CABINETS AND CUPBOARDS About 1800-1850
Pier cabinet in post-Empire style, aboat 1830,
Cupboards: Architectural wardrobes and sideboards with cupboards in cities but in country districts, armoires, dressers continue 18thC traditions.
Cabinets: After French Revolution, the antique guitar restoration and pictures Directoire takes later, austere Louis XVI style a step further with functional cabinets and bookcases – doors with brass grilles or glass panes arranged with flat glazing bars in diamond patterns. From 1804, grand Empire ornament applied to simple, rectilinear shapes. Style adopted throughout Europe and continued after 1815, until 1850 but with ornament much reduced.
Biedermeier: In Austria, Hungary, Germany, Scandinavia, flat-fronted cases display bibelots. Bow-fronted corner cabinets with glass doors above, wood below, also popular.
Similar style in Russian cabinets made by Gambs and Bobkov of St Petersburg.
Style Troubadour (Gothic Revival): Begins in France 1820, runs parallel with Biedermeier until 1850, reaching climax with vast bookcase designed by Cremer and Bernardis for Austrian stand at Great Exhibitions, London, 1851 – pointed arches, pinnacles, domes, cluster columns, tracery.
Louis-Philippe (Rococo revival): Serpentine-fronted vitrines with vernis Martin panels made from about 1830 when Louis-Philippe becomes King of France. Name applied recklessly to cabinets made long after his downfall in 1848.
Directoire and Empire: Mahogany, cherry, maple, fruitwoods, walnut, oak, pine.
Biedermeier: As above but with preference for pale woods – birch, maple, poplar, cherry. In Russia, Karelian birch, poplar, Persian walnut, Brazilian amaranth.
Troubadour: Oak.
Louis-Philippe: Kingwood, ormolu often poorly finished.
Fashion for flush surfaces results in few panelled carcases in sophisticated furniture; most joints disguised. Ends joined to tops and bottoms with lapped dovetails, frames of doors tenoned and mortised, rebated to receive glass. Traditional methods increasingly assisted by steam-driven machines.
Above, Charles X bookcase, about 1825.
Lapped dovetails.
Empire: Turned columns or pilasters often surmounted by Egyptian heads, flanking doors. Ormolu or brass mounts on friezes.
Biedermeier: Ornament limited to sparse use of mounts, geometric marquetry, carved paw feet.
Troubadour: Carved and pierced details from Gothic architecture.
Louis-Philippe: Marquetry, ormolu mounts. Ver-nis Mat-tin lacquer in Louis XV style.
French polishing becomes general except for country pieces, still oiled and waxed, painted, varnished or left natural.
Simple Empire and Biedermeier bookcases sometimes sell at reasonable prices but can take off alarmingly, especially if in pale woods liked by interior decorators. Louis-Philippe vitrines almost always sell at high prices, even though some arbiters of taste disapprove of them.
SHELVES
Until about 1820, shelves in bookcases and cabinets were of wood, usually made adjustable by fitting freely in grooves cut in the 18th century weighing scales ends. Shelves resting on cleats attached to ends, or on studs in holes, generally indicate a later date. Glass shelves in vitrines are usually modern, but may be replacements for wood ones in a period cabinet.
CABINETS AND CUPBOARDS About 1850-1890
Ornate cabinet inlaid with Renaissance ornament, 1870.
Late-19thC trench uitrine in mid-18MC style, with ormolu mounts and panels of vernis Martin lacquer decoration.
Revivals of historic styles continue – Gothic, Renaissance, baroque, rococo – with a grand town-hall version of neo-classicism never wholly abandoned.
Wide variety of veneers – some imported, many local, e.g. olive in Italy – laid on oak in France, pine in Italy, Spain, parts of Germany, Scandinavia.
Outwardly the antique rahr brass key bottle opener same as in previous period, but growing use of dowels in place of mortiseand-tenon, machined dovetails in place of hand-cut ones.
Two-stage cabinets of 16thC Renaissance form, made in Germany about 1880 have fine Meissen (Dresden) porcelain plaques copies from 17thC paintings. Intricately carved Bavarian rococo cabinets have shelves and brackets unknown on 18thC types. In most countries, decorative features from different periods are applied to large cupboards and wardrobes.
Leading makers: Pogliani, Milan, Fourdinois, Linke, Paris; Pssenbacher, Munich.
Copies and pastiches of French 18thC cabinets mounted in ormolu or imitations. True ormolu is cast, tooled bronze, gilded with amalgam of gold and mercury, fired to evaporate mercury and leave film of gold. Process repeated before final burnishing. Some areas may be left matt. Partly for economy, partly because mercury process highly poisonous, substitutes developed, e.g. bronze dipped in acid and lacquered; electrotypes
(Galvanoplastics); and electroplated nickel.
Belgian reproductions of Renaissance and baroque cupboards, carved with genre subjects, lion masks, fairly reasonable; marquetry cabinets expensive.
Dowel joints in place of mortise-and-tenon (see CONSTRUCTION) can only be detected if join is slightly open due to shrinkage. Method used on Continent earlier than in Britain, but not before 19thC.

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