The Utrecht Psalter and its Furnishings - Part V

Once more we come to our occasional series examining the furniture found in the 9th century Utrecht Psalter, now housed in the Universiteitsbibliotheek, (University Library) Utrecht. This study is being conducted alphabetically, as I have labeled the different types of furniture, and we are now come to the letter 'P'. This is a significant classification, because as far as I know, I have coined the phrase "Plinth Chair" to designate a type of seat which is the single most popularly illustrated device used for seating prior to the 14th century, across all forms of medieval artwork, but which no history of furniture has yet to point out as a distinct form.

David composing the psalms. (detail of fol 1v)
In this illustration we see a plinth chair, a foot stool, and a desk.
both the chair and the desk are depicted as paneled furniture

Most people assume these plinth chairs to be chests; if a "chest" is completely synonymous to an enclosed square or rectangular box form, then perhaps they are chest. I strongly disagree with this narrow classification, however, as there are numerous medieval illustrations showing both chests and 'plinth chairs' in the same scene, with a distinctly different form, and manner of decoration. They are, in my opinion, no more "chests" than an "ottoman" (known also as a tuffet or hassock) is a chest, which is incidentally a modern version of the former. Modern refrigerators are basically of 'cabinet' form, yet one never sees them classified as such in furniture books. I introduced this form of seating by the name of "Plinth Chair" a couple years ago here, so there is no need to repeat myself completely.

St John from a 9th century gospel book, Rheims
Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal MS 1171 fol 164v
In this illustration one clearly seas the difference between the chest
and the chair.

In the Utrecht Psalter, there are at least 21 illustrations depicting no less than 25 separate chairs of this type. There is no need to show multiple illustrations of them here, because, in keeping with the general impressionistic nature of the illustrations in this work, they are all of near identical design, showing only the basic form. A few have, as the above illustration shows, the addition of the indication of paneled construction by way of a secondary rectangle drawn within the perimeter of the main body.

Unfortunately, no chair like this has survived from any time in the medieval period, which leaves most people, without a second thought, to assume the objects in these illustrations to be chests. As can be seen in the above illustration, though, this particular design would be very impractical as a chest in the sense that we usually think of them, for reasons such as the very pronounced overhang of the top and the large protruding moulded base. Many of these chairs are also depicted, as the above example, with curved or shaped sides. This is not to say that they could not have been used for storage, no example that I have found in artwork is detailed enough to prove or disprove this concept. In fact, there is no reason to doubt that some would have been used as such. Others, however, are depicted with open arcading or in other forms of semi-openness which indicates that even if some examples might have doubled as storage items, they were not all used as such, nor was that their primary function. Simply put, they are a distinct form of seating, made and used as such.

9th century ivory panel, formerly part of a book cover, now in the Louvre

The above ivory panel detail is great for two reasons, the first is that it shows four such chairs in various states from completely enclosed (top left) to completely open, having only a base, and seat connected by four legs. (lower left) The top right could either be paneled or having openings, and the lower right depicts a plinth chair with solid ends, but open sides. (part of the ivory has chipped off of this one) The second reason I like this carving is because of the chest in the centre which completely flies in the face of most people's concept of early medieval furniture. This is more of a 'cabinet' in size and shape, has a vault shaped lid, and carved post and panel constructed sides.

The idea that early furniture, including these plinth chairs, was necessarily "crude" or "primitive" is further dispelled by two more illustration, this time from a later 10th century manuscript now located in Strahov Monastery in Prague, but originating from Trier, Germany. I have cropped the pictures to allow the details to be readily visible. The artist (known as "Meister des Registrars Gregorium") has indicated mitred corners to the panels in the body of the chair, gold accent to the moulding, and a carved acanthus leaf panel in the second example which is all in gold leaf with painted moulding. Some of the gold leaf has been lost on the left edge, revealing the very carefully drawn details of the chair.

Two details from a Trier Gospel book, now housed in the Strahov Monastary
ca 980

These chairs are illustrated in every century of the Middle Ages, from the 6th (the beginning of the "medieval" period)...

6th century panel from Rome, still very much in the "antique"
style of the Roman era.
This chair is exactly the same as the two 10th century examples.

...to the 15th, which is the end of the Middle Ages. In fact, I have one example that I stumbled across from the middle of the 16th century, but cannot remember where I filed it.

From the British Library comes this early 15th century example
BL Yates Thompson MS 37 fol 103r 

This is an excellent illustration because it shows that just as in the 9th century, the artist made no real distinction between the altar (shown with two red tablets representing a diptych) and the chair. As I have mentioned many times before, the artists were usually not very concerned with details in book illustrations. In the Utrecht Psalter, the plinth chairs and altars have exactly the same form and only other associated items distinguish one (unoccupied) type of furniture from the other, just as the diptych does here.

As I have said, no such chair survives, so any attempt at reconstructing one would be purely speculative. Some clues to the type of ornament used, however, might come from carved stone panels of the same time period in question, such as this 10th century former altar frontal, shown below.

This carved stone altar panel might give some indication of what a moulded
wooden panel might have looked like.

I have no idea when these chairs first came into vogue, but throughout the course of the Middle Ages they remained extremely popular and survived well into our modern era. As times and tastes have changed, they have adapted to those changes in material and the application of ornament and finish, but their basic form held true for more than a thousand years. To me it is a great wonder that no one else has ever given them as much as a second thought or the place they deserve in books of furniture history.

