Stepping into the 18th Century Dining Room

The eighteenth-century dining room was a nexus of sociability. Whereas historically, the greatest amount of money had been lavished on ceremonial rooms like the state bedchamber, the dining room, as an increasingly important space of entertainment, began to surpass these more formal rooms in value. The eighteenth century, on the whole, was a distinctly social period. Polite society could pass their time in newly built assembly rooms or pleasure gardens, promenading in the hopes of being seen, or taking part in elaborate entertainments like masquerades and ridottos. As the public sphere opened up, so too did domestic architecture. The fashionable set increasingly used their homes as venues for entertainment. 

Grandly situated along the riverfront of the Thames, the ground floor and connected terrace of Montagu House boasted extensive vistas. Upon entering the dining room, from either the central hall or the drawing room, it would have been difficult to miss these captivating views framed through two sizeable sash windows. An architectural elevation of Montagu House from 1828 includes the position of the “floor line,” and it is clear that the windows of the ground floor were large in scale, reaching almost to the floor. With such uninterrupted views, a visitor drawn to the window may have observed the ships and hurried activity along the Thames, including a Chinese junk, or sailboat, which the Duke had built. 

Adorning the terrace outside of the dining room was another of Duke John’s creations: a Chinese pavilion which is today housed at Boughton. Duke John was not alone in his fascination with China. As East India Company trade with Asia surged during the seventeenth century, the imports brought back – porcelain, wallpaper, lacquered furniture, and textiles – captivated the British imagination. Chinoiserie, an aesthetic which combines East Asian motifs and styles with European-market tastes, was the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century result.

As sunlight spilled into the dining room from the terrace and Thames, the rays would have been picked up and diffused by the copious amount of gilding in the room. Inset into wall panels were six gilded plasterwork trophies designed by plasterer Thomas Clark. Although they were incorporated into the surface decoration of the walls, the trophies are listed in a 1746 inventory of Montagu House, underscoring their importance in the room’s overall decorative scheme. Duke John was equally attentive to the sumptuous gilded detailing in his home. In a letter to his chaplain, he earnestly requested assistance hiring new maids as his current staff “spoil all my carving and gilding” during their work. 

Intermixed with the gleaming trophy panels were nine paintings, a pier mirror (which hangs on the wall, or pier, between windows), and a sculptural marble chimneypiece complete with a painted mirror. The walls of the room perhaps were painted white to contrast with the gilded details; this colour combination was a popular one. Lighter shades of paint including creams, whites, and stone colours, were mainstays in mid-eighteenth-century taste, in contrast to the darker colour palette of the seventeenth century. 

The nine paintings in this room, all by Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (1634-1699) and Jacques Rousseau (1630-1693), were collected by Ralph Montagu for the earlier Montagu House in Bloomsbury. By displaying these works in his dining room, Duke John not only links himself with his father, but also, he puts his father’s taste and patronage on display. The first Duke did not simply collect works by these artists. Rather, he was closely connected with each of them. Montagu House Bloomsbury boasted over fifty flower paintings by Jean Baptise Monnoyer, while Jacques Rousseau was employed by the Duke to add painted features throughout the house, including an architectural trompe-l’oeil for the main staircase. Outside of their Montagu commissions, both artists were employed by Louis XIV and later found work under William and Mary. With their royal connections, both French and British, showcasing the work of these artists in his new dining room allowed Duke John to highlight his family’s own longstanding artistic and social connections.

Eight of the nine paintings from Duke John’s dining room survive in the Buccleuch collection today. The remaining painting, an oval landscape by Rousseau, was sold at auction in the mid-20th century. It would have hung on the east wall between the windows, in conjunction with a pier mirror. [See the following images of the paintings transposed onto the dining room plan and elevation to understand how these artworks were positioned in this room.] Although it is difficult to gather their scale from such sketches, the paintings in the dining room consist of varying dimensions. The five landscape compositions, however, are all over six feet tall, foregrounding the grandiosity of the room. The room’s dimensions approximately measured twenty feet by twenty-eight feet.

