The Utrceht Psalter and its furnishings - Part III

This is part three of a a series of posts in which we are examining the furniture from the 9th century Utrecht Psalter and comparing it to other contemporary illustrations, and actual objects. These posts have been going through an alphabetical listing of the various types of furniture depicted therein and we have now come to 'O' or, 'Ordinary Chairs', as I have termed them. I am here making the distinction between "ordinary chairs" and other types of chairs which are also depicted in this Psalter.

There are four such illustrations, two of them clearly depict wooden chairs with turned posts, one is too vague to be certain of its intended construction or material, and the last clearly depicts one made of metal. (bronze being the most likely candidate for this)

One of three depictions of a common  turned wooden chair in the
Utrecht Psalter

Ordinary chairs are here defined as those which have a form similar to a modern kitchen type of chair, namely having a back made from two "posts" extending up from the rear legs and connected to one another by one or more horizontal slats or rails. These connecting rails may have additional vertical elements inserted between them. Generally these chairs are further distinguished by a relatively smaller size and lighter construction. In one of my earliest posts on this blog I did an entire article on the topic of the "ordinary" chair, so do not need to repeat it all again, but I want to refresh a couple points from it.

Chairs were not solely reserved for persons of high rank and stature as is the commonly held myth; there are dozens of medieval illustrations which prove this. I go into some detail of this point in the above mentioned article, but I attach here one poignant example as evidence for those who do not have the time to read that article.

This picture alone should dispel most myths about chairs in the Middle Ages
especially regarding their supposed limited use to elite and prestigious persons

In June of last year (2015) I featured a group of furniture found in a grave site in Trossingen, Germany which included a simple turned wooden chair much like those depicted in the Psalter. Recently St Thomas Guild, a fellow website dedicated to things of the late Middle Ages, posted a recent archaeological find of a group of fragments comprising the remains of a chair which seems to have been discarded around the middle of the 13th century. This chair is again very much like the 6th century one and the 9th century illustrations; and such chairs continued to be made well into the 18th century in rural places

A piece of  chair discovered in an excavation in Shiedam, The Netherlands;
it seems to have been discarded on a farm sometime around 1250.

A pair of 18th century Dutch chairs. The main difference in these chairs, as
compared to the medieval examples would be in the profile of the turnings.

From about 1300 years earlier, there is a definite
connection between this design and that of the
18th century chairs pictured above

I think it would be fairly safe to assume that any given time throughout the medieval period a chair like these would have been found in most any but the poorest of houses. The key difference would be in the level of ornamentation. These two excavated examples give us actual objects to see, but they do not convey their original appearance; certainly any paint or other means of decoration they once exhibited has been lost, leaving a tattered ghost of their former selves.

A lightweight chair made of metal is represented
by this illustration

The fourth chair in this group is different than the others, and seems to represent a chair made of metal rods. Bronze was the primary material used for furniture in the Roman world, and it seems that the tradition of its use continued during the Middle Ages. The famed "Dagobert Chair" now in the Bibliotheque National Facnce is perhaps the most famous but not the only example still in existence. There are many surviving roman curule and and "X frame" roman chairs which exhibit the same sort of construction as is represented her but I have not, so far, come across any example of an actual surviving object of this form. There are however a couple other 9th century manuscripts which also portray this form of chair

In the complete version of this page from a 9th century manuscript are
pictured four metal frame chairs similar to the one in the Utrecht Psalter

Unfortunately, like all of the other furniture in this Psalter, and indeed in most medieval manuscripts, there is not any real details to go on, we simply see a form, and representation of a type. It would be most interesting to find further evidence of such chairs, but unlike the "Dagober" chair, these were relatively simple and their use as bronze material would have been much more valuable once they had become outmoded or worn out.

Videre Scire

Reflections On My Visit to the MET - A carved 6th or 7th century panel

It has now been twenty years since I came to the States, (where does the time go?!) and until two weeks ago I had never been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, known colloquially as the MET. A few weeks ago I decided to remedy that shortcoming by giving myself a birthday present; a trip to the museum. One of the things that had prevented me from visiting earlier was that I knew it is a huge museum and there would be no way to take it all in in one day, thus I would need to stay overnight, a rather costly investment in New York. In fact, the museum is so vast, that even in three days I did not see half of what I wanted to see. (And to think that I had also planned to visit the Cloisters which is another whole building devoted to 12-15th century European art, located in a different part of the city.) I spent all of the opening hours of the Museum inside it for the duration of my trip. A fact that had the native New York cab driver incredulous, he could not fathom someone coming there to visit a museum?!

I could gratuitously post a bunch of photos which I took there, (I managed over two thousand, and am still sorting through them.) but just about every object in the MET is online, and some of them have thousands of renditions posted by others. I do not feel the need to add to the noise. What I decided to do, rather, was to post over the next few months some of the pieces that particularly impressed me, and to share some of the inner workings of my mind, in seeing, appreciating, and comprehending them. In short, I will be curating them into a broader medieval context than what the museum has time or space to do.

