Hogarth Chair

The name sometimes applied to the hoop-back, hollowed-crested, pierced splat chair of the Decorated Queen Anne period, having rather straightened cabriole legs with a heavy knee.

Holly (Ilex Aquifolium)

A hard white wood extensively used in all periods of English furniture for inlays, marquetry, stringing and banding.

Honeysuckle

A climbing and flowering plant which in conventionalized form was much used by the Greeks for decorative purposes, and is known as the Anthemion. It was frequently used on Renaissance furniture, and Hepplewhite employed it as a design for a chair-back. A characteristic ' swag ' of the Adam period consisted of repeated honeysuckles.

Hood

A term used to describe the arched top of a piece of furniture. Other terms are "rounded," "semicircular," "curved," and "domed" tops. The name also given to the case enclosing the dial and works of a long-case clock.

Hoof-Foot

Animals' hoofs, solid or cloven, were used as designs for the feet on furniture for many centuries before the Christian era. The hoof-foot was introduced into England from France at the end of the seventeenth century.

Hoop-Back Chair

A chair-back, the uprights and top rail of which form a continuous or slightly broken curve from one back leg to the other. They appeared in the Queen Anne period, and again in a prominent manner in the Hepplewhite period.

Thomas Hope (C. 1770-1831)

Thomas Hope is best known in literature as the author of the once famous novel, "Anastasius." He wrote also upon architecture, and his "Household Furniture and Interior Decorations " (1807) had some influence in moderating the extravagances of the pseudo-classical style in vogue at that time. This book, which contains a number of his own designs, was one of the earliest works on furniture written from a purely artistic standpoint. Thomas Hope was the father of the Rt. Hon. A. J. B. Beresford-Hope, founder of the Saturday Review.

Horse Dressing Glass

See Cheval Glass.

Horse-Hair

The furniture covering called by this name is woven from the tail and mane hairs of the animal. As a covering it was used by Hepplewhite, and early in the nineteenth century it came into extensive use, and so continued throughout a large part of the Victorian period. It had been previously used as a stuffing for chairs, squabs, etc., but the date of the first manufacture of horse-hair cloth is in doubt.

Horseshoe Table

A table, popular in the latter part of the eighteenth century, roughly in the shape of a horseshoe. The guests were thus enabled to be more closely companionable than when seated at an oblong table. The width of the table was commonly about thirty inches.

Husk Or Bell Flower Ornament

A conventionalized form of the bell-shaped flower or catkin, Garrya eliptica, often used as a carved design on furniture in the form of a chain or pendant.

Hutch

From the French word huche, a trough, bin, chest. Originally a chest, it became in Gothic times a cupboard with doors in front, and probably afterwards the court cupboard. Sometimes it contained two tiers of cupboards, when it was called a double hutch.