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LOUISE’S PAPERS
Painted Furniture by Louise Devenish
From the beginning of the early ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece, and Rome and throughout the vast Asian Continent, wood has been decorated and preserved by means of special age-old pigments and binders which recipes go back thousands of years. The amazing thing is that we continue to take pleasure in painting on wood whether for utilitarian purposes or for decoration as a means to brighten our environment and our lives. It never seems to goes out of style. The other amazing thing is that so many objects have survived the ravages of time and/or from being displayed in our museums and/or within private collections. Though pieces have survived from the tenth and the twelfth centuries, it wasn’t until the fifteenth century that we see oil painting flourishing in the Western world.
During the Egyptian dynasties, oil was pressed out of seeds and mixed with pigment. Later, the seeds were crushed in small bags; this process was referred to as cold pressed oil.
As time evolved, oils like linseed oil were left to sit out in the sun so that the extraneous material from the seeds, such as protein could settle out; the sun also bleached and thickened the oil thereby increasing its efficiency. During the Renaissance, the oil was heated at high temperatures in lead pots whereby the residue from the lead compound in the oil, when mixed with the pigments, resulted in oil that dried quickly to a hard film.
Drying oils were the predominant binding medium we see used on antiques and artifacts from this period.
Everything was done by hand. Grinding the pigments and adding them to the oils – the recipes were passed down from generation to generation.
At the end of the eighteenth century, premixed paste colors were manufactured and paint became a commercial product. Before the mid-nineteenth century, tin tubes were introduced that contained premixed paints.
Binders that have been used throughout time and across the globe included rabbit skin glue, fish glue, and even buffalo glue in Western India. Also used were egg whites, egg yolks, casein, gum Arabic resins, shellac, and waxes.
The most common, and far less exotic, binder is made from petroleum based additives. Glue was used in the exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts which were decorated with letters of pure gold.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in England has a beautiful chair, circa 1630, that came from an entire suite of furniture from the court of King Charles I of England. This chair had been decorated first by gilding the entire frame then with artful painting of countless sprays of delicate flowers onto the surface.
It was possibly the work of artist Philip Bromfield who, in the seventeenth century, was a member of The Painters and Stainers Company of London. Mr. Bromfield charged 25 shillings a yard for his paintings of naturalistic flowers which was a great sum in those days. We know this by examining the old invoices in the collection of Her Majesty, Elizabeth I of England. This expensive decoration bears out the fact that painting furniture was not just a less expensive alternative to carving or veneering, but a unique and individual way of decorative expression afforded only by the very wealthy.
Most likely Bromfield got his inspiration and education from books of engravings, such as The Florileguium which was published in Antwerp in 1590 by Adrian Collaert.
These flower illustrations were also used by other artists not only for rendering textile designs, but also for decorating harpsichords and coaches. Mr. Bromfield was an expert in trompel’oeil and painted with such technique on furniture for Queen Anne of Denmark who was married to King James I of England and Scotland. Queen Anne’s chairs were painted in white and gold and spotted with red flowers. Some other chairs created by Bromfield were painted with green and gold flowers. These examples are different from the perception of how most of think of how our ancestors decorated their homes.
In America, because of the many nationalities that settled here, we see various influences and many forms of decoration, both primitive and highly sophisticated. In the seventeenth century, pigment for paint was imported from England with the oil was already ground into it. The most used colors were lamp black, bituminous earths and reds made from leads and iron oxides, white derived from white lead, blues, and green from verdigris.
One of the most common forms of furniture decorated was the Dutch “Kas” or cupboard which we also refer to as the marriage or hope chest of New England. The Kas or Kasten was decorated in Grisaille, in different shades of grey to imitate sculpture. It had a three-dimensional quality. The chests were decorated with bright flowers of tulips, sunflowers, and carnations. The were first drawn with a thick coat of lead white over which the colors of vermilion and copper green were applied in a thin layer to which the flowers were added to the panels – some in bright yellow, which after recent paint analysis done at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (where many of theses pieces are displayed) was found to contain arsenic and traces of sulfur and orpiment.
The color schemes used were lively and very beautiful to brighten- up the houses that were only lit by candles and the large fireplaces at night.
Sadly today, they have either lost their paint by age or through the muting of them by later coats of paint.
Society kept up with the ever changing styles, even after the American Revolutionary War, we can refer to the numerous pattern books and articles advising what was the most appropriate style of the day and, most of all, what was and what was not in good taste!
