Furniture of the Olden Time

NOWHERE in this country can the interiors of the old houses and their woodwork be studied as in Salem. The splendid mansions around Philadelphia and in Maryland and Virginia are...

CHAIRS are seldom mentioned in the earliest colonial inventories, and few were in use in either England or America at that time. Forms and stools were used for seats in the sixt...

SPINETS, virginals, and harpsichords were brought to the American colonies in English ships as early as 1645, when “An old pair of virginalls” appears in an inventory; and anoth...

FROM 1644 to about 1670 desks appear in colonial inventories. During those years the word “desk” meant a box, which was often made with a sloping lid for convenience in writing,...

CUPBOARDS appear in English inventories as early as 1344. Persons of rank in England had their cupboards surmounted by a set of shelves to display the silver and gold plate. Eac...

A STRONG distinction was made in America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between mirrors and looking-glasses; the name “mirror” was applied to a particular kind...

THE furniture of the American colonies was at first of English manufacture, but before long cabinet-makers and joiners plied their trade in New England, and much of the furnitur...

THE earliest form of table in use in this country was inventoried in 1642 as a “table bord,” and the name occurs in English inventories one hundred years earlier. The name “boar...

WHEN wood was plentiful and easily gathered, the fireplace was built of generous proportions. At the back, lying in the ashes, was the backlog, sometimes so huge that a chain wa...

UNTIL about 1600, clocks were made chiefly for public buildings or for the very wealthy, who only could afford to own them; but with the seventeenth century began the manufactur...

THE first form of the long seat, afterward developed into the sofa, was the settle, which is found in the earliest inventories in this country, and still earlier in England. The...

THE word “bureau” is now used to designate low chests of drawers. Chippendale called such pieces “commode tables” or “commode bureau tables.” As desks with slanting lids for a l...

into bolts which screw into the drawer. Letters D, E, and F give the succeeding styles of brass handles, the design growing more elaborate and increasing in size. These are foun...

ONE of the most valuable pieces of furniture in the household of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the bedstead with its belongings. Bedsteads and beds occupy a large...

THE chest was a most important piece of furniture in households of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It served as table, seat, or trunk, besides its accepted purpose to h...