Mastery of Design: Silver Gilt Snuffers, 1547-1553

Snuffers
Cast, Silver Gilt
1547-1553
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This striking silver gilt object is perhaps not immediately recognizable to modern eyes though we can guess that this is something that’s meant to be used with candles. Chased and beautifully engraved, on the handles the objects reads “GOD SAVE THE KINGE” while the back reads, “EDWARDE WYTHE ALL HIS NOBEL COUNCEL.”

These are snuffers. Snuffers were used, as we could have guessed, to maintain candles by shortening the wicks to prevent them from burning too fast. Snuffing candles was an important task in homes well until 1820 when the advent of the smokeless wick made snuffing unnecessary. These ingenious tools featured blades to trim the wick while the heart-shaped box held the cut-off ends.

This particular example dates between 1547 and 1553 and bears the arms of Edward VI along with the inscriptions noted above. Edward VI was the only surviving son of Henry VIII. He reigned from 1547 to 1553 and was succeeded by his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth.

These snuffers were passed down through the family Edward’s uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. Edward Seymour who was the brother of Jane Seymour, the King's mother and one of the many wives of Henry VIII.

Surviving items from the Tudor Court are rather rare. Furthermore, they demonstrate the attention to detail that was lavished by the court goldsmiths on small domestic items. We tend to forget that such detail was essential to objects as early as those created in the Sixteenth Century. Since the snuffers lack a hallmark, it is probable that these were a special order for the court and not sold to the general public.

Unusual Artifacts: A Positive Organ, 1627

Positive Organ
Germany, 1627
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

The term “Positive Organ” refers to an organ smaller than those typically used for church music. These were mostly employed in domestic settings, set on a table. One person would operate the keys while another pumped the bellows at the back of the instrument.

This one with its carved, painted and gilt pine case features keys made of birch. The organ pipes are constructed of stiffened, layered paper.

It’s believed that this instrument once belonged to Johann Georg, I Duke of Saxony (1585-1656), whose portrait adorns the piece. Strapwork strolls complete the elegant look. The organ was made in Dresden Germany in 1627 by Gottfried Fritzsche (1578-1638).

Building of the Week: Hampton Court Palace, the East Molesey, Greater London

Originally built circa 1514 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, The Archbishop of York , Chief Minister and a favorite of King Henry VIII, Hampton Court Palace was intended to show foreign visitors that British cardinals wielded just as much prestige and power as those of the Catholic Church in Rome.


The palace was initially built in an unusual combination of styles which reflected the transition of architectural preferences that defined the reign of Henry VIII. Predominantly domestic Tudor in style, the palace—as originally built—contained many perpendicular Gothic features along with some unexpected Classical detailing. Wolsey oversaw the completion of the palace, but only managed to live there for a few years before he realized that he’d been increasingly falling out of favor with Henry VIII. In order to pacify the king, Wolsey made a gift of the palace to him. The cardinal then died the following year.

The Tudor Entrance

King Henry VIII rather liked the palace and wanted to make it the central residence of his court. However, his court—when fully assembled—contained about one thousand people. The palace as it was, could not hold all of them at once, and furthermore the kitchens were certainly not big enough to feed Henry, let alone his entire court. Under Henry VIII’s direction, the kitchens were quadrupled in size in 1529. Henry also commissioned the famous Great Hall as well as the tennis courts.

EnglishMonarchs.co.uk

Meanwhile, Henry VIII was having some marital difficulties—wives were cheating, dying, being killed and generally irritating him. Some of this must have distracted him because the palace had several years where it was not altered. After the king’s death, his eldest daughter, Queen Mary I succeeded him—for a bit—and she was replaced with Queen Elizabeth I who lived at the Palace and added yet another kitchen.

In 1603, the Tudor Period ended with the death of Elizabeth I. The monarchy was taken over by the Stuart Dynasty, initially led by James I, and then his son, Charles I. There was some much publicized trouble with Charles I, but we won’t get into that now. We’ll just say that Charles II became King, and he was followed by James II—neither of them cared much for Hampton Court Palace and it went into a long period of disuse.

EnglishMonarchs.co.uk

That all changed when joint monarchs, William of Orange and Queen Mary II (daughter of James II) ascended to the throne(s) in their rather peculiar arrangement. They enlisted Sir Christopher Wren—the top architect of the day, to demolish the Tudor palace bit-by-bit and replace it with a new Baroque palace so as not to be outdone by those pesky French with their Versailles. They did, however, intend to leave Henry VIII’s great hall intact.