A carved wooden panel from the 6-7th century

Before I even went to the museum, I knew there would not be time enough to see everything I would want to, and so determined to stick to what would be the most important to me; namely late antiquity, and early medieval. Thus my tour began right inside the entrance, to the left of the ticket takers. (20+$ per day for three days is an investment in itself). The first few rooms are filled with a mix of objects from all over the Roman world, spanning a period of the 3rd to the 7th century, perfect hunting grounds to help understand the state of the arts at the onset of the Middle Ages.

I had not been there for more than twenty minutes when I spotted this object, hanging on the wall, and knew that my trip had not been wasted.

I was studying this lamp stand when I first spotted
the panel. I enjoyed seeing this lamp as well, and
was very happy that the museum placed it in front
of a mosaic which has an almost identical object
represented; touching on one of my key themes-
that objects portrayed in the artwork are always
much simpler that the actual things they represent.

I said that nearly every object in the museum is online somewhere, and this one is no exception, but I had never come across it, and so was delighted to "find" it. Wooden objects from the 6th and 7th centuries are extremely rare, so it was very special and moving for me to see this remarkably well preserved piece. Before reading the description, I thought perhaps it was a back panel for a bench, or a crest from a cabinet. There are holes in the bottom of the panel, however, which most likely held spindles or balusters, that making the cabinet scenario much less likely.

When I take a trip to a museum, I always try to take pictures of the descriptions either right before or right after photographing the object, so that I will be able to remember what it was I was looking at later. With 2000 plus photos, this was extremely useful! Here is the description for the above picture as provided by the MET.

Museum label for the panel

The museum inventory numbers allowed me to look it up online and find out more information about it. For example, I now know that it is 223mm high, 927mm wide, and 19mm thick. (Interestingly, even today, this is the most common thickness for basic timber stock.) I also learned that it was discovered in and is presumed to have come from Egypt. Because my studies are primarily confined to European Medieval culture, one might wonder why I would have much interest in this, but I will address that shortly. First, however, I wish to discuss the part which the museum mentions as being its likely function. ("The crest of a piece of furniture or a barrier") I am not going to say I have a more precise answer than that, because I do not, instead, what I want to do is examine a few applicational possibilities.

As I said earlier, my first thoughts, upon seeing it were that it could be the back of a chair or bench, but that was partly influenced by the fact that I had just been studying the Utrecht Psalter. Thus my mind recalled some of the benches and chairs depicted in that manuscript.

A bench depicted in the Utrecht Psalter; note the crested back.

This bench depiction represents a much larger piece of furniture than would have been possible from the MET panel (4 occupants), but thanks to an image which I have borrowed a few times already, from St Thomas Guild, we can see that smaller benches, suitable for two people were also produced.

A short bench from Sweden, purported to be from the 12th century, but in style
it could have come from any time of more than a thousand years prior to that,
based on Celtic and Migration Period grave finds and early
(8th-11th century) illuminated manuscripts.

In the late antiquity,and early Middle Ages large chairs were produced which were meant for a single user, and intended to impart a sense of importance and power associated with the occupant. This panel would be large enough to suit such a purpose as well.

A throne depicted in the 9th century Stuttgart Psalter

In looking through my manuscripts I came upon another possible application; that of a headboard. The manuscript pictures I have are less convincing, but when one factors in the Migration Period bed remains which have been found in Germany, Switzerland, and France, this increases the possibilities.

A bed depicted in the Ashburnahm Pentateuch this shows the way balusters
would have been inserted into the bottom of the crest panel

Remains of a 6th century bed (cut down to be used as a coffin) from a grave
find in Baden-Württemberg
(You would not look very pretty after you were buried for 1400 years either!)

Detail of a sketch made in the mid 19th century of a bed found in Oberflacht
a grave site in Baden-Württemberg. This sketch also shows a plan of the bed as
it was found within a sarcophagus. Based on these proportions, one can see
that a panel the length of the one we are discussing would fit such a bed.

As I said, I have no intention of trying to establish what this piece was actually used for, I just wanted to point out some possible applications so that you could visualise it in use on an actual piece of furniture. I have not found any depictions of screens or room dividers, but that could also be another function, as suggested by the museum. The fact that this piece comes from Egypt as opposed to Europe causes me little concern. There are many early medieval ivory artifacts from Egypt which are nearly identical to European examples of the same types of objects. These include Boxes, book covers, and mirror cases, there is no reason, then, to suppose the same might not be true of wooden objects.

The Roman Empire had a very homogenising effect on the arts throughout the area of its control, and we find items of furniture from Spain and Morocco to Iran and even India which had the same basic forms and methods of ornamentation. Small regional influences gave some level of distinction, but the overall Roman-ness of these pieces is almost always undeniable. Part of this was because the Romans incorporated and dispersed design elements from all of the regions in which they held control and allowed the craftsmen from those areas to continue to ply their trades in far flung parts of the empire. The result was a give and take in which both "sides" influenced one another. The classical Greek influence had also been absorbed by Rome, which itself had grown from diverse areas of Europe and the Near East.

