Author: Michael Chappell

While Michael recovers, here’s a reprise of a prior blog entry.

My last blog entry brought a spate of e-mails- admittedly a smallish spate, as I have only a handful of dedicated readers. The e-discussion centered on how I had brushed aside dining tables, focusing on sideboards as the primary dining room debacle. I readily agree with my readers who point out that dining tables can be more than a little problematic. As well, they are such a bane that a number of fine quality dealers rarely even offer them.

I say a bane for a number of reasons. First, while a sideboard was of some roughly typical dimensions determined by the purposes a sideboard served, a period dining table can be of widely varying dimensions, explained by considering their original context. As with so much multi-use 18th century furniture, an early dining table may not have been used exclusively for that purpose. The earliest dining table we’ve ever handled is presently in our inventory and is shown here fully extended. As such, it can handily seat 20 people. In its incarnation illustrated, it is composed of two demilune ends, two drop leaf center sections, and two leaves. With a little understanding of 18th century usage and room arrangement, one would surmise that the table was seldom fully assembled in its early life, and, when not in use, its components might have been deployed as follows- one of the drop leaf sections was in use for dining, accommodating 8 people around all four sides, with the other drop leaf section, with one leaf dropped, functioning as a side-serving table. The two demilune ends were probably used as pier or console tables, possibly on either side of a chimney breast, possibly in the dining room but just as possibly in some other room. The two leaves? Probably stored- and stored flat, apparently, as they haven’t warped in 250 years.

Regency period tables- those of the splayed legs that seem to inform the image most of us have of a ‘proper’ dining table- are then often times huge pieces of furniture, purpose-built for the now-standard purpose-built dining rooms that accommodated them. While of course length is an issue, the problem we typically encounter most often is depth. Our recent experience tells us that the optimal depth for even a grand modern house is something in the neighbourhood of 40” to 48”. Long and narrow is now what’s wanted to accommodate formal dining. However, formal dining in the Regency heyday of the dining table could not be accomplished with anything so shallow. Part of the dining experience was pageantry on a scale that none of us has ever experienced, unless you regularly attend state dinners at Windsor Castle. 10 courses or more would not be unusual, with a separate beverage for each course. Each place would have been laid with flatware, cutlery and drinking glasses to accommodate the whole of the meal- and a goodly number of the plates, too- all part of the panoply of dining. Consequently, the space required for this massive number of accoutrements was huge, extending an arm’s length from the outside edge toward the centre of the table. A 48” depth would be barely adequate- 60” is more like it.

Even with infrequent use, dining tables have traditionally had hard use. This, then, brings us to the second big issue surrounding period dining tables- their condition. Table tops were most at risk, with wine stains a particular problem. The alcohol in the wine has the unfortunate effect of dissolving the shellac of the table top, allowing the wine access to and absorption by the raw wood. A table cloth will have made matters worse, soaking up wine and keeping it in contact with the table top longer than if the wine were spilled and then mopped up from a bare table. The tannins and oxidation of the sugars in the wine will always leave a dark stain. Although modern restoration using chemical methods can generally ameliorate stains, the more typical method has been a mechanical one- strip off the old finish and then aggressively sand the entire table top to down below the level of the stains. Tragically, this effects to remove all the patination- but not always the stains!-  and a good bit of the figuring in the wood. Adding insult to significant injury is that this ‘restoration’ is frequently followed by the application of impermeable plastic finishes to ‘protect’ the top from future stains. Of all the items that are the victims of botched restoration, I think, as a class, dining tables rank fairly highly amongst the ranks of most frequently botched.

Did I mention, as well, that dining tables take up a lot of a dealer’s floor space? They do, of course, monopolizing space that could accommodate a number of other, smaller items.  So, a costly item, hard to find in good condition, with dimensions that are unlikely to match what’s required by the client, and hard to display. A bane. But, of course, the offset is the magnificence of the best tables: nothing that I can think of offers the expanse of fine quality matched timbers- and this is what makes them sought after, and makes a dealer swallow hard, take the acquisition plunge, and put them on display.

