Studio: international art (53.1911)

Old Danish Carved Furniture

its makers have also understood how to subor- furniture without any alteration whatever, as for

dinate the ornamentation to the proper construe- instance in the cupboard shown in Fig. 7, the

tive building-up of each piece of furniture. Even composition and fundamental lines of which in

if at times one cannot help noticing the peasant- reality hail from the Gothic, whilst the ornamenta-

craftsmen's dread of plain, unadorned, flat surfaces, tion belongs to the High Renaissance period (about

it must be admitted that they have generally under- 1625), and yet the cupboard bears the date 1698.
stood how to underline what is frame-work and In other parts of the country the Gothic and the

what is panel, and they do not violate the simple early Renaissance were a thing of the past by the

lines which the wood construction involves, how- year 1600 and the ornamental motifs of the High

ever much they may vary the ornamentation, Renaissance had come into vogue. They were

both as regards the different pieces of furniture more especially brought into Denmark by the

respectively and within one individual piece craftsmen of the Netherlands whom Frederick II.

(Figs. 3-5). called into the country at the time he was building

All the furniture from West Jutland was big and the castle of Kronborg, and from the workshops in

heavy, often an absolute fixture in the house. Elsinore they rapidly found their way to the other

The cupboards were generally intended to be towns. The acanthus ornamentation had to give

bricked in, so that only the front was visible, way to the cartouche work, and the furniture was

The beds were huge four-posters or panelled formed as pieces of decorative architecture, with

alcoves (e.g. Fig. 2), and the chests were huge cornices and columns, arched portals, hermas and

receptacles in which bedding and clothing were caryatides. Figural ornamentation was also fre-

stored and in which the young girls could gather quently resorted to, reliefs with scenes from the

together their trousseaux. This accounts for the Old and the New Testament, or statuettes
female names which are often
found carved on them, as
for instance on the chest
illustrated in Fig. 5, " Charen
Vollest Daater," which in
English would mean
Catherine Olaf's Daughter.
The inscription may at other
times be entirely religious, as
in Fig. 3 :

" Set til Gud ale din Lid
og Tro
Saa fanger du Loke og
Ovige Roo."

(Put thy faith and thy trust
in God, and thou shalt have
happiness and perpetual
peace.)

The West Jutlandish
school reached its climax
during the last decades of
the sixteenth century, but
the peasant craftsmen in
many places adhered to the
old accustomed shapes some
fair way into the seven-
teenth century; and even
after they had adopted earlier
Renaissance motifs, one may

still now and again come ,„„ <VT .,„„,,„ „

b fig. 2. carved oak panelling tOK an alcove bedstead with doors.

upon the old types of sleswick. date about 1600

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