Elizabethan oak furniture

A considerable amount of oak furniture has survived from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), partly because of the material in question and partly because much of it was made for the great houses built by men who achieved fame and fortune in that era. Where the houses have survived, so have many of the pieces that furnished them.

Elizabethan furniture

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, wealthy Elizabethans felt more secure than their ancestors had done for centuries, and they wished to settle down to lives surrounded by comfort and ostentatious decoration. Massive, well-constructed and richly carved oak furniture was therefore typical of this age.

This was also the age of the triumph of Protestantism, so much of the furniture was influenced by northern rather than southern Europe, with classical features less obviously apparent than those typical of Germany and the Low Countries.

England was also well supplied with oak trees, which provided timbers not only for the Navy but also for craftsmen who could work the wood into panels and frames, the panels often being richly carved. Frames were made with mortise and tenon joints, the mortise being the socket into which the projecting tenon fitted exactly. The fixing was often done by knocking in wooden pegs.

Chairs

Elizabethans valued their furniture, with special respect being paid to items that were used by important people, such as the master of the house. Only he would sit in the imposing panel-backed chair at the head of the table, with the rest of the family sitting on stools or benches. The master’s chair would often have carved panels on the sides and front, as well as the solid back. Many of these chairs have survived to the present day.

However, changes in chair design occurred during the period, with later chairs being lighter and, indeed, more comfortable to sit in, with curved arms and fewer panels. Another development was the “back stool”, literally a stool with a back, designed for use around dining tables as opposed to having one’s back against the wall as in old-fashioned great halls.

Many pieces were known to have been upholstered with velvet or silk, but these additions have not survived.

Tables and cupboards

The Elizabethans invented the draw table, which could be extended to almost double its length or width by pulling extra leaves out from underneath the top. Such tables would have been very useful in smaller houses where space was at a premium.

Another innovation was the “court cupboard”, with “cupboard” to be understood as a “cup board”, a board for storing cups (etc). The word “court” may be of French derivation, meaning “short”. The court cupboard was an open three-tiered side-table designed for housing and displaying the family’s best crockery. The cupboard was therefore also a prestige piece, often highly decorated with inlay or strap-work (intricate repeated geometrical carving in low relief), and with legs in the shape of heraldic beasts. Later cupboards were made with doors, so that they began to resemble what we now understand by the term.

Beds

Wealthy Elizabethans gave much attention to their beds, and some spent huge amounts of money on these items. Shakespeare himself is known to have taken great pride in his beds, only bequeathing his “second best bed” to Anne Hathaway.

A wonderful example of an Elizabethan oak bed can be seen in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. This is the Great Bed of Ware, which was known at the time of its construction to be remarkable, as it gets a mention in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”. It is a massive construction of the “four poster” type, having pillars that support a heavy “roof” from which draperies would have hung to provide complete privacy. The bed is about 11 feet square with intricate carvings over practically the whole surface, and especially the headboard.

With a few exceptions as noted above, Elizabethan oak furniture was very right-angled in appearance, with every element being either vertical or horizontal. There were very few curves or diagonals, which accorded with the preferred styles of architecture and garden design of the time. However, what might otherwise have given an image of severity or coldness was countered by the delight taken in carved decoration and in the warm colouring of the wood itself, which was often highly polished to bring out the rich dark sheen of one of the most beautiful of timbers.

© John Welford