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Hidden in Plain Sight; Cabinets in Medieval Artwork

This posting will examine the existence of cabinets in the early and high Middle Ages.

From abot 700 AD comes this
two door cupboard with intarsia decoration
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, fol 5r

Back when I first began studying artwork in search of illustrations of furniture, I primarily focused on paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries. This was mostly due to the fact that it is almost the only "medieval" artwork on display in the museums. This is also why most people, when it comes to medieval reenactment, tend to focus on these two centuries, the information from earlier is just so rare, and there are relatively very few objects from earlier centuries to base recreation on.

A "Giebelschrank", which is German
for a cabinet with a pointed top.
ca 1200. Notice that it was
originally painted and is missing the
edge trim on the top.

As a furniture maker by profession, I have always been particularly interested in finding examples of "case goods" type furniture, Especially cabinets. The usual line, when it comes to cabinets in the Middle Ages, is that there were very few of them, and that they were very heavy, immovable objects. In fact, there are existing examples of this type of furniture which supports that idea. An example of that would be a late 12th/ early 13th century cabinet in Halberstadt which is constructed of timbers large enough to make a house with. but there are other less publicised examples which prove that this was not always true. The single door armoire from the Bergen Museum, pictured above, proves this.

Relief carving of ca 1330, depicting a very fine cabinet, doubtless this was
once one half of an Annunciation scene

As I studied the artwork though, I did come across examples of furniture which seemed more 'ordinary'. In particular, Giotto painted several desks and cabinets between the 1290's and 1337, the last year he was alive. All of these pieces of furniture seem little different to ones made in the 15th and 16th centuries. I also came across Several similar depictions of furniture in relief carvings by Andrea Pisano, and a splendid sculpture by Giovanni da Balduccio, of about 1330, pictured above.

The question might then be raised, "Were cabinets invented in the 13th century, and if not, why do we not see cabinets in earlier work?" The answer to the first part is 'no', and the second part is complicated. First of all, we do not have all, or even more than the tiniest fraction of all the artwork that was produced between the 6th and 13th centuries, so we have no idea of what may or may not have been portrayed, we only know what is portrayed in those artworks that yet survive. Second, there actually are a few illustrations of cabinets from earlier times; one example also in stone, is from a capital in the Basilica of St Mary Magdalene in Vézelay.

A capital in the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine à Vézelay,
created in the first half of the 12th century

It is obvious that the objects in the illustrations I havegiven are cabinets, simply by the modern recognisable form they take. I mention this, because several years ago, whilst going through the images from Royal Manuscript 16 G VI in the British Library. I came across the following two illustrations, and a "light bulb" came on in my mind.

Folios 85r and 112v from BL Royal 16 G VI 2nd quarter 14th century

In the first illustration, we can clearly see that a cabinet is represented, because it has shelves full of gold vessels, but in form, it is just the same as the buildings in the next illustration. My moment of realisation was twofold; some of the "buildings" in medieval artwork are actually meant to be cabinets, and a possible reason that more cabinets were not portrayed, was because in the context of simplified representational artwork, a building and a cabinet look just the same. Perhaps to avoid confusion, artists did not usually portray cabinets.

Part of this revelation was that I had recently seen the cabinet illustrated at the top of this blog posting. I realised that a typical medieval portrayal of this cabinet would not really be any different from an illustration of a doorway or a building. After this idea occurred to me I went back through a lot of illustrations to see if there were more examples to support my theory. I was delighted to find that, in fact,there are. 

BNF Lat 1 fol 3v , so called Bible de Vivien, or
the first Bible of Charles the Bald, ca 845

I had actually pondered this image earlier, and thought that the object on the extreme right of the centre register was some sort of cabinet, but had no way to prove it. Most discussions of this picture would say that the object represents a church in which the writings are stored. In fact, the lower register does show books being transferred from one church to another, but on careful examination, we can see that the artist did make some distinctions between his buildings of the first and third register, and the cabinet of the middle one, In the following three details, I have pointed out these differences,

Three details from the above illustration. I have added notes
to point out the differences between the buildings and the cabinet.

The first thing that I noticed was that, unlike the other buildings in this painting, the "cabinet", as I am sure it is, has no representation of stones to its walls; all the other buildings do. The next thing to note is that nearly all of the windows in the buildings are represented as having mullioned, glazed windows, as illustrated by their lighter colour and the white bars in the windows; those that do not are arched. Neither is true for the openings that would be interpreted as windows, were the cabinet actually a building. Speaking of those openings, they all have doors painted in various stages of being open, unlike any of the windows in the other buildings. Lastly, our cabinet has a frieze moulding above the door of the first tier (above the lower doors), and a plinth base to it, as one might expect a cabinet to have; none of the other building shapes from this illustration do.

Here is another illustration from the end
of the 10th century which shows essentially
the same principles. This time, the door
is closed and the cabinet has no windows
in order to distinguish it from the building.

Cabinets seem to have been an integral part of a scholars studio from the beginning of the medieval period, a carryover from classical Greek and Roman society, actually. (see illustration toward the end of this post)

A cabinet for theatre masks, from a book of Greek plays
BNF Lat. 7899 fol 2v 9th century
(So much for the notion that Classical literature was
"lost" in the early Middle Ages!)

