Games tables

games and cards table 18th century — Table from around 1750 has a backgammon board under a chess/checkers/draughts board, and nine men's morris at the other end. Probably German. Photo by Thomas Quine

This table is a fine example of the 18th century fashion for specialised furniture designed to suit particular interests and hobbies. It’s beautifully crafted by a skilled cabinet-maker for a client with plenty of money. Look at the inlay work in the games boards, the edgings, the pairs of dice – and all over. Set in the walnut surface are maple, plum, mahogany and other woods, expertly cut and fitted together.

The later 1700s saw more and more furniture created exclusively for people’s leisure activities. Clever metamorphic step-chairs for private libraries, and card tables for the drawing-room are two examples I’ve already written about. Ladies’ (needle)work tables were surprisingly often combined with chess boards, and are sometimes as elaborate and decorative as the games table shown here. Stylish, ingenious pieces of furniture suited the mood of the times.

Georgian games table — Mahogany games table with inlaid chess board. View from side and above showing sliding, reversible top and backgammon layout beneath. English, c1795

Games boards can be seen occasionally on earlier furniture, like the amazing 16th century “Eglantine” table covered with fine marquetry at Hardwick Hall, England. (Detail pictured below.) But the 18th century brought something new. The table to the right is not as fine as the one in the main picture, but it is probably more typical:

The top is inlaid as a chessboard on the under side, and is made to slide in grooves and to be reversible when required. The top when removed discloses two compartments fitted for backgammon. This game is one of considerable antiquity in England, and was generally referred to as “the tables”. Although now relegated to country vicarages and the homes of the smaller squirearchy, it was a fashionable amusement during the eighteenth century, and one at which considerable sums were won and lost by the “bucks” of the Georgian period and the days of the Regency.
Herbert Cecsinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 1909

Porcelain, and more table details

The bigger porcelain box on the table at the top of the page is for game tokens or counters, and was made by Meissen, probably between 1750 and 1780. The little green one is a Meissen snuff box made c1745. Inside the lid (sorry, not visible) is a scene of people playing tric-trac, a kind of backgammon. The glass beakers with playing card decoration are the oldest things in sight; they come from early 1700s Saxony.

16th century table — Chess and backgammon boards inlaid in 16th century Hardwick Hall table. Photo by Damian Entwistle

The German table, in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, is approx. 35 by 29 inches, and 29 inches high. The English Georgian table is 28 and a half inches high. The top is only 20 by 22 inches when the side flaps are down. When up, they rest on hinged supports, and make the table’s full length 39 inches.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Games table, Hardwick Hall table. More picture info here

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Card tables and a social life

antique American card table — American mahogany card table with gold touches. Hinged top opens out to about 36in. square. c1828. Photo by Jenny O'Donnell

Many finely-crafted card tables were made in the 1700s and 1800s. The social lives of prosperous families in America, Britain, and other parts of Europe depended on having a card table, or two, for friends to play at in the evening.

Before 1700, card-playing was popular with very rich people, and less so with people who were moderately wealthy. It stayed fashionable with the aristocracy in 18th century Europe. Wealthy gamblers sometimes lost huge sums of money in gaming houses or private mansions where a ‘banker’ oversaw games of chance like faro or basset.

During the 1700s and 1800s more people came to have more leisure time, and they furnished their homes to reflect this. Comfortably-off hosts in middle-sized houses organised card tables for their evening guests. People still played for money but the games, like whist or piquet, involved more skill and less betting. The players might enjoy conversation more than cards once a nice little group was gathered round the table. This often provides a useful scenario for dialogue in novels. Young women confide secrets over cards in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and older ladies whisper animatedly at Cranford card tables described by Elizabeth Gaskell.

17th century card table — Playing cards c1637. By Dutch painter Jan Olis

Before it became fashionable to have special furniture crafted by cabinet-makers, cards were often played at tables covered in a floor-length cloth, as you can see in various paintings of elegant 17th century players. Artists also show poorer card players, usually men, gathered round a stool or barrel when they had time for card playing.

Decorative or simple?

