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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork, by 
-John Hungerford Pollen
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork
-
-Author: John Hungerford Pollen
-
-Release Date: April 25, 2017 [EBook #54602]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT AND MODERN FURNITURE ***
-
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-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Lesley Halamek and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
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-
-  SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS.
-
-  EDITED BY WILLIAM MASKELL.
-
-  No. 3.--FURNITURE ANCIENT AND MODERN.
-
-
-
-
-_These Handbooks are reprints of the dissertations prefixed to the
-large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the Museum
-at South Kensington; arranged and so far abridged as to bring each
-into a portable shape. The Lords of the Committee of Council on
-Education having determined on the publication of them, the editor
-trusts that they will meet the purpose intended; namely, to be useful,
-not alone for the collections at South Kensington but for other
-collections, by enabling the public at a trifling cost to understand
-something of the history and character of the subjects treated of._
-
-_The authorities referred to in each book are given in the large
-catalogues; where will also be found detailed descriptions of the very
-numerous examples in the South Kensington Museum._
-
-  W. M.
-  _August, 1875._
-
-
-
-
-  ANCIENT AND MODERN
-
-  FURNITURE AND WOODWORK
-
-
-  BY
-
-  JOHN HUNGERFORD POLLEN
-
-
-  WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS
-
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-
-  _Published for the Committee of Council on Education_
-
-  BY
-
-  CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY
-
-
-
-
-LONDON.
-
-DALZIEL BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CAMDEN PRESS, N.W.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-  CHAPTER                                           PAGE
-
-     I  Furniture Ancient and Modern                   1
-    II  Antique: Egypt, Nineveh and Greece             4
-   III  The Romans                                    17
-    IV  Byzantine Art                                 29
-     V  The Middle Ages                               41
-    VI  The Fifteenth Century                         59
-   VII  The Renaissance in Italy                      66
-  VIII  Renaissance in England, Flanders,
-          France, Germany, ans Spain                  78
-    IX  Tudor and Stuart Styles                       85
-     X  Furniture of the Eighteenth Century          103
-    XI  Changes of Taste and Style                   116
-        Appendix: Names of the Designers of
-          Woodwork and Makers of Furniture           133
-        Index                                        140
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF WOODCUTS.
-
-
-                                                    PAGE
-
-  Egyptian chair                                       4
-
-  Assyrian chairs                                      7
-
-  Greek chair                                         10
-
-  Greek chairs                                        11
-
-  Greek couches                                       13
-
-  Greek mirror                                        14
-
-  Greek chariot                                       15
-
-  Pompeian interior                                   19
-
-  Roman tripod                                        22
-
-  Roman candelabra                                    23
-
-  Roman candelabra                                    24
-
-  Roman table                                         26
-
-  Roman couch                                         27
-
-  Roman ceremonial chair                              28
-
-  Roman _sella_                                       28
-
-  Roman kitchen utensils                              30
-
-  St. Peter's chair                                   35
-
-  The chair of king Dagobert                          43
-
-  Anglo-norman bedstead                               46
-
-  The Coronation chair                                49
-
-  Interior of English mediæval bedroom                51
-
-  Anglo-saxon dinner-table                            52
-
-  Dinner-table of middle-class, fifteenth  century    53
-
-  Table of fifteenth century                          53
-
-  Travelling carriage of fifteenth century;
-    "Tullia driving over the body of her father"      55
-
-  Oriental panels                                     57
-
-  A royal dinner-table of the fourteenth century      58
-
-  French panel; fifteenth century                     60
-
-  Venetian cornice                                    68
-
-  Portion of carved Italian chest                     69
-
-  Venetian chair                                      71
-
-  Italian bellows                                     72
-
-  Another example                                     73
-
-  Knife-case; 1564                                    76
-
-  Carved panels                                       80
-
-  French table; sixteenth century                     81
-
-  French panel; 1577                                  82
-
-  English panel; about 1590                           86
-
-  French cabinet; sixteenth century                   88
-
-  Italian oak pedestal                                90
-
-  Venetian mirror-frame                               91
-
-  German arm-chair; seventeenth century               93
-
-  English bracket; about 1660                         97
-
-  English doorway; about 1690                         98
-
-  Venetian looking-glass                             100
-
-  Holy-water stoup                                   101
-
-  English dinner-table; 1633                         102
-
-  Italian distaff                                    106
-
-  Roman _triclinium_                                 117
-
-  Bedstead; fifteenth century                        118
-
-  The great bed of Ware                              119
-
-  Bedstead at Hampton Court                          120
-
-  Mediæval room                                      120
-
-  Cradle; fifteenth century                          121
-
-  Folding chair; fifteenth century                   122
-
-  Italian chair; sixteenth century                   123
-
-  Antique Roman tables                               125
-
-  Folding table; English, 1620(?)                    126
-
-  Mediæval chest                                     127
-
-  Roman carriages                                    130
-
-  English carriage; fourteenth century               131
-
-  State carriages                                    132
-
-
-
-
-FURNITURE,
-
-ANCIENT AND MODERN.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-
-The study of a collection of old furniture has an interest beyond
-the mere appreciation of the beauty it displays. The carving or the
-ornaments that decorate the various pieces and the skill and ingenuity
-with which they are put together are well worthy of our attention. A
-careful examination of them carries us back to the days in which
-they were made and to the taste and manners, the habits and the
-requirements, of bygone ages. The Kensington museum, for example,
-contains chests, caskets, cabinets, chairs, carriages, and utensils of
-all sorts and of various countries. Some of these have held the bridal
-dresses, fans, and trinkets of French and Italian beauties, whose sons
-and daughters for many generations have long gone to the dust; there
-are inlaid folding chairs used at the court of Guido Ubaldo, in
-the palace of Urbino, and of other Italian princes of the fifteenth
-century; buffets and sideboards that figured at mediæval feasts; boxes
-in which were kept the jesses and bells of hawks; love-tokens of
-many kinds, christening-spoons, draught and chess men, card boxes,
-belonging to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries;
-carriages of the London of Cromwell and Hogarth, and of the Dublin of
-Burke; panelling of the date of Raleigh; a complete room made for a
-lady of honour to Marie Antoinette.
-
-Besides these memorials of periods comparatively well known to us, we
-shall find reproductions of the furniture of ages the habits of which
-we know imperfectly, such as the chair of Dagobert, and various relics
-illustrating the old classic manners and civilisation, as they have
-come down to us from Roman and Greek artists, and brought to light by
-the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii.
-
-The field through which a collection of old furniture stretches is
-too wide to be filled with anything like completeness; but the South
-Kensington collection is already rich in some very rare examples, such
-as carved chests and cabinets, decorated with the most finished wood
-carving of Flanders, France, and Italy, as well as of our own country.
-
-As wood is the material of which furniture for domestic use has
-generally been made, there are, of course, limits to its endurance,
-and not much furniture is to be found anywhere older than the
-renaissance. Objects for domestic use, such as beds, chairs, chests,
-tables, &c., are rare, and have not often been collected together.
