Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

According to John Gloag’s “A Social History of Furniture Design: From B.C. 1300 to A.D. 1960,” there are only two forms of furniture: a box or a platform.

When it comes to boxes, nothing is more boxy than a chest (see yesterday’s entry on six-board chests). When it comes to platforms, nothing supersedes a trestle table. Since at least Medieval times, trestle tables have been a staple of the finer castles, manors and huts of the Western world.

The history of trestle tables fascinates me. But it would probably bore most of you. So let me deal only with the juicy parts. Before the Georgian period, the tops of trestle tables tended to be quite narrow, according to David Knell’s “English Country Furniture: 1500-1900.”

Why so narrow? Because diners sat on only one side of the table with their backs against the wall. Diners didn’t sit across from one another. This seating arrangement allowed servants to serve from one side, but it also had a much more practical purpose. In case you were attacked while eating (how rude!) you could flip the table so it served as protection against your attackers.

Another benefit: You could use the benches (usually called “formes”) that were secured to the wall of your hut or holdfast.

As home security improved and dining mores changed, the trestle table became wider but shorter in length. But its basic form survives basically unchanged to the present day.

The trestle table is an early achievement of structural engineering. It is lightweight – I can pick up an 8’ example with one arm – and yet it is impossibly sturdy. It requires a minimum amount of material. It is portable. And, most of all, it is a beautiful form.

From the ends, a trestle table looks like a tree, with prodigious roots, a straight bole and arching branches that support the tabletop.

So perfect is this form that it can be quite hard to date trestle tables accurately. Yes, you can use fasteners and patina to guide you, but those are the same things that guide the furniture forgers or refinishers. Relying on the form or ornamentation is useful if the table has a distinctive form or any ornamentation. Many have neither.

So we are left scratching our heads but admiring the lines of tables such as the one I drew above. Is it English or American? Auctioneers (respected ones) could narrow the date of its construction down to a 100-year period. But was that between 1700 and 1800? Or 1800 to 1900? Or later?

That’s the beauty of this piece and many other trestle tables. Remove the patina and these tables could be at home in the Tower of London or any tower of excess in Manhattan.

This example is 65-1/2” long, 38” wide and 28” high. So we know that it was built after the Georgian period. But after that….

— Christopher Schwarz

The furniture of the wealthy is usually quite easy to date. The rich are, after all, the ones who can afford elaboration, ornamentation and experimentation.

And thanks to pattern books, museums, researchers and wealthy furniture collectors, we actually know a lot about the high styles of furniture, from Sheraton to Chippendale, and Hepplewhite to Federal.

But when you look at furniture for the lowborn, it can be difficult to assign a date of construction without invasive archaeological techniques. Why? Well there are a lot of furniture forms that have remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

These are simple pieces with little ornament. They are usually made from common materials. And yet, the survivors are well-built, well-proportioned and have a grace that in my book exceeds any bonnet-top highboy.

This is the furniture that I have been immersed in for almost two years now in preparation for a book on what I’m calling the “furniture of necessity.” I’ve been trying to identify different forms of furniture that have remained unchanged for 200 years or more.

And while books have been helpful, the biggest gold mine has been results from auction houses that do not specialize in the high-style stuff. And it’s the data sheets from these auctioneers that are of particular interest. In addition to listing the dimensions, materials and provenance, the auction house will usually try to assign a date range for the piece.

With the high-style pieces, this is usually straightforward – unless the piece is a fake. But auctioneers from all walks of life tend to struggle when dating these low-style pieces. For example: One auctioneer estimated that a six-board chest he was selling was made sometime between 1800 and 1950.

That particular guy might be a moron when it comes to dating furniture. But I found that even larger auction houses can have difficulty dating pieces such as six-board chests. They might date a chest such as the one shown above as being built between 1800 and 1850. And if you know anything about the history of furniture, you know that that was a tumultuous time, which should make the piece easy to date.

As part of my research, I’ve been redrawing these antique pieces in SketchUp, which is a way of removing the patina and wear from a piece so you can see its form without being assaulted by marks of its age. The results have been interesting.

When was the piece above built? It measures 40″ long, 18-1/2″ deep and 24″ tall. It’s poplar. But was it made in 1770 or 1870? Or is it modern? Does the date of its construction change the way you evaluate its design?

I don’t have the answers – just the will to dig deeper into this topic.

— Christopher Schwarz

The joiner’s craft was transformed during the seventeenth century, after wood ceased to be thought of purely as a constructional material. Until the middle years of the century, the colour and texture of the wood were disregarded, their decorative possibilities ignored, and their surfaces were made acceptable to the eye by painting, carving or inlaying. Interest in the natural color and marking of the wood was aroused by the rediscovery of veneering….

— Edward Lucie-Smith, “Furniture: A Concise History”