Posts tagged "victorian"

A Fine Example of Victorian Craftsmanship

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on June 24, 2010

Recently I wrote about our May furniture container, and one of the items I featured in that post was a carved Victorian sideboard. This is really such a beautiful piece that I wanted to share some of the detailed photos that we have of it. Enjoy!

The black areas in the backsplash are mirrors.

Take a look at the lion in the center. He looks absolutely shocked. Somewhere, a lion died of old age and woke up in Victorian England as a carving in somebody's sideboard. Not the afterlife he was expecting. Surprise!—you're furniture.

When I first saw this guy, I thought he was a pregnant woman until I saw the beard. For a moment I considered Victorian carnies and bearded ladies, but after banishing that thought, I realized that the representation here is in a classical style, where depictions of men and women are often androgynous.

Here is the little man's female opposite. They are both holding a cylindrical object, the man with his left hand, the woman with her right, but I haven't been able to figure out what it is supposed to represent. I'm sure it was a common and recognizable motif to Victorians.

The surprising thing about these cherubs is the remarkable level of detail shown in their faces. They sure are cute little pudgy things. (In case you're wondering why I don't call them puttos, see my post, "Putto or Cherub?".)

I believe that these pulls are original to the sideboard, which is fairly uncommon for a piece of this age. Incredibly, the pulls show almost as much precise detail as the wood itself.

Tags: sideboard, showcase, victorian

0 comments.

Putto or Cherub?

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on September 12, 2009

This isn't the type of question I ask very often, but a post about a Thomas Brooks Dresser over at Rare Victorian peaked my interest. John Werry raised the issue of whether the winged male child, shown at the top of this dresser as well as in countless other works of furniture and art, ought to be referred to as a "putti" (singular for "putto") or as a "cherub."

According to Wikipedia's version of the story, "cherub" cannot refer to the artistic representation of toddler angels, a claim for which Wikipedia provides no support in that article but does in another on putto. I use the term "support" loosely, since the reference does not appear to be academic or peer-reviewed; in any case, a forum poster known as Juan Carlos Martinez argues that "cherub" refers exclusively to the Christian theological figures, and that putto are only secularized versions of Cupid—and thus obviously not Christian (see the rest of his argument). Not wanting to leave the question unanswered, I did what I always do in any contest of English diction: I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary (which unfortunately requires a subscription to access).

Continue reading...

Tags: putto, cherub, oed, thomas brooks, rare victorian

0 comments.

Victorian Furniture (1837-1901)

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on August 06, 2009

Anybody who knows antiques and the reproductions that follow them knows that familiarizing yourself with various furniture periods can be a big help. That's why we decided to offer our readers a few useful summaries of the major furniture periods of England, starting with one of the first. This post is the 6th in a series of 7, continued from a discussion of Regency furniture.

The same period that produced both an infamous Puritanical moralism as well as On the Origin of Species, the Victorian period is often seen as a time of contradictions, which any look at literature and art from the period can discern. The same can be said of Victorian furniture, where the stately propriety of the day clashed with a clamor of human passions to produce some of the finest, well-crafted furniture pieces of all time. Today, Victorian furniture is often considered the epitomized combination of orderliness and rich ornamentation. Indeed, furniture-makers at the time were so successful that succeeding styles took inspiration from the Victorian period, and even today many of the finest furniture styles (including our own collection) owe their design and construction techniques to the master craftsmen of Victorian period furniture.

Continue reading...

Tags: furniture, history, victorian

0 comments.