Studies in painted cottage furniture
COLOUR
Sixteen flat colours grouped into four working families. Painted cottage furniture is usually chosen family by family rather than piece by piece, so a chest and a bed can sit in one room without competing.
A section through a painted panel, from bare timber to the layer that takes the wear.
Edges, handles and seat fronts lose their film long before flat panels do.
How loose covers sit against a painted frame, and where the seam line falls.
Three weave densities at one scale, and what each does to a painted seat.
A bed and a chest measured against one wall run, footprints drawn beneath.
Colour on furniture followed the paint trade, not the cabinet trade. When mixed colour became something you could buy rather than grind, the summer house was where it landed first.
Paint hides grain and it hides tool marks, but it rarely hides a joint. Three joints, and what each one tells you about how a piece was put together.
Every study and feature on this site is filed by plate number and by discipline. The plate number is the filing order of the publication, running from Plate 01, and the four disciplines — Colour, Finish, Form and Textiles — describe what each plate is about rather than when it was made.
The complete index lists all eight plates grouped by discipline. The editorial scope page sets out what this publication covers and what it deliberately leaves alone.