-The museum of the hôtel de Cluny, in Paris, is the best representative
-collection of woodwork anterior to the quattro or cinque cento
-period--_i.e._ the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
-centuries. Some carved and gilt carriages belonging to the last
-century are also there; and a set of carriages, carved and gilt, made
-for state ceremonials, used during the latter part of the last century
-and down to the days of the empire of Napoleon III. are, or were till
-the war of 1870, kept at the Trianon at Versailles.
-
-Many cabinets and tables in Boule work, Vernis-Martin work, and in
-marquetry by Riesener, Gouthière, David, and others, in the possession
-of Sir Richard Wallace, were lately exhibited in the museum at Bethnal
-Green, and examples by the same artists from St. Cloud and Meudon are
-in the Louvre in Paris. A fine collection of carriages, belonging to
-the royal family of Portugal, is kept in Lisbon. These are decorated
-in the "Vernis-Martin" method. Several old royal state carriages,
-carved and gilt, the property of the emperor of Austria, are at
-Vienna.
-
-In order to take a general review of the kinds, forms, and changes of
-personal and secular woodwork and furniture, as manners and fashions
-have influenced the wants of different nations and times, it will
-be well to divide the subject in chronological order into
-antique; Egyptian, Ninevite, Greek, Roman:--modern; early and late
-mediæval:--renaissance; seventeenth and eighteenth century work: to
-be followed by an inquiry into the changes that some of the pieces of
-furniture in most frequent use have undergone.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-ANTIQUE: EGYPT, NINEVEH, AND GREECE.
-
-
-Considering the perishable nature of the material, we cannot expect
-to meet with many existing specimens of the woodwork or furniture of
-ancient Egypt. There are to be found, however, abundant illustrations
-of these objects in the paintings and sculptures of monuments. The
-most complete are on the walls of the tombs, where we see detailed
-pictures of domestic life, and the interiors of houses are shown, with
-entertainments of parties of ladies and gentlemen talking, listening
-to music, eating and drinking. The guests are seated on chairs of
-wood, framed up with sloping backs, of which specimens are in the
-British museum; others are on stools or chairs of greater splendour,
-stuffed and covered on the seat and back with costly textiles, having
-the wooden framework carved and gilt, generally in the form of the
-fore and hind legs of tigers, panthers, and other animals of the
-chace, sometimes supported, as in the accompanying woodcut, on figures
-representing captives.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The British museum contains six Egyptian chairs. One of these is made
-of ebony, turned in the lathe and inlaid with collars and dies of
-ivory. It is low, the legs joined by light rails of cane, the back
-straight, with two cross-bars and light rails between. The seat is
-slightly hollowed, and is of plaited cane as in modern chairs. Another
-is square, also with straight back, but with pieces of wood sloped
-into the seat to make it comfortable for a sitter. Small workmen's
-stools of blocks of wood hollowed out and with three or four legs
-fastened into them may also be referred to, and a table on four legs
-tied by four bars near the lower ends.
-
-The Egyptians used couches straight, like ottomans; with head boards
-curving over as in our modern sofas, sometimes with the head and
-tail of an animal carved on the ends, and the legs and feet carved
-to correspond. These were stuffed and covered with rich material.
-The Egyptians did not recline at meals. Their double seats, [Greek:
-diphroi], or bisellia, were such as were used by the Greeks and
-Romans. They had shelves and recesses, chests and coffers, made
-of pine or cedar wood, and of a material still used in Egypt, the
-_cafass_--palm sticks formed into planks by thin pegs or rods of
-harder wood passing through a series of these sticks laid together.
-"Of their bedroom furniture," says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, "we know but
-little." They used (he tells us) their day couches probably, or lay
-on mats, and on low wooden pallets made of palm sticks. These last had
-curved blocks, which served for a pillow, forming a hollow to receive
-the head. Examples in alabaster and wood are in the Louvre and in the
-British museum.
-
-Their materials for dress were of the most delicate and costly
-description. The robes of the ladies were often transparent, and the
-gold and silver tissues, muslins, and gossamer fabrics made in India
-and Asia were probably also used in Egypt. All these, as well as their
-jewels and valuables, imply corresponding chests and smaller
-coffers. Small toilet boxes elegantly carved into the form or with
-representations of leaves and animals, are preserved in the Louvre and
-in the British museum and other collections. They were generally
-of sycamore wood, sometimes of tamarisk or sont (acacia), and
-occasionally the more costly ivory or inlaid work was substituted for
-wood. Larger boxes may also be seen in the Louvre, some large enough
-to contain dresses. They are square, with flat, curved, or gable tops,
-painted on the surface, and generally lifted from the ground by four
-short legs or prolongations of the rails that form the framework.
-These boxes are dovetailed, and secured by glue and nails.
-
-Their chariots and the harness of their horses were rich in
-proportion, the former painted, inlaid with ivory and gold, or with
-surface gilding, containing cases for their bows and arms, and made of
-wood filled in with the lightest materials, perhaps canvas stiffened
-with preparations of lac in the Japanese manner, and put together with
-a skill that made the carriage-makers of Egypt famous in their day.
-It will be sufficient to add that the great Jewish kings had their
-chariots supplied from Egypt. Solomon paid about £75 of our money for
-a chariot, and of these he kept (for war purposes alone) a force of
-fourteen hundred, with forty thousand horses.
-
-Mummy cases of cedar, a material readily procured and valued for
-its preservative qualities, are to be seen in many collections,
-and examples can be examined in the British museum. They are richly
-decorated with hieroglyphic paintings executed in tempera, and
-varnished with gum mastic.
-
-The furniture of Nineveh is not so elaborately or completely
-represented as that of Egypt, where the preservation of sculpture and
-painting was helped out by a climate of extraordinary dryness. But
-the discoveries of Mr. Layard have thrown on the details of Ninevite
-domestic life light enough to give us the means of forming a judgment
-on their furniture.
-
-"Ornaments," says Mr. Layard, "in the form of the heads of animals,
-chiefly the lion, bull, and ram, were very generally introduced,
-even in parts of the chariot, the harness of the horses, and domestic
-furniture." In this respect the Assyrians resembled the Egyptians.
-"Their tables, thrones, and couches were made both of metal and wood,
-and probably inlaid with ivory. We learn from Herodotus that those in
-the temple of Belus in Babylon were of solid gold."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-According to Mr. Layard, the chair represented in the earliest
-monuments is without a back, and the legs tastefully carved. This
-form occurs in the palace of Nimrúd, and is sculptured on one of the
-bas-reliefs now in the British museum. Often the legs ended in the
-feet of a lion or the hoofs of a bull, and were made of gold, silver,
-or bronze. "On the monuments of Khorsabad and by the rock tablets of
-Malthaiyah we find representations of chairs supported by animals
-and by human figures, sometimes prisoners, like the Caryatides of the
-Greeks. In this they resemble the arm-chairs of Egypt, but appear to
-have been more massive. This mode of ornamenting the throne of the
-king was adopted by the Persians, and is seen in the sculpture of
-Persepolis." The woodcut represents such a chair, from a bas-relief
-at Khorsabad. The lion head and lion foot were used by other oriental
-nations. The throne of king Solomon was supported by lions for arms,
-probably in the same position as the horses in the Khorsabad chair;
-and lions of gold or chryselephantine work stood six on each side on
-the six steps before the throne.