BSB clm 14000 fol 97r 879

These two pictures help support each other, clarifying the intent of the
artist in portraying writing cabinets; in the first example, they are built into
the wall of a stone paneled room like one would have found in a palace.
St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 371, zt. 2  11th century

In case there are any die-hard skeptics, here is another illustration ca 1330-40
which shows the same notion, just in the garb of 14th century ornamentation.
BL Egerton MS 2781 fol 71r

And another from the 1st quarter of the 15th century
BL Royal MS 1 E IX fol 63v

All of the cabinets illustrated thus far have very distinctive characteristics which they share with contemporary architecture. It should be no surprise that so much furniture of the Middle Ages had architectural elements to it,  This seems to have been a trend since Roman times. There is a much celebrated remains of a charred cabinet in Herculaneum, which had columns, capitals, and a frieze. All very much like contemporary Roman temples. I already mentioned that cabinets and architecture tended to be nearly indistinguishable in form in the medieval artwork. Below are a few pictures which are buildings, but look very much like the examples of cabinets we have seen; in other words, were one to add some shelves, these would be cabinets not buildings.

This is neither a cabinet nor a building, but a baldaquin.
Notice that it is nearly identical to the Norwegian cabinet.
BNF Lat 6(2) fol 88r 10th century.

The object to the right is most likely a doorway, or a representation of a building
but add a door and a few shelves, and it would be a cabinet.
BSB clm 23631 fol 24r 1V 9th century

There is probably someone reading this who still is not buying into my argument, but that is fine, I have one more card to play. I already showed the Bergen cabinet, which is very architectural in form, as pointed out by the above illustrations. This cabinet is what came to mind when I saw the cabinet in the British Library manuscript and set me on this line of investigation. Another fact that added weight to the notion, however, were the many 13th and 14th century sacristy and chalice cabinets still found in various churches and monasteries around Europe, especially in the Germanic lands; which are all built very deliberately to mimic architecture.

Schrank in the Brandenburg Cathedral
Originally this would have been painted and gilded.

A ca 1300 cabinet in Bad Doberan Münster, made to store 20
chalices and their respective patens.
Notice the painting on the inside of the doors which is
reported to be original to its construction.

Also from the Bad Doberan Münster, this is the left wing
of the high altar, completed about the same time as the
Minster, ca 1300. The entire building project was completed in 15 years.
This altar has been restored, but with the same colours and
gilding, as originally crafted. The cabinet above would originally
have looked like this as well; traces of the paint and gilding
have been left as time has aged them.

I am not saying that most people had cabinets in their homes, and it would be impossible to determine how prevalent they were. The point of this article is to counter the notion that in the early Middle Ages, the furniture was all, or nearly all "six board" and dugout chests. Many writers will tell you that the "hutch" (another name for a tall chest with legs) "originated" in the 12th or 13th centuries, implying that post and panel construction did not exist before that time. My research shows that throughout the medieval period, all sorts of post and panel "case-goods" type furniture was being produced, including cabinets and armoires.

All of the basic forms of furniture were already established in Egyptian and early Grecian civilisations, and the Romans continued those traditions. I have just returned from a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, where I spent three days studying medieval artworks. I will be sharing more in future posts, but here is one photo from the Late Antiquity/Early Christian period (roughly 250-500 AD). According to the museum information card, it depicts a doctor sitting in front of a cabinet containing scrolls, a basin, and medical tools; though it is inscribed with Greek letters,it comes from Rome, around 300 AD. 

A Roman cabinet from around 300 AD, from a sarcophagus now in the MET

This cabinet is very much like several depicted by the Ottonian artist known as the Meister des Registrum Gregorii, and others of his circle of influence. It would be totally absurd to think that whilst continuing the practice of making timber framed buildings, siege engines, and weaving looms, European society as a whole forgot how to make cabinets, but after several hundred years, again took up the art in the very same form.

BNF Lat 8851 fol 115v depicting St John in his Study
10th century

Just a parting note on a mostly unrelated topic; unlike many people will tell you, the chair in which St John is sitting does not have a two sided back "to keep out the draughts". The fact that it appears that way to us is simply the result of a common problem of medieval artwork, where the artist is trying to combine two points of view in one illustration. From the side, he knows that the back of the chair is 'behind' the sitter, but he also knows that from the front the back is visible on both sides of the occupant's body, thus he attempts to combine a 'side-view' and a 'front-view' in one picture. See my earlier article on interpreting perspective in medieval art.

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To Ornament or Not... Part 1; the scale of things

Visiting again the topic of medieval depictions of furniture in artwork, this post will begin to examine the question of what sort of ornamentation a piece of furniture might have had, based on the evidence, or lack thereof, in the various surviving representations of all mediums. We will be comparing similar objects depicted in various scales to see if the size of the artwork had any bearing on what ornament was used in the illustration, sculpture, metalwork, or glass painting.

BNF Lat 266 fol 2v um 850

To begin with, I present a work from my favourite time period in medieval history; the 9th century. In this illustration, which art historians have come to call a "Christ Tetramorph", (Christ with the Four Evangelists represented with their non-human [animals and an angel] forms) we have two scales of representation of the same type of object; a book. The books which the four evangelist's symbols hold are smaller than that which Christ holds, and thus they have less ornamentation. In neither case do they give us any information regarding the actual appearance of a 9th century book, beyond the fact that they were ornamented to some degree, and had clasps around the edges to keep them closed. Any other information we wish to gain about ornamentation of objects in this time period must come from other sources.

