Posts

Posts to beds were used in France in the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, but they were not generally used to support testers in England until the sixteenth century.

Pot-Board

The name sometimes applied to the shelf just above the floor underneath a dresser.

Pot-Hook

An S-shaped iron hook used for hanging a kettle or other vessel to a chimney-crane.

Pouch-Table

A small work-table for ladies introduced in the latter part of the eighteenth century, containing various suitable fitments and a pouch of silk underneath to hold the needlework. Some of the more elegant and elaborate examples of the Sheraton school are combined writing- and work-tables.

Premiere Partie

A term used in connection with Boulle (often incorrectly spelt Buhl), marquetry of tortoiseshell and metal, in which the tortoiseshell predominates and forms the groundwork.

Press

A cupboard or armoire in which clothes or other articles were stored. Such articles of furniture were used in Norman times. In the Carolean period they are referred to as press-cupboards and joined cupboards. When books became more general the word "press" was used to describe the case in which they were stored. Thus Pepys, in 1666, when referring to the cases in Magdalene College, Cambridge, which in early Georgian times might have been called bookcases, speaks of them as "new presses for my books." The word "press" is still used to describe bookshelves.

Press Bedstead

See Folding Furniture.

Prie-Dieu Chair

An arm-chair in carved woodwork with a high back and low-hinged seat, covering a receptacle for devotional books. It was a piece of furniture usually found in bedchambers of the fourteenth century and later. In much more modern times the name was transferred to low chairs without arms, with a broad shelf, often upholstered, in place of the top rail.

Prince Of Wales's Feathers

The three ostrich feathers, the badge of the heir apparent, formed a favourite and characteristic device on the chair-backs of George Hepplewhite and of his firm after his death in 1786.

Prong-Box

A name sometimes given to the case made to hold table silver, which furnished the sideboards in the latter part of the eighteenth century. See Knife-Boxes or Urns.

Pull-Down Front

The lid or covering to a secretary or bureau, which when lowered covers the desk or writing surface and fitments. "Cylinder," "roll," and "tambour" fronts are examples of this type, and "drop" or " fall" fronts of the type where the lid already covers the desk, and when pulled down on its hinges and suspended on quadrants or rests, forms the writing surface.

Purdonium

See Coal-Scuttle.

Purple Wood

A Brazilian wood of that hue, used for inlay in the eighteenth century.

Quadrants

Quarter circle bands of brass or other metal, attached to the pull-down front of a secretary, bureau, etc., to support it when lowered to make a writing surface or table.

Quartette Tables

Nests of four small tables of light make and diminishing size enclosed within each other and made to draw out. Sheraton, who may have been the first to devise them, called them "Quartetto tables."