International studio (81.1925)

inceRHACionAL

stroa©

rule the Spaniard despised the
French taste. The daybed, for
instance, was and still is an
object of scorn to them. A lady
was either well enough to sit on
a stool with no back or a chair
with a low one, or she kept her
bed. It is said that Phillip IFs
"gout chair" is the only known
concession to physical weakness
in Spanish furniture.

Walnut was and is the fa-
vorite wood with Spanish cabi-
netmakers. Oak was next in
popularity; a little chestnut and
redwood were used and, in the :

oak chest and small chair seventeenth century ^1^^ century, mahogany. j

Spanish furniture is masculine in feeling; it is Veneering was almost unknown. Chairs and the

never dainty or feminine. This is a large state- little table boxes and the inside of the varguenos

ment, but it is a safe one. The men of the six- were sometimes inlaid. But it was the almost

teenth and seventeenth centuries were warriors; universal use of walnut that gave Spanish furni-

and their wives and daughters must sit erect in ture the quality fittingly described as "serious."

their chairs as became the wives and daughters of It was serious because it met the masculine

soldiers. Curiously chair of hammered iron seventeenth century standards of durability

enough the Moorish
influence, so strongly
manifested in all
phases of Spanish dec-
oration, never had the
softening effect that
an Oriental influence
so often carries with it
—never more, that is,
than was good for the
resulting combination.
In Spanish palaces, of
course, the result of
the pursuit of French
ideals is seen, multi-
plying details, blur-
ring lines and entirely
destroying the austere
beauty of Spanish in-
teriors. But the houses
of the well-to-do farm-
ers, from which the
most beautiful Span-
ish furniture has come,
were unaffected by
this influence. Their
chests and tables and
chairs were built by
local carpenters whose
patterns and designs
had been unchanged
for generations. As a

and simplicity; be-
cause it was made of a
most unsentimental
wood under rigid laws
that insured honest
craftsmanship and
was adorned chiefly
with iron, a most un-
romantic material in
the hands of any but
artists.

It is a little diffi-
cult to imagine that
the addition of a strong
Oriental influence to a
taste for Spartan sim-
plicity of line and
structure would pro-
duce a dignified, uni-
fied and esthetic re-
sult, but that is what
happened both to
Spanish furniture and
to the houses in which
it was placed. This
Oriental feeling for de-
sign was just the leaven
necessary to enliven
and lighten the lump
of native crudity. A
vargueno—the cabi-
net desk that is the

fifty-four

april I925