For me, it is nice when possible, to compare other ornamental representations from the same artist. Thus, though the books these figures hold are not very detail oriented, by examining other decorations from the same artist, in the same book, we can get a better idea of what ornamentation may have been possible in the realm of that artist.

BNF Lat 266 fol 106v um 850

I am not suggesting that this would be the decoration of a book cover, but it is an ornamental frame or border, and shows scrolling leaves and knot-work, both types of decoration which we find on all sorts of surviving artifacts from the 9th century. Notice also, the even more simplified rendering of four books on the four edges of this frame.

Of even larger, and therefore more detailed decoration, are these two bands of stylised, entwined leaf and bud motifs from another page of the same gospel. In addition to being rendered with silver leaf, these patterns were large enough to be further enhanced by highlights and shadow which gave them, when newly painted, a three dimensional form. Sadly, most of that highlight and shading has worn off over the past 1200 years. (Can you imagine that?)

BNF Lat 266 fol 74v um 850

From another 9th century manuscript comes another of those Cannon Tables which I have mentioned in the past. This one is nicely rendered with Corinthian capitals, marble columns, acanthus leaf carving to the architrave, and a very cute little bird perched atop the the crest. Above the columns sit two figures on plinth chairs; their posture very expressive of someone with a lot on their mind. Of the chairs we can discern nothing beyond the fact that they have a cushion on them and their basic form, though even that is not very precise.

Épernay  MS 1-220 fol 14v  9jh

From the same gospel comes this illustration of St John (identified by his symbol, the eagle). John sits on a chair very much of the same form as our last two contemplative figures', but this illustration is large enough for the artist to begin suggesting some ornamentation to the furniture. We see the implication of carved feet on the lectern, and scrolling leaves on its top edge, as well as on the foot bench and the chair. Notice, however, the level of rendering to the leaves comprising the border of this painting. This could quite easily be a carved design running around any one of these pieces of furniture. It is my belief that that is precisely what the artist had in mind; carved ornamentation, when he painted this border.

Épernay  MS 1-220 fol 134v  9jh

I am not saying that this border represents the ornament of that depicted on this furniture; the basic form is different, but it could be used as the ornament of some piece of furniture - or carved or painted moulding around a door, a cornice, or any number of other applications where moulding would be used. It is simply a depiction of one pattern of 9th century carved and/or painted moulding.

Biblioteca Naţională a României, Ms R II 1 Zt 136 um 800 BA

The ornament which the artist had in mind for the chair, foot bench, and lectern were of a more scrolling design, as I said, so we should look for examples of this form of ornament to get an idea of what might have been possible. Fortunately, there are many examples of this form of ornament, which, with slight variation, can be found from Roman times through the 15th century. For the sake of this conversation though, we are considering 9th century ornament, so we should look for sources from that era. In several of the more important gospel books of the 8th and 9th century can be found ornamental borders and page dividers on each folio. These borders are depicted as various forms of actual decorative mediums such as gold and precious stones, cloisonné and champlevé enameling, marble, wood, mosaic and other forms of decoration contemporary with the time of the production of these books. One of these borders is pictured above, representing gold and enamel decoration; it shows the degree to which this simple scrolling vine and leaf motif can be taken. (See also the upright stiles in the Maximian chair back.below for another variation on this theme.)

BNF Lat 11751 fol 59v um 1025-75

Another set of illustration portraying chairs, this time from the 11th century, again demonstrates this same basic concept that the larger the illustration, the more ornament the same artist will use in the objects he portrays.There are three scales /degrees of this illustration. The top tier with Christ is the largest and therefore has the most detail. The lower tier depicting the Virgin Mary as Queen of heaven, is on the same scale as the other figures within this register, but since she is more important than the other occupants, more care was taken in her portrayal.

Everything in this illustration is again representational, yet the depiction of Christ shows a highly decorated book, multiple forms of ornamentation to his clothing, and a jeweled throne and footrest. The throne of the Virgin in form is more elaborate than that of the Christ, but the degree of its ornamentation is lesser. Furthermore, Mary only has a few dots on her clothing to represent pattern to the cloth and none of the other figures, save the one to her left (right hand side) has any at all. All the other seated figures' chairs are also less ornamented than that of the Virgin or Christ.

In reality, it would be logical for a king's throne or chair to be more ornate than that of the queen's and hers more so than other members of court, so this diminishing of decoration is accurate from that point of view, but none of these chairs give us a model from which we can build a reliable example of an 11th century chair. Each of them, in their different forms only serve to illustrate that chairs of their type were ornamented to some degree. Because of the scale and importance of each sitter, the only thing we can accurately conclude from this illustration is that the larger the illustration, the more ornament the artist would have used in his depiction.

If we accept the premise that the circles and tear-drop shaped lozenges represent the gem encrusted ornamentation favoured as decorative elements in the 11th century, then, by the varying degrees of scale in this illustration, we can not actually even draw the conclusion that Christ's chair is more highly ornamented than some of the other's. The decorations on the two chairs immediately the right and left of Mary also have these same shapes. Given the scale of these chairs, there are less actual circles and lozenge patterns to them, but they clearly indicate the same idea of bejeweled ornamentation.

