Part 17 (1/2)
There are many household curios which cannot be cla.s.sified under the headings of the foregoing chapters. They represent well-known features in every home, and yet each little group has an individuality of its own. Some may say that the main features of house-furnis.h.i.+ng have been left out of consideration, and that they are the most interesting household curios when age and disuse have come upon them. Household furniture, however, has been fully dealt with in the ”Chats” series in the two volumes ent.i.tled ”Chats on Old English Furniture,” and ”Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse Furniture,” to which books those interested in the curiosities of cabinet-making and village carpentry are referred. Yet notwithstanding the completeness of those works there are a few objects which have so entirely pa.s.sed into the range of household curios, and their uses were so entirely apart from present-day furniture, that some of them are specially noted in the following paragraphs, together with a few other isolated antiques.
Dower Chests.
If there is one piece of furniture above another that is surrounded with a halo of romance, surely it is the dower chest! We can picture the incoming of the coffer in all the newness of hand polish, fresh from the hands of the village carpenter or the retainer who had wrought the gnarled old oak grown on the estate for a favourite daughter of his lord--that chest which was to be packed full of fragrant linen, between which was laid sweet lavender, and richly embroidered garments for the bride, who, with her personal belongings stowed away therein, was to pa.s.s from the parental home to her newly wedded and unknown life. There are ancient chests full of historic memories, such as those in which the wealth of monarchs has been stored, like that in Knaresborough Castle, which, according to legend and some reference in old deeds, came over with William the Conqueror. In the Castle Museum there is another chest made for Queen Philippa in 1333--a veritable dower chest.
Some of the older chests have had loops for poles by which they could be carried about; but such were more correctly treasure chests. The dower chests usually remained in the home of the bride, and in time became her receptacle for bedding and other household stores, the little tray or corner box for jewels and trinkets being disused and eventually done away with altogether. The evolution of the chest until it became a cabinet or a chest of drawers is a story for the lover of old furniture to tell, but the dower chest in its earlier forms is a curio rich in legend and folklore. It may interest American readers to record that many of the oldest specimens in the States were first used as packing cases of unusual strength, gifts from the old folks at home, when colonists in Jacobean days crossed the Atlantic. Curiously enough, American craftsmen copied them and maintained the purity of the old English style long after the makers of English dower chests had been influenced by Dutch and French design and inlay.
Medicine Chests.
Some of the early English medicine chests, the foundation of which is of wood, are covered with tapestry, others with green satin, sometimes ornamented with floral devices made of puffed satin, overlaid and outlined with gold thread. Medicine chests varied in size, but few households were ”furnished” without a fitting receptacle for home-made recipes for simple ailments, such as were much resorted to in the past.
The chests were usually well fitted with bottles and phials, and with gla.s.s stoppers or silver or pewter tops. Many of the medicines had been prescribed by local pract.i.tioners, and were regarded as sovereign remedies to be used on all occasions; others were family recipes held in high repute. In such chests there was often a drawer or compartment containing bleeding cups and lancet--a remedy often resorted to when an illness could not be diagnosed.
Old Lacquer.
The beautiful red lacquer work is getting scarce, although it has had a long run, for it is more than twelve hundred years since the j.a.panese learned the secret of making it from the Coreans, who in their turn had it from the Chinese. The secret of producing in China and j.a.pan lacquer which cannot be imitated in other countries lies in the _rhus vernificifera_ which flourishes in those localities. It is the gum of that tree commonly called the lacquer-tree, which when taken fresh and applied to the object it is intended to lacquer turns jet-black on exposure to the sun, drying with great hardness. It will thus be seen that although French and English lacquers have been very popular, the imitation lacquer applied can have neither the effect nor the durability of the natural gum which sets so hard, and in the larger and more important objects can be applied again and again until quite a depth of lacquer is obtained, sometimes encrusted over with jewels and other materials embedded in it.
The best English lacquer was made in this country between the years 1670 and 1710, and was a very successful imitation of the Oriental. At that time and during the following century very many tea caddies, trays, screens, trinket boxes, and even furniture, were imported; and it was those which English workmen copied, gradually increasing the variety of household goods for which that material was so suitable.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 94.--OLD POWDER FLASKS.
(_In the Victoria and Albert Museum._)]
Old English lacquer differed from the more modern papier-mache in that instead of the pulp being composed entirely of paper, glued together and pressed, it was composed of a basis of wood, covered over with a black lacquer, on which the design was painted in colours. It was made under considerable difficulties, in that it had to compete with the imported Oriental wares which were made in China and j.a.pan under more favourable natural conditions.