Early 19th century Empire or Regency tables, and later Federal Era tables in the USA, generally had fold-over tops concealing a playing surface, which might be covered in green baize. Carved pedestal bases had legs that could swing out to support the square opened top. Mahogany was a popular choice, but walnut, maple, rosewood or satinwood were also used.

pair neo-classical card tables — Card tables made in New York by Frenchman Lannuier c1817. Photo by Peter Roan

Ornamentation varied. Later card tables tended to have more elaborate flourishes than the relatively restrained pre-1800 designs. A semi-circular or demi-lune Georgian flip-top table might have simple tapered legs. Inlaid surface patterns were likely to be discreet geometric designs. Whether the top folded into a rectangle or semi-circle, a typical card table was about 30 inches high and 36 inches across: a good size for four people to chat as well as play. Some tables were made with recessed holders for coins or tokens. (See big picture below.)

In Victorian times social card playing was by no means only for the grandest section of society. A card table was almost essential for households aspiring to a middle-class way of life. An 1856 book* advising British people how to set up house on annual budgets of £100 upward assumed there would be a card table in the drawing room, even if it was only mahogany veneer on a softwood frame, with a simple round or square top.

By this time a particular style of simple oval or round table was known as a ‘loo table’. Loo, or lanterloo, was a popular game in the Victorian era, though its origins are older. Sometimes these tables had a tilting top (not folding in half), perhaps with inlaid veneer decoration, and so they could be kept upright by a wall.

18th century American card table — Card table, top open, Queen Anne legs, in the Robert Hooper House, built in Massachusetts c1754. Photo by Jonathan Dresner

There were always a few people who kept away from card playing for religious or moral reasons – but not always the ones you would expect. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch there’s a clergyman who plays cards well enough to pad out his modest income with regular winnings, though he attracts disapproval from some of his neighbours.

*JH Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy: suited to families spending from £100 to £1000, London 1856

More on American card tables influenced by cabinet-makers like Sheraton in Philadelphia Empire Furniture by Allison Boor

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: first mahogany table, Hooper table, pair of tables. More picture info here

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Tiled stoves, winter warmth

tiled stoves oven bench 19th century — A tiled stove with its "oven bench" in a Swiss museum house (photo by Yola Simon) and an 1861 painting of a living room/stove room in the Black Forest region of Germany.

Tiled stoves were a wonderful way of heating homes in Northern Europe. I’ve often wondered why the British never used them. The settlers in North America hardly used them either, even in regions with bitter cold winters. At first they seem to have followed the British idea of having a fire to warm yourself by, rather than trying to keep a whole room warm. In English-speaking countries the open hearth reigned supreme long after other nations had taken to stoves, although there were some iron stoves in the early USA and colonial New England…. but I’ll write about them another day. This is more about ceramic glazed tile stoves, sometimes known by their German name of Kachelofen.

Stoves warm rooms more efficiently and cleanly than open fires. Heat doesn’t escape up the chimney, it’s safer and easier to keep them going overnight, and you don’t have to chop down so many trees to fuel them. (The Green movement has rediscovered wood-burning stoves.)

What explanations could there be for the traditional British resistance to stoves for heating? Some I’ve considered are discussed in Priscilla Brewer’s From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America – essential reading if you’re interested in the history of heating and cooking stoves in the US. Can you think of any apart from these three?

ceramic tiled heating stoves — Two Swedish stoves for the corner of a room, the plain one in a farm cottage, the floral one in a bigger house. The white stove on the right is in Lithuania. Swedish photos by HomeThingsPast. Lithuanian photo by Alma Pater

Milder winters than the rest of northern Continental Europe
Distaste for the “unhealthy” idea of an enclosed warm room with “no” fresh air, no open chimney
Feeling that open fires are part of the British way of life – supported by Lawrence Wright in the 1960s in Home Fires Burning

The stoves pictured here are not from mansions. There certainly are many fine stoves in palaces and grand houses, but these are the kind you can see in simple or middling houses.

Green seems to be a popular tile colour for rustic German stove rooms, with their characteristic benches and drying racks. In Sweden there are lots of tall, white stoves. If anyone knows more about regional styles of ceramic stove I’d love to hear from you.

A stove-room for the stove?

17th century stove room — This picture had the title "stove with bedroom" in 1659, in an educational book teaching Latin and English names for the things labelled with numbers. More on this in the text.

