548 - Octagonal table and four plank chairs with mascaron backs, oak, Historicism, probably circa 1890

Octagonal table and four plank chairs with mascaron backs, oak, Historicism, probably circa 1890 Oak, five-piece seating set, Historicism, probably circa 1890. 1) Table, octagonal top of glued boards with moulded edge, below a frieze with a gallery of short vertical spindles, four turned baluster legs, at half height a shaped cut-out undertier, condition commensurate with age, table top broken and rejoined, slightly raised at the break. D. 70 cm, H. 74 cm. 2) Four plank chairs, seat board with chamfered front corners and moulded edge, four turned splayed legs, pierced carved backrest of symmetrical scrollwork and foliage, at the top a mascaron with moustache and hair standing up in points, below a smaller grotesque face with open mouth and likewise upright, strand-like hair, back tenoned through the seat board and wedged, condition commensurate with age, each 93x43x43 cm (HxWxD), seat height 47 cm. The plank chair, also called Stabelle or farmhouse chair, is a seat whose legs and carved back board are set into a solid seat board. The name Stabelle derives from the Latin scabellum, the stool, as does the Italian sgabello, and from the 16th century this chair type replaced the stool as everyday seating in the countryside. The Gründerzeit between 1870 and 1910, as a late phase of Historicism, drew on the forms of the Renaissance and favoured oak as furniture wood; acanthus scrolls, masks, balusters and turned columns are part of the standard decorative repertoire of this Neo-Renaissance. After the grotesque faces on their backs, such chairs are also called Fratzenstühle (grotesque-face chairs). Side tables with an octagonal top on turned columns with an undertier also count among the typical Gründerzeit furniture.