Soft Touches

Carpets on the floor and curtains at the windows were rare through Elizabethan and Jacobean times — but carpeting and curtaining were profusely used for other purposes. Fine woollen fabrics, or silks and velvets from China and Italy were hung around the bed, while cushions and table coverings were often of harder-wearing turkeywork — wool knotted into a backing like Turkish rugs.

Many soft furnishings were made by the ladies of the house who worked pillowcases and bed coverlets, cushions and book covers, purses and bodices. Trellises set with flowers and animals wound across their fabrics. The needlewomen could use pattern books of motifs, pricking along the lines, then pressing powder through the holes onto the fabric.

Everyday Metalware

Pattern books of designs were used also by silversmiths keen to copy the fashionable work of craftsmen from Germany and the Low Countries. The wealthiest folk — merchants and professional men as well as landowners — could afford cupboards full of silver, not just to display but to use. The status-conscious became almost indifferent to it and instead coveted glass as the most prized possession. Salt cellars were still made as status symbols and in many styles, Classical columns and bells being popular. Other ‘pieces included covered cups, serving dishes, plates, goblets, beakers, tankards, toiletry pots, jewel caskets and candlesticks.

Antique Collector MagazineDuring Elizabethan times silverware was smothered with columns, mythical heroes and beasts, urns, swags of foliage and strap- work. Finials on lids were large, some in the form of warriors, many like steeples. Jacobean silver had less flamboyant ornament.

Spoon-bowls were rounder, less fig-shaped. The few forks were for serving, so ewers and basins for rinsing hands were still put on the table. Queen Elizabeth avoided both hand- washing and greasy fingers by wearing gloves – a fresh pair for each course.

There was still plenty of pewter on most tables. Each diner had food served on a pewter plate and then lifted anything that needed cutting onto a rectangular trencher of harder pewter. Servants would later buff out the knife marks from the trenchers. Pewter was also used for broth bowls, meat platters and ale tankards. There were brass and iron pieces, too, at the fireplaces and in the kitchen.

Imported Finery

The making of glass was still dominated by Venice. English craftsmen were able to produce only inferior imitations, but Italian immigrants to. England started making Venetian-style glass in the 157os. However, fears that wood, the main fuel, was becoming scarce led parliament in 1615 to restrict its use to industries important in defence, such as shipbuilding and iron-smelting. Glass-makers had to use coal, and many furnaces that had no coal locally closed.

Glass had additional glamour when it came from abroad, as had rock crystal, large shells, ostrich eggs and tobacco. Tankards in German tigerware – mottled brown stoneware – were sufficiently valued to be given silver mounts and lids, until people were enchanted by goods from farther afield.

The East India Company, set up in 1600, brought in Japanese lacquered chests and the brightly patterned Indian cotton fabrics known as ‘chintzes’ – and also increased the availability of Oriental carpets and Chinese porcelain. The main porcelain wares were vases, plates and bowls, and prized pieces were mounted in silver for display. New imports arriving from China after the mid-century were to serve the new habit of tea-drinking.

Much English pottery was comparatively crude, decorated with trails and pads of slip (runny or soft clay). There was also earthenware with a tin glaze that gave a smooth, white surface to paint on. This painted earthenware competed with Italian maiolica and imports from elsewhere. As the craze grew for blue on white Oriental porcelain, English potters decorated their wares to imitate it from the 1590s on. In Holland, too, it was imitated soon after 1600, and the Delft production centre was soon to give its name to the ware.

A Brief Flavor of France

The refinement and excellence slowly infiltrating all the arts and crafts were given added impetus when Charles I became king in 1625. His taste for French style – and his French wife, Henrietta Maria – favoured increasingly ornate and luxurious rooms in the French manner, with gilded panelling and plasterwork and richly painted ceilings. Charles had a passionate interest in the arts, encouraged artists such as Van Dyck and Rubens to work in England, and built up a collection of superb paintings.

But Charles I’s views of the monarch’s rights and his refusal to bend to the wishes of parliament finally proved unacceptable to the nation. The Civil War and the ensuing Commonwealth (1649-60) led by Oliver Cromwell were a sobering and destructive interlude for royalty and gentry. The costs of war made heavy taxes inevitable and there was little money left to spend on fine goods. Like earlier rulers who were short of funds, Charles I and Oliver Cromwell had precious plate melted down and minted.

Even when the fighting was over, many of the former leaders of fashion were dead or destitute, or in exile on the Continent. High fashion stood still and a more austere tone prevailed – for a time. Exuberance and indulgence were to be embraced even more enthusiastically at the Restoration.

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An Elizabethan Bedchamber; Soft Touches, Metalware, Finery