House & Garden 
38 
SPANISH TABLES and SEATING FURNITURE of the SIXTEENTH 
and SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 
The Excellent Craftsmanship of Spanish Furniture Makers—Splayed and 
Lyre Legs—Stools and Benches 
HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN & ABBOT McCLURE 
Fig. 1. A Moorish fragment of carved stone 
shows a decorative device found on some 
Spanish furniture 
S PANISH tables and seating 
furniture of the 16th and 17th 
Centuries shared equally with the 
wall furniture of the same period 
the characteristic qualities to which 
attention was directed at the be¬ 
ginning of the article devoted to 
wall furniture in the January issue 
of House & Garden. These quali¬ 
ties. it will be remembered, were 
noted with reference to its general aspect. 
In the matter of structure we find the same 
sterling qualities of staunchness and solidity 
and the same unstinted use of the best mate¬ 
rials. The workmanship, whether structural 
or decorative, was admirable and in every way 
the Spanish craftsman worthily upheld the 
traditions of careful and honest construction 
to which he was enjoined by more than one 
legal enactment. Inside as well as the out¬ 
side of drawers, back as well as front, under¬ 
neath as well as on top, will bear critical 
scrutiny and one very rarely finds an instance 
of the slovenly treatment of parts that did not 
readily catch the eye, a fault which, unfortu¬ 
nately, too often comes to light when examin¬ 
ing some of the Italian furniture of the same 
or later date. In furniture making, as in 
architecture, the Spaniard showed greater con¬ 
cern for sound construction than did his Ital¬ 
ian contemporary who, so long as the decora¬ 
tive effect was good, was often quite shame¬ 
less, especially in architectural practice, in his 
disregard of sound constructional principles. 
The Woods 
In Spain, during the period under consid¬ 
eration, walnut of an exceptionally fine qual¬ 
ity was the staple wood for furniture, just as 
it was in Italy or just as oak 
was in England up to the Re¬ 
storation. One can form some 
idea of the sort of timber em¬ 
ployed by coming frequently 
upon table tops whose width is 
cut from one plank, and that 
plank is sometimes more than 
2" thick. Though walnut may 
be considered the staple mate¬ 
rial, other woods also were 
used by the cabinet, table and 
chairmakers. One of the com¬ 
monest of these variants from 
walnut was oak. Chestnut, 
beech, pine and cypress, as 
well as sundry different woods 
not already enumerated were 
drawn upon when occasion re¬ 
quired, while mahogany, 
thanks to the medium of Span¬ 
ish and Portuguese early com¬ 
mercial relations with far 
lands, found mobiliary em¬ 
ployment considerably prior to 
its introduction elsewhere in 
Europe. The woods other than 
those mentioned occurred from time to time in 
limited quantities and chiefly as accessories 
to decoration. 
The characteristic genius of contour, as with 
contemporary wall furniture, was rectilinear 
and, even after Baroque influence had begun 
Fig. 2. .4 small \lth Century table with draw¬ 
ers, splayed trestle legs and iron braces 
to make itself perceptibly felt, the 
departure from rectilinear princi¬ 
ples was usually confined to such 
manifestations as arched chair 
backs or arched and scrolled 
stretchers between the front legs of 
chairs. One national peculiarity 
in the contour of tables it is espe¬ 
cially important to note and that 
is the manner in which many of 
the pairs of legs are splayed outward, a feature 
that will best be understood by an examina¬ 
tion of the illustrations. 
Variety of Tables 
The student of old Spanish furniture cannot 
fail to be struck by the great variety of tables 
in use in the period before the 18th Century, 
not a few of them of a distinctly specialized 
type. That many of them, both of the long 
refectory type and also of the console variety, 
were specifically designed to be so placed there 
can be no question in the light of structural 
evidence. Not only were numerous Spanish— 
and likewise Italian—tables of the sort graced 
with carving, turning, panelling or similar 
decorative means on one side only, but the side 
not exposed to view was oftentimes lacking 
even an ordinary degree of finish. 
Of the larger and heavier oblong tables, 
which might be placed either against the wall 
or out in the room according to the dictates 
of fancy, two principal types may be clearly 
recognized. The one was supported by pairs 
of “lyre” shaped, trestle legs, often splayed out¬ 
ward towards the table ends, braced with iron 
braces that in most cases were shaped and 
decoratively wrought and extended from the 
stretchers of the “lyre” trestles to the middle 
of the under side of the table 
top. The tops of these “lyre” 
trestles were grooved and dove¬ 
tailed into the thick plank that 
formed the table top and the 
wrought iron braces supplied 
the requisite rigidity to keep 
the table firm. These long 
tables originally had no un¬ 
derframing, but a later stage 
of evolution sometimes added 
an underframing of such sort 
that there was an opportunity 
for drawers. Tables of the 
“lyre”-legged type varied con¬ 
siderably in length and when 
underframing and drawers 
were added it was generally in 
the shorter specimens. Ex¬ 
amples of the “lyre” trestle¬ 
legged and iron braced tables 
are to be seen in figure 14. 
Sometimes the legs are plain 
and free of carving and de¬ 
pend altogether upon their 
shaping for decorative amen¬ 
ity; at other times they dis- 
Fig. 3. A late 16 th or early \lth Century walnut table with paneled 
drawer fronts, showing typical Spanish design and construction 
