Notes from Michael Chappell
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Working our way through the economic doldrums, and complaining about it to my wise old friend Anita Shanahan, her pithy rejoinder was ‘Well, it isn’t wartime, is it?’ She has posed that rhetorical question to me before, under similar circumstances to fore stop my whingeing. And, of course, as tough as things are, few of us in the developed west know hard times or privation. For Keith and me, we have yet to require any cinching up of our (designer) belts.
What’s put me in mind of this is a highly decorative and exquisitely wrought screen/room divider that, frankly, we are surprised is still in our inventory. With a montage of London landmarks either side, silkscreened on to Formica, it is framed in gilt bronze, with each panel having a pair of finials that are reminiscent of, depending upon whether your bent is connoiseurial or governmental, either the Palladian obelisk-shaped chimney pots of Chiswick House, or the Beaufort portcullis. Regardless, the overall effect betokens what became known as the Festival Style- a use of period motifs restated in a mid-20th century idiom, and rendered in contemporary materials. Formica? One forgets how profoundly innovative was this use of melamine resin in domestic interiors. I have to say, about the happiest moment of my mother’s life was when she had easy to clean Formica counters installed in her new (circa 1960) kitchen. Times do change…
But, of course, the introduction of new building, new design, and everything else associated with the 1951 Festival of Britain, yet surviving nicely in London in the form of the Southbank Centre, was to jar a nation into looking forward, that had been so beggared physically and spiritually in the recent past. The extent of the devastation just in London is hard to comprehend, but as the physical damage was cleared away, that the nation, for nearly a decade after the conclusion of the conflict remained on ration was a daily reminder of a conflict that, for most Britons, was not yet completely over.
Suffice to say, the only thing Keith and I have had to queue for lately is to pay for our popcorn at the movies. So, right again, Mrs. Shanahan- hard times? Hardly…
It could be said axiomatic that, for furniture at least, the maintenance and continued production of a particular type of piece betokens its continued practical use. So with the Pembroke table. Note the pictured example, late George III period, and dateable to about 1790. A generation later than the Pembroke table illustrated in yesterday’s blog, and, with its banding a slightly more formal piece of furniture, it is also minus the elaborate cross stretcher of those tables of a generation before.
By this point, the Pembroke table had, pardon the expression, come out of the closet. Banded, inlaid, often painted and frequently of woods even more exotic than mahogany, the table becomes a front of house piece, put to whatever use a small table might be used in a public place. Note, however, that the napery drawer is still present, so one might surmise its at least occasional use for the service of some sort of consumable- probably tea. The late Georgian example illustrated was of a size that it could conveniently support a tea service, with its top when completely open, of an oval size that would support a silver tray of corresponding perimeter. At the risk of putting my gentle blogophiles off their afternoon tea, I must say that, despite its more polite use, the napery contained in the table might not have been any cleaner than it had been in times past. So much for the good old days.
Continuing in recognizable form, here is another example from yet later, this time of the Regency period and dating to about 1810. Again, banding, but rosewood, that favorite of all Regency period exotic woods. And, kind of a plus size. The ubiquitous napery drawer signifying the link with food service, but the plus size of the table, opening to a very wide 47” with both leaves raised, argues for its use less for the service of breakfast for one, or a tea for several, but as a surface for a heavier repast, probably for two. And so the later period Pembroke tables are frequently termed, then, ‘Supper tables’.
Handy as the pocket on a shirt, as I drift in to Fresno farming idiom to describe the indispensable piece of household furniture commonly known as the Pembroke table.
One assumes the name derives from its original design and use in a household of the Earls of Pembroke. Offhand, I can’t recall any particular prominence given to Pembroke tables at Wilton, the Palladian-inspired Pembroke manse in Wiltshire. Chippendale’s Director…makes no mention of Pembroke or Wilton, but does provide us with a design remarkably similar to the table illustrated. The design is designated ‘Breakfast table’ and it is presumed, at least in the middle of the 18th century, that is the primary use to which the table was put. Of smallish size, it could either be carried, or more likely, shoved against the wall with leaves dropped, 
inconspicuous when not in use. That castors were a ubiquitous feature of Pembroke tables makes the latter seem likely. Our example pictured above has leather-wheeled castors that would not either scratch a wood floor or tarnish a carpet or floor cloth in the way a metal wheel might.
