Country-house life with the family was the ideal of Elizabethan and Jacobean gentlefolk. They could set themselves up with fine silver, rich textiles, lavish clothes and coveted goods from abroad.

A new kind of household had been established for people of power and influence by the mid-16th century.

No longer did they share a communal life with a motley assembly of officials, military supporters and other retainers. Now they lived in families in substantial homes on their country estates, some on lands that were previously owned by the Church, until they were seized after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 5536 and bestowed on supporters of the monarch as rewards for their loyalty. Some families had more than one estate.

It was the ownership of estates that shaped the style of life. Rents and produce from their lands enabled even the minor aristocracy and gentlefolk to live well. Many landowners enlarged their houses or built one or more lavish new ones. When they visited London, perhaps to consult their lawyers or occasionally to attend court or parliament (for landowners were entitled to a seat in parliament), they saw the fashion and furnishings of Elizabeth I’s courtiers, cosmopolitan visitors and other rich folk, and ordered new clothes and goods for themselves.

Some landowners were quick to take the latest style back to their homes. For a generation or two, rich Elizabethan men decked themselves in extravagant clothes made from the finest embroidered fabrics which were slashed to reveal exquisite linings; they wore feathered caps, high, pleated ruffs around the neck, dainty rosetted shoes and jewelled clasps, chains, miniatures and pins.

The family group at home could be large, including perhaps a widowed mother, and unmarried sisters and daughters. There might be the heir too — if there was not a second estate for him to occupy — and younger sons who had not sought wealth by marrying into a merchant’s family.

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PLANNED FOR THE FAMILY

To accommodate the family comfortably, bedchambers and living rooms proliferated. Many of them were walk-through rooms in the wide-fronted but shallow houses with an E, H or half-H ground plan. The most ambitious country houses had a ‘long gallery’ where the family and guests could walk in poor weather, admire the portraits and other paintings displayed there, amuse themselves with games, and play or hear the harpsichord.

Outside, the houses presented a symmetrical array of tall gables or turrets, clusters of chimneys and huge bay windows soaring through all the storeys. Some were veritable lantern houses — glittering acres of glass supported in delicate stonework.

After 166o, in Jacobean times, the windows may have shrunk and the roof been given smaller, curved gables, but the basic style was slow to change; property owners did not readily take up the Classical lines favoured by Inigo Jones.

 

IMPROVING THE FURNITURE

Elizabethan furniture was still massive, mainly of oak and scanty, far outstripped in quantity by hangings, rugs and cushions. Defter joinery — chiefly the mortise-andtenon joint pinned by dowels — was used in making the furniture, but its appearance was changed most by profuse decoration. This was where the Renaissance at last began to impinge on the way things looked in Britain.

Everywhere there was fluting and gadrooning, columns and caryatids, cartouches and lion masks, acanthus leaves and strapwork, and grotesques — fanciful people and beasts copied from the unearthed ancient Roman ruins known as grotte . The decoration was deeply carved on the frame-and-panel chests, over the court cupboards used as dressers, and on the press cupboards used as wardrobes.

If there is one decorative emblem of the age, it is the bulbous ‘cup-and-cover’ on bedposts, table legs and court cupboards. Long, solid, six-legged or eight-legged dining tables were made with cup-and-cover legs and an elaborately carved frieze below the table top. There were also draw tables with leaves below the main surface which pulled out to double the table’s length. Small bedside-cumbreakfast tables were made too.

Stools, still more numerous than chairs, were now ‘joint stools‘, their parts held together by pegged mortise-and-tenon joints instead of by crude wedges. The sturdy box chair was still made for the master but it was slightly less hefty and less likely to be panelled in below the seat. Legs were not carved or fluted but turned balusters or shaped like columns. Seats were narrower, the open arms were sloped forward and the panel back had side ears and might be inlaid with pale holly or fruitwood. There were still rather clumsy `turned’ chairs, with supports that were shaped by a foot-operated pole lathe.

By about 1600, upholstering was coming in, but upholstered chairs were usually kept out of the public rooms to reduce wear on them. Early upholsterers often simply glued fabric, carpet or leather onto the wood. Fortunately for the ladies, the type of back- stool often called a farthingale chair was devised. Low-backed, armless and high-seated, the thinly upholstered chair offered a practical perch for ladies who until about 1620 wore dresses that made sitting difficult. The stiff bodice dipped at the front to a sharp point over the stomach, and the heavy skirt spread out wide over a whalebone, wire or cane frame called a farthingale.

 

A LIGHTER STYLE

Jacobean furniture continued the Elizabethan style but was less heavy and less extravagantly decorated. Cup-and-cover supports became more slender, and geometric patterns, often with diamond and semicircle shapes, were used. Decoration was less deeply carved — and perhaps not carving at all but glued-on mouldings or turned pieces split lengthways.

As the 17th century progressed, most chairs still had a flat wooden seat with a needlework cushion on it, but homes were likely to have a few thinly upholstered chairs to bring out for important guests. The X-chair (whose seat was cradled in the upper part of two X-shaped supports) increasingly had a permanently padded seat instead of just a squab cushion resting on webbing, and many more stools were given back rests.

Ladies could sit in more comfort by then; their gowns were high-waisted with the full skirts falling in soft folds. Men too, by the less-flamboyant reign of James I, wore sagging bucket-topped boots and sober woollen suits proper to country gentlemen.

Among the new pieces of furniture was a compact games table whose double-layer top folded out to rest on a swivel ‘gate’. Similar gate legs were fitted to narrow tables which had hinged flaps to lift and rest on the gates. The chest sprouted drawers with iron handles and became a chest of drawers — which by about 5650 had doors over the drawers.

 

DECORATING THE WALLS AND CEILING

Panelling and plasterwork gave Elizabethan and Jacobean craftsmen ample scope for embellishment with exuberant Renaissance motifs. Once the technique was developed of sawing timber across the grain and neat joins could be made, large panels were fitted in grander rooms and carved with arcading, strapwork and geometric patterns. The walls of lesser rooms were generally wainscoted — covered with small, plain panels.

A plaster frieze above the panelling was moulded with arabesques and flowers, beasts and family crests.

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