-
-The forms of furniture of a later date in the sculptures of Nineveh
-at Khorsabad are of an inferior style. "The chairs have generally more
-than one cross-bar, and are somewhat heavy and ill-proportioned, the
-feet resting upon large inverted cones, resembling pine-apples."
-All these seats, like the [Greek: diphroi] and _sellæ_ of important
-personages in Greece and Rome, were high enough to require a
-footstool. "On the earlier monuments of Assyria footstools are very
-beautifully carved or modelled. The feet were ornamented, like those
-of the chair, with the feet of lions or the hoofs of bulls."
-
-The tables seem in general to have been of similar form and decoration
-to the thrones or seats, the ends of the frame projecting and carved
-as in the woodcut above, only on a larger scale. The couches were of
-similar form, but made of gold and silver, stuffed and covered on the
-surface with the richest materials. The tables and the chairs were
-often made in the shape also found in Greece and Rome, with folding
-supports that open on a central rivet like our camp-stools, and like
-the curule chairs which were common not only in Rome but throughout
-Italy during the renaissance.
-
-A large piece of wood of pine or cedar is in the British museum. It is
-of a full red colour, the effect of time. Cedar was probably most in
-use; but both in Egypt and Nineveh, as also in Judæa under Solomon
-and his successors, woods were imported from Europe and India; ebony
-certainly, perhaps rosewood, teak, and Indian walnut. Ebony and
-ivory were continually used for inlaying furniture. Of their bedroom
-furniture we can say little, nor do we know of what kind were the
-cabinets or chests made to preserve their dresses and valuables. It is
-probable, however, that these were occasionally as rich and elaborate
-as any of their show or state furniture.
-
-Of Hebrew furniture we can give few details. It is probable that
-the Jews differed but little from the Assyrians in this respect. The
-throne of Solomon has been already noticed. In the story of Judith the
-canopy and curtains of the bed of Holofernes may have been taken
-by the chronicler from familiar examples at home, or may have been
-strictly drawn from traditional details. In the figurative language of
-the Canticles, the bed of Solomon is of cedar of Lebanon, the pillars
-of silver, the bottom of gold. Ordinary bedroom furniture is spoken of
-in the Chronicles, when the Shunamite woman, a person of great wealth,
-built for the prophet Elias "a little chamber on the wall, and set
-therein a bed, a table, a stool, and a candlestick." Ivory wardrobes
-are mentioned in the 45th psalm, but of what size or form we cannot
-determine. In the book of Esther allusions are made to Persian
-furniture decorations, white, green, and blue hangings fastened with
-fine linen to silver rings and pillars of marble. The beds were of
-gold and silver, &c. The bed of Og, king of Bashan, was nine cubits
-long by four, and was of iron: it was preserved as a trophy.
-
-As the chariots of Solomon were made in Egypt, and the artists
-employed on the Temple came from Tyre, it is not unreasonable to
-suppose that furniture was either made by foreign workmen, or that
-the Hebrews borrowed freely the forms and decorations of surrounding
-Asiatic nations. Though specially and purposely jealous of any
-innovation or interference with religious rites and observances, we
-have no cause to think that they objected to the use of furniture or
-utensils such as they found first during the long sojourn in Egypt,
-and afterwards in other countries. They are said in earlier times to
-have spoiled the Egyptians with reference to the ornaments and jewels
-carried away at the migration. We know that Moses was "learned in
-all the wisdom of the Egyptians;" and two particular artists, and
-two only, are named in the book of Exodus as qualified to execute the
-sacred vessels and utensils. Whatever their technical qualifications
-were, these had been acquired in Egypt.
-
-In any attempt to picture to ourselves the kind of furniture and
-objects of daily use apart from chariots, arms, &c., that surrounded
-the Greeks in early ages, it will be necessary to bear in mind the
-close connection which that people must have had with the Asiatic
-races, and the splendour and refinement that surrounded the wealthy
-civilisation of the oriental monarchies.
-
-They were so continually the allies or the rivals of the various
-states in Asia Minor, and pushed out into that fertile region so many
-vigorous colonies, that it cannot be doubted that the splendid stuffs,
-beds, couches, thrones, chariots, &c., used by Greeks on the Asiatic
-continent or in Europe, had much of eastern character in form and
-method of execution; perhaps, at first, in decoration also. This
-woodcut represents a chair of Assyrian character on a bas-relief from
-Xanthus, in the British museum.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Much that is oriental figures in poetic accounts of the arms,
-furniture, and equipments of the Greek heroic ages. The chiefs take
-the field in chariots. These could have been used but in small numbers
-on ground so uneven as the rocky territories of the Morea. The
-beds described by Homer, the coverlids of dyed wool, tapestries, or
-carpets, and other instances of coloured and showy furniture, were
-genuine descriptions of objects known and seen, though not common.
-Generally the furniture of the heroic age was simple. Two beds of
-bronze of Tartessus, one Dorian and one Ionian, the smallest weighing
-fifty talents, of uncertain date, were kept in the treasury at Altis,
-and seen there by Pausanias towards the end of the second century. The
-chariots differed little except in the ornamental carving, modelling,
-or chasing, from those of Egypt.
-
-The oldest remaining models of Greek furniture to which we can point
-are the chairs in which the antique figures in the Syrian room at
-the British museum are seated. These are dated six, or nearly six,
-centuries before Christ. They represent chairs with backs, quite
-perpendicular in front and behind. The frame-pieces of the seats are
-morticed into the legs, and the mortices and tenons are accurately
-marked in the marble, the horizontal passing right through the upright
-bars. These early pieces of furniture were probably executed in wood,
-not metal, which was at first but rarely used. The woodcuts show the
-different forms taken from antique bas-reliefs.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The chest or coffer in which Cypselus of Corinth had been concealed
-was seen by Pausanias in the temple of Olympia. It was made about the
-middle of the sixth century B.C. The chest was of cedar, carved and
-decorated with figures and bas-reliefs, some in ivory, some in gold or
-ivory partly gilt, which were inlaid on the four sides and on the top.
-The subjects of the sculpture were old Greek myths and local legends,
-and traditions connected with the country. This coffer is supposed to
-have been executed by Eumelos of Corinth.
-
-The great period of Greek art began in the fifth century B.C.; but
-those were not days favourable to the development of personal luxury
-among the citizens. An extreme simplicity in private manners balanced
-the continual publicity and political excitement of Greek life. The
-rich classes, moreover, had little inducement to make any display
-of their possessions. The state enjoyed an indefinite right to the
-property of its members; the lawgiver in Plato declared "ye are
-not your own, still less is your property your own." In Sparta the
-exclusive training for war admitted of no manner of earning money by
-business. In Athens the poorer class had so exclusively the upper
-hand of the rich that the latter had to provide the public with
-entertainments of sacrificial solemnities, largesses of corn, and
-banquets. "The demos," says the author of the "Gentile and the Jew,"
-"understood the squeezing of the rich like sponges." Greece was the
-paradise of the poor.