A stove used to mean a heated room, and not the thing heating it. In the 15th century the idea of keeping a living room warm, with heat radiating out through glazed tiles or iron panels, started to spread in German-speaking parts of Europe. There was still an open fire in the kitchen for cooking. This could be connected to an enclosed oven-box in the next room to create a warm space called the “stove” (German “Stube“). There might be enough heat to warm an adjacent bedroom too. It was a big step forward in comfort for people living in ordinary homes. A French traveller reported:

For the cold …. [German people] have stoves that heat in such a way that they are warm in their rooms, and in winter craftsmen do their work and keep their wives and children there and it takes very little wood to heat them.
Gilles le Bouvier, Livre de la description des pays, mid-15th century

Stove and furnishings 17th century — The stove-room, bedroom and their furnishings described in a 1659 school book.

In many countries the heating “box” is still called an oven (German Ofen), but English speakers have got used to calling it a stove, and have forgotten that stove used to mean a room. In the 17th century illustration above the oven is in the back right corner, numbered 5. Here’s a list of the things pictured: from the 1659 English edition of Comenius‘ school book Orbis Pictus, with the original punctuation.

The Stove 1. is beautified with an Arched-Roof 2. & wainscotted walls, 3 It is enlighted with Windows; It is heated with an Oven.

Its Utensils are, Benches, Stools, 7, Tables, 8, with Tressels, 9, Footstools, 10. and Cushions, 11.

There are also Tapestry hanged. 12. for soft lodging, in a sleeping-room, 13. there is a Bed 14. spread on a Bed-stead, 15. upon a Straw-pad, 16. with Sheets, 17. and Cover lids, 18. The Bolster 19. is under ones head. The Bed is covered with a Canopy 20. A Chamber-Pot 21 is for making water in.

Kachelofen stove Alsace — Another green tiled stove, this one from Alsace. Photo by Christina

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Swiss stove, Lithuanian stove, Alsatian stove. More picture info here
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18th century American kitchen

This model of an 18th century kitchen in New England should appeal to people who like historic kitchens, and to people who like doll’s houses. There are lots of “authentic” things in it, and care was taken with historical details. The room is interesting and charming even though it may not be 100% realistic, but see what you think before reading my opinion.

Fireplace and mantelpiece

The fine fireplace has plenty of period detail: an oven set into the soot-stained brickwork (behind the doll-woman), andirons to hold the logs in the fireplace, a chimney crane to the left for hanging cooking pots over the fire. But where are the cooking pots? One brass pan with a long handle for open hearth cooking, but no kettle, no griddle, no spit – not much to make meals for what looks like a reasonably prosperous household. And setting the table so close to the fire – too hot, too dirty, too inconvenient in real life, but it’s the right kind of table and contributes to the overall scene.

early American kitchen — Fireplace area in the Early American Kitchen. Knoxville Museum of Art

On and around the mantelpiece are ornaments and domestic bits and pieces. The sailing ship is accompanied by Toby jugs and candlesticks: probably pewter like the tankard, plates and other things in the room. The gun and powder horn are nearby. A bed warmer hangs by the fire, as they did, ready to be filled with embers while also looking fine. Hard to imagine the family would hang a twig besom alongside, nearly hiding the brass heirloom. Even though a broom would have been used for sweeping away ash round the hearth, it surely belongs to some inferior corner. Anyway, it’s good to see this one here, reminding us what 18th century Americans used.

Furniture

A dresser displays plates, pitchers, and another Toby jug. The seats are not upholstered, but two have traditional draught protection with their high backs and sidepieces: a shape that inspired the more comfortable wing chairs gradually coming into use. With their longlasting design, the stools could have come from Elizabethan England or been made brand new by a local carpenter. A candlestand adds portable, adjustable lighting for close craftwork in a room that is already equipped with candles on walls and mantelshelf. The spinning wheel for flax would have been in frequent use in many households, making linen thread for weaving cloth. The miniature furniture here was made by professional cabinetmakers. Originally it would have been pine or maple.

Doorway

Hanging near the door is a pierced tin lantern, ready for anyone going out into the dark. The glass balls in netting remind me of fisherman’s floats and, the museum suggests, echo the “witch balls” that people hung in doorways or windows for protection against dark forces entering the house. What are the strings of little dark things hanging next to the broom? Probably food being preserved by drying – apples, perhaps? What do you think?

Windows

1700s American kitchen — Spinning wheel for flax in New England kitchen. Knoxville Museum of Art

I admit to knowing nothing about how New Englanders used indoor plants in the 18th century, but I can’t help wondering if the pretty curtains and flowers are typical of hard-working kitchens of that era. Even though this room is the kind of kitchen that doubled up as a family living room, to me the window area seems more like pretty parlour than kitchen.

