Irish furniture, from claw feet to chrome

Last week, this page advised readers to visit the National Gallery during the present quiet time in the auction calendar in order to see work by many of the artists who are likely to feature during the spring sales.

The same advice might also be given in relation to Irish furniture, excellent examples of which are on show in the National Museum's Collins Barracks premises. The period furniture gallery here carries a cross-section of Irish pieces from the late 17th to the early 20th centuries, covering all the main periods and stylistic trends during these years. It is particularly interesting and informative to see work from different times brought together since the changes in taste, sometimes quite startling, are all the more apparent.

The earliest items, for example, date to the years immediately after the conclusion of the Williamite wars and include a cradle dating from circa 1700. The most striking features of such furniture is both the wood from which it has been made - almost invariably oak - and the relative coarseness of manufacture and decoration. It is astonishing that within just a few decades so much development could occur so that the museum's collection features a chair sophisticated in design and construction, made in Kilkenny in 1740.

In walnut veneer with floral and foliage marquetry panels, this item shows some of what would quickly become characteristic features of Irish furniture: a love of decoration and front cabriole legs terminating in animal claw feet. Certainly, both of these would very quickly become the norm, as is shown by a silver table and a card table, each dating from around 1760 and showing the same elements. By this date, mahogany was the preferred wood, used in generous abundance on an Irish architect's table of circa 1750, its interior opening to reveal a wealth of storage spaces and its front bearing an elaborately carved apron centred on a shell motif above, once more, the typical animal claw feet.

Such a style of furniture fell out of favour very quickly in Ireland during the last quarter of the 18th century when the neo-classicism espoused by Robert Adam and his followers came into favour and mahogany was replaced by satinwood as the preferred wood.

On display at the National Museum are two side tables which demonstrate the new style's vogue. Both made in Dublin, delicate in form and dating from around 1780, one is in painted satinwood, the other features a variety of woods used for inlay. Remarkably, in the post-Union, prefamine Ireland of the first decades of the 19th century, heavier mahogany furniture once more revived in popularity. A museum shows a mahogany plate bucket made by the well-known Dublin firm of Williams & Gibton around 1835 as well as a somewhat earlier Irish piece in mahogany: a combined plate bucket and chamber pot holder. The exhibition then demonstrates the next shift in taste with the new interest in Irish heritage, expressed in furniture through the creation of elaborately-inlaid Killarney work such as a hall stand of circa 1880 carrying the remark "Let Erin remember the days of old ere her faithless sons betrayed her" and a densely carved yew wood chair by John Jones of Dublin featuring arms ending in the heads of Irish wolfhounds and a harp on the top of the back. A selection of Adam-style neo-classical pieces made by James Hicks in the late 19th/early 20th century can also be seen.

The last items of historical interest in the show are those made around 1930 by architect/ designer Raymond McGrath such as a chrome and leather chair and a table in veneered wood and copper.

An adjacent exhibition on contemporary furniture design and manufacture, organised in conjunction with the Furniture College, Letterfrack, Co Galway will also be of interest, not least because it shows how work is made.