Frames for these paintings were designed by cabinetmaker Benjamin Goodison, who appears regularly in the steward’s records of Montagu House as early as 1737. Around the same time, his name emerges in the accounts of the Royal Wardrobe as he undertook commissions for nobility and royals alike. Goodison’s work in the dining room extended beyond the frames as he was employed by the Duke to design some of its furniture, including the pier mirror in “a Carv’d Gilt Frame.” Goodison’s gilded frames for the room are elaborate: shells and Vitruvian scroll motifs protrude from the top of the frames while festoons of flowers hang delicately from the bottom surface. Such motifs, particularly the Vitruvian scroll, were favourites of William Kent, the foremost designer of the first half of the eighteenth century whose work greatly influenced the interior decoration of Montagu House. Duke John’s library included two books by Kent of designs by Inigo Jones, further highlighting his love of Palladian style. 

Historically, the hearth defined the center of the home, so it is no surprise then that the chimneypiece, surrounding the hearth, took on symbolic importance. Whether a visitor entered the dining room from the hall or the dressing room, they would be directly confronted with the central marble chimneypiece and its gilded overmantle mirror on the north wall. The mirror, like the paintings in the room, hearken back to the first Duke, as this piece was produced for his Gilt Closet in the Bloomsbury house. With its painted “Garland of Flowers,” purportedly by Charles de la Fosse and Jean Baptise Monnoyer, its decoration links seamlessly with the three still-life paintings in the dining room. Architect Isaac Ware, in his highly influential 1756 treatise, A Complete Body of Architecture, remarks that “no article in a well-finished room is so essential” as the chimneypiece. As he continues, “The eye is immediately cast upon it on entering, and the place of sitting down is naturally near it.” Not only is visual attention centered around the chimneypiece, but also, activity radiates from it. 

Along with evidence from the architectural plans and elevations, the 1746 inventory of Montagu House provides the most comprehensive overview of the furnishings and appearance of this room. A dining table – perhaps the most obvious feature of a dining room – is not listed in the room’s inventory. However, it was not uncommon in the early and mid-eighteenth century to remove the dining table when a room was not in use. Some houses even boasted multiple moveable or folding tables for the dining room. Drop-leaf tables remained popular, as their slim form, when folded, allowed for easy storage. It was not until the last decades of the eighteenth century that the large, central dining room table became a customary and permanent fixture in the room. 

The table (or tables) employed in this dining room likely was constructed of mahogany. By 1730 the imported mahogany with its dark sheen became the wood of choice for fashionable furniture. In its preeminence, mahogany superseded walnut in popularity, although walnut furniture continued to be used, including in the Montagu House dining room. Accompanying the dining table, according to the inventory, was a set of sixteen “Wallnut Tree Chairs Covered with red Leather on Castors,” two of which were armchairs. Their material construction may reveal that these were older chairs being repurposed for this room. Until the end of the eighteenth century, it was typical to place furniture, particularly chairs, against the walls of a room until they were in use. With the added castors (i.e. wheels), this set of chairs easily could be rolled from the edges of the room to the center, just as the table was brought in for gatherings and meals.

In trying to envision these chairs, we know only of their materials: walnut and red leather coverings. Yet Charles Philips’ portrait of the Duke may provide a suitable representative for the type of chair used in his dining room. In a relaxed posture, Duke John drapes one arm atop a red leather chair and rests his other upon a giltwood side table, (of which we know there was one in the dining room as the inventory includes “an Egyptian marble Table on a Carv’d gilt Frame.”) As a backdrop, swaths of thick red curtains hang behind the Duke, not unlike the red damask window treatments which hung in the actual dining room. Perhaps these elements are props for such a portrait, but with little visual evidence to draw from, this painting can still inform our understanding of the types of furniture the Duke surrounded himself with – whether in the built environment or in a painted one. 

