Ambry
A Late 15th Century English Ambry
By Duke Galmr Ingolfsson
Summary:
The medieval ambry (or aumbry) was an early type of cabinet. Originally the term applied to a small niche in the wall of a church for storing sacraments, that later evolved into a small ornate hanging cabinet.
By the late 15th Century, this term applied to a cabinet used to store food and dry goods in the kitchen area. This form was also known as a dole cupboard, in that use, it was usually placed outdoors where servants and the needy could get food (as in “being on the dole”).
In the 16th Century, this form got smaller and was either hung on the wall or on legs in the bedroom area and called a livery cupboard. That was used to hold food and drink to be consumed overnight.
This project addresses the late 15th Century version as depicted above where it was used for food storage in or near the kitchen.
Sources:
The lead photo is an ambry dated to around 1490 that was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002 and was the model for this project. Obviously, without either access to the piece or several more photos, it would be impossible to make an accurate reproduction. I am going to make my best guess based on my knowledge of period techniques, the overall measurements, and this photo.
I consulted various sources to get a good idea of the common features, probable construction techniques, forms of decorative carving, etc. A list of references and a gallery of representative samples appear at the end of this article.
Characteristics of the Ambry:
The defining characteristics of the food storage ambry are a boxy shape, roughly 3 to 4 (width to height) proportions with a single or stacked central door, and the pierced gothic tracery that served for ventilation. The interior has 3 or 4 shelves and a simple nailed-on back (in most cases).
Being a piece of utilitarian furniture, the construction techniques that were employed are fairly basic. The surviving examples are fashioned in one of three ways:
- Boarded – Boards butted and nailed together
- Frame and Panel – Similar to the construction of chests
- Clamped (or Bound) – Iron-bound boarded cabinet after the style of medieval iron-bound chests
Most of the examples I was able to find are of the boarded type and that is what is used in this project. See Appendix A for photos of other surviving ambries.
Fashioned as a squat cabinet, they are about 3’-4’ wide and 3’- 5’ tall, and 12”- 18” deep. A 15th Century ambry would not confuse an early 20th Century cook who would know it as a pie safe.
Materials:
Almost all surviving examples are oak. Were they all oak? Probably not. However, oak was the fashionable choice for furniture into the 17th Century and its insect and rot resistance make it a preferable choice given England’s climate and the use to which they were put.
The boards were nailed and at this point in time, they would use blacksmith-forged wrought nails. Also, there were hinges for the door, most of them are a simple H shaped style. Some ambries have a lock, again, blacksmith made. Others had a simple latch or hasp.
Tools:
Construction of these cabinets require a very modest selection of tools:
- A saw (to dimension the lumber)
- Bench planes (to smooth and dimension the boards)
- A chisel (to chop out the mortises)
- A bitstock (hand drill; to make the pilot holes)
- A hammer (for the nails)
- Files and/or chisels for the pierce work
- Measuring and marking tools
Considerations for this construction:
Since I am not intending to produce a reproduction as such, I am willing to make some compromises in the selection of materials and processes. They are:
- The use of walnut instead of riven or quarter-sawn oak.
- The use of Cut nails instead of hand-forged wrought nails
- Opting for a latch instead of a hand forged lock
Lacking a trust fund, I cannot afford English brown oak. It is available in small quantities from specialty wood supplies in the US, but at prices that are eye-watering, in the range of $30-$40 bd ft. The traditional choice for replicating period English furniture in America is white oak. It is much paler than English oak, but otherwise extremely similar, so a little stain gets you as close as you will get without a few hundred years of grime and soot.
I choose Black Walnut for this project since I had recently acquired a stack of walnut boards and I did not have enough oak (of any type) on hand for something of this size.
Walnut has several virtues: the ambry will be about ⅔ the weight of an oak one, walnut is far easier to carve and it has a very attractive grain pattern that will enhance the visual interest. Even so, I don’t have boards of adequate width (13” – 17”), so I had to glue up narrower boards using hide glue.
I used cut nails for this project. Cut nails were not invented until the end of the 18th Century but they are a reasonable, visually similar, and far less expensive substitute for hand-forged wrought nails. When you can find them, hand-forged nails run $3-$4 each. This project uses almost 100 nails, so @ $20/lb (68 nails), cut nails were within my budget. Another period technique is to use ‘trenails’ (wooden nails made from carefully straight-grained stock). That is an experiment for another day.
The original has forged iron hinges and a lock. I was able to source hand-forged hinges of the correct size (Horton Brasses, $54), but not a lock that looked appropriate. Many other ambries had a simple wooden latch or knob, so I choose to use that for this project.
The hinges are attached with rustic looking screws rather than clenched nails which is the likely method used in these pieces (hard to be sure in most of these photos). Screws were used in furniture starting in the 15th Century but were not very common until the 18th Century (and the invention of efficient tools).
There is no do-over in clench nailing and I feared that the operation would crack the carved walnut panel right on the last step of the project. Not feeling super brave after 30 hours of carving, I opted to use screws. From more than a foot away, you would be hard-pressed to notice the difference even if you were aware screws were not common in furniture until later.
This Project:
This is the first piece of case furniture I have made in some time and I was slightly taken aback at the sheer quantity of wood it required compared to some of my more recent projects. For instance, the folding stools were made from my shop’s scrap pile. All together this project contains 38 board feet of lumber: 28 of walnut and 9.5 of pine. Not counting the wastage (described below) that adds maybe 30% to the total.
- All the walnut and pine boards were milled to thickness and dimensioned with power tools. After that, the remainder of the work was done with hand tools.
- Lacking boards of sufficient width, the first step after milling the stack of boards to uniform thickness is gluing up panels.
There is a bit of an art to doing a good job of making wide boards. You need to work around the defects in the wood (boards from yard trash walnut trees such as I had have many defects): the very white and softer sapwood, drying cracks on the boards, embedded bullets (seriously), etc. Plus, you want to match the grain pattern as best you can, or at least match the color. It’s also good to think ahead to the joinery phase and try to not have glue joints or knots where you need to work.
