Series editors' preface - Wood Tools

Figure 1.14 Japanned cabinet on stand, English,
1680–1730
ment in relief; the other, sometimes known as
Bantam work, had the ornament incised or cut
into the surface. The process was imitated by
‘japanners’ who cut out a pattern in a gesso
ground then coloured and gilded the result. In
1688 John Stalker and George Parker published
their Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing.
This publication identified three elements
essential to the art of japanning. These were
gums, metals and colours. The gums were used
to prepare varnishes; metals were used in powder
or dust form and were worked into the varnish,
and colours were put down to make
backgrounds (Figure 1.14).
Around 1660, varnishing was introduced as
an alternative wood finish. Stalker and Parker
(1688) also gave recipes for shellac spirit-varnish
which was used for coating all sorts of
wood products. After the application of each
coat, the spirits evaporated leaving a thin film
of shellac on the surface. After this had been
built up to ten or twelve coats, it was given a
high polish with a mineral called Tripoli. This
high quality finish was favoured for walnut and
later for mahogany and satinwood. In other
Furniture history 19
cases oil was used hot, to rub into walnut to
give it a ‘black and sleek’ appearance.
Japanned cabinets were often made to fit
onto gilded or silvered stands. These stands
were roughly bosted and then gesso was
applied in thin coats. Once it had hardened, it
was re-carved, sanded and gilded. After the
Restoration, the fashion for gilding required
both water gilding and oil gilding processes to
be used. Water gilding required a wet clay
base, which was sometimes double gilded and
usually burnished. Although this was the finer
finish, oil gilding was the more durable method
and hence more popular.
Other decorative processes included verre
eglomisé (the process of decorating glass by
drawing and painting on the underside and
backing this with metal foil). Mirror surrounds
at the end of the century were most likely to
incorporate this process, using red or black
ground, and silver or gold foil. In the 1670s
straw work was introduced as a decorative finish
using marquetry designs and continued in
popularity through the eighteenth century with
an impetus from the French prisoners of the
Napoleonic wars.
Around 1680 the earliest Tunbridge ware
was recorded. Originally produced in
Tunbridge Wells, the process flourished for the
next one hundred and fifty years. The process
was initially one of tiny cuts of veneers built
into a mosaic pattern, often with a cubic or
elongated rectangular theme. It should not be
confused with the end-grain mosaic work produced
there in the nineteenth century.
The use of metal in furniture decoration in
the period was not common but did occur.
Furniture covered in sheet silver or made from
solid cast silver was produced in the
Restoration period, though little now survives.
During the last quarter of the seventeenth century,
boulle work was introduced which used
brass or pewter inlays in a tortoiseshell base,
sometimes framed by an ebony veneer. André-
Charles Boulle worked in Paris as ébéniste du
Roi from 1672 and his distinctive process was
adapted by Gerritt Jensen for his work in
London. The boulle process is considered similar
to marquetry in that both sheet materials,
metal and shell, were cut simultaneously.
Recent research seems to show that early
boulle work was not necessarily cut in this
way, but individually from the same pattern. It