History embodied in furniture design.

The study of furniture design is more than aesthetics and utility. It often reads like history, geography and social studies.

Suppose you are an editor who loves furniture. How do you compile a section on furniture design when you are allowed 1,000 years from which to choose? Do you begin your research in the 11th century, then methodically allocate so much space for every new style of chair, cupboard or table you uncover? Would anyone read it? Would that be more helpful than simply referring readers to the heading Furniture in Encyclopedia Britannica? Where is the originality, the inspiration, the passion?

We decided to ask persons in furniture and cabinetry-oriented professions to lend a hand in writing the copy, believing they would be motivated by affection for the subject. They were wonderfully helpful, and most insightful. And while we did not catalog the past 10 centuries of furniture design, the following topics are dear to our hearts and always relevant.

The Earliest Traditions

Furniture lovers can behold the latest designs in markets in major cities throughout the United States, Canada and abroad. Students and lovers of early furniture turn to museums and unique collections - Colonial Williamsburg, VA; Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI; Winterthur, DE; and Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC, among others - to study the earliest traditions in making furniture.

Furniture curators from the above institutions had the challenging task of selecting from their extensive collections the most outstanding examples of furniture to include in this issue. They are Ronald L. Hurst, CW; Henry Prebys, Henry Ford; Wendy A. Cooper, Winterthur; and Tim Judson, Biltmore.

Colonial Williamsburg

A mile-long and nearly half-mile wide area of the historic city of Williamsburg, VA, restored to its 18th century appearance, includes 88 buildings that have survived from the 18th and early 19th centuries. A number of buildings that had disappeared were faithfully rebuilt on their original sites. This historic area comprises a living history museum recreating 18th century life when Williamsburg was the seat of government and the social and cultural center of Virginia.

A new, year-long exhibit of the finest furniture made in the South from the years 1680 to 1830 will run through December 1998 at the DeWitt Wallace Gallery. More than 120 examples of the cabinetmaking traditions and diversity of the South's three principal regions - Chesapeake, Low Country and Back Country - are on display. Hurst selected four items from the exhibit (chosen for their diverse forms) to include here.

Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village

Other splendid examples of early American furniture spanning more than 350 years are on display in Dearborn, MI. Henry Ford Museum's holdings include more than 90,000 home furnishing artifacts that provide a sense of American life as it was from day to day.

For example, a gateleg table represents an era when a family used a single piece of furniture for preparing food, eating and working. The table leaves would be raised or dropped several times a day, depending upon the need for floor or table space. Curator Henry Prebys discussed three additional examples:

Fancy Chair (c. 1810)

A number of woodworking techniques are combined in the "fancy chair" produced in the shop of Samuel Gragg, Boston, c. 1810. When Gragg patented the production process in 1808, he called it "an elastic chair." Prebys said the patent records were destroyed in a fire in 1836, so we can not be sure of the actual process by which the piece was made. Typically, strips of wood were heated in sand through which steam was made to pass.

The seat ribs are white oak, the rear seat rail is ash, legs are oak, front stretchers are beech and front seat rail and rear stretchers are soft maple. To mask the different woods, the entire chair was painted yellow green and trimmed with painted peacock feathers, hairs or grasses on its goat feet, and striping.

Not many of these chairs survive. Contemporary sitting habits did not encourage their preservation. Because the chairs were springy, people liked to test their limits - and frequently exceeded them. Men often tended to lean back, balancing the chair on its fragile rear legs, Prebys said.

Mrs. Lincoln's Chair (c. 1865)

After President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, purchased an expensive parlor suite which included this armchair. The chair represents the mid-19th century concept of comfort combined with what the 20th century would consider an overdose of decoration. The chair epitomizes our perception of Victorian furniture.

New technologies made possible the great amount of deep carving on the back. This kind of piercing and almost three-dimensional fruit and flowers would require a large, expensive block of wood. Undercutting might split it.

In this case, however, thin layers of rosewood were glued together in cross grain stacks. The entire lamination was then steamed and forced into a curved form in the shape of the back. When dry, the piece was elaborately carved. Because of the thin cross grain layers, the carving did not chip or crack.

The bent plywood system would be utilized 80 years later by Charles and Ray Eames for their famous DCW chairs, which are the stylistic antithesis of Mrs. Lincoln's armchair.

Hannah Barnard's Cupboard (1715)

This rare survival, a cupboard made for storage as well as to display valuables, was made in Hadley, MA. Made of oak and pine, the entire piece was brightly painted to create an amazing work of art in a world of dimly-lighted rooms.

When new, the expensive piece of furniture probably held the "movables" that were Hannah's inheritance. Her name on the front was a way of telling the world that she came to her marriage to John Marsh as a person who was somebody. Land and buildings were inherited by sons, but a woman's movable items such as sheets, cutlery and furniture, were inherited by her daughters.

Hannah died in 1716 just after her daughter, Abigail, was born. The press cupboard remained a part of her husband's household until he died. Abigail inherited the cupboard, then passed it on to her own daughter. It continued to descend through daughters until it came to Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village in 1935.

Biltmore Estate

Many people might dream of living in a house as grand as a castle. George Vanderbilt was one of them. But rarely is a dream realized with the magnitude of Vanderbilt's Biltmore House, a French Renaissance-chateau-styled mansion completed in 1895. With 250 rooms, it is the largest private home in the United States, and the jewel of an estate situated on more than 8,000 acres of land in Asheville, NC, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Richard Morris Hunt designed the mansion; Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed Central Park in Manhattan, planned the gardens and grounds.

At the turn of the century, artisans associated with the estate crafted a limited number of beautifully made pieces of furniture. Biltmore Industries was established by George Vanderbilt as a philanthropic community activity, and was allied in spirit to the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Vanderbilt also filled the house with 17th, 18th and 19th century treasures collected during his world travels: exquisite antique furniture, fine silver, oriental rugs and art by Renoir, Sargent, Whistler and others.

Winterthur

In the rolling countryside of Brandywine Valley in northern Delaware lies Winterthur - an unrivaled museum of American decorative arts from 1640 to 1860. Henry Francis du Pont was born there in 1880 and inherited the estate in 1927. He had begun to buy antiques while a student, but his collecting accelerated after he acquired Winterthur.

As a collector, du Pont sought the best, the rarest or the key pieces that revealed the skills of American craftsmen. He once wrote, "The story of Winterthur tells the greatest story of our time - the story of the American people." By the mid-1930s, du Pont was recognized as the nation's foremost collector of American antiques, said Wendy A. Cooper, furniture curator.

Joseph Downs, late curator of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said, "The vast scope of Winterthur collections, particularly of the 18th century, gives a new understanding of and respect for the integrity of American craftsmanship..."