Duccio - Madonna of the Franciscans c1287
235x160mm
(wikipedia)

One might still wish to argue the point that the throne of Christ is more ornamental than those of the other sitters because he is a more important figure. So, what if an artist portrays the same person in two different images, surely, regardless of scale, the ornamentation should be the same, right?

Here are two late 13th century paintings of the Madonna by Duccio, one of "the fathers of renaissance art". They both portray the Virgin Mary seated in a turned and carved chair, and having a two tiered, arcaded  foot bench beneath her feet. One chair is actually of a 'stool' form, as it has no back, but in essence, they are similar turned post chairs, the principal difference comes in the scale. The first painting, above, is tiny, at 160 milimetres wide; it is on the scale of illuminated manuscript paintings. The second Madonna, below, is four and one half metres tall, rendering the smaller figures near life size! Duccio had so much area to work with, he hardly knew what to do with it all. He spent a lot of energy ornamenting the panels to the point of impracticability, and added a lot of highlighting, to suggest a highly polished surface to the wooden parts. (Thomas Chippendale's drawings are often too delicate to be practical as well, but no one says his designs did not represent possibilities for actual furniture.)

The real distinction achieved by the vastly different scale of these two works, however, comes in comparing the fabric depicted in them. In the Madonna of the Franciscans panel, the 'Cloth of Honour' behind the Virgin is draped over a supporting frame, like the back of a chair, but separate from it. We can see this from the way the cloth is formed into a series of peaks and valleys and by the undulating fringe a third of the way down from the top edge. (it looks like a brown water stain) The artist made no attempt at depicting folds or overlaps in the pattern, or shading to the cloth which makes its form a bit difficult to discern. The ornamentation of the fabric is a simple white St Julian's cross form on a blue ground. It is highly probable that such a pattern could be found on cloth woven in the 13th century, but compare it to the brocade depicted in the painting which is larger than life. In this Rucellai Madonna, there is also a cross pattern, but also vine and tendrils, quatrefoils and other ornamental banding along with multiple colours, In short, because of the scale the artist had to work with, the fabric in this painting is truly spectacular. (Incidentally, the blue gown of the Virgin, at the time of this painting, would have, merely by its colour, spoken of immense wealth; indigo blue dye was one of the most costly colours in the medieval world.)

Duccio - Rucellai Madonna 1285 Bildausschnitt
Detail of the lower left corner

Lewis Chessman, Bishop - Rear View
1st half (>) of the 12th century
(Flickr)

Many people, on seeing the Lewis Chessmen, feel that they are quite representational of furniture ornamentation. Perhaps they are, but it would be a very heavy and clumsy chair if one were to scale this design up to the size of a proper chair. It does, however, have the elements of decoration from the 10th through 12th centuries, so in concept, it is a good source of information on possible ornamentation of an actual object.

Schloß Quedlinburg, back panel of the  Kaiserstuhl
c 1045-50
(apologies for the sideways picture, Google refuses to stop flipping it when I
 load it for some reason) picture found on Flickr 

I wanted to avoid the temptation of comparing actual examples with artistic representations of similar objects in this post, but at the same time, an ivory sculpture of 90 milimetres and a bronze chair back (which is actually a sculpture in its most fundamental concept) of around 900 milimetres cannot be passed by, in this context. This design is too similar to that of the chess piece to not recognise it as of the same type of ornamentation. This type of ornament could also have been carved into a wooden panel, and/or could also have been painted on a chair back, giving us numerous possibilities of possible ornamentation of a chair back in this time period.

Maximian's Chair, Ravenna mid 6th cent.
(from Wikipedia)

Maximian's Chair, Ravenna , Detail of  back panel

Whilst on the subject of comparing actual objects to that in the artwork, what better way of illustrating this than showing an historical furniture object which, itself, has depictions of chairs in its very ornamentation. Such is the case with this Chair of Maximian (which I have featured before). This is a fascinating piece of surviving furniture from the beginning of the Middle Ages; it shows the degree of ornamentation used in an important person's (a bishop, in this case) chair.

By comparing this real life chair to an illustration of a chair within its decoration, we can see the degree of simplification which goes into illustrating actual objects This left panel on the back of the chair has a Mother and Child, an image that would persist for more than a thousand years, virtually unchanged. The Mother Mary sits in a chair not unlike the one which this representation is ornamenting, though the actual chair has a partial wrap-around back and this depicted one does not. The only ornamentation to the depicted chair is a set of double lines on each of the straight members, and ball finials like those on the real chair.

I do not mean to keep wearing out the subject of chairs, but they seem to be the most common form of furniture in medieval artwork. Here is another example of one installation with numerous chairs with varying degrees of ornamentation, according to their scale and level of importance within the overall composition.

St Luke, Burgos Cathedral tympanum c 1235

This is part of a tympanum on the west (if memory serves correctly) facade of the cathedral of Burgos, in Spain. St Luke, seated in the largest chair, has a much more ornamented one than the saints which are in the volutes of the arch. In the centre of this sculpture, but not shown in this picture, is a Christ seated on an even larger,and therefore more elaborately ornamented chair. In addition, in a higher tier, there are two more smaller figures, (Mathew and Mark) at similar desks but their chairs are also less ornamented, and the desks do not have the carved floral pattern to the moulded edge. (there is a figure of St John, similar to this one, on the right side as well)

One of the reasons I wanted to use this illustration, however, is that immediately below the seated figure is a very similarly treated arcade to that of the chair, but because it is larger, the artist included more detail. Instead of the curls on the ends of the arch ending in scroll terminals, they end in human head form. (It is also worth noting that the finials to the posts on the chair have been broken off, as has the arm of St Luke.)

