Furniture: Lady Zonneschut loves crimson & cream

Hello my friends,

A while ago I showed you this small winetable and this House of Miniatures candlestand. The first I decorated in cream with crimson details, the second in crimson with details in cream. I really like the effect of the combination of these colours. And I believe it will combine nicely with the green of the walls in the dressingroom. Therefore I want to use it on more furniture pieces for Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom. First I want to tell you a bit about the inspiration that  influence my furniture colour choices. Then I will show you the making of this set.

In the Netherlands in the 17th century unity of colour and fabrics was seen as very fashionable and desirable. To have all upholstery, curtains, bed hangings and wall hangings in the room of the same fabric and colour was deemed the pinnacle  of wealth and good taste. It goes without saying that only one or a few rooms in grand houses had these costly treatments. 

From the second half of the 18th century these rules became much more relaxed. From the rococo/Louis XV onwards a tasteful combination of different but matching colours and fabrics became the fashion. A nice example is the boudoir in the picture below.

In Huis ter Swinnendael there is a mix of styles and colours. In the dressingroom the panneling is sage green and the fabrics used (so far) is a mustard yellow. The usual colour for the furniture would therefore be yellow or green. But, I really like the combination of cream and crimson. And I believe it will combine nicely with the green of the walls. Therefor I want to add more Crimson & Cream pieces to Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom. 

I like to believe that these pieces are favorites of Belle Zonneschut which stood in her appartment in their town house in The Hague. With the 'voluntary' exile of the Zonneschuts to their country estate due to the Batavian Revolution (the Zonneschuts support the house of Orange in excile and therefore stand on the "wrong side" in this revolutionairy period) , Belle could well have her favorite pieces sent over from the town house in The Hague to Huis ter Swinnendael. Resulting in the amalgam of different pieces in her dressingroom. 

To furnish the room I collected a few more House of Miniatures kits. I now have started with assembling them. I started with a Queen Annne fire screen and a candlestand matching the candlestand I have already decorated. This way I turn them into a matching set of three pieces. 

I also bought a Queen Anne side table, a Queen Anne tea table and a Chippendale lowboy. I have been assembling the side table but I was not sure yet if I would add it to the crimson and cream set. The lowboy will not be assembled as the kit is intended. I will chop it up and use the parts to make dressing table in the style of a Mazarin desk. But that is for another post. 

Sanding the cabriole legs of the side tabe round and glueing the pieces together was straight forward enough. To make the holes for the drawer pulls I pushed some dressing pins through the soft wood.

 I wanted to stain the side table in a mahogany colour. But since I accidentally broke a table leg while cleaning the room, It was an ugly repair that would always show when merley stained. That is why I decided to paint the side table in the same colour scheme. So the Crimson & Cream set got a little bit bigger. 

But I will not paint all the furniture intended for Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom in crimson & cream. That would hardly be realistic. Even though it would look good in my opinion. Huis ter Swinnendael may be a wealthy gentleman's home, but it is not a royal palace where money is no objection (just raise the taxes!). So this room, as well as the other rooms will be furnished with pieces in a combination of different styles and finishes. Collected over several generations of Zonneschuts.

But returning to the furniture at hand. I painted the new pieces crimson. Then came the hard part. The decorations in cream. To that end I added a little cadmium yellow to titanium white until I had a soft creamy colour that matches the cream colour on the original candle stand. 

First I retouched the original piece in some places to enhance the decoration. Then I copied that on the second candle stand. Now it was time to decorate the fire screen. The legs and the bottom half of the pole of this fire screen are the same as on the candle stands so I decorated those in the same way.  

I was tempted to add an escutcheon with a family crest onto it, but I decided to leave the central panel open. I did add a shell-like motive in the corners of the screen.

The fire screen and the candle stands have the same construction for the feet and share the same decoration on those. These pieces differ on the top half. not only by their construction and purpose but also the way in which the edges are cut. Where the edge on the candle stands are hollowed out,  the edge on the fire screen are rounded off. Therefore I did not gave it the same edge decoration as on the candle stands.  

The table top at last, got a decoration on the border similar to the fire screen and a simple division into different panels with thin lines in cream. This way all pieces share some of the ornaments used which helps to tie it together into a set. I did not add a decoration into the panels  on the tabletop. It is my intention to place different items onto the table and they would obscure a decoration from view. 

