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END OF SALE The next sale of Oak, Country Furniture, Folk Art, Works of Art and Sculpture will be held on 2 July 2003
EUROPEAN WILD CHERRY (Prunus avium) also historically known as Gean or Mazzard, grows prolifically throughout Europe, and to a rather lesser extent in Britain. It is the ancestor of the cultivated varieties which produce sweet cherries, but is not anatomically different from it. When cut, the wood is slightly oily and almost colourless, but on exposure to air and light, the heartwood gradually changes its colour to a reddish tan, with the sap-wood a little paler and prone to attracting furniture beetle. In common with all British fruitwoods, cherry has a distinctive swirling medullary ray pattern, composed of both long and short ray elements, which can usually be found in abundance on quarter sawn or turned sections of the wood. The lusterous reddish brown colour which polished cherry can achieve suggests that it was considered a suitable surrogate for the fashionable mahogany which it superficially resembles. Cherry was widely used as a furniture wood on the European continent in the 18th and, particularly, in the 19th centuries, especially in Austria, South Germany and in France where a distinction is drawn between the often milder coloured cultivated cherry, (cerisier) and the sometimes more richly coloured wood of the wild cherry, (l'merisier), where they were extensively used for meubles usuels.
In Britain, the wild cherry which grows tall and straight was greatly preferred as an ornamental tree in woodlands. The cultivated cherry was similarly grown as a large standard tree and some regions of England, including Kent and the Thames Valley, had flourishing commercial orchards.
Cherry was less commonly used for furniture making in Britain, but was a preferred wood in treen and in some regional chair making traditions, and was offered as a more expensive alternative, below Yew tree and above Elm or Ash. In the Thames Valley, cherry was, again, offered for the whole chair other than the Elm seat, and was typically used for the back splats in Ash and Beech chairs where, in the convention of the region, turned roundels of the heartwood of Yew were fitted into the central hub where a 'wheel' motif was used.
PLUM (Prunus domestica) is derived from hybrids of the European blackthorn (P.spinosa) and Asiatic cherry plum (P.cerasifera) and its numerous varieties were grown widely as standard trees in Britain and on the European continent. When cut, its colour, like that of cherry, is pale, but soon the heartwood begins to change from brown with reddish-purple overtones, to a deep lustrous red-brown colour, which, like cherry, was probably considered a surrogate for mahogany, with which it is sometimes confused today. The sapwood is yellow in colour, forming a striking contrast with the dark heartwood, and this was largely removed when used for making both seating and non-seating furniture. When traces of it are present, it has usually been heavily attacked by furniture beetle. In a similar way to Cherry and all other fruitwoods, Plum displays the distinctive medullary ray swirl, with long and short ray elements.
Due to the tendency to prefer the heartwood of this wood for furniture making, it is rare to find it used in large pieces of furniture other than as decorative veneers, although it is more commonly found than is generally acknowledged in smaller items such as corner cupboards, pedestal tables, boxes, turned chairs and treen ware. Plum, however, is used widely on the European continent as veneers in cross banding and marquetry, where a decorative virtue is made of the contrast between the light sapwood and dark heartwood. In the Thames Valley chair making tradition, Plum held a special relationship with the most prized wood, Yew, and was used for the turned roundels inserted into the central hub of the 'wheel' motif commonly used in the back spats of this region's Yew wood chairs. On occasion, the sophisticated Windsor chairs associated with the village of Mendlesham in Suffolk were also made from Plum wood, with Elm seats.
ELM (Ulmus spp) In addition to the widespread common Elm (Ulmus procera) and the equally well known Wych or Scotch Elm (Ulmus glabra), other species of Elm grow in the British Isles which are native to particular regions. These include the Guernsey Elm, (U.carpinifolia), also called the Jersey or Wheatley Elm; and Cornish Elm (U.augustifolia), which grows in the South West, and like the Channel Islands variety, is tolerant of salt sea winds. Yet other species are associated with the Eastern and Midland regions. Once common, the Elms have been decimated in Britain from the 1970's by the advent of Dutch Elm disease, a fungus, ceratocystis ulmi which is carried by the Elm bark beetle. Elm has long been used as a furniture wood, with examples of massive tables with single piece tops being recorded from the 15th century. John Evelyn, writing in 1662 commented that elm was used to make "Trunks and boxes to be covered with leather; coffins, for dressers and shovelboard tables of great length".
Elm is a coarse, resilient wood which has a distinctive anatomical feature, seen in the annual ring growth, where alternate layers of dark fibre and lighter vessels form the characteristic striations which readily identify Elm either in the end grain or in tangentially sawn boards. The anatomy of Elm results in distortion as it dries, however, and furniture makers sought to use the more stable quarter sawn central boards of tangentially sawn logs wherever possible. This is particularly evident in Windsor chair seats, where the rear edge of the seats often shows the smaller concentric annual rings of the central quarter sawn boards.
Elm oxidises readily to a warm brown colour and this, combined with its attractive swirling grain and its wide availability as a common hedgerow tree, ensured its use as a furniture wood. This was particularly true in the vernacular traditions where, in some regions, Elm was the dominant hardwood. In the South West, for example, bacon settles and the distinctive farmhouse tables of that area were usually made from Elm. The common joined chairs from East Anglia are also predominantly made from Elm and the Windsor chairs from many areas commonly have seats of Elm.
Wych or Scotch Elm is a paler brown colour, and finer in the grain than the common Elm, and although it grows throughout the British Isles, it is particularly associated with Scotland, which explains the often paler colour of Elm furniture made there.