The art of j.a.panning was revived in England late in the eighteenth century, and some remarkable pieces appear to have been the work of amateurs who painted and gilded so-called lacquer work, tea caddies, and jewelled caskets. It must be remembered that the art of j.a.panning was looked upon at one time as an accomplishment, for about the year 1700 many gentlewomen were taught the art.
French artists took up the Oriental style, and produced some very successful lacquer work, striking out in an entirely distinct style, which, as Vernis Martin decoration, became famous. The varnish or lacquer forming the foundation for those delightful little pictures was not unlike in effect the Oriental lacquer which to some extent it was intended to imitate.
In the early nineteenth century lacquering as an art fell into disrepute, and such decorations were largely a.s.sociated with the commoner metal wares, stoved and lacquered by the so-called j.a.panning process carried out in Birmingham and other places, although there is now some admiration shown by collectors for small trays, bread baskets, candle boxes, and snuffer trays of metal, j.a.panned and decorated by hand in colours and much fine gold pencilling.
The Tool Chest.
There have been amateur mechanics in all ages, and among the household curios are many old tools suggestive of having been made when the carpenter had plenty of time on his hands to decorate his tools with carvings, and frequently to make up his own kit. Thus old planes and braces were evidently the work of men who possessed some humour and skill, too, for some of the carved decoration is quite grotesque. There is a fine collection of old tools made and used in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on view in one of our museums. There is a carpenter's plough, dated 1750, moulding planes and skew-mouthed fillisters of beechwood, and a router plane of carved hornbeam. The modern hand brace becomes more realistic, and its origin understood at a glance when we examine the old hand brace of turned and carved boxwood, dated 1642, in that collection. The part where the bit is fitted is literally a hand, carved out of solid wood, and the curious crank indicates an imaginary twist in the arm, perhaps suggested by some carpenter who was able to manipulate his tools in a way not commonly understood, thus giving to future carpenters a most useful tool.
Egyptian Curios.
Among the collectable curios of old households are many antiquities from foreign lands. Perhaps the most interesting, in that they afford us examples of the prototypes of household antiques as they were known to a nation possessing an early civilization, polish, and refinement, are those which have been discovered recently in Egyptian tombs. Some representative examples may be seen in the British Museum. There are toilet requisites including mirrors, combs, and even wigs and wig boxes, as well as a gla.s.s tube for stibium or eye paint. There are ivory pillows or head rests, models of the ghostly boats of the underworld, and a vast variety of children's toys, including wooden dolls with strings of mud beads to represent hair, porcelain elephants, and wooden cats; and there are children's b.a.l.l.s made of blue glazed porcelain, and of leather stuffed with chopped straw. There are many games and amus.e.m.e.nts, such as stone draught boards, and draughtsmen in porcelain and wood. There are bells of bronze and some remarkable musical instruments like a harp, the body of which is in the form of a woman; and there are reed flutes and whistles and cymbals such as were carried by priestesses. There are curious ivory amulets, quaintly carved spoons, ivory boxes, and even theatre tickets. Necklaces and pendants and other articles of adornment are plentiful, for the Egyptian maidens possessed much jewellery--bracelets, rings, and necklaces. One very exceptionally fine relic of this far-off age is a toilet box complete with vases of unguents, eye paint, comb, and bronze sh.e.l.l on which to mix unguents, and other trinkets. Many such antiquities find their way into museums and private collections of household curios, and are useful and interesting for purposes of comparison, telling of customs which change not, and of the many connecting links which exist between the past and the present.
Ancient Spectacles.
It is truly astonis.h.i.+ng how many ancient spectacles, which to collectors of such things would be veritable treasures, lie neglected and allowed to ”knock about” until broken or otherwise damaged. Those mostly discovered are the heavy bra.s.s and silver-rimmed spectacles of about one hundred years ago, some very interesting specimens of which are to be seen in several of the larger local museums.
Spectacles are of very respectable age, although they cannot be traced back to the ancient peoples, for the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, notwithstanding that they polished gla.s.s and rock crystal and possessed much scientific lore, were ignorant of their use as aids to sight.
It is said that the credit of the discovery of how to make use of artificial aids to defective sight must be accorded to Roger Bacon, who in his book _Opus Majus_, published in the thirteenth century, mentioned magnifying gla.s.ses as being useful to old people to make them see better. True spectacles are said to have been fas.h.i.+oned in 1317 by Salvino degli Armati, a Florentine n.o.bleman. At first they were convex; indeed, no mention of concave gla.s.ses for shortsighted persons was made until towards the middle of the sixteenth century. From that time onward there were developments, and among the household curios are to be found silver, bra.s.s, and tortoisesh.e.l.l rims, and gla.s.ses of more or less utility.