Commode painted oak, walnut or fruitwoods, with carved decoration, typical of French provincial furniture. In the English-speaking world, "commode" passed into cabinet-makers' parlance in London by the mid-eighteenth century to describe chests of drawers with gracefully curved fronts, and sometimes with shaped sides as well, perceived as being in the "French" taste. Thomas Chippendale employed the term "French Commode Tables" to describe designs in "The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Director" (1753), and Ince and Mayhew illustrated a "Commode Chest of drawers", plate xliii, in their "Universal System of Household Furniture", 1759–62. John Gloag notes that "Commode" expanded to describe any piece of
Flax and Wool Cabinet Mordaunt Crook in the 2012 reissue of his book "William Burges and the High Victorian Dream" as the simplest of the five pieces that Yatman commissioned from Burges between 1855 and 1859, and that its design is "nothing if not plain-spoken" with "quaintly Arcadian" symbolism. Cook speculates that the colouring on the cabinet might have been decorated with gold. Flax and Wool Cabinet The Flax and Wool Cabinet or the Flax and Wool Wardrobe is a large piece of painted furniture designed by the English architect and designer William Burges. It may have been the first large piece of painted