In going through some of my collection of illuminated manuscripts in preparation for this blog I found some remarkable ornamentation which very much invoked the style and spirit of the carvings on this MET panel.

The artist who painted this manuscript stuck mostly to the Roman
tradition, but he used some of his native Germanic motifs in the border
and other ornamentation. The spirit of Christ's chair is very much like
that of our panel. The ornamentation surrounding the IHS XPs is even
closer. (This is the latinised  abbreviations for the Greek words
"Jesus Christ")

At first glance, this crest of a Cannon Table from the Soissons Gospels
(BNF Lat 8850 ca 814) has nothing to do with the panel we are discussing, but
look closely, and you will see the same rounded edges interspersed with leaf
points. This is a motif which is found throughout the Roman world at least as
far back as the 3rd century; predating "Byzantine".

Sometimes the influence went the other way as well, and forms of "barbaric" ornament made their way into Greco-Roman art. (or it had been there from the time that these people were also "primitive"). I pointed out the decorations in the above portrait of Christ; these sorts of decorations can be found all over the western world going back millennia before Christ. Here are a couple more examples.

This photo is from the MET website. It shows a basic form of universal
ornament shifted  a bit to give a deliberate emphasis to the cruciform form.
(Notice the dark areas, stained by the minerals used as paint pigment; this
piece would have originally been painted.)

Also from Lat 8850, this little scrap of a border shows the same basic motif
as it might be drawn in a simplified manner relevant to the scale

BNF Lat 9427 fol 145v This letter 'D' from the text, "Diebus Illis Maria"
(In those days Mary... but I cannot read the rest of the script, so I do not
know what the text is) has a somewhat similar motif but the same
design for the border of the roundel. The stem of the 'D' is similar to the
bottom border of the panel. This Frankish manuscript comes from right
at the turn of the 8th century (ca 700)

Even more impressive, however is this little gem, from about the same time, but in a different manuscript.

BNF lat 12048 fol 40v. I think it would be hard to find a closer example
from anywhere than this to the carved roundel in the MET panel. This manuscript
was produced in France at the beginning of the 8th century.
Please notice, also how well painted the cock is.

Thus I conclude that this panel, though it comes from Egypt, can still give us valuable clues as to how a 6th or 7th century piece of European furniture might have appeared.

Videre Scire

Furniture in the Salerno Ivories

Whenever I have free time, I usually spend it doing research on some aspect of the Middle Ages; this mostly falls into the more specific topic of furniture and furnishings of that time period. I study by examining pictures, reading books, and occasionally going to museums. (I would love to go more often, but time and budget affect that possibility considerably.

In preparing my recent post on the topic of stools in the Middle Ages, I came across a picture of a stool depicted in an 11th century ivory plaque from Salerno. I was intrigued by this picture, so I did a bit of investigation and found a book written on these ivories, and their history and cultural context, as understood by Robert Bergman, after he had conducted several years of research and study on them. In fact, the book I bought, The Salerno Ivories, was an outgrowth of his thesis on the topic.

In this posting, I want to examine the furniture depicted in these fascinating little ivory panels; in a future post I will compare these depictions with other artwork and actual objects which I believe are of the type depicted herein. I took all the pictures from my book, and have mostly only shown the furniture; should you want to see the rest of the ivories, I suggest you buy the book, as I did.

A throne chair and a foot stool

The furniture type which is most frequently depicted is the throne chair, for more of which, see this article. There are no two chairs depicted alike, even if the same person is portrayed sitting on them (which is only the case with King Herod).

Adoration of the Magi; another throne chair
and its surrounding baldachin 

King Herod, from the Massacre of the Innocents

King Herod again, this time visited by the
Magi. Notice the differences in this throne.

There are also, featured in one of the panels, a stool, a bed and a small table. In a previous post I pointed out, and will do so again here, that the bed is not a large platform supported by four spindly legs in its centre, as a literal interpretation of this picture might suggest. The artist was not concerned with depicting things as we see them, but was only interested in compositional harmony and rhythm. He had an interest in showing the turned legs for the bed, but had he carved the scene in a more realistic manner, the legs would be almost completely concealed by the seated figures, besides the fact that he seems to have wished to use the four upright legs as part of the vertical elements of his layout. 

Here is the original picture that sparked my interest in this topic

Another type of seating which has several representations is the plinth chair, which you can read more about here.

In the scene of Pentecost, the disciples are depicted either sitting on plinth
chairs or one long 'plinth bench', the end of which is portrayed on the
right of the plaque. Each figure has his own foot rest.

Three more plinth chairs and a round table
(my apologies for the sideways picture, sometimes
Google does this and I cannot figure out how to
correct it.)

Several other pieces of furniture depicted in the ivories are beds. I have shown four here, and there are actually a couple more in the series, but the details are not clear enough to be worth including them here.

The healed paralytic carrying away his bed

Noah asleep in his bed, after having gotten drunk.

