Fire Of London

This fire, the greatest European city fire on record, began on September 2, 1666, and spread devastation over 436 acres. It destroyed 89 churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, 13,200 houses, and much of the fine furniture that had been imported or made in this country during Tudor or Jacobean times. On the other hand, it gave great impetus to furniture-making for the next few years, an impetus which was increased by the extravagance of the Court, the growing wealth of the citizens, and the irruption after 1685 of many thousands of skilled French refugee craftsmen - all leading to the formation, early in the eighteenth century, of what may be called the English School of Furniture.

Fireplace

Chimneys and fireplaces were in use in Norman times, but they did not become usual in the houses of the middle classes until the early Tudor period.

Fire Screen

See Screen.

Flap Strapping

See Strapwork.

Flap Table

A table, which can be traced back certainly to the first half of the seventeenth century, with a slab, top, or mensa in two, or more usually, three pieces. The centre piece is rigid; the sides form flaps, which can be let down by folding back the movable legs level with the immovable part of the slab.

Flemish Chair

A high-backed chair, with or without arms, containing characteristic Flemish features which became a vogue in England towards the end of the seventeenth century. The splat was in the form of a panel of cane, upholstery, laths or balusters surmounted by an elaborate carved cresting. The legs were of the incipient cabriole type, straight at the back with bold curves in front supported by scroll feet, and the stretcher was in the form of com pound curves - two concave curves joined together by a convex one in the centre. These features probably reached Flanders from Italy by way of France. Examples of a very ornate Italian chair and a settee, including these features, made for Charles I., are at Holyrood Palace.

Flemish Scroll Or Curve

Curved bands of various shapes, mostly of the C and S shapes, carved as ornaments on furniture of Flemish origin, first imported into England in Carolean times.

Floreated - Carved or decorated with floral ornament.

Flower-Stand

All upright stand, of varying form and in a variety of materials, for holding a large pot of flowers. Some of Adam's flower-stands, with sloping legs terminating in goats' feet and adorned with rams' heads and other characteristic ornament, were exceedingly graceful.

Flutings

The vertical channels or grooves in a column separated by a sharp edge or arris, at other times by a fillet. When the lower portion of the channel is provided with a convex moulding it is said to be cabled. When a series of short flutes ending top and bottom hemispherically are used side by side as on a frieze, they are called stopped flutings.

Folding Furniture

A term referring to a class of furniture much favoured in the Shearer, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton periods when a room was often used both for a bedroom and a sitting-room. For example, washstands and dressing-tables had flaps or folding tops converting them when closed into small tables, and the bedstead was made to fold up into a cupboard, pseudo-bookcase, bureau, etc. Bedsteads of this kind are sometimes known as library press-bedsteads.