And, so, a long period of construction began to make Hampton Court Palace look more like Versailles—which it did, in parts. But, the job was never finished because Mary died and William lost interest, and then fell off of his horse and died, too. So, what remains is a essentially a Tudor palace on one side and a Baroque palace on the other. Fortunately, they’re unified in color by the use of rosy bricks. Many courtiers found the new round windows with pointed pediments to be “startling” as if the new courtyard was simply a line of wondering eyes. Others felt that the improvements to the structure rivaled Versailles grandeur.

The Baroque Facade

After the end of the Stuart Dynasty, only George I and George II used the palace as a residence. In 1838, Queen Victoria ordered that the palace be restored. Victoria intended for the palace to house much of the artifacts in the Royal Collection. For most of the Twentieth Century, Hampton Court Palace has been open to the public so that all can enjoy the art and architecture of one of the world’s most intriguing and unusual palaces. 

Masterpiece of the Week: The Kitchen at Elmswell Hall, York

Click image to enlarge
The Kitchen at Elmswell Hall, York
Mary Ellen Best, 1834
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Mary Ellen Best (1809-1891), a watercolorist, excelled in creating views of domestic interiors and tender genre paintings. She often created the interiors which she painted and was famous for some of the makeshift details in her scenes which were accurate representations of a typical home. She didn’t glamorize her scenes and took great pains in beings a true to life as possible, making sure that the furnishings matched the setting. For example, in this scene, Eighteenth Century chairs are shown, neatly depicting the fact that, in most great homes, the servants’ halls were furnished with pieces which were considered too out of fashion for the main house.

Here, we see one of Best’s creations—a watercolor view of the kitchen of a great country house, showing a woman inspecting bread dough as it is rising in a dough trough which is humorously supported by a chair. The piece was painted in Little Driffield, England in 1834.

Unusual Artifacts: A Stereograph, "A Family at Afternoon Tea," 1855-60

A Family at Afternoon Tea
Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.
1855-1860
The Victoria & Albert Museum

We’ve looked at stereographs from my own collection before, but here’s one from the V&A.

To refresh your memory,  a stereograph is a pair of photographic images of the same subject taken from slightly different angles. When viewed through a special “stereo viewer” or “stereoscope”, these images give the illusion of a single three-dimensional image when viewed through a stereoscope designed to hold it.  They remained popular from the 1850s well into the Twentieth Century.

Occasionally, these images were colored by hand in watercolors, paints or inks to make them more life-like.   In this case, I’m glad the image was colored since it gives us an idea of look of a typical American, Victorian home.  Here, we see a group which has been posed in the act of taking tea from a silver tea set and china cups and saucers. Domestic scenes like this one--of a model family like or of the institutions of society such as school, church or marriage --were typical subjects of popular stereographs.

This stereograph was made between 1855 and 1860 by Underwood & Underwood of New York, USA.

Painting of the Day: “A Dress Rehearsal,” by Albert Chevallier Tayler, 1888

A Dress Rehearsal
Albert Chevallier Tayler, 1888
The Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

This is one of the many paintings based on the contemporary French naturalistic style which were collected by Lord Leverhulme to advertise his line of soaps. Once the paintings had been employed as images in his ads, Leverhulme brought the paintings home and gifted them to his wife. After her passing, the collection became the centerpiece of The Lady Lever Art Gallery.


Leverhulme used this scene by Albert Chevallier Tayler as an advertising image. He was drawn to this scene of a young bride modeling her wedding dress before her nuptials. Tayler, an artist from Cornwall, specialized in these sentimental domestic scenes and images of working class and pleasant families. This was just the sort of theme that Leverhulme wanted for his advertisements, and found much success with them.

Object of the day, Museum Edition: A Beaded Tea Cozy, 1860

Beaded Tea Cozy
England, 1860
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Our Victorian Forebears took great care in ensuring that even the most utilitarian of objects was as attractive as possible. Today, let’s look at one such object—a tea cozy (or, as our U.K. friends spell it, “cosy,”) which was designed to be placed over a pot of tea in order to keep it warm.

This tea cozy was made around 1860 in London and is decorated with glass beads. This was made by an amateur embroiderer in the home for purposes of domestic use. Here, we see a design of roses and lilies on a bright blue ground. This sort of design and color palette is characteristic of Mid-Victorian decorative arts. This is the sort of cozy that would have been kept for special occasions and would have been used with the “best” silver or porcelain tea—reserved to impress special visitors or for use on important occasions.

Such beadwork was the height of fashion in the 1850s and 1860s and I’m a big fan of it. Beads were often used to adorn Victorian embroidered decoration on everything from fashion to upholstery and found use in a wide range of domestic items.

Most likely, the beads came from Germany or Italy where the glass industries produced and exported vast numbers of such beads in a brilliant variety of colors. The beads that we see here were known as :pound” beads because they were purchased by weight. These came in two popular types—bright opaque colors and translucent clear shades. Both can be seen utilized here.