The Birth of St Edmund
BL Harley MS 2278, fol. 13v zw 1434-9
this miniature is approximately 120mm square

I began this post with a couple of items from my favourite time period, but am well aware that most people with an interest in the "Middle Ages" tend to prefer things from the 14th and 15th century; the same concepts still hold true for this part of the millennium as well, as can be observed by comparing the following two illuminations.

Here we have a lovely bedroom scene from the first half of the 15th century. It is not painted with as much detail as one sees in a Rober Campin, or Rogier van der Weyden painting, but the scale is much smaller and thus it would be very difficult to achieve that level of realism. Nonetheless, there is ample information for the seeker of medieval interior details to feast the eyes upon in this painting.

There are plenty of actual objects in museums for us to observe their physical appearance, but here we have a reference to types of objects found in a wealthy person's chamber. These include a fireplace with niches for the display of ornamental objects, of metal, ceramic, and glass. We find ornamental andirons in the fire, and a patterned carpet on a tile floor. The mother of St Edmund, who is the focus of all the attention in this painting, lies in a canopied bed. This illustration shows us, unlike so many other paintings, the fact that a rich person's draperies, covers, and bed hangings would have been made of ornamented (brocade) fabric. It also, with an economy of effort, shows us that the walls would have also been decorated, though most medieval illustrations leave them blank.

There are a few pieces of furniture in this painting, but the scale of them is too small to add detail. We see a backless bench of plinth chair form, a barrel backed armchair, and a buffet. The physical ornamentation of these objects were unimportant to the artist, he merely put them here to fill in the scene with as much detail as the space warranted, based on his scale of rendering, in order to give the feel of a habited living environment. The other objects in the painting are also there to add to the sense of wealth in a busy life filled room of a nobleman's household. These items, however, were not essential to the picture, as the next illustration shows. 

Birth and Christening of St Fremund
BL Harley MS 2278, fol. 72r 

This miniature is the same size as the preceding one, but the interest in comparing the two comes from the fact that this second illustration has two scenes in it, requiring the artist to simplify the pictures in order to make them smaller. On the left side we see another bedroom scene, but this time, most of the household objects are left out. There is one ewer beside the fireplace and a cushion on the floor; the only other object, aside from the bed, is a brazier used to put coals in. This object allows heat to be placed at the opposite side of the room from the fireplace. (From personal experience, I can tell you that it does a great deal to help keep a room warm on a cold winter day.) With only half the space to work with, and needing to retain the figures, which are the important part of the picture from the point of view of the original readers, (They did not need to see what a 15th century room looked like, they were already in one!) the artist had to economise somehow. He did so by omitting most of the objects. The overall level of detail is the same as the preceding illustration, but because less space was available, fewer objects and furnishings were depicted. This in no way tells us anything about the actual quantity of objects in a room, and should give us a cautionary lesson about judging the furnishings and decor of any actual room based on what we see in most medieval artworks.

I have given many illustrations here of degrees of ornamentation, in most cases by the same artist, to like or similar objects. In no way am I suggesting that every object was highly ornamented, but at the same time, I wish to make the reader aware that medieval furniture was usually much more ornamented than most depictions which we find in the artwork of the Middle Ages. People of that time loved ornamentation, and whether they were poor or rich, they decorated their objects to the best of their means. A king and a yeoman could both have a chair of similar form, the key difference in the two would have been the materials used in their construction and decoration. If one could not afford, or did not wish to have gold and gems, enamels, or ivory, he could still have something carved, or painted, but his possessions would have been decorated in some manner. Nearly every object which we find from the medieval period bears this out; those that do not, are not in a good state of preservation and thus cannot tell us how they appeared when new. Gold and gems are stolen or re-used for other purposes, paint peels and fades, dyes fade and lose their colours, cloth rots, wood is consumed by moisture, worms and fire, and gilding and moulded gesso flake off, leaving us with a sad shadow of the beauty that was originally found on these objects. Happily, not all objects are thus destroyed, and we can see from many of them them the true spirit of ornamentation in the Middle Ages.

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It has nothing to do with the age...

Most people have the general idea that everything coming from the roman period was superbly made with perfect symmetry and form,  but, after the "fall" of the empire, Europe was swept into an abysmal "dark Age" from which it took a thousand years to slowly crawl back out. Along with this notion comes its twin, which is the idea that the farther back one goes in the Middle Ages, the more primitive things become. While this may be true to some extent in certain regions and during certain eras, I am dedicating the remainder of my life to utterly shattering that myth as a universal, all encompassing truth.  The reality is much more nuanced and complex. Basically put, time has nothing to do with the quality of the creations that the talented and gifted craftsmen and artists produced during the millennium which we call The Middle Ages. This blog posting will begin to show the truth of this statement.

The following page, from a late 8th century manuscript in the St Gallen Archive, illustrates quite nicely most people's perception of pre-14th century medieval art in general. There is no denying that it is rather naive and primitive in appearance. The "barbaric"/Celtic forms of art are here in their most vivid form, therefore, proof of a standard much lower than what came before...or is it?