Here is an example of medieval artists not being overly concerned with the details of the story whilst carrying out their creations. In the story of Noah, he was found naked and drunk, but here he is clearly already clothed before his son drapes the cloak over him. Medieval artwork is almost never to be interpreted as accurate depictions of anything, even if it may offer some visual clues.

Another(again, sideways pictured) bed, This one with decorative
turned legs and flared feet
Compare the detail of the doors in this picture with those in the above
picture of King Herod Visited by the Magi

St Joseph dreaming in a bed with bobbin and reel turned sides

And so that is nearly all the panels which have any meaningful depictions of furniture in them, but I want to put one of these pictures here a second time, in case you did not catch the other piece of furniture in it the first time.

A bottle of wine in a cabinet

Here is depicted a small bedside cabinet, with Noah's wine flagon inside. I believe it is intended as a cabinet because of how it is depicted, but I am also aware of a series of Old Testament fresco illustrations in a church in Italy which have similar cabinets beside Abraham's bed; thus giving me additional reason to believe what is pictured here is a cabinet. In one of those paintings, the doors of the cabinet are shown ajar. When I do the second half of this blog topic, I will share that picture for your own comparison.

I have often spoken about the level of detail depicted in the objects portrayed in artwork, as compared to actual decorations of objects, and the fact that artwork almost never shows the true extent of actual ornamentation. No better example of my point can be found than in the following set of pictures of ornamental fragments which originally framed these ivory plaques that we have just examined.

It is the theory of Robert Bergman, who spent several years studying these ivories, that these panels were originally part of a set of doors. As such, these ornamental bands would have formed the framework to the door panels. By looking at these decorative strips, we can get a better idea of the ornament which could have been used to decorate the sides of beds and chairs, or the legs of tables and cabinets. The remains of at least three medieval chairs, all older than these 11th century ivories, still exist, and all of them have the same degree of carved ornamentation to their structural elements. All of the decorations in the portrayed furniture are merely 'X's', zick-zacks, hatching, and dots, but this is due to the small scale of the carving. All of these ivory panels are only 90-120mm wide and to depict any accurate detail of a piece of furniture which is in an area of only 10 or 15mm would be nearly impossible, as well as being pointless. The people for whom these panels were made, already knew what beds, stools, chairs, cabinets, and tables looked like; it is only us, some 1000 years later who clamour for more information.

Several sections of ornamental carving which belong to this set of ivories

Videre Scire

A Spectacular Find of Late 6th Century Furniture

A couple weeks, ago, whilst reading various topics related to the peoples of Europe at the beginning of the Medieval Period, I stumbled upon a picture of a small table which was found in a grave in Trossingen, a town in south-western Germany, renowned today for the harmonica. I was immediately transfixed by the picture, and began looking for more information about the table and where it came from. I actually found quite a bit about it on the internet, but almost all in German. Since most of the readers of this blog will be English speaking, I thought it would be good to dedicate this post to sharing this information so that the English speaking world can also share in the fascination of these early artifacts.

A fantastically preserved lathe-turned maple table from
a late 6th century grave in Trossingen, Germany.

I am not sure why someone would be out doing archaeological work in the snow, ice, and rain of winter, but according to the official web page of the Archäologische Landesmuseum, Baden-Württemberg (State Archaeological Museum of Baden-Württemberg), related to this archaeological find, that is precisely what was taking place in the winter of 2001/2. What they uncovered seems to be well worth whatever misery the archaeologist might have encountered whilst conducting their dig.

The treasure they were unearthing was a grave of an unknown person of the upper class of the Alemanni, a Germanic tribe in what is now the state of Baden-Württemberg, in south-western Germany. According to the information on the museum's website, and further reading I did on other websites, the occupant of the grave is believed to have been an approximately 40 year old warrior or knight. This conclusion has been drawn from the fact that he was buried with a shield, lance, sword, riding equipment (saddle and tack etc) and held in his left arm, an unbelievably well preserved lyre with figures of warriors facing one another, depicted on the front.

The lyre alone is an unbelievable find, not least-wise because it is seemingly the best preserved of some 15 similar objects found to date; but also because of the complexity of its construction. (more on that later) However, from the standpoint of this blog, it was an incredible find, overall, for the quantity and quality of all the furnishings found in this grave.

Bear in mind that these items have been undisturbed, in a low mound in the earth, for more than 1400 years. To find a single scrap of wood from that time period is remarkable, but to find whole identifiable pieces of furniture is truly amazing. This preservation was made possible because at some point in time, not long after the entombment of the deceased, the site was flooded, leaving a thick airtight layer of fine clay over the grave. (That must have been a miserable year for the residents of the region!)

The contents of the grave included a chair, a bed which had been cut down and converted into a sarcophagus, a table, a candle stick, and various treen ware, (small household objects made of wood). Because the time of this burial was at the very beginning of the Middle Ages, it is useful to study them for what they can tell us about the evolution of furnishings over the course of the next millennium. What I had already noticed from the 5+ years of research I have been involved in, primarily by examining manuscript illuminations, was the very slow changes which occurred with most forms of furniture during the course of much of the Medieval Period. Though this observation had been largely drawn from the study of medieval artwork, the goods from this grave bear witness to the accurateness of many of my conclusions. 

