Enfilade

State Bed from Hampton Court Castle, ca. 1698 (New York: The Metropolitian Museum of Art, 68.217.1a), as installed in The Met’s newly renovated British Galleries. Photo by Coscia Joseph. As noted in the museum’s online entry: “In the style of Daniel Marot, this bed was made for Thomas, Baron Coningsby (1656–1729), for Hampton Court, Herefordshire, where it remained until 1925. The curtains, counterpane, headcloth, and some of the trims are modern copies of the originals.”

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From ArtHist.net:

Skill, Style, and Innovation:
British Furniture Making from the Restoration to the Arts and Crafts Movement
Online, The Furniture History Society, Wednesdays, 3 November — 1 December 2021

The Furniture History Society, UK, is organising a short course on British furniture makers from 3rd November to 1st December as part of its outreach and educational programme, for British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO). Each week three speakers will consider the history of furniture makers and making in Britain. Beginning with the Baroque period, the course will move chronologically through the centuries to conclude in December with the Arts and Crafts movement. In addition to dealing with the output of specific furniture makers, this course aims to provide an integrated account of the furniture trade in the context of the cultural, technical, and industrial developments that occurred in Britain during these three and a half centuries, while also acknowledging other significant factors such as the role of the patron and the involvement of artists and designers. The talks bring to life the careers and work of some of the most important makers of their time—including Gerrit Jensen in the late seventeenth century; Giles Grendey, William Vile, Thomas Chippendale, and John Linnell in the eighteenth century; Thomas Hope, J. C. Crace, and Charles Robert Ashbee in the nineteenth century; as well as less well-known makers, firms of furniture makers, designers, and architects.

Tickets can be purchased for individual weeks or for the entire course at a saving. To purchase tickets, please go to the EventBrite page. This course will be recorded, and the link to the recording will be sent to ticket holders after the event, though please note that Max Donnelly will not be recorded. We are grateful to the Paul Mellon Centre and the Foyle Foundation for their support.

The course runs from 4.00 to 7.30pm (GMT) every Wednesday as follows:

Week 1 | November 3 — British Baroque Furniture, 1660–1715

• Wolf Burchard (Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art), British Baroque Furniture and Furniture Makers
• Amy Lim (Oxford University), The Baroque Interior: Furnishing the Great London and Country Houses
• John Cross (Furniture historian and maker, specialist on the Jamaican furniture trade), The London Trade, ca. 1660–1720

Week 2 | November 10 — The Early Eighteenth Century and the Furniture Trade, 1715–1760

• Adriana Turpin (FHS Project Manager for BIFMO, International Department, IESA), Furniture for the London Merchants
• Jeremy Howard (Buckingham University), Fantasy and Exuberance: English Rococo Furniture Makers as Craftsmen and Designers
• Norbert Gutowski (Independent furniture maker and restorer, former Subject Leader at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, Sussex), Eighteenth-Century Furniture Techniques

Week 3 | November 17 — Architects, Furniture, and Patrons, 1760–1815

• Megan Aldrich (Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford), The Furniture Maker and the Architect in the Palladian and Neoclassical Periods
• Lucy Wood (Independent furniture historian, formerly curator at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Department of Furniture, Textiles, and Fashion, Victoria & Albert Museum), London Furniture Makers in the Time of Chippendale
• Rufus Bird (Former Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art, Royal Collections), ‘As Refined and Classical as Possible’: George IV and Other Patrons of British Furniture Makers in the Regency Period, 1800–1830

Week 4 | November 24 — The Development of Furniture Firms, Historicism, and Reform, 1815–1860

• Max Bryant (University of Cambridge), Beyond Hope: Architects and Furniture in the Age of Historicism and Reform
• Ann Davies (MA Courtauld Institute of Art), Furniture for the Great Exhibition 1851
• Max Donnelly (Curator of Nineteenth-Century Furniture in the Department of Furniture, Textiles, and Fashion, Victoria & Albert Museum), Furniture at the London International Exhibition, 1862 — not included in the recording

Week 5 | December 1 — From Manufacture to the Arts and Crafts, 1860–1914

• Clive Edwards (Emeritus Professor of Design History, Loughborough University), Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Furniture Production
• Matthew Winterbottom (Curator of Nineteenth-Century Decorative Arts, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), At Home in Antiquity: Furniture Designed by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• Annette Carruthers (Former Curator, Decorative Arts, Leicester and Cheltenham Museums), Arts and Crafts Furniture Makers and Designers