Why does antique furniture usually have carved feet?
First, antique furniture tends to be the fancy stuff for rich people. Modest furniture made out of a few boards for the unwashed masses usually isn’t considered for preservation, but the fancy shit rich people bought got kept.
Rich people tend to like to show off how rich they are. And one way to do that up until fairly recently was through furniture. Maybe you use exotic wood, but even if you don’t do that you pay a woodworker to waste his life carving useless intricate details like pineapple newel posts or ornate table legs.
The claw-clutching-a-ball design apparently comes from China, it’s supposed to be a dragon’s foot clutching a jewel. The British adopted it in the Queen Anne period because it’s ornate, fancy and foreign exotic. Rich people get to brag that they got their table, or a taste for the style, “during their travels.” Ball-and-claw feet specificall would fall out of fashion with the Chippendale era though fancy schmancyness would hit an all time maximum, and then the industrial revolution happened.
It used to take a skilled artisan to make carvings like that with a chisel. Now, we have duplicating machines that can batch them out dozens at a time. This episode of the New Yankee Workshop shows this off. When building his Lowboy, Norm doesn’t even try to carve cabriole legs, he buys them from a company that makes them, and we get a little footage of the factory. This is why you don’t see the Zuckerbergs of the world showing off ostentatious carved furniture: ornate carvings are commodity items now. You can buy furniture with cabriole legs and arch cornices at any of those big warehouses out by the highway with a “Going out of business forever” sign out front.
Is it only ornamental?
95% yes. Speaking as a woodworker I can tell you, people overwhelmingly like looking at tapered legs. Our own legs taper, so we tend to copy that. From fancy cabriole legs to simple shaker furniture. A flared foot of any kind is mostly ornamental because again our own feet flare out, but there is a bit of a practical purpose: A larger surface area with a rounded edge is easier to slide across the floor than a small, sharply edged end of a board. It doesn’t tend to dig in as much, particularly on carpet. Also, the rounded features are more difficult to chip and splinter.
Why are they usually webbed feet?
It’s meant to be a dragon’s foot, so somewhere between reptilian and birdlike. It is also furniture, not a statue, so it’s rather stylized and not very anatomical.
The claw clutching a pearl is just one variant of countless others. We have furniture from ancient Egypt and Rome which has legs carved as animal feet, so it is not a tradition that stems from the British via China.
I agree with all of this except the part about making things pretty being a waste. Beauty has its own value, although far too often for pieces like this it was more for bragging rights as you said.
Kind of my point, but a set of a dozen chairs like that isn’t so much about creativity as it is cost. Still beautiful imo, although i still prefer more minimalist styles in furniture.
I hear ya. There’s a line somewhere when people become shitty rich. I’m just not sure that line is at … has a nice dining room table with carved feet or some shit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I fucking love it when a specialist with relevant expertise who also happens to be a good writer gives a full on contextual breakdown that’s super accessible, well organized, well informed and a pleasure to read, on a topic I never even thought about. It’s the stuff lemmy dreams are made of.
Don’t mistake me for a scholar, now. I’m a guy with a thickness planer in his backyard shed that’s read a couple books and watched a lot of videos about building furniture. I’m confident I could defend the rank of “enthusiast.”
That said, it is something I liked about Reddit. You could post “Left-handed theoretical psycho-ornithologists of Reddit…” and you’d get at least a few credible answers.
Oh man we certainly do struggle. It’s like all the tools they make for actually doing theoretical psycho-ornithology are right handed! You know what I mean?
Okay so there are layers to this question:
First, antique furniture tends to be the fancy stuff for rich people. Modest furniture made out of a few boards for the unwashed masses usually isn’t considered for preservation, but the fancy shit rich people bought got kept.
Rich people tend to like to show off how rich they are. And one way to do that up until fairly recently was through furniture. Maybe you use exotic wood, but even if you don’t do that you pay a woodworker to waste his life carving useless intricate details like pineapple newel posts or ornate table legs.