-
-It is therefore to be expected that the sculpture of the day, though
-employed sometimes upon the decoration of thrones or state seats,
-chariots, chests, looking-glasses, tripods, as the painting was
-on walls, vases, and movable pictures on panels, should have been
-employed mostly in temples and, with occasional exceptions, on objects
-of some public use. The chest described above was kept as a relic,
-and the elaborately carved thrones in the temples were those of the
-statues of gods and heroes. Ivory and gold laid over a substructure
-of olive wood were the materials quite as frequently used by great
-sculptors as marble or bronze for statues which did not form parts
-of the actual decorations of their architecture. In later times these
-materials were used in sumptuous furniture.
-
-The Greeks used couches for sleeping and resting upon, but not for
-reclining on at meals, till the Macedonian period. We give two or
-three examples, from marbles: one of which resembles the modern sofa.
-Women sat always, as in Rome, sometimes on the couch at the head or
-foot, on which the master of the house or a guest reclined, generally
-on chairs. Besides chairs like the one represented here, the Greeks
-made arm-chairs; and folding chairs of metal. In the Parthenon frieze
-Jupiter is seated in a square seat on thick turned legs, with a round
-bar for a back, resting on short turned posts fitted into the seat.
-The arms are less high than the back; they are formed by slight bars
-framed into the uprights at the back, and resting on winged sphinxes.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Mirrors of mixed metal alloys, silver, tin, and copper, have come down
-to our times in great numbers. They were made occasionally in pure
-silver, and in gold probably among the Greeks as they were in later
-times among the Romans. The cases are of bronze, and engraved with
-figure designs of the highest character. There is, however, no proof
-that these were used as furniture in houses, as in Rome. They are hand
-mirrors, and the description of them, as works of art, belongs rather
-to that of antique bronzes. The woodcut shows the usual type, with the
-richly ornamented handle.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Designs of the Greek couch, whether for sleeping or for reclining
-at meals, are abundant on tomb paintings, and sculptures, and on the
-paintings of vases. In the British museum we may see a large vase in
-the second vase room, on which a couch for two persons is arranged
-with a long mattress covered with rich material, lying within what
-appears to be a border of short turned rails with a cushion on
-each end, also covered with rich striped material. A long low stool
-decorated with ivory lies below the couch as a kind of step. The
-legs, as in many vase representations, are thick turned supports with
-lighter parts below, and a turned knob at the foot. On another vase
-Dionysus reclines on a thick round cushion at the head of the couch,
-while Ariadne sits on it. Figures feasting or stretched in death
-on similar couches can be seen in two beautiful and perfect funeral
-chests in the Ægina room. All these pieces of furniture seem made
-of or decorated with ivory, and furnished with coloured cushions or
-coverings of an oriental character. Tripods were made of bronze in
-great number for sacred use, and probably also as the supports of
-brasiers, tables, &c., in private houses. The tables were of wood,
-marble, and metal; the supports being either lion or leopard legs
-and heads, or sphinxes with lifted wings, a favourite form in Greek
-ornamentation.
-
-With regard to Greek houses generally, their arrangements differed
-very little from the earlier houses of the Romans. The bas-relief in
-the British museum--Bacchus received as a guest by Icarus--represents
-a couch with turned legs, the feet of which are decorated with leaf
-work; a plain square stool, perhaps the top of a box, on which
-masks are laid, and a tripod table with lion legs. The houses in the
-background are tiled. The windows are divided into two lights by an
-upright mullion or column, and a bas-relief of a charioteer driving
-two horses ornaments a portion of the wall, and may be intended for
-a picture hung up or fixed against the wall. The whole shows us
-an Athenian house, decked for a festive occasion, and garlands and
-hangings are festooned round its outer walls.
-
-The Greek chariot was of wood, probably similar to that of the
-Egyptians. It had sometimes wheels with four strong spokes only, as in
-the woodcut. The chariot wheel of the car of Mausolus, in the British
-museum, has six. The Ninevite wheels have sometimes as many as twelve,
-as may be seen in the sculptured bas-reliefs of the narrow Assyrian
-gallery of the British museum.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The woods used by the Greeks for sculpture were ebony, cypress, cedar,
-oak, _smilax_, yew, willow, _lotus_, and citron. These materials were
-rarely left without enrichments of ivory, gold, and colour. The faces
-of statues were painted vermilion, the dresses, crowns, or other
-ornaments were gilt or made in wrought gold.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE ROMANS.
-
-
-The splendour that surrounded the personal usages of the earlier races
-of antiquity, the Egyptians, Ninevites, Persians, Greeks, and Tuscans,
-was inherited by the Romans. Not only did they outlive those powers,
-but they absorbed their territory as far as they could reach it; they
-affected to take in their religions and deities to add to their own
-system; they drained the subject populations for slaves, and eagerly
-adopted from them every art that could administer to the magnificence
-and luxury of their own private life. They have left both written
-records in their literature and actual examples of their furniture,
-made in metal or of marble. The discovery of Herculaneum and of
-Pompeii has given us not only single pieces of furniture, but very
-considerable remains of houses, shops, streets, fora or open public
-places of assembly, theatres, and baths. It is in such evidences of
-Roman social life that we shall find the materials for our present
-inquiry.
-
-The Romans spent their earlier ages in unceasing struggles for
-independence and dominion: and so long as the elder powers of Italy
-survived to dispute the growth of Roman greatness, there could not be
-much expansion of private wealth or splendour in the houses of
-Roman citizens. Though surrounded by splendid social life among the
-Etruscans, the Roman people long remained exceptionally simple in
-personal habits. It was after the Punic wars that oriental luxuries
-found their way into Italy along with the Carthaginian armies.
-Tapestry is said to have been first brought to Rome by Attalus, the
-king of Pergamus, who died B.C. 133 possessed of immense wealth, and
-bequeathed tapestries, generally used in the east from the early ages,
-to the Roman citizens. When Augustus became emperor the conquest of
-the world was complete. Thenceforward military habits and simplicity
-of individual life were no longer necessary to a state that could find
-no political rivals. The great capital of the world absorbed like a
-vast vegetable growth the thought, the skill, and the luxuries of
-the whole world. Nothing was too valuable to be procured by the great
-Roman nobles or money-makers, and nothing too strange not to find a
-place and be welcome in one or other of their vast households.
-
-While this was so at Rome in chief, it must be remembered that
-other capitals were flourishing in various countries, as wealthy, as
-luxurious in their own way and degree, only less in extent and means,
-and lacking that peculiar seal of supremacy that gives to the real
-capital a character that is never attained in subordinate centres of
-civilisation. Antioch was such a centre in the east; Alexandria in
-the south. Both these great cities contained wealthy, refined, and
-luxurious societies. Both were known as universities and seats of
-learning. Antioch was the most debauched and luxurious; Alexandria the
-most learned and refined. They did not exactly answer to the distinct
-capitals of modern kingdoms and states, such as we now see flourishing
-in Europe, to London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or St. Petersburg,
-because no one supreme state or city predominates over them; and
-further still, no one draws the pick and choice of the intellect and
-refinement of the whole of Europe to absorb them into itself as Rome
-did in the old world. But, in those days, Antioch and Alexandria,
-one at the head of the wealth and splendour of Asia, the other
-representing Greek learning grafted on the ancient scientific and
-artistic traditions of Egypt, must have contributed much to the
-general fusion of "ideas" and notions on art and personal manners and
-customs in the capital of the Roman empire.
