Antique Furniture

During the Stuart period, tables became more important articles of furniture than in preceding epochs.

The change from movable boards set on top of trestles to permanent table structures had occurred during Tudor times, but it's not till the Stuart period that we find them in significant numbers.

Then we meet with long tables that follow the traditional lines of the trestle boards, ingeniously devised drawing tables, gate tables with drop leaves, small rectangular tables, three-cornered cricket tables and many others.

The early Jacobean long or "refrectory" tables were often VERY long -- some were even thirty feet or more -- and narrow. "Drawing tables" were ingeniously contrived to double their length and seating capacity by means of two shelves, sliding under the central top, but so arranged that on being drawn out the upper top falls into their place forming a level surface.

The gate tables which originated during this period were found so practical and useful that the design has largely persisted to the present day.

About the time of the Restoration, owing largely to the prevalent habit of tea and coffee drinking, various small tables began to be made in great numbers. Drawers in tables became common during this time as well.

All the Stuart tables were braced by stout stretchers near the floor. Bulbous legs went out of fashion by the middle of the seventeenth century. Ringed baluster and columnar legs appeared about the time of the Restoration in tables as well as chairs.