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THE RENAISSANCE-1400-1600

How decorative changes such as Renaissance era, came about is a fascinating study in itself. During the Middle Ages art, literature, and science had been neglected. Then to Italy fled the Byzantine Greek scholars when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. From the scholars. Italians learned of the happier and more contented lives of the ancients. Thus it was that the Renaissance achieved its highest glory in Italy. The movement spread to Western Europe - France, Germany, Spain and England, all felt its effect. Great artists and craftsmen such as Francoine. Guiliano and Antonio da Sangallo; wood carvers and sculptors such as Jacopo della Quercia and Verrocchio had a strong influence on the Tudor period (English Renaissance) Elizabethan and Jacobean (1603-1625).

Italy was the home of the world's greatest architects, sculptors and painters during the Renaissance:

Titian, Michelangelo, BotticeIli and da Vinci are a few of the masters whose supreme talents added to the total sum of the developing artistic movement. As the Renaissance spread, life became gayer', elegant in both furnishings and personal dress.

During the early period of the Renaissance, changes in furniture were slow. Many chairs were built with legs set into runners extending from front to back on each side. Later these runners were elevated and became stretchers to brace elegantly carved legs .

The chest (or cassone), served many different purposes as a clothes box, seating bench, or as a trunk when travelling. Beautifully decorated and excessively carved, the Cassone also became a marriage coffer  a forerunner of today's trousseau chest. An early form of the household cassone a 15th century "built-in" bedstead with six chests fitted around both sides. The [oat-end served as a seat whilst dressing or undressing and also as a step to assist getting into and out of the high bed. Likewise the chests provided storage for clothing. Our familiar built-in divan with drawers fitted underneath can be traced to the early Renaissance cassone. When eventually, legs were added to it, cabinets and chests of drawers eventuated - early versions of modem sideboards and dressing tables .

Only in the houses of 'the nobles were chairs in the early period of the Renaissance made with any degree of comfort as we know it. Generally. benches. stools and low chests were used for seating well into the 15th century. By the 16th century. chairs were in common use. The cross-legged Roman chair developed into the Savonarola chair - a fairly comfortable armchair formed by a series of slats. The slats made up the sides and seat. and by withdrawing two or three long pins and removing the wood-back, the chair was able to fold in the manner of the present day camp stool. Later, with the increase of carving. decoration, and upholstery, the frame was made a fixture known as the rib less Dante chair.

Dining tables during this period were long and rectangular in shape - the monastery refectory provides a name for our accepted modem oblong table. The custom of seating was mainly on long benches at each side of the table with perhaps a high-backed leather covered chair edged with fringe, or a Savonarola chair at each end. Early in this era, artists and craftsmen were compelled by regulations to submit their designs and drawings to the Commission of Arts before proceeding.

Fabrics used in furnishings during the early part of this period were mainly drawn from small Byzantine patterns. Later, the Italian weavers created their own designs using large patterns of flowers and urns on rich velvets trimmed with gold lace (galloon). Throughout the Renaissance, brocade, velvet, damask and dothof-gold were used. and often of a magnificence that would seem incredibly theatrical by today's standards. Practical as well as decorative articles were well designed and exquisitively executed. Cellini, a genius as both a goldsmith and a jeweller, was working in Florence and Rome. At the same time glassware in all its incomparable forms, was being produced in Venice and exported.

In France, the Renaissance movement arrived through various mediums. Charles VIII after his invasion of Italy. brought back many fashionable ideas. Charles IX. Henry III and Henry IV (all princes of Italian and French extraction), helped make the Ital¬ian style popular in France. By the end of the reign of Louis XIII, the French Renaissance had lasted for more than one hundred and forty years. Furniture in France during the era was very much like the Italian, and mostly made from walnut which was easily carved. Cabinets were huge, and the large beds were canopied and enshrouded with very rich hangings of velvet and damask. Weavers from Italy made Lyons the most significant textile centre in France, and it can be said that from this early date, France assumed leadership as the producer of the world's finest fabrics.

In England. the Renaissance movement had a profound effect not only on the houses and dress of the people. but on their political and religious life as well. Henry yilI employed great craftsmen from Italy and France to build and decorate in the Renaissance style, and so the Tudor period was born. Oak was the main wood used in Tudor furniture during the Renaissance but the effect never achieved the fineness of the Italian walnut furniture of the same era. Although English furniture was generally good in design, it lacked the excellent finish and proportion evident in the work of the Italian craftsmen. Gothic motifs, grapevines, Tudor roses, masks, dolphins and scrolls were used in carvings. Massive bedsteads were the most highly decorated items on the Tudor scene. Built to accommodate many persons, the bedsteads had great headboards and foot posts to support the roofs and testers; heavy ropes were needed to support the mattresses. The rooms of Tudor period homes were extremely large and bare. and furniture very limited. Benches without backs and stools were used for seating - chairs were owned only by the wealthy. Trestle board tables were mostly used by the average family of the era, with low stretchers connected to the table legs to keep feet off the cold. dirty floors. Rushes took the place of floor rugs although the nobility could afford to import rugs from Turkey. Painted cotton fabrics from East India were in favor with birds. flowers and leaves featured in block-printed textiles. Huge wall tapestries which helped to give warmth to cold rooms, were made in England at the time.