis XVI periods are usually made of beech, birch, or walnut, and they are often gilt. It is important to remember, however, that they may not originally have been so. Sometimes the wood forming the frames was left plain and unadorned, more often they were painted white, or white and partly gilt. Equally, a chair may have been originally plain or painted, and then gilt before the end of the eighteenth century. More often gilding or regilding was carried out in the nineteenth century, and often very coarsely. Collectors should bear this in mind when judging both the style and condition of French chairs.

The earliest Italian chairs were probably no more than square stools to which a back and arms had been added, but they do not seem to have been in general use until the fifteenth century. Folding chairs [sedie pieghevoli] were made before the beginning of the fourteenth century, however, and one or two fourteenth-c. examples have survived. The most popular form of chair in the fifteenth century seems to have been the so-called 'Dantesque' or X chair which might also, if necessary, be folded for traveling. Two thirteenth-century wooden X chairs are known, but most chairs of this type seem to have been made of metal rods. At first the X chair was without any form of back but this was added in the sixteenth century, and many examples survive from this period. The so-called Savonarola chair was a development of the simple X chair with a number of struts following the curve of the design. Chairs of both these types were made throughout Italy in both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Wooden tub [p. 213] chairs seem to have enjoyed a limited popularity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries [a good example is in the Horne Museum at Florence]. The 'Andrea del Sarto' chair, which has a semicircular seat above which a thin strip of wood supported on balusters serves as both back and arms, was introduced into Tuscany in the early sixteenth century.

In the course of the sixteenth century the upright chair with straight back and arms was developed and ornamented, eventually becoming the standard pattern. Seventeenth-century craftsmen used it as the basis for their richly carved and gilded thrones, such as the one in the Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice. The easy chair [poltrona] does not appear in Italy until the late seventeenth century. During the eighteenth century Italian chairs differed little from those made elsewhere in Europe. In Venice, however, chairs with backs in the form of a figure of eight enjoyed great popularity.

Chamfer. Bevelled edge, as when the sharp edges of a beam are bevelled off. A dust chamfer [i.e. to throw off dust] is a smooth bevel at the lower edge of the framework of a panel, the other edges being moulded, or part moulded and part of rectangular cut. Of stop chamfer, there is no better simple definition than Walter Rose's in The Village Carpenter: 'where slope finishes and square begins' [to arise].

Chandeliers. A branched lighting appliance consisting usually of several lights which can be suspended from a ceiling. Large quantities were made in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but not many have survived. They were made of various materials: ormolu, wood, crystal, glass, and occasionally porcelain.

Cherry. A hard, close-grained, reddish- or pinkish-brown wood, it was used in England for chairs and panels in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though few examples remain. It was often used in America for furniture of the finest design and workmanship. In use as early as 1680. Joseph Downs says cherry was a favourite wood among New York cabinet makers; was more often used than mahogany in Connecticut, and quite often used in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky furniture.

Chest [see also Coffer]. One primitive form of chest is the dug-out or trunk, its interior gouged in the solid. Some dug-outs are of considerable antiquity; others may be of more recent date than their appearance suggests. In name and rounded lid the traveling trunk, as it is still known, recalls the ancient use of a tree trunk. Framed chests are also ancient, the earliest surviving medieval examples being formed of great planks so disposed as to present an almost or wholly flush surface at front and back. Paneled chests were being made in the fifteenth century, later becoming very popular. The earlier 'flush' construction was, however, to some extent perpetuated until a very late period in the boarded chest, made entirely of boards, including the ends, which also form the uprights [cf. Wainscot]. Unusually long examples are sometimes, but not necessarily correctly, called rapier chests. The validity of the term is uncertain. Popularly called 'non[e]such' chests, mainly of the latter part of the sixteenth century, are inlaid with formalized architectural designs, thought possibly to represent the Palace of Nonsuch, or Nonesuch, at Ewell, Surrey. Such architectural motifs are, however, exploitations of a Renaissance design favoured on the Continent, though a possible affinity exists between them and the crowded towns in Gothic art. Mule chest [implying a hybrid] is collectors' jargon of no validity for a chest with drawers.

Chest of drawers. This derives in name, and to a considerable extent in principle, from the chest, a link being the chest with drawers, with a single range of drawers beneath the box. Such pieces were in being by the latter part of the sixteenth century, a gradual tendency to increase the drawer-space at the expense of the box resulting in the chest of drawers. At the same time various structures enclosing a quantity of drawers were also in being, on the Continent and in England, as with the 'new cubborde of boxes' made by Lawrence Abelle in 1595 for Stratford-upon-Avon or the 'cubborde with drawing boxes' of the Unton Inventory, 1596. 'Nests of boxes' is another old term [see also Bargueño, Writing cabinet]. The chest of drawers was introduced into Italy, probably from France, in the late seventeenth century. An early example in the Palazzo dei Conservatori at Rome is of a square pattern adorned with pilasters at the corners, but the French bombˇ shape was generally preferred. In some mid-eighteenth-century Venetian examples the curve of the belly has been ridiculously exaggerated and the top made considerably larger than the base. In Rome and Naples rather more reticent designs were adopted. In Venice and Genoa chests of drawers were frequently lacquered or painted, while Lombard examples were often decorated with intarsia . Elaborate bronze mounts in the French style are rare on cassettoni made outside Piedmont. In the United States it was not common in the Queen Anne period, but was revived, [p. 214] especially in New England, during the Chippendale period. Serpentine oxbow, and block-front shapes are found on New England Chippendale chests.