Lathe turned chair
late 6th century

Beginning with the chair; I will explain some of what I mean. I have already published a couple postings regarding the early medieval history of the chair, and you may refresh your memory here, and in other posts on the blog as well. What this 6th century chair shows, is that from the beginning of the Middle Ages through the 17th century, there was very little fundamental difference in the design of this type of turned chair. The artwork from the 7th century through the 12th, when we again find actual surviving objects, 'fill in' the gap in history, now that we have an actual example at the starting point.

Below are two photographs from a book in my library, written by Victor Chinnery, entitled Oak Furniture, the British Tradition. This is an excellent book and I have read it several times. Mr Chinnery is obviously fascinated with post medieval furniture, so does not touch on pre-16th century topics much, but in his book are several examples which show how medieval designs persisted even after the end of the Middle Ages; now we can see that some of those designs were indeed very long lived!

Turned chair from the late 17th century
Fundamentally, this is the same chair
but with the addition of arms, and
subtle changes in turning forms.

There are some easily observable differences in the two chairs pictured above; the most obvious being the inclusion of arms and a higher back. Other differences would be that the 17th century example has a solid seat, whereas the 6th century one had an "unidentified organic substance" (in other words, most probably, leather) which has not survived, and that the joinery in the earlier version goes right the way through the legs, but the later one has a more conventional "socket" mortise. Additionally, the 17th century chair is narrower at the back, and the turnings are more fluid/less static in form.

Notwithstanding those differences, look at the similarities; the finials to the back are near identical, the lower rung on the front has a double inverted arch form, all four legs are connected by horizontal stretchers near their base, and the back is comprised of round horizontal members filled in with reel shaped turnings, as is the back of the 6th century example.

So-called King Stephen's throne from Hereford Cathedral
This chair is missing several parts, but is overall, in
a good state of preservation.

Now consider another chair, also from Mr Chinnery's book, which he takes great pains to argue the fact that this chair "... may be an archaic product of the 16th century." To be fair, he does cite some possibilities of it being older, and admits that stylistically, it is nearly impossible to pin down to an accurate date. In his world of 16th-18th century furniture, when stylistic changes were taking place every decade or so, he has fallen into the pit of attempting to place a precise date on something which has a form spanning much more than a thousand years. What my research has shown is that throughout the medieval period, styles and even more so, forms, changed very slowly, if at all. As a case in demonstrating the conflict of these two ways of seeing the subject of dating an object, take one of Mr Chinnery's arguments for a later date of the chair, in which he cites the turning of a "circa 1680" candlestand as being "exactly" (he supplied the italics) the same as the turning on the back of the chair in question.

Turned candlestand

I do not have enough knowledge of 17th century furniture to try to argue with him about items from that time period, but I would argue the fact that it is not "exactly" like the candlestand, as the latter has no grooves to the bobbins, and the reels are much smaller on the earlier example. What I will point out, however, is that that the "circa 1680" candlestand does have much closer to the exact same form as the central pier of St Mathew's lectern in the Gospels of Saint-Médard de Soissons from the BNF. (Bibliothèque nationale de France) In fact, this 17th century candlestand would be completely at home in the 7th through 13th centuries, based on the forms of turnings on lecterns, chairs, and candle sticks, as depicted in the manuscripts.

St Mathew, from an early 9th century Gospel book
BNF lat 4450 fol 17v

Going back to the topic of chairs, though, it is also worth noting the similarity of the joinery of the Trossingen example and that of the "unknown dated" 12th century one from Mr Chinnery's book. In both cases, the construction utilises "through tenons'. This type of joinery is observed in all the surviving turned chairs of the 12th and 13th centuries that I know of. This 6th century find informs us that such techniques were already in use at the onset of the Middle Ages.

Other objects from this grave find include a bed, which "has been converted into a sarcophagus". When I first saw this picture, I knew it had been cut down, but thought, "oh, great; now someone is going to think that beds in the 6th century were very narrow." I am glad that the archaeological museum pointed out the fact that it had been re-purposed and altered. It does show more of the same forms of turnings as demonstrated in the chair, and again confirms, as does the turned candlestand and table, from the same grave, of the variety of forms utilised in turned objects. This is especially relevant, because we have actual objects with which to compare the designs illustrated in the medieval manuscripts.

6th century bed, converted to a coffin

Unlike the chair, this bed does not have through mortises. It also has very flat well formed timbers for the side panels. The decorative turnings seem to be sliced off of round turned segments, but look to be much less than true half turnings. Perhaps this is partially because of corrosion and shrinkage caused by the drying process during the post exhumation period. Although much is preserved, a lot has also been lost during these items long interment. One internet article that I found, states that originally, the chair had runic inscriptions on the upper back splat, but they are "worn away, or otherwise so altered" as to be "nearly impossible" to decipher.

