Antique Chest Of Drawers

FRENCH AND ITALIAN CHESTS AND CHESTS OF DRAWERS About 1600-1675
Italian Renaissance cassone.
Lidded chests continued to be the main storage pieces until about 1650. From then on, they were largely replaced with armoires (see CUPBOARDS, p. 210) and chests of drawers, but in many rural areas the lidded chest survived as a traditional type. By about 1620 baroque (see GUIDE TO PERIODS AND STYLES, P. 192) had begun to replace Renaissance in Italy as the dominating style for much furniture, and soon travelled north. Many Italian cassoni are of the sarcophagus type (see CHESTS 1450-1600, opposite) with curved carcases that suited the baroque style of decoration, but 17thC chests of drawers were angular.
17thC carved Italian cassone.
Usually, a timber near to hand (see CHESTS before 1450, opposite) as the principal wood and sometimes throughout (e.g. oak in the Netherlands), sometimes with a secondary one (e.g. chestnut in France) for drawer-linings (sides, back and bottom). Iron.
Chests (wood): Framed, housed or built up. Germany made an iron type now popularly known as ‘armada’, with a large escutcheon around a false keyhole, the true one being concealed at the centre of the lid, under which a steel mechanism operates as many as 12 spring-loaded bolts.
Above, early-17thC German steel ‘Armada” chest, locking at 14 points.
Chests of drawers: Panelled ends joined by mortise-and-tenon joints to horizontal rails between the drawers at the front, panelled or boarded back. Drawers usually full width, but often moulded to appear narrower. In the Netherlands, lower ones often enclosed by doors. Drawers made with lap joints or, at best, two or three coarse dovetails.
Drawer-sides grooved to slide on side runners fitted inside ends. Feet are either continuations of stiles (corner posts) or separately turned on the lathe to ball or bun shapes, and dowelled into the base.
Drawer moulded to reduce width.
EUROPEAN DECORATION
Chests: Early-17thC Italian cassoni often have one large front panel with figures, scrolls or coats-of-arms carved in bold relief. In Denmark, chests of boarded construction were carved with love tokens (e.g. twin hearts) or with repeat patterns simulating the strapping on German iron chests (see the information on CONSTRUCTION above).
Chests of drawers: In Italy, drawer-fronts were sometimes decorated with certosina –inlay into the solid with small pieces of bone to form geometric patterns. In the Netherlands, floral patterns were inlaid with bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl. In most regions, mouldings were applied to drawer-fronts in geometric patterns – an Islamic style that spread from Moorish Spain. Patterns may be different on each drawer-front. Some mouldings and small areas veneered in ebony, imported from the East Indies; thus, the
ability to veneer led to the French calling cabinetmakers ebenistes, to distinguish them from the menuisiers (joiners) who worked with solid wood.
Handles: Turned wood, iron rings or brass drops. Italian wood knobs sometimes carved with heads of humans or animals.
handles: below right, wooden knob, turned and hatched; below left iron ring.
If grain was meant to be seen, varnish made of resin dissolved in linseed or poppy oil was used until about 1660, when lac in spirits of wine became popular. Country-made pieces oiled and polished with beeswax dissolved in turpentine. In Spain, Italy, the Alpine countries and Scandinavia, pine was painted in colours, with scrolls, foliage, flowers or figures, or left in natural state and scrubbed.
Best buy for those with space to fill: large Dutch chests of drawers, partly enclosed by doors; high quality, oak throughout. There are 19thC copies around, but the quality is often even better than the 17thC originals.
Dutch chest of drawers, mid-17thC.
Small Italian and Spanish chests of drawers in painted pine are often crudely constructed and later in date than they appear – sometimes so much later that they are best avoided unless backed by a worthwhile guarantee.

Antique French Gothic CHESTS
Before about 1450
The lidded, box-like chest was one of the earliest articles of furniture, made over a very long period and in many parts of the world.
French oak chest with chip-carved roundels, of a type common in the 15thC.
The first chests were hollowed out logs, but more advanced types survive from the 13thC, when the Romanesque style was being overtaken by the Gothic in Northern Europe, while Italy was more influenced by Byzantine styles of the Eatsern Roman Empire (see GUIDE TO PERIODS AND STYLES P. 189).
Dug-out chest.
Local timbers, e.g. walnut in Italy, Spain, southern Germany; oak in France and the Netherlands. Iron hinges, straps, scrolls.
Dug-out: Log hollowed out with adze (axe with horizontal cutting edge). The lid was formed from a slice of tree-trunk (thus ,travelling trunk’).
Boarded (or ‘plank’): Five boards — front, back, two ends bottom — nailed together, with sixth as lid.
Housed (or clamped): Front, back and ends tenoned into mortises cut in uprights; ends sometimes strengthened with framing. Lid often pivoted with wooden pins in sockets without recourse to metal hinges.
Romanesque: Rounded arches on stumpy columns carved in rows across front, and pierced through feet.
Early Gothic: Chip-carved roundels on fronts, the placing of the roundels symmetrical but the patterns within them varying in random fashion. In France, birthplace of the style, carved figures of saints, knights in armour, pointed arches, or elaborately scrolled ironwork used both to strengthen and decorate.
Often painted in vivid colours originally but little trace of them remains. Present colour and appearance depend on environment and treatment over last 500 years, and may be dark, light or something in between.
Most chests earlier than 1450 are now in churches or museums, and when decorated examples in reasonable condition appear on the open market, they are expensive.
Roundels
Plain boarded chests were made well into the 17thC, and some have been chip-carved in recent times in the Gothic style. In genuine examples, the roundels were marked out with a compass, and faint traces of the incised circles can often be discerned. These are not usually apparent in chests carved later.
Housed construction for chest.