In the midst of moving my parents from their house on the farm to a new home in town a few years ago, I had cause to ask my mother why she and my father had accumulated so much stuff. Her reply was the typical one, to the extent that one doesn’t discard what one might, at some indeterminate future date, find useful. Well, indeed. Moreover, where would I be in my current endeavor if everyone threw out every item of personal property every few years? 18^th century furniture pieces would be even fewer on the ground than they are.

The idea of this though, keeping what one might need, puts me in mind of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. We all saw the final day’s activities, including the Queen drawn from Buckingham Palace in the 1902 state landau, her dress, taking her cue from that of her grandmother Queen Mary, in a style of an earlier day. Despite the vicissitudes of her royal children, made the commonest of common knowledge by an ever hungrier media, Queen Elizabeth is beloved, making a virtue of preserving the best from the past as head of state. Has there ever been a time in her 60 year reign that republicanism waxed strongly? If it has, it has only been considered as a possibility once the present monarch has become the late one.

While the queen’s presence has been an enduring one, the gala hoopla of the jubilee certainly functions valuably to underscore that fact, and provide the opportunity to consider within the context of an extra special event how important and comforting tradition can be. With Queen Elizabeth’s reign basically business as usual, without the special occasion of the Jubilee, one would become naturally indifferent.

And the length of her reign has resulted in celebrations at just the right intervals. Unfortunately, Americans have had nothing similar since the Bicentennial of 1976. Heavenly days! 36 too many years ago. Don’t tell anyone, but for the 4^th of July that year, we threw fireworks off the top floor of my condo building at 2611 Ala Wai Boulevard in Honolulu.

Amidst the acrimony that is now sadly the central feature of partisan politics in this country, an acrimony that has degenerated into factional hate mongering, one wonders whether we wouldn’t be well served as a nation, as the British have, from a jubilee that reminds all of us of our endurance as a nation and commonality as a people. When things were at a low ebb, with recovery from the war creeping forward with glacial slowness, London was the site of a Festival of Britain that engaged and consequently invigorated the entire nation. What more opportune time than now for a festival of America. Now there’s a thought.

The risk run when one speaks of preservation is always of marking oneself out as exclusionary,  or put another way, ‘I’ve got mine and can afford to keep it for my sole enjoyment.’ I’ll let you draw the ‘…and to hell with the rest of you’ implication. The other risk, of course, is to be considered an anachronist and consequently little regarded. As my father says from time to time, ‘If all of us had foresight the way we have hindsight, we’d all be ahead by a damn sight.’ Descriptively put, and highly accurate. No, we can’t turn back the clock but in what matters is it not worthwhile to review and learn from what the fullness of time might have shown up as errors in judgment?

The building of the Ala Wai Canal in the 1920’s, indeed all the alteration of the natural environment in Hawaii and elsewhere that rocketed forward beginning in the early years of the last century were byproducts of what seemed the eternal watchword for all that was good in society- progress. In an effort to bring about what was thought the best for the most, what was existing, in both the natural and built environments, was thought if not actually bad, then at least suspect. The natural environment was exploited for what it was then considered- a malleable raw material that, with man’s active involvement, could always be improved. Although the confidence in man’s abilities reflects the tenor of those recent times, even at this near term vantage point we can agree that, to a large extent, that confidence was actually hubris.

What appeared as gradual improvement then became a juggernaut that, surprisingly, still proceeds apace.  Mindsets changed to those more reflective that seek to slow, eliminate, or even reverse earlier errors in environmental judgment even now seldom win out over the mindset so fervently embraced in the last century. I was surprised, for example, when watching a broadcast of the Kamehameha School’s Song Contest to hear one of the young participants explain his future goal to become the Donald Trump of Hawaii. How surprising it was to hear, given the level of immersion in traditional Hawaiian culture of all Kam School students- one would presume the predominant movement, to the exclusion of all others, would be to stop, if not reverse, the predations wrought by real estate developers. I would argue that the world can ill afford one Donald Trump. Astonishing that anyone in Hawaii would propose there might be room for two.