Along with these photos from the Archäologische Landesmuseum, Baden-Württemberg, came instructions on the website on how to view high resolution images of some of the objects. In these pictures can be seen a lot more of the details and the remains of decoration, such as incise line carving, and fine groove clusters on the turned objects. Because of long exposure to damp and decay, what is left completely unknown, however, is how these pieces might have been further enhanced by paint, wax, or varnish. Unless things had greatly changed between the end of the 6th century and the end of the 8th, though, based on the miniatures, I would assume they would have been painted, as the people of that time seem to have liked colourful objects.

Oak candlestand 

Of all the forms represented in this group of grave-goods, the most remarkable to me, was that of the foot of this candlestand. As already discussed above, the fact that placing precise dates on objects of unknown provenance is sometimes quite challenging. Look at the base of this candlestand; I am sure that, were it not found with the other grave goods from a date-able period, most appraisers would give it a 14th or 15th century date, on account of the foot. Compare it to the foot of this 14th century ewer.

Ewer from the Copenhagen Museum 1st quarter,14th century

There are many other revelations from this grave find, and many questions which the finds raise. Some of the additional details worth mentioning are the fact that of the collection of more than 11 wooden objects found in this grave, only one was made of oak. (The timbers which formed the roof of the grave were also of oak.) That object was the candlestand. The chair is made of maple and ash, the bed is made of beech, and the table of maple. Other wooden objects include a spear with a shaft of hazel, a shield of alder, a bowl made from poplar and a turned and carved canteen of maple "burl wood". In fact, if the goods in this grave are anything to go on, maple, not the generally accepted oak, was the preferred medieval timber for furniture at this time.

The canteen would fall high on the list of questions which this find begs an answer for. It is made of a large chunk of wood, turned round on the face, but leaving some area from which to carve the handles and spout. In the rear, a separate plate has been fashioned to allow the centre of the object to be hollowed out. What fascinates me, is the question of what method the maker would have used to attach that plate in a 'beer-tight' manner. (it apparently held barley beer) To be watertight is a good achievement, but beer would pose an additional problem of pressure from a fermented drink, and therefore, whatever means was used to adhere the plate would have needed to be even stronger than would be required for water alone.

Turned and carved canteen
The process of drying out items left damp for more than 1400 years has
caused a lot of distortion to the original shape of these objects.
Notice how out of flat and round this opening now is, though it would
have been originally quite properly round due to the fact that it was
turned on a lathe.

Based on the fact that the internet is chock-a-block with pictures of people making all sorts of reconstructions of it, for the average person, the most remarkable object from this find is the lyre. This, too, presents some serious challenges to our contemporary notions of early medieval craftsmanship. There is a good article about this object on Wikipedia but it is in German, so English speakers beware. According to this information, and from the observation of additional photos not provided by the museum, the body of this lyre is made of a solid piece of maple between 11 and 20 mm thick and hollowed out to form the sound box. (it tapers toward the yoke) It is then covered over with a second plate of wood which forms the 'top' or cover, and ranges from a thickness of 1 to 6 mm. This is coming from the time when most people assume everything was carved out of a log with an axe. It must have been one fine axe wielding artist who was able to craft this instrument. Additionally, the top was originally only affixed with glue, but a later repair was made in which 5 tiny nails were used on the right lower edge. This too sounds exactly like the generally held view of life in 'the dark ages'.

In all, the finds from this grave site should give reason for most people to seriously question their notions of life, even in the earliest part, of the Middle Ages. This was a group of people outside the primarily romanised Gaul, Spain, and Italy or the sphere of the Eastern Roman Empire, yet these people had the ability to turn a 550 mm table-top on a lathe, cut comb teeth from a deer's antler, with a saw,  and make a wooden canteen with a water-tight glued on side. As I have said before, people have always had skills, and craftsmen have been producing fine objects in every century of human existence.

End view of the lyre showing the separate top. The bridge is made of willow.
What is not very clear from this view, is the incised decoration of the top,
which included "Celtic" knot-work and two groups of 6 warriors facing
each other.The thickness of this entire instrument is thinner than a modern
violin. In the background, a man is holding a modern replica.
Wikipedia photo

Note; all pictures from the museum are used with permission of Archäologisches Landesmuseum Baden-Württemberg, and were taken by Manuela Schreiner, unless otherwise specified.

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The (long and complex) History of Medieval Chairs - Part II; Plinth Chairs

It is nearly impossible to give adequate coverage to almost any topic which covers 1000 years and an entire continent. It will be my attempt in this blog posting, to give more coverage to the topic noted in the title, than that of any book on furniture history that I have ever seen; especially since I have never come across any discussion of these plinth chairs. Although they are the most common single form of seating apparatus depicted in medieval artworks, up to the beginning of the 15th century, as far as I know, the history books are entirely silent on the topic. I have a few books in which illuminations from manuscripts have been reproduced, depicting this seating form, but the authors very casually mentions them as "chairs" and give no acknowledgment to the fact that they are very different in form to what we think of today as a 'chair'. In this blog posting, I will begin to shine a bit of light on the long and varied history of this type of seat-form.