Smallish in size, but then, its original function was for the service of breakfast in a small room, or closet, adjacent to a larger bedroom. A fair amount of activity took place in rooms known then as closets but we would more likely think of today as a dressing room. That a room was small made it easier to heat and to stay that way, and when one is dressing from the skin out, well, some of my gentle readers may be hardy souls who find frosty exposure in the buff bracing, but not me. As well, that breakfast might be served in the same (warm) room makes a considerable amount of sense, unless one wants to eat one’s eggs and bacon frigidly cold. The table’s frieze drawer was for the storage of napery, precisely in the same way an equivalent drawer would be used on a sideboard. That napkins and a small table cloth might be stored between uses might seem strange, but, frankly, the same soiled linens would be used and used again, and again. This may sound horrible in light of our modern fetish toward hygiene, but one must remember, the 18th century was doubtless a very dirty, smelly age. With cooking odors, smoke, and seldom washed bodies all contributing to the typical domestic pong, that there may have been a grease stain or two (or three or four) on one’s table linen would not have seemed amiss.
One assumes the Pembroke table would have been open for a time after breakfast was consumed. Note the elaborate and rather overstated flattened stretcher on our piece and on the design from Chippendale. Doubtless the tray upon which one had consumed one’s breakfast could then be placed upon the stretcher, to be cleared away later, with the then vacant flat surface functioning very well to support a book, writing implements, or anything that needed a flat surface as the gentleman made his postprandial preparations to meet the rest of the day.
The Pembroke table continues tomorrow.
The sideboard image in the last blog engendered a fair amount of response. While I had presented the image as an objective correlative, it struck a chord. Not only are we attempting to sell the love, lovers of English antiques love, it seems, sideboards. I guess at this point I can out myself as a lover of sideboards, too. Pembroke tables, also, but that’s the subject for another blog.
The advent of the ubiquitous late George III period mahogany sideboard seems to be a follow-on from the growth of cities, with that particular phenomenon an outgrowth of the change in England from an economy driven largely by agriculture into one where wealth was derived from manufacturing and trade. As these are occupations that the quality did not dirty their hands with, there grew up a wealthy middle class. While a country seat was the ultimate mark of material success, the middle class in the first instance required someplace to live in town. The terrace house became the standard plan, in London and virtually any other British urban centre. While convenient, even the largest terrace house can be somewhat less than commodious. Furniture developed, consequently, in scale and function that matched newly standardized living environments.
While the mammoth serving table with its acres of surface area for the ostentatious display of plate would be perfectly suited for a grand dining room in a country house, the city dining room with limited space had to combine beauty, function, and scale. What better multi use piece of furniture than the sideboard. The illustrated example contains a large enough surface area for a serving table, an arrangement of shallow but long drawers for the flat storage of table linens, and a deep and large cellaret drawer for the upright storage of anything in bottles. I should put –storage of huge amounts of intoxicating beverages, because the amount that was drunk was truly prodigious, dwarfing anything that today we would consider excessive. With the increase in gentility amongst the middle classes in the late 18th century, the custom of the ladies withdrawing became standard, with the gentlemen, as if they hadn’t had enough already, then left in the dining room not just to have the small glass of after dinner port, but to drink themselves into oblivion. Consequently, sideboards were frequently fitted out with a cubbyhole to accommodate, wait for it, a chamber pot. Well, when nature calls, and with the vast quantities of bibulous liquors consumed, one can surmise it called frequently and with some urgency. The irony is that an integral pot cupboard in a sideboard is today considered by collectors a desirable feature, and by me, too. Otherwise, I can’t say I am unduly enamored of late Georgian scatology.
The usefulness of the sideboard led to its manifestation in a variety of different sizes and shapes, but always with the same recognizable function. 
This smaller, Regency example, from the exalted firm of Gillows of Lancaster, despite its size still contains a range of shallow drawers for napery, and a large, deep drawer for bottles. Note the locks on the drawers, another ubiquitous feature of sideboards. Despite the long-standing jokes about servants stealing the silver, sideboards, while the tops may have accommodated silver serving pieces during mealtimes, were never meant for silver storage. Silver, including all eating utensils, was held below stairs in either a vault or strongbox. Sometimes it was even held offsite in collective vaults, and brought out only for special occasions. The locks were to protect napkins and other table linens from pilferage. One forgets how extremely valuable cloth was, with everything woven by hand. Inexpensive cloth the result of the introduction of the steam loom was still decades away. The cellarette drawer when not used for the service of full bottles was for the (locked) storage of empty bottles. Bottles brought in full for dining were filled below stairs from a cask and, on the very odd chance the contents were not consumed, dumped back in. The empty bottles themselves were valuable- as with cloth, bottles were as yet handmade- and kept locked up when not in use.
The Georgian sideboard, with the forgoing an intriguing primer, but hopefully not more than my gentle readers wanted to know. For me, though, and for most of you doubtless, when does context not intensify feeling? Let me know if you don’t all now love sideboards just a little more.