From the ubiquitous Director by Thomas Chippendale which found its way into every country and translation in Europe as well as to the most important cities in the new world. This mega best seller was followed by the influential and Neo-Classical designs by Robert Adam illustrated in Works in Architecture, London 1773-1779, which offered a rich vocabulary of ornaments as well as called for a change from the clarets and emerald greens of Rococo period, to the sunny pastel palette of Italy, which instantly transforming every fine dining room from Maine to Charleston
In London, many Italian craftsmen were encouraged to seek work in the grand new houses of the aristocracy designed by Robert Adam and furnished by Thomas Chippendale. These new talents included Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Michaelangelo Pergolesi, and Antonio Zucchi. Zucchi met the celebrated Swiss painter Angelica Kauffman while working for Adam and married her.
George Hepplewhite’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, published in 1788 by his wife after his death, was also a notable design book and had great influence on painted furniture in America, referred to as “Fancy Furniture.” Many of his designs were used also for painted cornices and beds.
Sheraton’s Cabinet -Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book , published in 1802, and also provided inspiration for cabinetmakers and artists. In it, he suggests techniques such as priming rush seats of chairs with common white lead ground up in linseed oil and distilled spirits of turpentine, and then painting them a soft straw color. These designs from many sources changed the entire landscape of style during the 19th century.
In the eighteenth century, Philadelphia the nation’s capital, and the style there was exceedingly Francophile. Many French expatriates had settled there to escape the devastation of the French Revolution and the overthrow of Napoleon. Personages such as the Duc d’Orleans, the future King of France, was living there as was Joseph Bonaparte (the brother of Napoleon) who owned a Philadelphia townhouse. Thomas Jefferson returned from France to Philadelphia and brought back 59 chairs in the Louis XVI style painted white with gilt highlights. Benjamin Franklin sent his wife white and gold furniture from Paris.
In the wealthy and thriving seaport, Baltimore, the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe designed furniture for the Madison White House engaging the services of the celebrated John and Hugh Findley who created 17 wonderful Greek style Klismos chairs, each with a different painted design of sphinxes and griffins, laurel and anthemion lyres, and wreathes upon the tablet crest rails and throughout the entire frame.
A set from this suite can be seen in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Others unfortunately were lost or burnt when the British tried to capture the White house in 1812.
Elias Hasket Derb, a wealthy merchant and ship owner from Salem Massachusetts, ordered oval back fancy chairs for his new mansion in Salem. They were painted white with splats consisting of four green plumes tied with a bow knot, with delicate floral sprays going down the sides and on the apron. These also can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Elias also commissioned New England artist, John Ritto Penniman, to decorate a commode for his daughter Elizabeth .
Penniman was a very accomplished artist who began working at the age of 11; by the time he was 21 he had his own business making everything from landscape art to Masonic signs and paintings, and reversed paintings on glass known as verre eglomise .He worked with the Boston clockmakers Simon and Aaron Willard and decorated the
glass panels of their signature banjo clocks with landscapes and ship scenes.
For Elizabeth’s commode, which is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he covered the demi-lune top with paintings of naturalistic seashells which he painted from life.
The twentieth century in America saw the slow and steady stream of women out of the home into the work force and the art world. Elsie de Wolfe (whose client, Henry Clay Frick, put her on the map) decorated the exclusive Colony Club, the first club to admit women in America, which earned her renowned acclaim. She decorated the club interior like a Tivoli Garden scene with charming white trellis work, green vines, and painted furniture in the dining room which brought the outside in. Her torch was picked up and carried by future luminaries , amongst them Rose Cummings Nancy Lancaster, Syrie Maughan, Dorothy Draper, Sister Parish – all of whom shared a great love for painted furniture.
Sister Parish’s favorite innovation during the Depression era, was to buy up all the American golden oak furniture she could find in Sears, Roebuck departments stores and then paint it white which she would then present to her unsuspecting (and delighted)clients. This novel chic furniture became vastly popular throughout the entire Eastern seaboard and across the country, and is still endured today.
The passion for painted surfaces goes on: new colors, new patterns, and new imitations of exotic natural materials such as malachite, lapis, and tortoiseshell.
What’s new is old and what’s old is new.
Bibliography
Painted Wood History and Conservation by The Getty Museum, 1998
The Best of Painted Furniture by Florence de Dampierre, Rizzoli, 1987
American Painted Furniture by Cynthia Schaffner and Susan Klein,Clarkson Potter, 1997
Glossary
Grisaille a trompe l’oeil: an effect that simulates carving and/or sculpture by monochromatic painting in various tones of grey
Anthemion: The Greek honeysuckle pattern
Palmette. Similar to anthemion stylized palm leaf
Griffin : Mythological beast that is half eagle half lion
Sphinx: Egyptian, mythical winged monster which is half woman and half lion.
Adam: Brothers Robert and James. Robert was a practicing architect who brought the Neoclassical style to Europe and America. They are the authors of The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1773.
Angelica Kauffmann: (1741-1807) Swiss painter and decorative artist came to London in 1776 to paint murals, ceilings and furniture, many designed by by Adam.
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