WELSH FURNITURE

[To view further details on WELSH FURNITURE 1250 - 1950 click the image on the left.]

Welsh Furniture 1250 - 1950: A Cultural History of Craftsmanship and Design - 2 Volumes

By: Richard Bebb

"The Definitive Reference on Welsh Furniture"

 

Volume I: 1250 - 1700

Contents include:

Is there a Welsh Style? An examination of the way welsh furniture has been studied. The cultural region of Wales. The development of the chair.

Establishing Provenance: research methods, combining artefactual and documentary evidence. The central role of the craftsman: timber, construction and trade organization. A study of different social levels: Gwydir Castle and Gelli farmhouse.

The Medieval court, manuscripts and bardic praise. Elementary furniture types; elaborate church screens; great turned chairs; chests, cradles, tables and buffets. The elusive Harri ap Gruffydd's cupboard.

The court of Rhys ap Thomas. A native style of herldic and polychromed furniture and panelling. Advanced Renaissance tastes and Continential influences: standing bedsteads, court tables and drawleaf tables. A production group of Penbrokeshire carvers.

Gentry patronage of 17th century craftsmen. Domestic developments and probate inventories. Fine carving and turning, and the 'Cromwellian' taste. The distinctive cwpwrdd deuddarn and cwpwrdd tridarn and the emergence of the 'Welsh Dresser'.

Volume II: 1700 - 1950

Contents include:

The proliferation and diversity of regional types: chests and cupboards for storage and display; joined and stick chairs and tables; dressers and longcase clocks. Design and decoration: flowing inlay, fretwork and panelling. The community of craftsmen. Diverging values: nonconformity, desks and preachers' chairs.

Estate craftsmen, the rural community and the archetypal farmhouse interior. Travellers' accounts and artists' impressions. Cross-influences: cabinet-makers, joiners and village wheelwrights. The diaries, notebooks and sketchbooks of furniture makers.

Pride in the industrial home. Large-scale production alongside the persistence of local preferences. the Arts and Crafts Movement, Eisteffod chairs, and nostalgia for a rural past. The international antiques trade.

Some Welsh light on the development of furniture. Continuity and change: influences from outside with development and innovation from within. The evolution of the dresser to its present position as the epitome of Welsh Tradition.

 

Richard Bebb:

Richard Bebb was born in Cwmparc in the Ronda Valley and now lives in Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire. He is an antiques dealer specialising in Welsh Furniture and was by the 1980's widely recognized and an authority on the subject. The research and writing of these two deatiled volumes has taken the best part of 13 years alongside working as a full-time antiques dealer. He is a member of the British Antiques Dealers Association [BADA] and the Furniture History Society.

 

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ORDER THIS BOOK