A medieval scribe is illustrated in this
civil document from the early stage of
Charlemagne's reign.
St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 731, zt. 234

Here is another page from a different manuscript of the same time period (within fifteen years). The Bibliotheque Nationale states this work as "around 800", but "before 814", Wikipedia however, says it is from about 827, Perhaps they know something the folks in Paris do not?

St Luke Composing his Gospel from the
Gospels of St Medard of Soissons
BNF Lat 8850 fol 11v

I have spent a lot of time pouring over medieval manuscript images, ones that the average person would consider dull and boring; decorated initials and illustrations of columns and arches like those above, which are called Canon Tables, and are used to notate similar passages of scripture among the Four Evangelist. Many of these tables are much simpler than this one, and a few are even more elaborate. Much can be learned from these types of illustrations; even though they usually do not portray any sort of 'picture', (as this one does) they can lend great insight into the manner of ornamentation used at the time of their creation, and show us the quality of workmanship which could be found in their era of execution. Another thing that can be observed about the images from this early time period, is the seeming rivalry between the 'Roman' model and the 'Celtic' mode of decoration (I will use the term "early" to refer to the 6th through 9th centuries, "middle" for the 10th through 13th, and "late" for those of the 13th through 15th. [yes there is some overlap; 1000 cannot be divided neatly into three equal centuries.] I also know that the first 'third' is actually weighted more than the others, but this is to distinguish the phases of development that more or less occurred in the style of art during these time periods. Furthermore, the split between middle and late would better be placed at the second quarter of the 13th century than at is close.). In many manuscripts, one finds either one or the other, wholly, whilst in others there can be a mixing of both types of artwork in separate illustrations, or, even mixed together in the same illustration. The first example would be one of wholly Celtic style, the second, that of a completely Roman model. 

It may surprise some readers, but in reading the 6th through 9th century contemporary writings of persons living in the regions formerly under the control of the Roman Empire, such as Gaul and Germania, the writers spoke of themselves as "Roman" and distinguished themselves from the "Barbarians", who were, by their definition, "not Romanised" Thus, while modern scholars consider the Roman world to have "collapsed" about 500 AD, no one bothered to tell the people living at that time about it, and they went right on considering themselves Roman. The whole bit about Charlemagne being crowned in Rome was to give legitimacy to him as a "western" Roman ruler, as opposed to the "Roman" rulers of the eastern realm, known in English as the Byzantine Empire, but in German as the Oströmische Reich, which translates to English as, the Eastern Roman Empire; this is precisely how it was viewed by contemporary peoples of both regions. (Of course the eastern half also wanted to, and did try, to re-unite the two halves under their control.)

Back to the above illustrations, I can imagine hearing many readers, familiar with the time of Charlemagne, saying, "but just a minute, that second illustration is from the 'Carolingian Renaissance School' also known as the 'Court School' and thus is an exceptional example from a brief bright spot in an otherwise dark age." Well, thank you, I am glad you brought that up, because again, like the first notion which we are discussing, this is a mixture of truth and rubbish...read on.

This next Illustration is another one of those Canon Tables which I mentioned a minute ago; however, in this case, someone never got 'round to filling in the appropriate text. This table is from "some time between 736 and 760", and thus earlier than Charlemagne's ascension as king of France, (768) and at the very least least, forty years before his coronation as Emperor in 800 AD. It is true that after he became Ruler, he did set up a "Court School" to promote the dissemination of learning and the arts throughout his realm, but in order to set up such a school, there must have been available talent, willing and able to come and teach at said school. The blind cannot lead the blind. Charlemagne went throughout the known (to him) world and recruited people (actually his agents did) from nearly every country, thus, there already was an established 'pool' of skilled craftsmen to pick from, before his school was begun. Given politics being what they are, and have always been, this does not even mean to say that the best were necessarily selected, as opposed to the brother's cousin, or the prime minister's best friend etc. etc.who was good at one craft or another and, some favour or other was either given or gotten in the deal. This canon table shows nearly the same level of craftsmanship to that executed by the creator of the second illustration above, yet whomever produced it would, in all likelihood, have been dead and gone before that famed school was ever conceived of . In a world in which students learn from their masters, under a system of apprenticeship, it is actually quite hard to completely erase a skill or craft. 

BL Add. MS 5463 fol 1v

That fact causes me to be baffled, when, in the context of the development or loss of skills and trades, I am confronted with the notion that somehow, whilst the arts of weapons, fabrics, and building continued to evolve and improve during the course of the Middle Ages, people expect me to believe that the art of making furniture was nearly snuffed out, to the point of furniture makers resorting to "dug-out chests, and planks set on tree trunks as tables". I am not making this up, I continuously come across such descriptions of furniture as being the types of furnishings used during the "early" (usually pre-14th century in these writings) middle ages. The following picture is from a Museum in Germany, and is talking about the "earliest forms of a chest" It says the word originated from meaning a tree, and that chests in the earliest time in history were so constructed; and continued to be used in remote places such as alpine valleys, long after the close of the Middle Ages.

To be fair, this museum did not define "earliest time in history" but most people reading this, seem to interpret it to mean "...of the Middle Ages" It is quite probable that at some point in neolithic history, chests were originally made in this manner, but we can go back as long ago as the Minoan civilisation and find representations of chests made with a post and panel construction.

This clay model of a chest comes from the 14th or 15th century BC
(that is 3500 years ago) and clearly shows one of the same forms
 used until at least the 13th century AD in Europe.