Date

Is it possible to date this kitchen? My guess is that Mrs. Thorne, the woman who masterminded this and many other wonderful model rooms, probably had a date in the late 1770s or 1780s in mind. The clothing suits this period well enough, as do the furnishings, and the model ship has a (post-independence) US flag. Without the flag, it could be somewhat earlier, perhaps.

Even with “real” historic kitchens, we aren’t necessarily seeing things exactly as they were. In this carefully-staged one, the period seems pretty consistent, but we’re probably looking at everything through a lens that makes the room more attractive than the original reality.

More

If you like to ID old kitchen items, try the things in a 16th century English kitchen, 1920s ranch kitchen, or a German kitchen around 1930. Also see this list of what was in a Scottish farm kitchen (and house) in 1789.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: First picture, second picture, third picture. More picture info here.

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Box beds, bunk beds – upstairs, downstairs

Lit clos double etage — "Box beds with an upstairs - Let's go, girls, sleepy time." Caption on postcard, about 100 years old.

I’ve written about box beds before, and about the Breton tradition of fine, substantial, and wonderfully carved box beds (lits clos or enclosed beds). At the time I didn’t know about another, more recent, tradition from about 100 years ago: pictures of comic scenes staged around Britanny’s most famous furniture. The double-decker beds (double lit clos, lit à l’étage etc.) are doubly amusing with the right humorous caption. There are straightforward photographs too, showing off traditional Breton folk costumes as well as the beds.

The postcards probably appealed to city slickers from Paris taking the sea air in Brittany, as well as to tourists from further afield. Brittany’s cultural heritage is quite distinct from the rest of France, so a cute picture of the carved box beds plus wooden clogs (sabots) and local characters in Breton dress could be just the thing to send to the folks back home. There seems to be a hint of “Aren’t these rustic hicks funny?” but it’s hard to be sure how it would have seemed at the time. In any case, the photographs give a good impression of the amazing furniture.

Every box bed had its combination bench-chest (banc-coffre or banc-tossel) to help with climbing in. (And with storing linen.) To get up and down, some postcard characters perched a stool precariously on the chest, some asked for a ladder, and others used a convenient shoulder.

Double box beds — Postcard caption says: Call to order. "Hey, up there. Could you be a bit quieter?"

Within Brittany, there were regional differences in the design of lits clos. Some were completely enclosed with full doors, except perhaps for decorative pierced carving to let air circulate. Other beds were only partly surrounded by wooden panelling, and had a curtained opening. Fixed panels and sliding doors could match perfectly. The space behind the bench-chest might be empty, or covered with a simple plank. Side panels were generally plain, hidden by other furniture close by.

As well as elaborate carving on flat surfaces, many beds featured ornamental balusters. A balustrade ran all the way along the top of some beds.

To see more souvenir box bed photographs – plus comedy – try these links:

Here’s a great collection (4 pages) of early 20th century box bed pictures (some mildly risqué in a French style).
More old postcards here; you have to search with “lit clos” and register to see them bigger.
This site only has one picture of a rather downmarket bed (is that a chamber-pot under the bench?) but, if you can read French, note that it leads to a curious poem about an elderly matriarch holding court in her imposing lit clos.

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Early American candlestands: light at the right height

Threaded candle stand screw type — Threaded screw candlestand allowed someone working at the desk to raise candles that had burned down. The drawer is a nice base for stability as well as storage. In the parsonage at Mission Mill in Salem, Oregon, photographed by Glen Bedsoe

When you’re working by candlelight you want as much light on your sewing or reading as possible, but you don’t want to waste candlewax or tallow. It helps if you can raise or lower the light to suit the task, or to allow for the candle getting shorter.

Candlestands colonial screw tripod table type — Early 20th C candlestands inspired by early American designs. On the left, a model for a recreated early American room (photo Knoxville Museum of Art). On the right, a woodworking design for a so-called Puritan candle stand, a "copy of a genuine antique", to be made of maple with brass tubing to hold the candles.

