Studio: international art (33.1905)

Ancient Chairs

The advance made in
Gothic art can easily be
traced in the illustrations;
the ancient faldisterium
gradually assumed arms
and a back, which in its
turn took various shapes,
but keeping its cross legs,
so that it could be easily
folded together, till the
time when the crossed legs
gave way to four uprights,
and we get the stiff, hard-
looking chairs with their
baldachin-formed tops and
footstools, these forming
a great contrast to the
light, graceful, and easily

moved folding-chair. chair from brunn sixteenth century

Dr. Figdor possesses many
of these old faldisteria, or
X chairs and stools, which
formerly had honoured places
in the monasteries of Padua,
Florence, and other Italian
cities, and which date from
the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The one repro
duced above came from a
Carthusian cloister at Brunn,
in Moravia. It is, as are
most of these old seats, in a
very good state of preserva-
tion, even to the velvet
cushion and tassels. Dr.
Figdor never makes the
mistake of having his
treasures doctored. The
carving is bold, and the
design simple; every stroke
of the chisel has told well,
the evident desire of the
workman being to make his
work worthy of the dignity
it was to support. Backs
and arms were added to the
folding-stool soon after the
Christian era, and by the
fifteenth century their propor-
tions had become symmetri-
cal. On page 335 is illustrated
Tyrolean chair early sixteenth century one of these from Romagna

336