-
-The Roman house was of traditional plan, and consisted generally of
-two or more square enclosures surrounded by arcades, open to the air
-in the centre, but which openings could be closed in summer or winter
-by awnings when the courts were not large enough to include a garden,
-as the inner enclosure usually did.
-
-The house had in front a _vestibulum_, an open space covered by a
-verandah-shaped roof, sometimes enclosed by lattices, sometimes open.
-An _ostium_ or lobby inside the entrance-door, deep enough to contain
-a small porter's lodge on one side, led to an inner door which opened
-on the _atrium_. This court had an opening to the air, and a tank for
-rain water was sunk in the middle. Fountains with jets or falls of
-water were not uncommon, the ancients being well acquainted with the
-principle that water if brought from an elevation in pipes will force
-its way up to its natural level.
-
-Inside the _atrium_ was the _nuptiale_, the nuptial bed, and here were
-kept in earliest times the _penates_, household or family divinities,
-and the family hearth, though these sacred emblems were banished in
-the imperial times to distant parts of the house, and statues between
-the columns that supported the central roof supplied their place. The
-_atrium_ was the general reception-room, like the hall in mediæval
-houses, but not the dining-room. To this succeeded an inner open
-court, with porticoes or corridors running round, supported on
-columns, and with a fountain or basin, shrubs and flowers in the
-centre, like the courts of the Alhambra. This court provided four
-halls in the four corridors, which could be screened off by tapestries
-and curtains. The centre was shaded in summer by canvas or carpet
-awnings. In winter a wooden roof could be pushed over the open space.
-Between the two halls or courts was a chamber called the _triclinium_,
-or dining-room. These rooms were roofed with timber richly painted
-and gilt. The roofs either hung on beams projecting from the walls,
-or were supported by pillars, or were carried up to a high opening,
-sloping back to the walls so as to admit more light to the rooms,
-alcoves, or screened portions furthest removed from the opening.
-Occasionally they were covered in wholly with a testudo-shaped roof,
-and in such cases lighted, perhaps, by dormers, though it is not quite
-clear how light was provided for in such constructions. Roman rooms
-were not floored with boards but paved with marble in large pieces, or
-in mosaic work made of small dies or squares. Coarse specimens of
-such work manufactured in our own times are laid down in the museum
-at Kensington, and fragments of the old work may be seen there on
-the walls. Occasionally these mosaics represent the house watch-dog
-chained, or the fable of Ganymede, or hunting scenes, sometimes
-finished with the utmost nicety. The _triclinium_ took its name from
-the three couches or sofas, on each of which three persons reclined
-during meals. Later, and in sumptuous palaces, several dining-rooms
-were built out beyond the inner courts. The engraving, a
-reconstruction, will give a fair idea of the general character of
-a richly furnished Roman house. First, is the _atrium_, into which
-smaller chambers open; next, the _triclinium_, to the left of which is
-a cabinet; and beyond is the _peristylium_, with its lofty colonnades.
-This last apartment was large and open; often planted with shrubs
-and trees, or containing statues, flowers in pots and vases, and
-surrounded by a corridor. As these courts were of various sizes they
-were, no doubt, in Rome on a scale out of all proportion to those
-found at Pompeii; were fewer or more in number, and rooms were
-added as the proprietor could acquire ground for building, often a
-difficulty in the older parts of the city. Something of this ground
-plan survives in a few of the very ancient Roman churches, as in
-that of S. Pudenziana, formerly the house of the senator Pudens, with
-vestibules, open courts, &c.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Around the inner court, in the sumptuous Roman houses and the country
-villas of the patricians, were built other rooms, dining-halls, no
-longer called _triclinium_ but _triclinia_ in the plural, as admitting
-more than the number of nine persons reclining on the conventional
-three couches, to dine at once. In the city itself room was probably
-wanting in private houses for such expansion, the houses being in
-streets already laid out. In the villas there was no such restriction.
-These halls were built to face different quarters of the compass and
-to be used according to the season. _Verna_ and _autumnalis_ looked to
-the east, _hyberna_ to the west, _æstiva_ to the north. _[OE]ci_ were
-other rooms still larger; and glass windows were to be found in them.
-In a painting now in the Kensington museum, n^{o.} 653, given by
-the emperor Napoleon the third, glazed windows can be distinguished,
-divided by upright mullions and transoms of wood, such as were
-constructed in English houses in the seventeenth century. The
-sleeping-rooms, _cubicula_, were small closets rather than rooms,
-closed in general by curtains or hangings, and disposed about the
-sides of the rooms between the courts, or round the outer courts
-themselves.
-
-Besides the living and sleeping chambers, there were store-rooms
-for various kinds of food. Wearing apparel was kept in _vestiaria_,
-wardrobe rooms, fitted especially to store them in. It is doubtful
-whether the dresses were in chests: more probably in presses, or
-hanging on pegs.
-
-The ornamental woodwork in some of these rooms was rich in the
-extreme. The outer vestibule was protected by an overhanging balcony
-or by the projecting rafters of the roof of the first portion of the
-house, according as rooms were built over that portion or not. It was
-in some instances enclosed by carved or trellised woodwork. The doors
-were generally in two halves and could be closed with locks, which
-in the age of the empire were thoroughly understood, with latchets
-secured by a pin or with a wooden bar. The term _obserare_ was used
-when the security of a bar was added. The hinge was a pin or peg at
-the top and bottom which turned in a socket. Metal hinges strapped
-over the wood frame were not unknown: and bronze hinges are in the
-collection of the British museum. The decoration of the door, which
-was of wood, consisted principally of bronze mounts. The doorposts
-were ornamented with carving, sometimes inlaid with tortoiseshell and
-other rich materials. The woodwork was painted. Bedrooms were closed
-with doors; oftener by curtains. The windows were generally closed
-with shutters, hinged and in pairs. They were some six feet six inches
-above the level of the street, not beyond reach of the knocks and
-signals of friends outside. Wooden benches were usually provided in
-the vestibule.
-
-Besides the inlaid door frames, the ceilings of all the Roman rooms
-were very richly decorated. In more simple constructions the wood
-joists of the floor above, or the structure of the roof when no
-room surmounted it, were shown and painted; but in richer houses the
-timbers were covered with boards, and formed into coffers and
-panels, painted, gilt, and inlaid with ivory. This splendid system of
-decoration dates from the destruction of Carthage. Curved bearers from
-the upper part of the walls were added to form one kind of ceiling
-(_camara_), for which Vitruvius gives directions; and glass mosaics,
-like those used in the pavements, were inlaid on a plaster bed in the
-coffers. The cornices were of carved wood, or of plaster carved or
-modelled; the wood was always covered with a preparation of gesso, and
-gilt and painted like the walls.
-
-An examination of the remains of Roman glass found at Pompeii and
-elsewhere, and of which excellent examples may be studied in the
-Kensington museum, seems to point to the use not only of mosaics made
-of dies, but of mouldings, borders, and panels moulded in coloured
-glass of magnificent hues, and with the finest stamped ornaments.
-These were occasionally gilt, or were made in relief, or with a coat
-of opaque white glass over the translucent material, which could
-be cut and modelled in the manner of cameos, and helped further to
-decorate the ceiling, always one of the most splendid features of the
-room.