Colonial Americans and their descendants left behind them a kind of threaded candlestand with a special charm. It’s thought of as a distinctively American design: twin candle holders on a wooden bar which moves up or down on a central stem. Floor-standing candlestands like this, with a small tabletop, are desirable antiques, while 20th and 21st century craftspeople have gone on making both full-height and “desktop” versions. For a classic example in maple wood look at this 18th century one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Grandmother’s front room had bow-backed chairs with flag seats, and tables supported by curiously-carved and twisted legs, a candle stand that screwed up and down like a piano stool, a handsome mirror, and the buffet was resplendent in its appointments.
Memories of a Massachusetts room c1800 in Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian by Sarah Emery, 1879

shoemaker candle stand — Candle stand in shoemaker's workshop at Colonial Williamsburg (a living history exhibit). Photo by Jeff Kubina.

What are they called?

Now for the name problem. Is there a name that summons up an image of a tripod-legged table with a pair of candle holders on an arm that screws up and down? Or even a name for the top part with or without legs? Here are some that I’ve seen used:

Candlestand or Candle Stand – the name used by the Met, but they use it for plain tables too. Light, portable tables, aka candlestands, were made in quantity in the 1800s as bedside or parlor tables suitable for holding a candlestick. Candlestand can also mean a very ornamental tall stand.

Shoemaker’s or Cobbler’s Candlestand – Adjusting the level of the candle was certainly important for shoe makers and other craftspeople, but they didn’t stick just to the threaded twin-candle type. The photo left shows a very simple candle holder with some scope for height adjustment, while the shoemaker’s shop at Williamsburg also has a more elaborate kind with the “light-focusing” globes associated with lacemaking.

Shaker Candlestand – Is it right to call screw-threaded candle holders “Shaker”? They weren’t just made by Shakers, and the Shakers themselves also made tables with a single hole and shaft for a candle holder, as well as plain small tables to place a candlestick on.

In the evening, after the dishes were washed and cleared off the table and the table set back, the candle stand would be moved out from its proper corner and the whole family gathered around it; some of the men reading a newspaper or a book or the women sewing or knitting, or spinning flax or tow. If there was not room around the stand for all, one or more would hang a candle on the back of a chair.
Memories of a Virginia farm in the 1820s by John Janney

Adjustable candle stand 18th century — A different way of adjusting candle height and position with this holder from Upper Saddle River, NJ, believed to date from c1735. (Bergen County Historical Society report 1920)

English candlestands

What ancestors or relatives did these candlestands have in Europe? I turned to Pinto’s Treen and other wooden bygones for clues. He describes a variety of adjustable one- or two-candle holders and stands: to go on the floor, on a table, or hanging on a wall. The type that sounds most like the taller early American kind discussed here is an 18th century “threaded wood stem or pillar, on which were mounted one or two threaded candle brackets, adjustable in height by turning them on the stem”. “Ratchet adjustment” or “friction rise and fall” were alternative mechanisms. He shows an early single candle friction type, floor-standing with a small square tabletop incorporated in the design. There’s also a short 18th century boxwood candle holder with threaded shaft holding an arm with a candle at each end.

As mentioned above, there’s some similarity with lacemakers’ candlestands, which Pinto says were used not only for lace but for other “close work” too. Usually, in England at least, these were “crude”, “three-legged” like milking stools, with holes for the “flashes” or water-filled globes and for a single “spring controlled rise and fall candle holder”.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: main picture, scale model candle stand, Williamsburg candle stand. More picture info here
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Rocking cradles – wood or wicker

Wooden cradle 1600s — Oak hooded cradle, English, 1683, carved initials, alongside 16th and 17th century oak furniture. Photo by HomeThingsPast

Cradle designs have changed, but are parents’ concerns any different? 200 years ago people were writing about the well-known dilemma: how much can I let my baby sleep in the day without stopping it from sleeping well at night?

It only remains…to say something of the cradle…I believe there is no doubt but the custom of laying children down awake, and rocking them in a cradle in the day time, or…in the evening when they are to go into their night’s sleep, as it is called, may [make] them sometimes more wakeful in the night… From: A Treatise on the … Management of Infants, 1784*

wicker rocking cradle with hood — Wicker cradle on oak rockers used by first baby born to settlers in America, probably. Dutch origins, c1620?*. Photo by Sarah Houghton

Two of the cradles pictured on this page are 300-400 years old, but they look much the same as cradles from only 100 years ago. For centuries, babies in Western Europe and North America were put into small baskets or boxes raised slightly off the floor, on rockers, with or without a hood. Rocking cradles like these have gone out of fashion, and we have different customs now.