A few years ago, the Honolulu Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of the work of the late Honolulu architect Vladimir Ossipoff. I believe the excellent book and catalog prepared by curator Dean Sakamoto is still in print and it is worth a read. What one takes away from it is the effort Ossipoff made, certainly at the height of his career, to use contemporary materials and link them sympathetically with the natural environment to yield what might be termed built organicism. Something that, while manmade for man’s use and while fully functional, nevertheless articulates properly- by which I mean as an adjunct not as an intrusion- with its setting. One seldom sees high rise buildings that accomplish this- unless they’re mid rise Ossipoff designs.

We’ve just returned from a few days in Hawaii. We consider Oahu our second home and where, in the fullness of time, we intend to make our primary residence. My first trip to Hawaii in May, 1976, was for a job in the banking business. Had not a greater power been guiding my destiny, I wouldn’t have traveled there, but in the intervening 36 years I’ve taken every opportunity to express my thanks for this fortunate event.

Over the course of those years, there have clearly been changes the most profound of which seem singularly contradictory. The growth in real estate development- and a visit to the forest of high rises that is Honolulu is testimony to this- is contrasted with the marked growth and appreciation of endemic, traditional Hawaiian culture, and its concomitant and often expressed respect for the land. Tragically, Hawaii’s strategic geographic position made it, since its discovery, a coveted possession by governments in both Europe and America. That it was a crossroads, as well as grappling for political hegemony, made an inordinate number of people aware of its beauty and it inexorably became the nexus of global mass tourism.

In spite of all this, its natural charm has survived pretty well, as well as the spirit of aloha maintained by its resident population. This last week, we enjoyed a morning’s hike to Manoa Falls, astonishing in its verdant beauty, and all the more so given its position in the Koolaus so close to the teeming population of Honolulu. Once there, we found the pool at the base of the fall predominated by a gentleman of a certain age and his blowsy girlfriend, who had stripped off and were intent on taking photos of one another. To say that this was inconstant with the natural setting is an understatement. Let’s say that this jarring mise en scene scared the birds away. While Keith and I stood there palely loitering, averting our eyes and hoping to outwait the lady and gentleman, we were joined by another couple who had hiked up with their two mid-teen daughters. The second gentleman, while not absolutely appalled, was nevertheless irritated by the way two others exhibited such an uncomprehendingly dominating presence, and he shouted out to them ‘How long are you going to be?’ To which the stripped off man replied ‘Come on in- there’s plenty of room.’

Really? Thank goodness not all of us think the natural world is a mere backdrop automatically trumped when graced by our presence. I suppose that, once upon a time not so very long ago, the preponderance of the natural world and an abundance that seemed inexhaustible made our exploitation of it seem incidental, when it was considered at all. Still and all, in Hawaii with both its limited land area and strongly rooted tradition of respect for the natural world makes its exploitation seem at best schizy and it has wrought some bizarre effects.

This may come as a surprise to my gentle readers who have visited there, but that intense enclave of the built environment that Waikiki has become was historically one of the most hallowed places anywhere, the precinct of kings and shrines that in their number would rival the Acropolis. My beloved Royal Hawaiian Hotel takes its name from the royal cocoanut grove, vestiges of which remain in the hotel grounds, enjoyed by the Hawaiian ali’i from the earliest days. The grove and its precinct were named Helumoa. Favored with ample fresh water naturally drained from the Manoa and Palolo valleys a few miles inland, Waikiki, and the area of Helumoa specifically was replete with abundant natural beauty and food stocks from taro patches and fish ponds. Nothing of this remains, with the area drained with the construction of the Ala Wai Canal in the 1920’s, and the spoils from the canal used as fill aiding a construction boom in Waikiki that has yet to abate.  Sacred sites known as heiau were dismantled. One of the most revered was only recently rediscovered when its topside development as a bowling alley was demolished, revealing the sacred alter of Kapaemahu underneath, incorporated into the building’s foundation.