Cheval glass. A larger type of toilet mirror in a frame with four legs; also known as horse dressing glass; dating from the end of the eighteenth century. The rectangular mirror either pivoted on screws set in the uprights or moved up and down by means of a weight within the frame ['the same as a sash-window' -Sheraton]. Turned uprights and stretchers were often found on these pieces about 1800.

Cheveret. See Secretaire.

Chiffonier. A piece of furniture which has given rise to a certain amount of confusion. The French chiffonier was a tall chest of drawers, but the chiffoni*re, a quite different piece, was a small set of drawers on legs. It was the latter which seems to have been copied in England in the later eighteenth century. Another form of chiffonier was popular in the Regency period - a low cupboard with shelves for books. As this was similar to contemporary commodes, it can be taken that the English version of the chiffonière was the only true small piece of furniture.

Child's furniture. Mostly small-scale furniture for children's usage, distinct from toy furniture. Some confusion exists between tables and the square joined stool [with unsplayed legs] which certainly existed as such. Chairs follow full-scale design, or are high-chair pattern, some of enclosed or wainscot fashion, others elevated on tall legs. A framework on wheels to support a toddler has been given various names, e.g. baby cage or go cart.

China cabinet. Seldom, if ever, found in America as a separate piece of furniture before 1790-1800. Even then it is perhaps a 'bookcase' [q.v.] used for displaying china. In early examples the lower portion is often a shallow cupboard on legs. Most American china cabinets date after 1800 and are in the Sheraton or a later style.

China stand. An ornamental stand for displaying china or flowers, introduced at the end of the seventeenth century and at first taking the form of a low pedestal on carved and scrolled feet, or of a vase on a plinth. In the early eighteenth century the form was sometimes that of a stool with cabriole legs, in mahogany. More fanciful designs, in the rococo taste, were evident after 1750, as in the 'Stands for China Jarrs' presented in Chippendale's Director. In the Adam period some attractive stands for flower bowls resembled the contemporary candlestands with three uprights. Little four-legged stands with shelves were also made at this time for flowerpots.

Chip carving. Lightly cut ['chipped'] surface ornament, mostly of formal character and including whorls, roundels [qq.v.] etc. Such work, known medievally, persisted on items of much later date.

Classical style. Basically any humanistic style emphasizing ancient Greek ideals, and in the arts a style inspired by Greek and Roman art and architecture. In American furniture the style reflected the innovations of Robert Adam, the British architect who was inspired by ancient Roman design. The design books of Hepplewhite and Sheraton helped communicate the style to America, where it has been called after them by dividing the style into two tendencies, the Hepplewhite and Sheraton. This is a difficult distinction to make.

Claw-and-ball foot. An adaptation, probably from the Chinese, of a dragon's claw grasping a pearl. Perhaps first adapted in Europe by the Dutch, it spread to England, from whence it was introduced into America about 1735. Enormously popular as the foot of American cabriole leg furniture in the Queen Anne and Chippendale styles. It remained much in fashion as late as the 1790s. In America a bird's claw was generally used, mostly the eagle's.

Clock cases. Elaborate clock cases made their appearance in France in the Louis XIV period and were often treated in the most monumental manner. They became a special product of the Boulle atelier , as they did of the workshop or Cressent later. In the Louis XV and Louis XVI periods they took almost any form which appealed to their creators, and a great deal of ingenuity, both of design and craftsmanship, went into their production. Roughly, they divided themselves into five main types: wall or cartel clocks, mantel clocks, pedestal clocks, régulateurs, and bracket clocks, the names of which are self-explanatory.

If the movement or make of a clock is known and the date is established the collector should remember that it may have originally been placed in another case. This is not uncommon.

Close chairs and close or night stools. Were sometimes chair-shaped, sometimes rectangular or drum-shaped boxes [possibly covered and padded], and sometimes rectangular boxes on legs. A type of joined stool with a box top was so usaable, though it does not follow that all stools with this feature were for sanitary usage.

Coaster. A receptacle which came into use before 1750 for moving wine, beer, and food on the dining table; also variously known as a slider, decanter [p. 215] stand, and beer wagon. For ease of movement, the coaster was normally fitted either with small wheels or with a baize-covered base, and the materials used in good examples included mahogany, papier mÅch*, and silver. Beer wagons were sometimes made with special places for the jug and drinking vessels.

Cock's head. Twin-plate hinge of curvilinear shape, the finials formed [more or less] as a cock's head. Frequently found on woodwork of the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries.

Coffer. Term freely confused with chest. In strict definition a coffer was a chest or box covered in leather or some other material and banded with metalwork, but it seems likely that the term was not always precisely used. It may not be wrong to class as coffers various stoutly built and/or heavily ironed strong chests and boxes, even though they do not fulfill all the above requirements. Trussing coffers were furnished with lifting rings and shackles or other devices for transportation; but chests and coffers not intended for transport might be chained to the wall for security.

Comb back. See Windsor.

Commode. The normal French word for a chest of drawers, which seems to date from the early eighteenth century.