-
-The walls, when not painted, were sometimes hung with mirrors of glass
-blackened, or of silver, or of slabs of obsidian. They were of various
-sizes, sometimes large enough to reflect persons at full length. In
-the case of portable pictures, frames were added round them. Borders
-were certainly painted round frescoes. It is not to be supposed that
-paintings which could be exposed for sale, moved about, and hung up,
-could be finished round otherwise than by ornamental mouldings, or
-framework sufficient to protect and properly set them off.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Among the ornamental pieces of furniture were tripods, three-legged
-frames, forming the supports of tables, of altars, of braziers,
-sometimes of pieces of sculpture. These were generally of bronze, and
-original pieces obtained in various parts of Italy can be seen in
-the bronze room of the British museum. Some of these much exceed the
-height of high modern tables. They are light, and ornamented on the
-upper ends with animal or other heads; some with the beginning of a
-hind leg about halfway down. They were, however, frequently movable,
-and, like the piece in the cut on the preceding page from an example
-in the British museum, were made to contract by folding; the stays
-which connect the legs internally slipping up and down them by means
-of loops. Such pieces might serve as table legs, or would hold altar
-pans or common fire pans or support pots of flowers.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Besides tripods the reception rooms were ornamented with candelabra on
-tall stands of most graceful form and proportions. It will suffice to
-point to more than a dozen of examples in the British museum; and
-the woodcuts are from examples in other collections. The stems are a
-fluted staff or a light tree stem, commonly supported on three animal
-legs spread at the base, and branching out on the tops into one, two,
-or more boughs or hooks, with elegant modelled decorations or ending
-in flat stands. One has a slight rim round the dish or stand, on which
-a candelabrum or wax candlestick could be placed. In other cases the
-lamps were hung by their suspensory chains to the branches described.
-Other candelabra stands were of marble, six, eight, ten, or more feet
-in height, hybrid compositions of column caps, acanthus leaves and
-stems, on altar bases, &c., in great variety of design, of which
-engravings may be studied in the work of Piranesi. Casts, n^{os.} 93,
-94 (antiques), are in the South Kensington museum.
-
-We do not know in what kind of repositories or pieces of furniture the
-ancient Romans kept their specimens of painting or their vases, some
-of which formed their most valued treasures. It is generally supposed
-that they were set on shelves fastened to the wall. On such shelves
-small images, boxes of alabaster or glass, and ornamental vases of all
-kinds were kept. Craters, sculptured vases on a large scale and made
-of bronze or marble, were also mounted on pedestals and ranged as
-ornaments with the statues. Bronzes and statues, pieces of sculpture
-that had fixed places, stood either along the walls of the reception
-rooms or under the eaves of the _compluvium_, whence light was
-obtained to set them off to advantage, and where turf, flowers, and
-fountains were in front of them. A vase or crater, nearly eight feet
-high, is in the hall of the British museum, brought from the villa of
-Hadrian at Palestrina; and in the entrance-hall of Nero's house there
-was a colossus 120 feet high, and long arcades and a tank or basin of
-water. But objects on this scale scarcely belong to the descriptions
-of what might be found ordinarily in houses of the great patricians.
-Sometimes a couch and a table of marble were placed close to the
-fountains in these delightful portions of the house.
-
-Tables were of many varieties in Rome, and enormous expenses were
-incurred in the purchase of choice pieces of such furniture. They
-were made of marble, gold, silver, bronze; were engraved, damascened,
-plated, and otherwise enriched with the precious metals; were of
-ivory, and of wood, and wood decorated with ivory; and in many other
-methods. Engraved (p. 26) is a very beautiful table found at Pompeii,
-and now at Naples. Tripods, terminal and other figures, made of bronze
-or marble; winged sphinxes, or leopards' and lions' legs, columns and
-other architectonic forms, were the supports on which these tables
-were fastened. Some had one central support only, in a few instances
-finished with animal heads of ivory. _Abaci_ were small tables with
-raised rims to hold valuables.
-
-Many tables were of cedar and on ivory feet. Horace speaks of maple,
-so also does Pliny, as a favourite wood for tables: birds'-eye maple
-especially was much prized. The planks and disks that could be cut
-from the roots and the boles of trees that had been either pollarded
-or otherwise dwarfed in growth in order to obtain wavy grain, knotted
-convolutions, &c., were in request. Veneers of well-mottled wood or of
-precious wood, small in scantling, were glued on pine, cedar, &c.,
-as a base. These pollard heads, root pieces, &c., were bought at high
-prices, specially those of the _citrus_ or _cedrus Atlantica_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The point held to be desirable (says Pliny) in the grain of tables was
-to have "veins arranged in waving lines or else forming spirals like
-so many little whirlpools. In the former arrangement the lines run in
-an oblong direction, for which reason they are called _tigrinæ_, tiger
-tables. In the latter case they are called _pantherinæ_, or panther
-tables. There are some with wavy, undulating marks, and which are more
-particularly esteemed if these resemble the eyes of a peacock."
-
-Next in esteem to these was the veined wood covered or dotted, as
-it were, with dense masses of grain, for which reason such tables
-received the name of _apiatæ_, parsley wood. But the colour of the
-wood is the quality that was held in the highest esteem of all;
-that of wine mixed with honey was the most prized, the veins being
-peculiarly refulgent. The defect in that kind of table was _lignum_
-(dull log colour), a name given to the wood when common-looking,
-indistinct, with stains or flaws. The barbarous tribes, according to
-Pliny, buried the citrus wood in the ground while green, giving it
-first a coating of wax. When it came into the workman's hands it
-was put for a certain number of days beneath a heap of corn. By this
-process the wood lost weight. Sea-water was supposed to harden it,
-and to act as a preservative. This wood was carefully polished by
-hand-rubbing. As much as £9,000 (a million of sesterces) was paid for
-one table by Cicero. Of two that had belonged to king Juba, sold by
-auction, one fetched over £10,000. These were made of citrus (_Thuya
-articulata_ or _cedrus Atlantica_). We hear of two made for king
-Ptolemæus of Mauritania, the property of Nomius, a freed man of
-Tiberius, formed out of two slices or sections of the _cedrus
-Atlantica_ four feet and a half in diameter, the largest known to
-Pliny; and of the destruction of a table, the property of the family
-of the Cethegi, valued at 1,400,000 sesterces.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The Roman patricians and their ladies sat on chairs and reclined on
-couches when not at meals. In the _atrium_ under the broad roofed
-corridors, and in the halls not used for eating, were couches, such as
-the couch of which we give a woodcut, of bronze or of precious woods;
-the bronze damascened with ornaments of the precious metals, or of
-metal amalgam; the wood veneered or inlaid with marquetry or tarsia
-work of ivory, ebony, box, palm, birds'-eye maple, beech, and other
-woods.