Elm burrs range from small, very tight grain, to larger, more open swirling burrs which can often be confused with those of Ash. Elm burr was much prized in vernacular furniture making, and was often used in the solid form, where the distortions associated with Elm often make them particularly attractive. Because of the irregularity of the grain where the burr was used as a veneer, areas often required careful and laborious patching to make up the veneer; a feature which may have ultimately led to its decline as a commercially used veneer. The burrs were used in other ways, too, and in common with those of Ash and Maple, lend themselves to being oxidised with acid before staining with lamp black to create them as simulated tortoiseshell, in the manner of so-called 'mulberry' furniture.
OAK. (Quercus) Some two hundred species of oak exist world-wide, including both deciduous and evergreen varieties. In the British Isles, two species are dominant. These include the common or pedunculate Oak, (Quercus pedunculata or robur) and sessile or durmast Oak (Quercus sessiliflora or petraea), although many intermediates occur as hybrids between these. Other species, including Turkey Oak (Q.cerris) and the evergreen Holm Oak (Q. ilex) are grown purely ornamentally in Britain, and have no significance as furniture timbers. Although anatomically the differences between Q.pedunculata and Q.sessiliflora are small, pedunculate Oak is identified in the standing tree in having acorns held on a stem or peduncle and its leaves are stalkless; whereas the acorns from sessile Oaks are attached directly to the stem without stalks, and the leaves have long stalks.
Oak has played a nationally important role in the history, literature and self identity of Britain, as well as in its architecture, ship-building and domestic furniture making, and in addition to the indigenous Oaks, imports of Oak from Russia through the Baltic ports or Danzig were an important source of timber from at least the 16th. Century onwards, although Chinnery identifies imports of wood as early as 1253. Other imports from Scandinavia, Poland, Prussia and Austria all added to the Oak used in British Oak furniture. The origins of the Oak in furniture can often be broadly ascertained by looking at the end grain of the wood through a hand lens. Oak from the colder, drier climates of Russia and Northern Europe tend to have consistently narrow annual rings, whereas British native Oak tends to reflect the variance in climate, and to produce varying annual ring widths, corresponding to the annual differences in rainfall and climate for spring and summer growth periods in Britain.
Historically, Oak was used in furniture as both 'through and through' (tangentially cut) sawn boards, with a corresponding variability in distortion in the boards as they dried, and as the more stable 'quarter sawn' or riven boards, which were radially cut or split along the lines of the medullary rays and which, in turn, held the boards in a stable plane and gave the surface its distinctive and attractive ray pattern. Such boards were called 'wainscott', a term thought to be derived from wandschot, a word used in Germany, Holland, and elsewhere on the Continent of Europe to refer to wandt (a wall) and schot (a defense)) and was particularly used as a 'ceiling' material for walls before the common use of plaster. Alternatively the term waeghe-schot, from Old Dutch, was used for the boards used as partitions in the enclosed beds of the region.
Although there is little anatomical distinction between pedunculate and sessile Oak the environmental conditions under which they grow in Britain often produce clear differences between the species which have an effect on the colour of the wood and the physical qualities, such as relative knottiness and irregularities in grain configuration. For example, in Wales, sessile and pedunculate Oaks both grow widely and are used as the most common wood in the historic furniture of that country. However, distinctions are commonly noted in the colour and quality of the Oak used. Sessile Oaks dominate the small woods on the hillsides composed of siliceous rock, which is particularly found in North Wales, and the poor soils found there result in very dark, almost black, heartwood forming with correspondingly narrow light yellow sapwood on the outside. Trees from these exposed conditions grow to a lesser diameter than those grown on more fertile soils and the branches are often convoluted and unevenly disposed on the trunk, causing many knots and grain irregularities in the converted timber. Oak from this source can be readily identified by the contrasting colours of the sap and heartwoods, and often the narrow trunks, sawn tangentially, show sapwood each side of the heartwood. Conversely, pedunculate Oak is the dominant tree of the Welsh lowlands and its wood is relatively straight grained and brown in colour.
Such colour and grain distinctions are often particularly apparent in furniture from North Wales, and it is apparent that furniture makers in Wales drew a distinction between the more difficult to work hill-grown Oak and that of the more fertile areas, and often used the darker, more intractable wood as secondary wood; as back-boards in dresser shelves or panelling in the rear of cupboards, for example, preferring the more uniform brown Oak for the more visible show wood of the piece. However, much 19th. Century Welsh Oak furniture is made from another source of Oak. This is seen as a rather bland, even grained, pale brown Oak, which was probably imported from Austria and perhaps other parts of Northern Europe, rather than being native to Wales.
Oak which has been buried in the acidic conditions of peat bogs in various parts of Britain and the European continent, often for thousands of years is preserved as extremely hard, black sections of wood. This wood, known as bog Oak, was widely used by furniture makers as a surrogate for ebony, as a veneer wood and often juxtaposed with contrastingly light veneers of sycamore or holly; the indigenous timbers acting as alternatives for the more expensive imported inlays of ebony and ivory.
A further form of Oak, much prized by furniture makers, is so-called Brown Oak and refers to a distinctive streaky brown discolouration found in all or part of the heartwood of Oak trees, caused by the beefsteak fungus (Fistulina hepatica) growing on them, and whose hyphae penetrate the tree. Some Oak furniture is entirely made from this wood. In other cases, distinctive interiors of bureaux are made from brown Oak, and perhaps more commonly, pieces are cross-banded in it. A further fungally infected form of Oak was used by furniture makers. This occurs when dead branches of Oaks are attacked by cholorsplenium aeruginosum, which creates a vivid blue-green or green colour, and provided one of the distinctive woods used in Tunbridge ware.
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