An Antiquarian's Tale, Issue 135

Clinton Howell Antiques - July 5, 2021 - Issue 135
An Appreciation of English Antique Furniture
A semi biographical journey of my life in the English Decorative Arts
Unfortunately, the only way for me to see the Thomas a Becket show at the British Museum is online as the English are being effectively barred from the Continent by having five to ten day quarantine times imposed on them for travel to the Continent. Dumfries, Paxton and all the other Scottish wonders that I wanted to  see this summer will have to wait. The Becket exhibition interests me simply because it is the beginning of the Middle Ages, a time period I know very little about, but which, I suspect, has lots of interesting details. What every historian must realize is that there is a wavelength for innovation and its after affects. That wavelength can be started by innovation--of any kind. For example, the building of cathedrals, although a geographically disparate activity, encouraged the establishment of religion which in turn 
Unfortunately, the only way for me to see the Thomas a Becket show at the British Museum is online as the English are being effectively barred from the Continent by having five to ten day quarantine times imposed on them for travel to the Continent. Dumfries, Paxton and all the other Scottish houses and ruinsI was hoping to see will have to wait as well. The Becket exhibition interests me simply because it is the beginning of the Middle Ages, a time period I know very little about. Part of my curiosity about the exhibition is to try to grasp the wavelength of innovation and its after affects. That wavelength is often started by specific innovation--of any kind. For example, the building of cathedrals, although a geographically disparate activity across Europe, encouraged the establishment of religion which in turn created all sorts of answers and problems for society. The answers had to do with a social order, the problems were often to do with the monarchy that chafed at having churchmen tell them what to do. Hence, Thomas a Becket and similarly, three hundred or so years later, Henry VIII's battles with Pope Clement VII over who was the head of the English branch of the Catholic Church. This was not a unique condition, historically, to Britain--it happened in other nations as well, but England's independence from Continental strictures continues to this day--hence Brexit. I could say that the seeds planted by Thomas a Becket reverberate to this day and have prevented me from seeing the exhibition about him at the British Museum. The arc of history is quite all encompassing--we have seen the movie before and it has many similarities to ones that went before it. No wonder the cinematic repeaters such as Rocky, Fast and Furious, Batman, Star Wars, etc., play on and on. We intrinsically understand such repetition, whether or not we know how the story will end.

Cyclical political quandaries may be a human frailty, but what happens in the world of creativity? The question seems broad, but creativity is not at all similar to man's political strivings which are ultimately driven by the desire for control. Creativity is expression, personal and mutable. If I look at European furniture for the last thousand years, there is a clear progression that is based on a number of things--to a minor extent political, but much more on innovation, access to new and different materials and, lastly, the demand of the market. The high point of this for me is the late 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries where furniture making across Europe achieves an extraordinary level of creativity and craftsmanship. It doesn't stop there, but market demands created reiterative desires, desires that palled for some and which, in turn, splintered any sense of uniformity in furniture style. Strictly speaking, that uniformity was illusory as cabinetmakers did not all drink from the same artistic cup, but innovation and communication helped roil what might have been seen by the second half of the 19th century, a stultified profession. Since that time furniture design has flirted with innovations of many sorts, from bentwood and plywood to lightweight metals to plastics to molded resins and more. It's an incredible story and one that demonstrates that innovation, brought about by both technology and creativity, is a force that cannot be controlled.