Rockers, hoods, drapes, handles, straps

Babies could be strapped in, either with strips of cloth tied right round the whole thing, threaded through holes, or attached to wooden knobs or basketry handles. The child was protected from draughts and damp floors, especially in a hooded cradle. Wicker cradles often had fabric drapes over the hood for extra warmth and daytime darkness.

Child rocking baby in wicker cradle — Hand- rocking in: A Little Girl Rocking a Cradle, c1655, Nicholas Maes (detail)

A small cradle can be rocked by an older sibling or a busy adult with a foot to spare for rocking while her hands are busy with other tasks. It can be lifted to another place using handles or convenient bits of wood-carving. Overall, the baby was fairly safe but questions remain. Was it left alone? What about mice in a world without chemical pest control? Would a busy carer tie the baby in and neglect it?

I had made it an invariable rule always to dress and undress my infant, never suffered it to be placed in a cradle, nor to be fed out of my presence. A basket of an oblong shape with four handles (with a pillow and a small bolster) was her bed by day: at night she slept with me. I had too often heard of the neglect which servants show to young children, and I resolved never to expose an infant of mine either to their ignorance or inattention. From: Mrs. Robinson’s Memoirs, looking back at the 1770s*

Wooden rocking cradle — Simple wooden cradle from the Scottish Western Isles. Holes for cord ties. Photo by HomeThingsPast

Materials and styles varied regionally, though the basics stayed the same. Planks of wood from big trees were available inmuch of Britain and Scandinavia. Numerous paintings of Dutch domestic life confirm that wicker cradles were common in the Netherlands. Cradles were ornamented with colourful folk art in areas with strong traditions of painting on wooden furniture.

Natural rocking

The last word goes to the 18th century “expert” quoted earlier:

Painted cradle — Cradle from Swedish farmhouse. Painted and carved traditional folk art decoration. Photo by Wolfgang Sauber

I cannot help thinking, there is something so truly natural, as well as pleasant, in the wavy motion of a cradle, and so like what children have been used to before they are born, ….that, always wishing to follow nature as I do, I cannot, on the whole, but give an opinion rather in favour of the cradle. From: …Management of Infants, 1784*

Notes

* Michael Underwood, A treatise on the diseases of children, with directions for the management of infants from the birth; especially such as are brought up by hand, London 1784
* Memoirs of the late Mrs. Robinson, written by herself. With some posthumous pieces. Edited by her daughter, M. E. Robinson, London 1801
* More about the American wicker cradle picture here.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here:
Dutch-American wicker cradle, Swedish cradle.
More picture info here
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Victorian nursery furniture

antique nursery furniture crib rocker — Elegant furniture for a baby's nursery of the 1870s. A swinging cradle (wicker or cane?) on a lacquered iron frame, with support for drapes, plus a chair for mother or nurse to rock baby when not in the cot.

Parents planning for a new baby in the 19th century felt some of the same pressures as parents today. From one direction came the voices of “experts” offering advice on safety, health, and hygiene. At the same time magazine writers and furniture salesmen talked up the fun of choosing pretty, fashionable furnishings for a baby’s bedroom, or nursery.

A superior crib with perforated zinc sides, according to an 1870s catalogue

For a young baby’s bed nothing is prettier than the wicker bassinet, trimmed with muslin and lace and with a canopy to match. However, the muslin adornments soon lose their crispness and it is better to purchase a rattan or iron crib…with a frame or rod from which to suspend curtains of China silk or some pretty washing material, held in place with bows of ribbon…Iron cribs painted in white and gold with brass knobs and finishing are very effective.
The Ladies’ Home Journal, Philadelphia, 1893

British magazines as well as American ones described pretty ways of decorating a baby’s room, for families who could give their children a nice space of their own. (The nearest some poorer households got to special sleeping arrangements for children was a trundle bed.)

A furniture store in Bristol, England suggested a “complete furnishing estimate” for a room, or two rooms, where a small child and its nursemaid would sleep and spend much of the day. The total cost was nearly as much as a labourer’s annual wage, but affordable for many successful professional or business families.

baby furniture 19th century catalogue package — Recommended baby furniture for English "day and night" nursery in an 1875 furniture catalogue

The horsehair mattress would have been approved by the American doctor quoted lower down the page. He was one of many 19th century writers criticising featherbeds (feather mattresses) as too warm, too soft, or too unhygienic. This was one topic where health and sales advice generally agreed. The mattresses in that same catalogue for cribs, children’s bedsteads, swing cots, or rocking cradles were offered with these fillings, from cheapest to most expensive:

1800s crib or cot with trim — "Strong iron crib, ornamented" for a Victorian baby

Best flock [fabric and fibre scraps]
Coloured wool
Superior coloured wool
White wool
Horsehair
Best white wool, or French
Superior horsehair

This selection was typical of England. In the USA cotton was a common mattress stuffing. While feather and down were disapproved of for children’s mattresses, down pillows were used for small babies. Doesn’t this seem dangerous and unsuitable by today’s standards?