-
-The chairs were of different kinds and were used for various
-occasions. The _atrium_ contained double seats, single seats, and
-benches to hold more than one sitter; chairs that either folded or
-were made in the form of folding chairs, such as could be carried
-about and placed in the chariot, _curules_. The woodcut shows the
-general fashion of a state or ceremonial chair; from the marble
-example in the Louvre.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-This woodcut is of the _sella_, a seat or couch, made of wood, with
-turned legs; it is intended, probably, for one person only, and has no
-need of a footstool. It has been covered with a cushion.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-_Scamnum_ was a bench or long seat of wood, used in poorer houses
-instead of the luxurious _triclinium_ of the men or arm-chairs of
-the women, for sitting at meals or other occasions. Seats were placed
-along the walls in the _exedræ_ or saloons; marble benches in most
-cases, sometimes wooden seats; particularly also in the alcoves that
-were constructed in the porticoes of baths and public buildings, where
-lectures of philosophers were listened to.
-
-The Romans had hearths in certain rooms. Numerous passages in ancient
-writers, to which it is needless to refer, concur in showing that the
-hearth was a spot sacred to the _lares_ of the family, the altar
-of family life. It was occasionally made of bricks or stone, and
-immovable, on which logs could be heaped. It seems doubtful whether
-chimneys were used in the Roman houses; probably occasionally. Writers
-on Roman antiquities speak of such rare constructions used, perhaps,
-as ventilators to the kitchen. The usual method of warming was by
-means of a brazier, of which an example found at Cære, in Etruria, is
-preserved in the British museum. It is a round dish on three animal
-legs, with swing handles for removing it. Another, square in form,
-is reproduced in a casting in the South Kensington museum collection,
-n^{o.} 70, standing on animal legs and damascened round the sides with
-gold ornaments. The Romans had also kitchen braziers with contrivances
-for heating pans, water, wine, &c., by charcoal. N^{o.} 71 at
-South Kensington is a casting of such a piece, having a round metal
-receptacle, like a small cask, on its end, and a raised horse-shoe
-frame, on which a pan could be placed, with fire space in the middle.
-These braziers were filled with charcoal heated thoroughly by the help
-of the bellows, to get rid of the noxious gases.
-
-It has been said that the dresses of the Romans were preserved, as in
-mediæval castles, in a separate room or wardrobe, and this room must
-have been fitted with apparatus for hanging shelves and lockers.
-They had besides for keeping valuables, and usually placed in the
-sleeping-room of the master or mistress of the house, cupboards and
-chests of beech ornamented with metal, some large enough to contain
-a man. In these receptacles they conveyed their property to and from
-country houses, and on visits. Enormous numbers of slaves moved to and
-fro with the family, and the chests were carried on men's shoulders,
-or in waggons of various shape and make.
-
-The most important action of the luxurious Roman day was the dinner.
-Couches were arranged for the guests, and the room was further
-provided with stools or low benches, side tables, and the movable
-table used for each course. These tables were put down and removed
-from the supports on which they stood. The side tables were of
-marble or of wood, covered with silver plates, inlaid, veneered, and
-ornamented in various ways; some were used for serving the dishes,
-others for the display of plate.
-
-Sculptured objects of plate, partly ornamental, were put on the table
-and removed with the courses. Petronius describes an ass of Corinthian
-bronze with silver paniers as the centre piece of one course; sauces
-dropped from the paniers on luscious morsels placed beneath. A hen of
-wood with eggs within and a figure of Vertumnus are also named by the
-same author as centre pieces. These were replaced on the sideboard or
-removed with the course in trays.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Closely connected with the dining-room was, it need scarcely be
-said, the kitchen; and we give woodcuts of kitchen utensils, from the
-originals preserved at Naples.
-
-Mention should be made of tapestries and carpets before leaving the
-subject of Roman house furniture.
-
-Carpets, _tapete_, blankets, or other woollen coverlids for sofas or
-beds, were made at Corinth, Miletus, and a number of seats of fine
-wool manufacture. It is too large a question to go into in detail, and
-woven fabrics belong to a different class of objects fully described
-in another hand-book, upon textiles. These tapestries played a great
-part in the actual divisions of the Roman rooms. Bedrooms, it has
-been said, were often closed with curtains only, and the corridors and
-smaller rooms were closed at the ends and made comfortable by the
-same means. At the dinner detailed by Petronius the hangings on the
-_triclinia_ are changed between pauses in the meal. The feelings
-consonant with the day or occasion were symbolized or carried out in
-these external decorations. Mention is made by Seneca of ceilings
-made so as to be moved, and portions turned by machinery; perhaps the
-changed panels showed different colours and decorations according to
-the day, and to the hangings which were used. The same author alludes
-to wood ceilings that could be raised higher or lower by machinery,
-"_pegmata per se surgentia_ et tabulata _tacite in sublime
-crescentia_," making no noise in the operation. These contrivances
-were reserved for dining-rooms, where the diversions were of the
-freest description and the guests prepared for any exciting or
-sensational interludes.
-
-The Romans required some of their furniture for out-door use. Besides
-the curule chairs and lofty seats which were carried into theatres or
-baths, and other places of public resort, they used litters. The sofas
-or couches were sometimes carried on the necks of six or more slaves,
-and served as litters. But special contrivances like the Indian
-palanquins were made with or hung under poles, with curtains or
-shutters. Stations of such conveyances for public use were established
-in Rome.
-
-The subjects of the carving and ornamentation of Roman furniture were
-the classic legends mainly derived from the Greek mythology. Roman
-house walls were, however, in later years profusely decorated with
-conventional representations of architecture, and panels richly
-coloured on which were painted figures of dancers, cupids, gods and
-heroes; sometimes commonplace landscapes and domestic scenes. Their
-solid furniture was decorated with masks, heads of heroes, legs and
-feet of animals, and foliage, generally the leaves of the acanthus, of
-an architectonic kind.
-
-The great achievement of the Romans in woodwork of a constructive kind
-was the machinery contrived for public shows, such as the cages shot
-up out of the sand of the arena of amphitheatres, of which the sides
-fell down, leaving at liberty the beasts wanted for fights or for the
-execution of criminals. Of such constructions probably nothing in the
-middle ages, when timber abounded and the use of it was thoroughly
-understood, exceeds the following; a description by Pliny of a device
-of C. Curio, in Africa, when celebrating the funeral games in honour
-of his father:--
-
-"He caused to be erected close together two theatres of very large
-dimensions and built of wood, each of them nicely poised, and turning
-on a pivot. Before mid-day a spectacle of games was exhibited in each,
-the theatres being turned back to back, in order that the noise of
-neither of them might interfere with what was going on in the other.
-Then, in the latter part of the day, all on a sudden, the two theatres
-were swung round and, the corners uniting, brought face to face; the
-outer frames too were removed (_i.e._ the backs of each hemicycle) and
-thus an amphitheatre was formed, in which combats of gladiators were
-presented to the view; men whose safety was almost less compromised
-than that of the Roman people in allowing itself to be thus whirled
-round from side to side."
-
-The following woods were in use amongst the Romans:--
-
-For carpentry and joiner's work, _cedar_ was the wood most in demand.
-_Pine_ of different kinds was used for doors, panels, carriage
-building, and all work requiring to be joined up with glue, of which
-that wood is particularly retentive. _Elm_ was employed for the
-framework of doors, lintels and sills, in which sockets were formed
-for the pins or hinges on which the doors turned. The hinge jambs were
-occasionally made of _olive_. _Ash_ was employed for many purposes;
-that grown in Gaul was used in the construction of carriages on
-account of its extreme suppleness and pliancy. Axles and portions
-which were much morticed together were made of _Ilex_ (_Holm oak_).
