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Seating in Churches Carving Designs The History of the Origin of the Design Period Known as Early American Colonial Furniture

The Chair and Seating in Churches

Even during the fiercest Civil War the property of the Church was usually respected. Abbots and important Prelates might travel from manor to manor, but the monks remained stationary in monastery and priory. Their occupations required permanent seating arrangements. No human body could stand the strain of continuous services starting at midnight and lasting till sunset, day in and day out for a lifetime, without sitting down at times. Our oldest chairs are all connected with churches.

In the south wall of the sanctuary of many churches there are seats built in the thickness of the wall for the use of the clergy. They are usually arranged step-like to indicate the rank of the priests and are called sedilia, the plural of the Latin " sedile", meaning " a seat". Another kind of chair is often seen in the sanctuary, a chair with X legs which was used by important visiting clergy. This chair really belongs to a third kind of chair which could be taken apart, or would fold up, and so could be transported easily. Chairs of this kind were called " fald-stools", i.e. folding stools.

Next to the sanctuary came the choir. In the unheated, draughty, and sometimes leaky churches, the monks had to be sheltered as much as possible, and so the seats were given backs and canopies and sides. A special kind of seat was required. The monk might sit during sermon, but he had to stand when taking part in. the service. Services were long and numerous, and some­times the monks were old or infirm. The seats were hinged, and when lifted, a large bracket underneath gave support, so that the monk could rest in a semi-standing yet perfectly devout position with his arms on the broad surface of the division between stall and stall, an excellent position for chanting. These bracket seats are called "misereres" or "misericords" from Latin words meaning "to have mercy" or "pity". The carvings on the brackets are an important source of information as to the tracing of the origins of the style known has early american colonial furniture and customs, the clothing and occupations of the times. One may see people at work and play, fighting or hunting, there are strange beasts and strange men, Biblical scenes, and scenes representing the seasons. It is always well worth while to lift these misericords, for they have much to tell. These seats running round the sides of the choir the fixed wall benches of the manor halls, except that each seat is separate ; It is a " stall", just as there are stalls in stables, and in theatres. The carviug of the stalls did not cease with the misericord. The canopies became miracles of craft work that were repeated in the font covers in many churches. • Bands of carving ran around the backs of the stalls, the hand-holds are always worth notice, while the end of the last stall and the front of the first line of stalls gave splendid spaces for carver's work. The end of each line of stalls was often crowned with what is called a "poppy head". The older spelling is "popey head" and is derived from the French word "poupe", meaning a doll, from the fact that the subject chosen was frequently a small human figure, although foliage, strange beasts, angels, and many other subjects were chosen.

In the body of the church the only seating provided at first was an occasional stone bench against the walls for the aged or in­firm. These are still to be seen in some porches. Every one went to church, and the gentry soon separated themselves from the commoners and partitions were erected which screened them from the public view. These partitioned places were raised from off the cold stone floors and were called " pews", from a Latin word meaning an elevated place. They were provided with seats and in some cases became comfortable little rooms. Rent was paid for these box pews and sometimes the whole church was filled with them. Poorer people sat on benches, and the bench-ends were often carved in the same manner as the stall-ends of the choir.

The Chairs in the Home in Tracing the Origins of the Style Known as Early American Colonial Furniture

As a separate, movable piece of furniture, the chair was slow to develop in England. Except for very rare "fald-stools" the forms, stools, benches and chests served the rough life of the times. A man in armour needed something substantial to sit on. Dangerous times made it safer for a man to sit with his back to the wall, unless he had an armed servant to stand and guard his back.

There was greater security and luxury in the trading cities of the Low Countries, in the tracing of the origins of the style known has early american colonial furniture and so chair-making developed there, and the Flanders chair was imported to England at the end of the fourteenth century. This had a solid framed box-like base with solid arms and back. By Henry VIII's time men no longer needed to wear armour, life in the houses of the wealthy became more comfortable, and chairs began to be more common. The lower part of the panelling began to be left out, leaving four independent legs with connecting bottom rails called "stretchers". The stretchers were either right on the floor or but slightly raised above it. The front stretcher was a "foot-rest" used to keep the feet off the cold, draughty stone floor. The front legs were "turned" or "thrown" by the wood­turner, and, so soon as the stretchers were raised a short distance from the floor, the end of the legs began to be shaped as feet. The backs were still solid from the seat upward.

Plate XXI
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