Just as the placard in the museum states, however, in some regions of Europe, log chests were made even into the 17th century. A few years ago this two part log chest was for sale at Christies; it was made in the second half of the 16th century.

A "primitive, medieval" chest; except it comes from the
Renaissance; the "age of enlightenment". It is contemporary
with some of the finest furnishings in the top museums.

These two pictures, alone, should demonstrate what was said in the title of this blog; that time had nothing to do with the quality or craftsmanship of an object. I want to knock a few more holes in most peoples notions of the quality of furniture during the medieval period before I go on, however. I mentioned something about planks set up on tree stumps for tables as well. I saved that statement and its source in my files, but it has since been lost and I have not found where I read the original statement again. I do have, though, from the will of Charlemagne, at his death, a brief description of a few of the items he had in his possession. The source of this is from Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni and though the description of most of his possessions are not very explicit, there is one delicious tidbit of information;  ...it is well known that among his other property and treasures are three silver tables, and one very large and massive golden one. He directs and commands that the square silver table, upon which there is a representation of the city of Constantinople, shall be sent to the Basilica of St. Peter the Apostle at Rome, with the other gifts destined therefor; that the round one, adorned with a delineation of the city of Rome, shall be given to the Episcopal Church at Ravenna; that the third, which far surpasses the other two in weight and in beauty of workmanship, and is made in three circles, showing the plan of the whole universe, drawn with skill and delicacy, shall go, together with the golden table, fourthly above mentioned, to increase that lot which is to be devoted to his heirs and to alms. (from the Medieval Source-book; this text translated from Latin in 1880)

None of these tables sound anything to me like planks set up on tree trunks! There is, in the 8th century biography of St Eligius, a brief story of him having constructed two chairs of gold and precious stones for the king, these, also were obviously sumptuously made, and had nothing to do with the general image most people have of early medieval furnishings. No one, today, knows exactly what those chairs looked like, because they have long since succumbed to the ravages of time, but there is a chair, from roughly the same time period as those made by St Eligius, which is now housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale, in Paris, and is said to have belonged to Dagobert. It has no jewels or precious stones, but it is still a very well crafted and beautiful chair.

You may look it up yourself on the internet, as there are many images of it, I chose to show this detailed view to demonstrate the skill involved in its making. Since it is cast of brass, this attests also to an whole other line of craft and the skills required to produce such an object.

So far, we have looked at objects from the end of the first third of the Middle ages, what about the 10th,11th and 12th centuries? Surely they were the bleakest of times, and the superb skill and exquisite craftsmanship had vanished by then, right?    Wrong.

Detail of the Dagobert Chair from the end

of the first third of the 7th century

Ivory reliquary in the V&A

mid 11th century

Obviously, someone still knew how to carve ivory in the 11th century...

Heinrichskreuz from the Quedlinburg treasury
early 11th century

they could still apparently work gold and gems...

Meister des Registrum Gregorii
Trier Stadtbibliothek
c985

And without a doubt, this shows that they yet retained the skills to paint.

Years ago, when I first saw an image of this painting, I thought it was a fake, because, I too, had been fed the same notion of the primitiveness of medieval art and could not believe this was produced slap bang in the middle of the "darkest" period of the Middle Ages. On doing more research, I discovered what I am sharing with you now, and continue to discover more of, to this day. These discoveries are, as I said, that there were, in fact, times and places during the course of the Middle Ages, in which primitive, naive, and crude objects were produced; however, at the same time, there were always craftsmen of superb talent who produced impeccable objects demonstrating skill and craftsmanship. 

Please look carefully at the five pieces of furniture depicted in this painting and tell me which one of them looks like it was hewn from a log. The desk alone should dispel anyone's lingering doubts about the existence of finely made medieval furniture. 

From the 12th century, we find, in the Minden Cathedral, an altar or pulpit, which at one time was the back panel of a chair, probably belonging to one of the bishops of the cathedral. There is a book (which seems to be out of print), which is titled, Schatz der Staufers, or something of the sort (not the children's comic book by that name in print now) which featured several beautiful 12th and 13th century carved pieces of furniture, This panel is featured among them in an old photograph, dating from some time in the 19th century; it is depicted with its legs still attached. It is instructive to consider, when viewing such items as any of those which I have featured, that though these might be isolated objects and very rare in terms of their survival, that they did not just appear out of thin air; someone made them, and he did not just make one such object. Each of these pieces is testament to an entire career of a craftsman and his work. 

Former Throne, now as a pulpit front in the Minden Cathedral
Mindener Dom Altar, Ehemaliger Thron des Kaisers um 1170
Bildausschnitt

I have come up with a phrase I like to use, which is that, "A lack of existing evidence is not evidence of a lack of existence.". Happily, though, there is plenty of evidence to prove that although there was plenty of the "crude" and "rustic" produced in medieval times, there were, also, in all periods of the Middle Ages, artists and craftsmen who produced fabulous works of art and artifacts. Man has always been a creature of cunning and skill, and the artists of society have always striven to produce works of outstanding beauty, this spirit was in no ways obliterated or extinguished during the age that is only "dark" because we have not really bothered to turn the lights on. 

In future blog postings, I will be examining other aspects which influenced the quality of items produced during the medieval period, including addressing such questions as to how two manuscripts, from the same country, and at the same time, such as the first two illustrations in this blog, wound up having such a marked difference in quality of workmanship.

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