St Luke, from a Gospel Book, 3rd quarter 9th century
A very classic example of the plinth chair

In the first part of this article, I mentioned the pre-medieval origins of chairs in general. There is also evidence of the plinth chair from the classical world, but we find an interesting twist to the subject; there are very few portrayed in the Roman period. I have seen Greek and Egyptian examples in their respective artworks, and, when searching for Roman examples today, I came across several from the artworks of early Mesopotamian cultures, including this one below, from the Louvre.

One of the many illustrations of a plinth type chair from
the middle eastern cultures of the 2nd millennium BC 

After seeing a couple pictures like this on the internet I got out some of my books, and discovered that I had forgotten a lot about what I had previously studied. Back when I was in high school, I wondered what came before the classical art of the Greeks, and began studying Mycenaean, Minoan, and Sumerian cultures. Hmm, sounds a bit like my more recent approach to the early Middle ages...


As I was looking for Roman examples of this type of chair, and not finding many, I remembered having gone through this exercise a few years ago. What I find is that there are very few illustrations that clearly show this form of seat. There are several examples that could be, but nothing clear and definite. There are also lots of similar objects which have short legs or feet, so are not actually 'plinths' as technically defined (having a moulding 'round the base). At the same time, one does see many objects of this form, but they are altars, not chairs. I think, the last time I was doing this research, I came to the conclusion that, because a plinth chair and an altar had the same basic form, the artworks did not often depict people sitting on such objects. This is a highly conjectural conclusion, however, and would need a lot more research than I have given it, to draw any firm conclusion on the matter. Furthermore, in the Early Medieval period, many altars still retain this plinth form, yet the manuscripts also show seated figures on such objects.

A plinth chair form, but this is an altar, not a chair.
Roman, 3rd century
from Wikipedia

In the past three weeks, in preparation for this posting, I have gone through 7909 illustrations from medieval manuscripts, and separated out 723 illuminations which depict one or more of these plinth chairs. As I said, they are the single most common type of seating form, up until the beginning of the last century of the Middle Ages. These chairs are sometimes depicted in a detailed and realistic manner; at other times, they are quite abstract and it is even difficult to decipher exactly what the artist had in mind when he produced the illustration. In addition to the manuscripts, there are scores of relief sculptures, full figure ("in the round") sculpture, metalwork, ivory, and frescoes (as well as paintings after the 13th century) which depict this form of seat.

Christ Enthroned on a plinth chair.
note again the more simplified ornamentation of the chairs depicted
in a smaller scale.

One of the most elaborate depictions of this type of chair is pictured above; it comes from the west portal tympanum of the Collegiate Church of St Benoit Sur Loire, in France. The edge of the seat and the cove mouldings are completely covered in carved vegetal ornament; the side panels and base molding are further ornamented with pierced arcading. By contrast, one of the simplest depictions is pictured below. There are even more simplified drawings; simply a cube form, but this one retains the notion of a plinth, whereas a cube could represent anything, even simply a block of stone.

Bern Burgbibliothek, Cod 264 zt. 120 ca 900
several different forms of seating, all very abstractly drawn
Note another variation, with the integrally constructed footrest.
(click image to view larger and read notations)

I have already mentioned a near complete lack of depictions of this chair form from the classical Roman Period, but by the onset of the Medieval Period, they have become quite common. I mentioned, in Part One of this article, that the Ashburnham Pentateuch has this form of chair, but, on studying it again, more carefully, it does not; the closest things to plinth chairs are objects like the one occupied by a king in the above illustration, or are of plinth form, but have a back crest with a drapery,(contrary to what I mistakenly said in the previous article). However, in the Louvre, and coming from roughly the same time period, (6th century) is a pair of ivory panels, which is known as the Nine Muses Diptych. (One panel of which is missing; there are only 6 muses pictured, the third panel, originally making it a triptych, has been lost.) In this ivory, there is a seated figure representing a poet. Interestingly, he looks very much like the figures in the evangelist portraits of many of the 8th and 9th century Gospel Books.

A poet, attended by his muse, sits on a plinth chair from a
6th century Italian ivory panel, now in the Louvre.

In the earliest part of the Middle Ages, this plinth chair had a very distinctive, 'plinth' form, but as the centuries wore on, and tastes changed, the chair took on other slightly altered forms as well; all in keeping with contemporary trends in design and taste. Discernable by the middle of the 10th century, a trend emerged, in which the chair had a layered or stacked appearance to it. This form seems to have reached its zenith by the middle of the 13th century, but by that time, another, almost chest-like form had come to supplant it. (As with most trends in furniture styles of the Middle Ages, one can find two centuries, or more, worth of overlap between these two ideas.)

St John (recognised by his attribute, the eagle) 10th century
Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt
Early depiction of the layered effect

Here is another example, from about 300 years later.

BL Burney MS 3 fol 5v ca 1240-50
Technically a bench,not a chair, so this should be in a future post on
benches, but this shows the extremes of the layered and cantilevered
designs that fashion thought up.