But the table and fire screen did not fit into the set as intended. I realised that the hollow edge on the front of drawer should be similarly decorated as the one on the candlestands. So I made some more cream cololoured paint and added these. I also added a cream line along the outer edge of the table top and the fire screen. please compare the two pictures above.To me they now look much better and more as one set of furniture pieces.

Then all that was needed was to push the handles through the escutcheons and into the holes before bendimg them flat. Now the drawer has handles.

Here you can see the four pieces together. The bright red of the crimson will be subdued and darkened a tiny bit when I varnish the pieces. 

Now the most important pieces for this room are ready. Although I am quite happy with how this set turned out. I have to admit that this is not by best brushwork. Not by far. The lines  almost never run straight where they are supposed to. Oh well. I believe it is not out of place. 

What is next for this room? A chaise longue and a dressingtable will follow soon. They will however not be part of the Crimson & Cream set. 

Have a great day.

Huibrecht 

Little Cunera on an Easter egg hunt...

Hello my friends,

Easter is almost over but I had no time to post this little post sooner than today.  I hope that all of you had a lovely Easter weekend. Wether you celebrate it around eggs and the easter bunny or the ressurection of Christ. 

I have kept you informed about the commission for the portrait of Cunera Olshoorn in threee earlier posts. Diane Meyboom has painted this excuisite miniature version of this young lady who lived 4 centuries ago. I received the portrait last month. Because the fair in Arnhem could not take place because of the last Covid restrictions, I invited Diane over for a lunch to celebrate handing over this little painting. I waited until Easter to show you the final result because she walks in a garden. 

With (quite) some imagination she is not holding a rose but an egg in her hand. She could be looking for hidden Easter eggs in the garden, like I did when I was young. 

And talking of eggs, she found one! 

I treated myself on a new miniature Fabergé egg made by Sun of Nalladris. You may recognise it. It is a miniature version of the Renaissance Egg. The real egg was made for Alexander III of Russia, who presented it to his wife, the Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1894.

The original surprise is lost. However Sun has added a lovely little egg with painted flowers to replace the original surprise. So now, next to the Rose trellis egg from last year I now have a second miniature egg. Perhaps next Easter I (Cunera) will collect another Easter egg from the miniature garden. Who knows!

For now I wish all of you a happy Easter.  Be well and take care. 

Huibrecht

furniture: A colourful table

Hello my friends, 

In october 2021I bought a half finished  House of Miniatures table. Its cabriole legs were already sanded in shape and needed little more done than staining or painting to finish it.

Since I am working on the Stewards office and Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom it was tempting to find a place for it there. But I want to put this table somewhere else so I am not restricted to the colourschemes of those two rooms.

The square corners of each leg were already rounded off through standing. But the tops of these legs were still square. That did not fit well with the quarter round corner pieces attached to the table top. So I sanded the top of the legs to match those.  In the picture above you see a finished leg on the left. The leg on the right shows the pencil mark to which the top must be rounded by standing some more. 

When all four legs were sanded into their new shape, I reglued them to the table. And then coated the whole with a layer of chalk paint. When that had dried I sanded it smooth. This gave me a great surface to paint. 

I first decorated the table top. This is my first try to marble using sponge. Not being able to find a natural sponge locally I used torn off bits of a synthetic sponge. I sponged diluted yellow ochre, raw umber, Alizarine Crimson, and primary red alternatifely with washes of dilluted red and brown. 

The result you can see above. My apologise for the dark foto. In reality it is less subdued than it shows in the picture. I am quite happy with the result, but next time I will strive for a more dramatic marbling. 

Then it was time for the legs and the aprons (in Dutch we call these skirts) of the table. I gave them 2 layers of Hooker's green, mixed with some Titanium white to create a pastel green. 

When that had dried I added some white patches. These patches on the aprons and legs of the table will be the focus for the painted decorations. 

Scrolls and flourishes, now had to be added in Hooker's green. Some mistake were made, but these were hidden behind a layer of Light green or white. When that had dried I tried again.

And this is the finished piece. I wanted to give it a rococo feel. No panel on the aprons or legs has the same decorations on it. I actively tried to stay away from symmetry with these decorations. The result is quite playful, I think. I hope you like it too....

I would hesitate callling it Gustavian or Venetian Rococo. I think it resembles most south German Rococo painted furniture like you can see in some Bavarian museums and palaces. 

Have a great day, 

Huibrecht