The only tables indicated in the room inventory are the Egyptian marble table and “a White Marble Table with a black Border on Mahogany frame on 6 Castors.” With castors, this table could be moved, but with their weighty marble tops, both of these pieces likely were better suited as permanent fixtures. Situated in a dining room, it is possible that one – or both – of these side tables were used for serving. Pier tables (situated in the space between windows) were also a common feature of the eighteenth-century interior. The accompanying image is of a marble and gilt side table carved by Jean Pelletier, who supplied furniture for the Bloomsbury Montagu House. As Duke John displayed art his father collected in this dining room, it is not implausible that he drew from his father’s furniture collection, too, to guide the style of his room.

More portable and lightweight than these pieces was the tea table included in the dining room inventory. Particularly for eighteenth-century women, the tea table was an important sphere of sociability as it was typically the hostess who brewed and served tea to her guests. After dinner the women would remove to the drawing room while the men lingered in the dining room, later rejoining the ladies for tea. In the only identified representation of the interior of Montagu House Whitehall, William Hogarth depicts a lively family gathering. At the center of the scene is a tea table adorned with a cloth, silver tray, and a delicate blue and white porcelain tea set. Even an earlier depiction of the Bloomsbury Montagu House, by Marcellus Laroon, makes reference to the social ritual of tea drinking. The room is crowded with guests, but in the center, once again, is the tea table where everyone is diligently served. 

Accompanying the tea table in Duke John’s dining room was a set of white porcelain including a tea pot, sugar dish, slop basin, and six cups and saucers. While items of silver are absent from the room inventory, a separate plate list from Montagu House catalogues the items which may have been used in this room. Working in tandem with the porcelain tea set were “A Silver Tea-pot,” “ One Coffee pot,” “One Chocolate pot and Mill,” “A Milk-pot,” and “Two Teawater Kettles” with “Two Lamps…belonging to them.” 

Tea was not the only caffeinated beverage imbibed by these eighteenth-century Britons. Although coffee and chocolate were both superseded by the popularity of tea, they remained customary alternatives. The preparation of any of these costly beverages, with their required accoutrements, was a type of social ritual that demanded attention. In his 1712 poem The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope mock-heroically treats the preparation of coffee, from the grinding of the beans (the “Berries”) to its pouring into porcelain cups (“China’s Earth”). As he describes, “The Berries crackle, and the Mill turns round. / On shining Altars of Japan they raise / The silver Lamp; the fiery Spirits blaze. / From silver Spouts the grateful Liquors glide, / And China’s Earth receives the smoking Tyde.” 

Echoing the rich colour of the leather on the dining chairs were the red damask curtains which lined the two windows. Eighteenth-century curtains took several forms. Most popular, however, were draw curtains, which were pulled horizontally, and festoon curtains, which moved vertically. An 1813 voucher for the household includes a bill for the repair of festoon curtains in this room. Festoons functioned best in rooms with lofty ceilings where they could be placed high on the wall. In such a room, when the festoons were pulled up, their drapery would not obscure the window glass or architrave. And in the Montagu House dining room, with its grand view of the Thames and Duke John’s pagoda, it would have been important to leave the space around the window unimpeded. 

Smaller items which may have lingered on the edges of the room include a “Fire Skreen of blue flowered velvet and a Gilt Frame [with] needle work on the other side” along with a “Two Leaf’d India Skreen.” Folding screens were used to divide space, block heat from the fireplace, or deflect cold draughts. Fire screens similarly could divert heat, but they also could cover the empty space of the hearth when a fire was not burning. Both objects were rooted in practicality, but as these examples from the Buccleuch collection demonstrate, they also could be lavishly ornamented with gilded, embroidered, and painted details. 

The inventory includes several utilitarian items which relate primarily to the functioning of the room rather than its ornamentation. We find the accoutrements of the fireplace, including a “Brass fire Shovel” a “Brass pair of Tongs” an “Iron Back” (which would cover the back of a hearth), and a “Poker Ornamented with Brass.” There are also “3 Brass Locks on 3 Doors” along with a “Mahogany Stick with a hook to pull Spring Curtains.”