By contrast, this miniature, also from the same period as the last, shows a very simple straight-sided example with almost no overhang at all.

Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, 5211 fol 3v 1250-4
Christ is seated on a plinth chair, ornamented in three rows of panels with
white dots, most likely representing carving.
At this time the plinth chair has begun to take on more of a 'chest' form.

Of course this is somewhat of an over simplification of the topic, and only represents one variation which is a bit more pronounced than some others. In reality, there are scores of types, regional variations, and stylistic nuances unique to each artist. One could write an entire book for each century on the topic, but most people would, doubtless, find that extremely boring reading.

In short, however, these chairs could be rectangular, square, or even round; they were carved, painted, covered in gems, and imitation gems, metal foil, and moulded gesso. They could be of an enclosed box form, or be constructed of open arcading and tracery. They sometimes had short lips to retain their cushions, and often had very pronounced overhangs to the seat. Sometimes they took on purely sculpted forms, and in the 13th and 14th century, at least, could even have 'ears' or tree branch looking extensions coming from the rear corners. I have observed this in enough different artwork of two centuries, to realise this must have been a real fad, not just one artists whimsical notion.

Madonna and Child, from the Met. I4th century
Usually these sculptures are depicted in a frontal
view so one never sees the chairs they sit on.
5 sides of an octagon with Gothic tracery

Though I have just mentioned some less 'plinth-like' varieties that these chairs often took on, over and over through the centuries, we see other examples proving that the basic plinth form was extremely long lived, and never seems to have gone out of fashion, Although, based on a less frequent occurrence in the 15th century art, these chairs became less popular, they still seem to have sailed right on out the near end end of the Middle Ages. I have not spent a lot of time sifting through 15th century manuscripts, my searches usually stop with the 13th, nonetheless, I still have quite a few examples of this type of chair from as late as the later half of the 1400's.

BL Harley MS 1340 fol 15r mid 15th century
since this one is depicted as being made of stone, certainly no one can
mistake it for a chest.

Once one has grasped the notion that these types of chairs were quite prominent throughout the medieval world, the logical question to ask, is, "Why do none of them seem to have survived?" This is a valid question, and I ask the same. There is no simple answer, but there are several possibilities.

One must first realise that, compared to the amount of all types of furniture, there are very few examples of any of it still extant. The items which did survive were, for the most part, things which found further use, down the economic chain of society or were stashed away in an attic, or were of some value due to association with (or later attribution to) a famous person. Chests were useful as storage devices, but if these objects were not primarily storage intended, they may have been less useful to succeeding generations. Another factor to consider is that, many of these items, if built like the choir stalls which have survived, would have been made out of extremely thick material, rendering them much heavier than their size warranted. 

Plinth chairs seem to have almost always been accompanied by a foot-rest and therefore the seat would have been higher than a modern chair. At some point, gradually, as with anything else, the fashion for sitting in an elevated chair with a foot-rest gave way, and most of the chairs that remained had their legs cut shorter to accommodate the changes in taste. It is not likely that this cutting down would have been very successful on a plinth chair, as its structure is entirely different to that of a chair with legs.

Cassone associated with Guliano da Maiano late 15th century
Is this a chest? I would have thought so, but perhaps it was originally a seat?

Lastly, though we tend to call anything that is oblong, of roughly box shape, and made of wood, a 'chest', in fact, in the medieval mind, there were many varieties of furniture type; all having a roughly 'box-like' form. Though as a valuables safe, a refrigerator, a gun safe, and a set of file drawers are all more or less 'cabinet-shaped', most of us would not consider any of them to be furniture. In the same way, a chest for money, one for swords and armour, and one for traveling, were usually not 'furniture' in the Middle Ages, (though modern museum setting often display them in such a way as to give that impression). In the same way, something that might appear to us as a chest, might actually have originally been intended as a chair. Most medieval depictions of chests show them as either being smaller than chairs, or at the height as a table or buffet. Things that are more or less chair height, probably were originally for that purpose. (except for the numerous examples which have had their legs shortened due to taste and or rot, in succeeding centuries.)

BNF Fr 2608 fol 449v
This looks to me a lot like the "chest" in the previous illustration.

Next time you are in a museum and see a "chest" which is missing its lower base moulding, and may or may not have a replaced top, but seems to be of seating height; consider weather or not you may in fact be looking at a plinth chair which, like its cousin the box chair, happens to have a convenient storage space in it as well.

French Gothic chest 15th century
Because the lock seems to have been designed into the overall scheme, this
is more likely to have been intended primarily as a storage item, but compare
it to the Seated Madonna above, and one sees the implications of what such an
actual chair might have looked like.

It is a shame that some magnificent plinth chair from the 9th or 10th century (or any other) has not been handed down to us, and the best we can do is speculate and guess as to their actual appearance. Nonetheless, the artwork speaks clearly enough, to inform us that not all furniture of box form had a primary purpose as storage compartments. The items we lump together and loosely term 'chests' had many varieties of form and function. One of those forms was a plinth chair.

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