“Only when baron and priest had lost their power could private life, with freedom to build and adorn the home as the owner pleased, exist.”
— “Furniture and its Story” The Woodworker Series, page 77
8 thoughts on “Baron and Priest”
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Keep the trestle images coming – I’ve got a trestle table design to wrap up and these images are awesome!
Oh, yay! The advent of the modern bouregousie, with no more sense of obligation to its inferiors than the baron and the priest that came before!
Baron and Priest. Great. Now I’ve spent all day with Frankie Lee and Judas Priest stuck in my head.
OK, I’m lost – it’s a nice table…is this a hit against the Church, or royalty, or were Baron and Priest real people? I feel decidedly un-hip.
Yeah, and the same time people had the freedom to set up house as they pleased, it was because the middle class expanded with the coming of the industrial revolution and they mostly began buying factory goods. Though the socio-political aspects of the “Baron and Priest” days were terrible by our standards, the castles and cathedrals (some of which took sixty years to construct) are still amazing expressions of craftsmanship.
And just to keep the history straight, that era came to an end precisely because of a priest (Luther) with the help of ….you guessed it….a baron (Frederick III).
It is impossible to overstate the benefit to the arts, both fine and decorative, gained from royal and Church patronage.
Ryan
I hadn’t thought about it before but when you think of the last name Priest, I have know a couple of people named that over the years. Smith, Butcher, Baker, Miller, these make sense, but being named Priest? :-O