The claw-clutching-a-ball design apparently comes from China, it’s supposed to be a dragon’s foot clutching a jewel. The British adopted it in the Queen Anne period because it’s ornate, fancy and
foreignexotic. Rich people get to brag that they got their table, or a taste for the style, “during their travels.” Ball-and-claw feet specificall would fall out of fashion with the Chippendale era though fancy schmancyness would hit an all time maximum, and then the industrial revolution happened.It used to take a skilled artisan to make carvings like that with a chisel. Now, we have duplicating machines that can batch them out dozens at a time. This episode of the New Yankee Workshop shows this off. When building his Lowboy, Norm doesn’t even try to carve cabriole legs, he buys them from a company that makes them, and we get a little footage of the factory. This is why you don’t see the Zuckerbergs of the world showing off ostentatious carved furniture: ornate carvings are commodity items now. You can buy furniture with cabriole legs and arch cornices at any of those big warehouses out by the highway with a “Going out of business forever” sign out front.
95% yes. Speaking as a woodworker I can tell you, people overwhelmingly like looking at tapered legs. Our own legs taper, so we tend to copy that. From fancy cabriole legs to simple shaker furniture. A flared foot of any kind is mostly ornamental because again our own feet flare out, but there is a bit of a practical purpose: A larger surface area with a rounded edge is easier to slide across the floor than a small, sharply edged end of a board. It doesn’t tend to dig in as much, particularly on carpet. Also, the rounded features are more difficult to chip and splinter.
It’s meant to be a dragon’s foot, so somewhere between reptilian and birdlike. It is also furniture, not a statue, so it’s rather stylized and not very anatomical.
The claw clutching a pearl is just one variant of countless others. We have furniture from ancient Egypt and Rome which has legs carved as animal feet, so it is not a tradition that stems from the British via China.
I agree with all of this except the part about making things pretty being a waste. Beauty has its own value, although far too often for pieces like this it was more for bragging rights as you said.
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Also plenty of craftsmen make beautiful shit without being rich. Bragging rights is a weird way to say creative effort in that sense.
The artist never gets rich, but his efforts still costs more than the basic stuff.
The artist sometimes gets rich.
Kind of my point, but a set of a dozen chairs like that isn’t so much about creativity as it is cost. Still beautiful imo, although i still prefer more minimalist styles in furniture.
Are you yourself a craftsman?
I craft many things, however I only display my wealth with ostentatious hats I obtain from a madman.
Yeah, see: when you’re looking at these highly ornate antiques, it’s not the wealth of the craftsman on display; it’s the wealth of his customer.
Well tickle me with a feather. Not every nice thing is a cynical display.
When it comes to rich people, pretty much yes it is.
I hear ya. There’s a line somewhere when people become shitty rich. I’m just not sure that line is at … has a nice dining room table with carved feet or some shit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have been rendered incapable of seeing beauty in ostentatious displays of wealth.
I fucking love it when a specialist with relevant expertise who also happens to be a good writer gives a full on contextual breakdown that’s super accessible, well organized, well informed and a pleasure to read, on a topic I never even thought about. It’s the stuff lemmy dreams are made of.
Me too, but the uber-pessimism spoils it for me.
Don’t mistake me for a scholar, now. I’m a guy with a thickness planer in his backyard shed that’s read a couple books and watched a lot of videos about building furniture. I’m confident I could defend the rank of “enthusiast.”
That said, it is something I liked about Reddit. You could post “Left-handed theoretical psycho-ornithologists of Reddit…” and you’d get at least a few credible answers.
Oh man we certainly do struggle. It’s like all the tools they make for actually doing theoretical psycho-ornithology are right handed! You know what I mean?
Wait a minute! What tools? You’re supposed to be doing theory! You’re a field psycho-ornithologist, aren’t you?
You know, chalk… markers…
Actually, we use quills a surprising amount of the time!