Jacobean furniture

From the book "The Practical Book Of Period Furniture", by Harold Donaldson Eberlein And Abbot McClure: For those whose needs embrace Jacobean furniture the authors have endeavoured to offset all difficulties and make its study as easy as possible by treating it in the most practical and systematic manner. They would also cheer the reader by assuring him that the subsequent periods are much simpler and less varied in their characteristics.

Before treating of Jacobean furniture itself it is necessary to say a few words regarding the terms used,when we speak of the Jacobean or Stuart period, with reference to furniture, we ordinarily include everything between 1603, when James I ascended the throne of England, and 1688, when the second James fled before the victorious approach of William of Orange.

The contour and style of the furniture of the Jacobean period, as of every other period for that matter, more or less faithfully reflected the social, intellectual and religious temperament and manners of the times. The furniture was stout and staunch, even to clumsiness and severe in form and line even though bedizened with a superfluity of ornament. It matched the coarse manners, abrupt morals, and vigorous theology of the day with all their grotesquerie, terrible earnestness and redundancy of polemics, brimstone anathema and persecution. Contour and style were both thoroughly in accord with the genius of the people.