Studio: international art (53.1911)

Old Danish Carved Furniture

FIG. 17. CHAIR FROM JUTLAND

FIG. 18. CHAIR FROM NORTH SEA1.ANI).
DATED 1795

bed. In many of the small Danish towns there were
craftsmen—Anders Sorensen in Odense, Jorgen
Ringnis in Nakskov, Hans Werner in Soro,
Lorentz Jorgensen in Holbek, Abel Schroder in
Nestved, and a number of others—who carved
many an elaborate altar-piece and pulpit, and even
when the country was impoverished by the wars
during the reign of Christian IV. and his son
Frederick III., this work was continued until the
old master-carvers died out, and until veneered
furniture towards the end of the seventeenth

FIG. 19. CHAIR FROM NORTH SEALAND.
DATED 1796

century put an end to the craft of carving and
cabinet-making and to the hornely, North German-
Danish traditions.

But this craft still remained to the fore in one
domain, that of the furniture and household
articles of the Danish peasantry. The luxurious
style of the baroque could not, of course, adapt
itself to or assert itself within this field. Even
if the artisans, perhaps, could have mastered the
baroque ornamentation—as did the Norwegian Gul-
brandsdolers the almost equally difficult style of the
eighteenth century — figure sculpture has never

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