A fender guard and fire irons were more or less essential. In many houses an open fire would be be the only way of keeping a child’s room warm, but of course this gave rise to lots of warnings and advice on how to manage the fireplace as safely as possible.

Child's washstand, basin — Washstand low enough for child, with shallow bowl, soap holder etc. Victorian England, 1870s

The washstands recommended remind us how much nuisance there would be carrying hot water jugs and basins around. Even with indoor plumbing in wealthy homes, a washstand was standard in middle- and upper-class bedrooms.

The furniture of a nursery should be as little in quantity as convenience will permit…It should therefore consist of the beds for the children and nurse, or I would rather say mattresses, as I am of the opinion feather beds are improper, for the following reasons:—firstly, they are too warm for the purposes of health, …thus giving rise to unnecessary, nay, injurious perspiration; secondly, the effluvium from feathers is extremely oppressive, particularly in warm weather…thirdly, they discharge a prodigious quantity of dust, …occasioning cough and other inconveniences.
Dr Dewees of Philadelphia writing in the Monthly Gazette of Health or Medical, Dietetic, Antiempirical and General Philosophical Journal, 1829

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Antique work tables for sewing and crafts

needlework and sewing table with silk pouch — A rosewood veneer work table with sliding needlework bag and chess board, from Georgian London c1815. Note the candlestick on a nearby stand. Photo by bortescristian.

Before the 18th century ladies used to keep their needlework projects in a work-basket or bag. Then furniture designers started to create elegant little tables for the drawing room with a silk work-bag or box-holder hanging beneath. You have only to look at one to understand why Sheraton, the famous cabinet-maker, called his designs pouch tables.

As well as slide-out pouches to hold sewing materials, these small tables had drawers and compartments under a flip-up top. The owner wouldn’t always be sewing alone, though. Many kinds of fancy craftwork were done while families, or groups of friends, sat together. The novelist Jane Austen mentions a “work-table” used for “making a filigree basket” decorated with rolled paper quills.* Later in the 19th century a “Complete Guide to the Work-Table” offers instructions for “Berlin work, crochet, drawn-thread work, embroidery, knitting, knotting or macramé, lace, netting, Poonah painting & tatting”.

Various extras like a pull-out reading & writing slope and a chess board were common, and you could have an ink-stand, a backgammon board, and fold-down extensions. By 1800 many prosperous households had a lady’s work station that doubled as a play station. One 1815 table auctioned in 2001 (for over £4000) even had a zograscope built in; a high-tech optical toy by the standards of its time. More ordinary furniture of this type included many nicely-made needlework tables with a couple of drawers, a compartment under a hinged lid, but no silk bag. Some fine pieces defy categorisation, like this French porcelain-topped tulipwood veneer table from the 1770s.

globe Biedermeier work table — Work table with sewing tools inside globe. Biedermeier style. Photo by DDDiana. (Please comment if you have more info about this table.)

American Federal or Empire work tables sell at auction for thousands of dollars; one made from mahogany and bird’s-eye maple in Boston around 1800 fetched nearly $20,000 in 2007. UK prices for Georgian and Regency tables vary a great deal according to quality: from hundreds to thousands of pounds. If you are buying, check any restoration work; newly-replaced silk pouches should be in an appropriate style.

Some rare European Biedermeier pieces are hardly tables at all, but globes opening to reveal perfectly crafted compartments for needlework tools and games pieces. Most of these elaborate neoclassical pieces were made, with great skill and fine veneer work, in Vienna or Berlin. Some drum-shaped work tables were made in this style, too.

A magazine in late Georgian London published a picture and description of a “fashionable” ladies’ work table in 1823. This suggests the idea was spreading out from the really wealthy and stylish upper class to more middle-class homes whose owners were interested in the furnishings of the upper social echelons. The writer of the piece quoted next probably thought readers would aspire to have a table like the one illustrated, instead of keeping their needlework in bags and boxes.

sewing table with drawing and writing flaps — Design for a work table from an English style and culture magazine in 1823. The needlework pouch slides out, the desk flap lifts to show a decorative interior, the writing surface can be sloped.

