Antique Refectory Tables
Refectory table
There was remarkably little furniture of any sort until the sixteenth century in England, apart from chests to hold valuables and clothes, benches and stools to sit on, and a rough `boorde’ or table for eating from. Tables in ‘refectories’ or halls were dismantled at night and used by knights and squires to sleep on – hence the description ‘table dormant’.
At first, tables were of roughhewn planks mounted on two or
more trestles. A stretcher was added for stability, but as the table was destined to be covered with layers of napery its appearance did not matter very much until Elizabethan days when surfaces of polished wood. became fashionable. The trestle developed into two solid end-pieces on massive feet, joined by a substantial stretcher, and a top which slotted into the two end-bearers. A tusk-shaped tenon on the outer side of the end-piece, knocked into a hole
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in the protruding end of the stretcher, held the table rigid. The alternative method of construction for tables was a basic frame made up of legs, low stretchers on all four sides and a top frame on which the table top rested. From these came the ,melon-bulbed’ tables of Elizabethan and Jacobean days, so loved and copied by makers of reproduction furniture from the late Victorian days and early years of this century.
Signs of authenticity
1. Some graining, and figuring on all wood where it has been split and not sawn.
2. Timbers shrunk along the grain making them narrower than the cleats or clamps.
3. All timbers, including low bottom stretchers, of same aged wood, patination and colour.
4. Heavy wear on bottom stretchers.
5. Width of two planks only. Some are made from a single plank. From c.1660 these were sometimes framed with cleating on all four sides with mitred corners.
6. In ‘frame’ construction, dowels sunk or slightly loose, not protruding. Green wood was
used so that dowels would not be pushed out by shrinkage of main timbers.
7. ‘Bolection moulding’ deeply incised, secured to legs with pegs or dowels.
8. Hand-cut dowels and pegs of uneven size and shape.
9. Thick patination on undersurface of table tops where it overhangs and has been handled continuously.
10. Feet blocks are worn, rotted or ‘frayed’ by damp and constant use on stone floors.
Likely restoration and repair
11. Bottom stretchers on frame construction tables replaced - often entire bottom frame including bases of square-sectioned legs.
12. Planks of table top fitting flush with clamps, no shrinkage, indicates new top or replaced clamps or both.
13. Saw marks on underside of table top or any part of straight timbers means recent replacement.
14. New tops made up from old floorboards with right grain but not much patination. Signs of nail heads where floorboards were nailed to joists.
15. It can safely be said that no table of this age on the market today has survived completely intact without repairs and replacement timbers at some time in its life.
Construction and materials
Most of these solid, heavy and important tables were made in oak. Some were made with elm tops and oak frames, and some of fruitwood for smaller tables if the girth of the tree was big enough for planking. The wood was not sawn, but riven and split into planks and then cleaned off with an adze until a smooth surface was obtained.
Whether made of trestle or frame construction, the table was no more than two planks wide — broad tables were not needed, since the nobility sat on one side of the table only, facing down the hall. The planks were clamped or cleated at either end to finish the raw ends of the wood and reduce warping and bending. The entire frame of a refectory table is held together with mortise-and-tenon joints and thick, handcut pegs or dowels. The uprights on a trestle table were slotted into two cross-bearers fixed to the underside of the table top,
and into two long flat plinths or feet at the bottom. One or two stretchers ran between the uprights and were slotted through and tenoned with a large tusk-shaped wedge to secure them. These wedges could easily be knocked out when the table was dismantled. On tables with frame construction, the base was made up of four thick stretchers, like the bottom of a box, tenoned into the bottoms of the square-sectioned legs very near the ground. The tops of the legs were dowelled into the underframe of the’ table top.
Detail
Bolection moulding for the swelling melon bulbs was common by Elizabethan times. In order to minimize the girth of timber needed for the legs, the swelling bulbs were added to straight, square-sectioned legs which were then carved and turned above and below the joins.
Variations
If there was little furniture to be seen in grand houses and manors, there was none in peasants’ dwellings. Refectory tables were only used in wealthy households, monasteries, and large manor houses.
Some crude side tables were made, usually known as ‘harvest tables’, for harvest suppers, as well
as some basic X-frame tables of elm, but they were rough and unfinished and very few have survived. Smaller trestle-type tables of applewood and other fruitwoods were also made for farmhouses, but most of the long, scrubbed farmhouse tables date from the end of the eighteenth century, if not considerably later.
Above: single plank harvest table, or ‘boorde’, constructed on the trestle principle, with an arcaded, chip-carved frieze. Left: seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century double plank frame table, with rushlight and candle drawer.
Reproductions
Nineteenth century
Massive melon-bulbed tables were made for the ‘Jacobethan’ revival of the Victorian age, using traditional methods of construction, but the planks for tops were sawn, not split, pegs and dowels were machine-made and of even size, machine-
carving was shallow and not smoothly rounded with use.
Twentieth century London-made reproductions from c.1900 by furniture-makers employing highly skilled craftsmen are also recognizable for the exaggerated proportions of bulbs and bolection
mouldings. Dutch versions of a later period have distinctive pear or acorn-shaped legs, and not straight-sided ‘melons’. Later, baluster-turned legs from large tables were combined with frame tops, new stretchers and surfaces.
From c.1925, one finds mass-produced ‘refectory’ tables with solid end-pieces and square tenons to secure central stretchers, often with knots in planks, usually three planks wide to accommodate people on both sides of the table, now warping and splitting because of unseasoned saw-cut timbers.
Tables of very recent date are often made from old floorboards, usually elm, sometimes oak, correctly split, but without deep patination and with none on the overhang of the table top. Bleached oak versions, mass-produced, greyish in colour, have undersurfaces furry with saw marks where timbers have been sawn as standard planking and then made up.
Price bands
Draw leaf or fixed-top refectory, c.1600, £8,000+.
Seventeenth-century frame table, trestle-type, £4,500-5,500.
Eighteenth- or nineteenth-century reproduction, £1,200-2,000.
(All prices for period tables assume some restoration.)
Tags: description table, Elizabethan, England, Jacobean, oak, reproduction furniture, sixteenth century, stretcher, Tables, trestle