House & Garde 
THE ROLE OF FURNITURE HARDWARE 
By These Mounts Progress Can Be Traced Through the Decorative 
Periods in France, England, Italy and Spain 
H. D. EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE 
F URNITURE mounts 
play a double role; they 
are both utilitarian and deco¬ 
rative. They are the indis¬ 
pensable hardware of furni¬ 
ture. At the same time, they 
are what might fitly be called 
its jewelry. 
Whether they be considered 
in their utilitarian or in their 
purely decorative capacity, a 
knowledge of mounts is essen¬ 
tial to a thorough understand¬ 
ing of furniture. The subject 
constitutes one of the smaller refinements of 
mobiliary art, it is true; nevertheless the mounts 
produce a very material part of furni¬ 
ture’s charm which is quite out of pro¬ 
portion to the amount of space they 
occupy. 
Mounts and Their Materials 
The general term mounts includes 
hinges, locks and bolts, key-hole plates 
or escutcheons, knobs, handles or pulls, 
backplates, straps or bands, comer or 
angle - pieces, re - enforcings, gallery 
rails or frets, pilaster capitals and 
neckings, bases and metal feet, nail- 
heads, studding, finials, ornamental 
plates. Empire appliques, and any 
other metal embellishments (except 
metal inlay) that designers and cabi¬ 
net makers may have resorted to from 
time to time. 
The materials of which mounts have 
commonly been made are iron, brass, 
bronze, ormolu (an alloy of copper and 
zinc, with sometimes an addition of 
tin, much used by 18th Century French 
ebenistes), bone or ivory, wood, and, 
in the early 19th Century, glass. 
With this latitude of possible appli¬ 
cations and this range of materials, all 
susceptible of a wide diversity of ma¬ 
nipulation in process and design, it in 
easy to understand how the course of 
evolution followed not only the trend 
of the great successive styles—Renais¬ 
sance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neo-Clas¬ 
sic-—but also produced many subsidi¬ 
ary phases peculiar to certain localities. 
During the period of Renaissance 
design in English furniture, that is, up 
to about the middle of the 17 th Cen¬ 
tury, the mounts were a comparatively 
inconspicuous feature and were utilita¬ 
rian in function. Turned wooden knobs 
of the plainest design often answered as drawer 
and door pulls. Chests, cupboards and cabinets 
in general had plain iron drop or loop handles, 
comparatively small in size and usually with 
little or no ornamentation. Hinges were either 
concealed or were apt to be plain iron straps. 
Escutcheons and keyhole plates were small and 
of simple pattern or were altogether lacking. 
Most of the furniture was so profusely carved 
that the effect of ornate mounts would have 
proved redundant and been lost. 
In France, up to the latter part of the 16th 
Century, much the same general condition pre¬ 
vailed. A great deal of the furniture was richly 
carved, for one thing, and, besides that, artisans 
were so occupied with the exuberance of deco¬ 
The jrelted back and keyhole plates play a distinctive 
decorative role in the ensemble of this mahogany block- 
front bureau bookcase. Canfield collection 
rative craftsmanship in so many other direc¬ 
tions that relatively little effort was expended 
on the elaboration of mounts. In Renaissance 
Italy, also, the mounts were, for the most part, 
of quite secondary importance. Outside of a 
few simple brass knobs on cupboards and cabi¬ 
nets, and the brass studding occasionally used 
to embellish credenze or the underframing of 
tables, the only metal mounts were the plain¬ 
est of iron drops or loops. Other than these, 
knobs and pulls were of turned wood. 
In Spain and Portugal 
Spain—we may include Portugal with Spain 
—was the only country where mounts played a 
really conspicuous part in the Renaissance pe¬ 
riod. Iron locks, lockplates, corner or 
angle-pieces and bandings, hinges, 
handles and pulls, were beautifully 
engraved, chased, fretted, and punched 
and, in addition, were often gilded. 
These elaborate iron mounts were 
chiefly used on the exteriors of the 
vargueno cabinets or kindred pieces of 
furniture and to some extent also on 
chests. The plain exteriors of the wal¬ 
nut vargueno cabinets, for the most 
part devoid of carving or moldings, 
made an excellent foil for the intricate 
metal work, ensuring a striking con¬ 
trast in color, material and design. 
The contrast was often still further 
enhanced by underlying the large fret¬ 
ted mounts with velvet, usually of a 
rich red. 
Moulded brass finials were often 
used to surmount the backposts of 
chairs and brass-headed nails or chat- 
tones of many different kinds, some 
of them punched, hammered, engraved 
or fretted, were used to fasten on the 
leather or velvet back and seat cover¬ 
ings and, at the same time, to perform 
an important decorative function. 
Brass studdings and fretted band 
pieces were also occasionally used on 
cabinet work. The vargueno cabinet, 
and the closely allied papelera with its 
many little drawers, may be considered 
the crowning achievements of Spanish 
cabinetwork. The drawer fronts of 
these pieces were frequently enriched 
with bone inlay which was still fur¬ 
ther enhanced by the addition of color, 
gilding and engraving, the incised de¬ 
sign being filled in with black or ver¬ 
milion pigment. The pulls or knobs 
of these drawers were often of the same 
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