FASHIONABLE FURNITURE. Ladies’ Work-table –
This elegant table forms a pleasing and commodious appendage to the sitting-room of mansions fitted up in a style of superior elegance. It is equally adapted to the boudoir and drawing-room, and answers the purpose of a drawing-table as well as a work-table, and a desk for writing and reading. The silk bag suspended from the desk is, in the engraving, of azure blue, with silk fringe of the same colour, but should be made to correspond with the colour of the apartment for which the table is designed.

In order that it may harmonize with the rest of the furniture, the frame-work should be formed of rose-wood of a rich dark colour, and varied in its grain. The ornaments are wholly of burnished and matt gold. The top of the table should be adorned with some rich design in water-colours, highly varnished, for the purpose of preserving it: this will be at all times a pleasing object to the eye. Fruit or flowers, well grouped, are particularly to be recommended. The interior may exhibit some pleasing landscape, or any other similar embellishment, according to the taste or fancy of the fair proprietor.
From: Repository of arts, literature, fashions &c, Ackermann & Shoberl, 1823

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: silk pouch rosewood veneer work table, globe needlework table. More picture info here

Notes

* Sense & Sensibility

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History of wing chairs

wing chair upholstered in red — Vivid red upholstery on this reproduction wing chair might have suited Colonial and Georgian tastes. Cabriole legs are a traditional touch. Photo by NCJW Home.

Wing chairs are sometimes called fireside chairs, and for good reason. Their design is perfect for enjoying the warmth of a fire while your back and sides are protected from chilly draughts.

These chairs were not the earliest furniture to use this approach to keeping warm. Wings were also used on some of the high-backed wooden settles (benches) found in English manor houses and inns long before the new kind of upholstered chair brought an extra level of comfort to the late 17th century. We now know these as wing or wingback chairs.

The same chairs soon appeared in colonial America. Like other Queen Anne furniture of the early 1700s, they had cabriole legs and curving lines that distinguished them from earlier styles. The famous cabinet-makers of the age, like Chippendale in London, designed elegant frames to set off the upholstery.

The picture of a wing chair stripped back by museum curators reveals that early padding was not as generous as we expect from a modern armchair. Fabrics were often vividly coloured. Bright patterns were seen in both colonial and Georgian drawing rooms. Restorers of 18th century antiques often favour plain colours, but this is not necessary for authenticity. Leather upholstery is also an option.

wing chair upholstery revealed — Original 18th century shape on the left after layers of 20th century upholstery (right) were stripped away. A New England easy chair with wings. Photo by Bdesham.

If you look at antique French wing chairs, or other chairs echoing the Louis XV or Louis XV period, you may see a lower seat in the bergère style. Similarly, in 18th century England Hepplewhite tried lowering the seat in his designs. He called the wings saddle-cheeks, perhaps knowing that they were called cheeks (joues), not wings, in France. Ears is their other name, used in some parts of Europe, German Ohrensessel for example, and remembered in the old-fashioned British name lug chair. (Lug meant ear.)

American wing chairs, also called easy chairs, were considered suitable as bedroom furniture for anyone frail or tired, sitting quietly in their room. Both antique and modern wing chairs may be associated with elderly people; a firm seat and a back with built-in draught-proofing offer an appropriate kind of comfort, and remind us that another name for this piece of furniture is grandfather chair.

In Britain, wing chairs were thought of as essential for a comfortable living room or parlour. Victorian writers describing scenes of idealised family life round a blazing hearth often mentioned a fireside chair. 19th century chairs were often more generously padded than earlier wingbacks – sometimes with a very firm horsehair stuffing.

contemporary wing chair — A 21st century wingback inspired by 18th century style, by George Smith for the Tom Dixon design studio. Black velvet stuffed with cotton and boar bristle. Photo by pressattomdixon.

Contemporary designers now produce all sorts of shapes and sizes of wing chair. Some blend the wingback concept with cutting-edge contemporary design, and yet the early Queen Anne shape has an enduring popularity. If you want a true antique, remember that “Queen Anne style” is just that: a style and not a promise that a chair is 300 years old.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Red wing chair. New England wing chair with stripped back upholstery, Contemporary black wing chair.

More picture info here

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