In Christ Bones End 16th Century For sale by : Au Réveil Du Temps Christ the end bone 16th - early 17th century cross and mounted on walnut base, the cross separates from the base to transport, because it is a travel model, very good conditionJanuary 29, 2012 by Vic (Hint: for quicker download, click on title of this article.) As viewers of Downton Abbey, we think we have gotten to know Highclere Castle and its setting well.  Sir Barry remodelled Highclere Castle for the third earl of Carnarvon from 1839 to 1842. The architect had just finished building the Houses of Parliament. The house once looked quite different and was Georgian in feature, as this image shows. Extensive renovations were made during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, Henry, the 3rd earl of Carnarvon, transformed the house into a grand mansion with 60- 80 bedrooms (the sum varies according to the source) and over 120,000 square feet. The staircase, also designed by Thomas Allom, sits in the tower designed by Charles Barry.

The BBC said about Barry’s Houses of Parliament: A good example of the period’s confused love affair with the past, it was summed up earlier this century as classic in inspiration, Gothic in detailing, and carried out with scrupulous adherence to the architectural detail of the Tudor period. – BBC, A British History of Architecture This description can easily be applied to Highclere Castle with its whimsical look back to Tudor times.andersen 400 series patio door cost The term “Jacobethan” refers to the Victorian revival of English architecture of the late 16th century and early 17th century, when Tudor architecture was being challenged by newly arrived Renaissance influences. cheap internal doors cardiffDuring the 19th century there was a huge Renaissance revival movement, of which Sir Charles Barry was a great exponent – Barry described the style of Highclere as “Anglo-Italian”.pocket door repair miami

Many visitors come to this blog looking for a floor plan of Highclere Castle. This one depicted below sits on the Highclere Castle website and is a bit hard to read. Not all the rooms are currently in use, and a number, such as the music room, are available to be rented as conference rooms. In the television series, the servant quarters and kitchens were not filmed at the Castle, but were constructed at Ealing studios in West London. Much drama is centered in the dining room. car window repair rockville mdThe actors often took days to film a scene, and it was quite a feat to keep the food looking fresh and to maintain continuity in both the drinking glasses and on the plates. barn doors on slidersRead Downton Abbey: Dining in Splendor for more information.shower door repair sarasota

This image on Huffington Post shows more details about Downton Abbey/Highclere Castle and values the mansion: Share with others:Like this:The Grandfather of Furniture: The Story of the Chest What the wheel did for modern innovation, the chest did for furniture. The coffer, the chest, the ark, or the cassone—whatever its name, it was the most useful, and most versatile piece in furniture’s history. From Ancient Egypt to Renaissance Italy, these humble boxes were the most important item to domestic life. sliding door track for greenhouseWhat began as a practical and crude receptacle for traveling, for holding food, clothing, and belongings, and suiting the comforts of life evolved into almost every piece of furniture we know today: chairs, beds, tables, buffets, wardrobes, hutches, dressers, and desks. Here’s a look at the first chests, how they were built, the pieces they inspired, and into what they eventually evolved.

The First Chests: The Invention of Paneling and Chairs As is common in the furniture timeline, Ancient Egypt had already established advanced methods, building boxes and chests with dovetail joints, most notably their ceremonial, burial sarcophagi with incredible carving, metalwork, inlaid jewels, and gilding. In medieval Europe, the hollowed out, dome-top chests were the earliest form—one solid piece of timber dug out inside, then given a rounded top following the shape of the log. In the 1500s, two types of joined chests evolved: the first, a simple, planked box chest held together with nails, which was subject to splitting and warping from shrinkage. The second, in the latter half of the century, offered a solution to the problem of wood splitting: the invention of framed-up panels (shown) worked with the grain of wood to allow for shrinking and expanding without compromising the structure. By nailing together a structural frame then fixing panels to the frame with the grains cross-wise, panels could move along the grain with the expansion of the frame (because wood always shrinks across its grain, never in the direction of the grain), all without breaking or splitting.

The future of furniture changed in an instant. Soon chairs, stools, and settles all adopted the framed-up method of construction. Mortise and tenon joints, pin hinges, strap hinges, hardware, and locks and keys all evolved along with the chest, growing more sophisticated with each adjustment. Aside from being the most important possession, the significance of these early chests was also in their decorative surfaces. Panels and friezes of these chests depicted every nuance of each style they inhabited: Tudor Gothic arches, tracery, and pierced rosettes, all mimicking masonry from Gothic architecture; linenfold paneling from Flanders; the shift to Renaissance motifs of florals, scrolls, and Romayne panels with heads and faces; and, advanced Italian cassoni panels, adding painted surfaces, marquetry, and pictorial landscapes modeled after Egyptian and Roman sarcophagi. Even Michelangelo had a hand in painting Italian cassoni panels—whereas typically only carvers provided decoration, this was a major decorative leap for furniture.

The Elizabethan era saw the chest evolve into boarded chairs, stools, court cupboards, and drawing tables, which had extending leaves and heavy, bulbous turned columnar supports—and even some ingenious pieces that combined all three: chests with hinged, flip-up tops that transformed the chest from table to settle. Coffers were chests covered in leather with nailhead trim—a technique that coffer-makers would lend to a unique chair crafted from an open frame and slung leather, the coffer maker’s chair. Chests on Legs: The First Cupboards, Tables & Sideboards Add a little elevation, and simple chests became important pieces for serving food, locking up and storing things—a reflection of a more private, permanent way of life. By the Renaissance, new rooms and new manners had given way to more specialized pieces of furniture, and in the manor house’s dining room, the chest evolved into a massive, highly decorative piece called the Elizabethan court cupboard—a mainstay in every household used for serving and storing food and dishes in dining rooms.

It featured a lower cabinet space (sometimes pierced for ventilation, if used to store food) and two upper shelves. Drop the lower cabinets, and you have the first buffet—also known as an Elizabethan sideboard. These open-tiered buffets featured enormous, bulbous turned legs and ornamental carving. Massive cabinets known as hutches also transformed from planked to framed-up construction during the Tudor Gothic period, offering upright storage like a modern armoire. By the late 16th century, wardrobes would get treated with moulding and decorative top rails, and by the early 17th century, they had bun, ball or turnip feet and hinged, inset doors. The addition of legs (and the opening up of the underframing to lose the box-like base) also led to the development of the settle, chair, and console and side tables. Read more about Oak Period Tables. Chests had long been used for seating and eating, but by simply extending the back supports to a chair, or opening up the framing, the luxury of furniture made for a single purpose evolved—a novel idea that would fan the flames of industry, consumerism, and design for centuries.

From Chest to Dresser: The Addition of Drawers Even though the chest had spawned so many new types of furniture, in and of itself it remained one of the most popular mainstays in the home in the 17th century. Chests were still practical for storage, and held on as prized possessions long after oak furniture was passé. But by the late 1600s, on the cusp of the Walnut Period, big changes were afoot for furniture. The invention of drawers was about to render the chest obsolete—retiring it from its long reign as the single-most important piece of furniture in history. By the 1650s, carpenters had added one or two drawers beneath chests (known as blanket chests), then had gone ahead and filled the entire storage with drawers—they proved so useful, it was a natural progression. The chest’s flip-up lid was replaced with a fixed top, and while still essentially used for the same thing, it lost its identity. Chests of drawers were now explicitly called a commode. Drawers were a life-changing invention: imagine realizing that you didn’t have to rummage around in a deep chest looking for what you needed when you could organize things into drawers!