-_Beech_ also was in frequent use. _Acer_ (_Maple_) was much prized, as
-has been already stated, for tables, on account of the beauty of
-the wood and of the finish which it admits. _Osiers_ were in use
-for chairs as in our own times. _Veneering_ was universal in wood
-furniture of a costly kind. The slices of wood were laid down with
-glue as in modern work, and they used tarsia or picture work of
-all kinds. _Figwood_, _willow_, _plane_, _elm_, _ash_, _mulberry_,
-_cherry_, _cork wood_, were amongst the materials for the bed or
-substance on which to lay such work. Wild and cultivated _olive_,
-_box_, _ebony_ (Corsican especially), _ilex_, _beech_, were adapted
-for veneering boxes, desks, and small work. Besides these, the Romans
-used the Syrian _terebinth_, _maple_, _palm_ (cut across),
-_holly_, _root of elder_, _poplar_; horn, ivory plain and stained;
-tortoiseshell; and wood grained in imitation of various woods for
-veneering couches and other large pieces of furniture, as well as door
-frames, &c., so that this imitation of grains is not entirely a modern
-invention. Woods were soaked in water or buried under heaps of grain
-to season them; or steeped in oil of cedar to keep off the worms. The
-_cedars_ of Crete, Africa, and Syria were the best of that class of
-timber. The best _fir_ timber was obtained from the Jura range, from
-Corsica, Bithynia, Pontus, and Macedonia.
-
-The Romans had admirable glue, and used planes, chisels, &c. Their
-saws, set in frames, had the teeth turned in opposite directions to
-open the seam in working.
-
-There are some curious historical records of the endurance of
-particular wood structures. The cedar roof of the temple of Diana of
-Ephesus was intact at the end of four centuries in Pliny's time. Her
-statue was black, supposed to be of ebony, but according to other
-authorities of vine, and had outlasted various rebuildings of the
-temple. The roof beams of the temple of Apollo at Utica were of cedar
-and had been laid 348 years before the foundation of Rome; nearly
-1,200 years old in the time of Pliny, and still sound.
-
-The emperor Philip celebrated the secular games (recurring every 100
-years), with great pomp, for the fifth time in the year 248. We may
-consider this event, for our present purpose, as a convenient finish
-of the classic period of antique art, and of the reflections of it in
-the woodwork and furniture and the surroundings of private life.
-
-Ten centuries had elapsed since Romulus had fortified the hills on the
-banks of the Tiber. "During the first four ages" (says Gibbon) "the
-Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues
-of war and government; by the vigorous exertion of these virtues, and
-by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained in the course of the
-three succeeding centuries an absolute empire over many countries of
-Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three centuries had been consumed
-in apparent prosperity and internal decline."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-BYZANTINE ART.
-
-
-We may take as the next period for illustration the centuries that
-witnessed the break up of the old Roman constitution and the gradual
-formation of a new order of society down to the end of the first ten
-centuries of our era. Seven hundred and fifty years out of those ten
-hundred belong in great part to mediæval history. The misfortunes of
-Italy, and the incessant state of war, invasion, and struggle in that
-peninsula were too destructive of personal wealth and the means of
-showing it in costly furniture to leave us any materials from thence
-for our present subject. The history of furniture and woodwork, as
-applied to civil and social uses, now belongs to such civilisation
-as took its origin and its form from Constantinople. Art of these
-centuries is called Byzantine.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The woodcut is from the chair of St. Peter in Rome, the oldest and
-most interesting relic of antique furniture in existence; that is, of
-furniture made of wood and kept in use from the days of ancient Rome.
-But it has had repairs and additions, and a description of it shall be
-referred to in another section.
-
-Byzantine art is a debased form of the classic, but with a large
-mixture of Greek; not of the old classic Greek type which had long
-been exhausted, but of that Asiatic Greek which derived so much of its
-splendour from the rich but unimaginative decorations of Persia. The
-objects actually executed at Constantinople or by Byzantine artists
-now remaining can scarcely be included in a treatise on furniture.
-They are mostly caskets and other small pieces executed in metal or in
-ivory. Accounts of many interesting pieces of Byzantine sculpture will
-be found in the "Description of the ivories in the South Kensington
-museum." Amongst them the diptychs of the consuls are not only the
-most important, but the most interesting to a treatise on furniture,
-as we see in them consular seats and thrones of many varieties.
-
-We may select amongst other examples the following, which can be
-studied in the museum or referred to in that work. For instance,
-n^{o.} 368 (fully described in Mr. Maskell's "Ivories") is one leaf
-of a consular diptych of Anastasius Paulus Probus Sabinianus Pompeius.
-The consul is represented seated on a chair of very ornate character.
-It is like the old folding curule chairs of Rome, but with elements
-both of Greek and Egyptian ornamentation, such as belong to the
-massive marble seats, supported by lions or leopards, with the heads
-sculptured above the upper joint of the hind legs. In the mouths of
-these lions' heads are rings for the purpose of carrying the chair,
-and the top frame is ornamented with little panels and medallions
-containing winged masks and portrait heads of the consul and his
-family or of members of the imperial family. On each side of the seat
-are small winged figures of Victory standing on globes and holding
-circular tablets over their heads. These probably represent the front
-of the arms, and are supposed to have a bar stretching from the heads
-or the circular tablets to the back of the seat. This feature too is
-a continuation of types that are to be found on Greek vases and in the
-chairs of both Nineveh and Egypt. A low footstool with an embroidered
-cushion on it is under the feet of the consul, and another cushion,
-also embroidered, covers the seat. This represents a chair of the
-sixth century.
-
-A seat still more like the curule chair, but with a high back, is
-represented in another ivory, n^{o.} 270, in the South Kensington
-collection. This piece is a plaque or tablet with a bas-relief of
-two apostles seated. The chairs are formed of two curved and
-recurved pieces each side, which are jointed together at the point of
-intersection. One pair of these pieces is prolonged and connected by
-straight cross-bars, and forms a back. Two dolphins, with the heads
-touching the low front pieces and the tails sloping up and connected
-with the back, form the arms. This belongs to the ninth century. The
-lyre back, a form not unknown in old Greek and thence adopted among
-Roman fashions, is also to be seen in chairs on ivories and in
-manuscripts. Round cushions were hung on the back, others covered the
-seat. These are seen also figured in the mosaics of Venice, and later
-of Monreale in Sicily which retained much of the Byzantine spirit. The
-art of Sicily continued longer subject to Constantinople than that of
-most of its Italian provinces, and Venice preserved her old traditions
-far into the period of the European revival of art.
-
-The beds, as represented in manuscript illuminations, belong chiefly
-to religious compositions such as the Nativity, or visions appearing
-to saints in their sleep. They are couches in the old Roman form, or
-are supported on turned legs, from the frames of which valances hang
-down to the ground. Sometimes a curtain acts as a screen at the head
-or on one side, but testers are wanting.
-
-Chariots and carriages of all sorts remained more or less Roman in
-type. There were a greater number of waggons or carriages for the
-conveyance of women and families than had been in use in ancient
-times. Christianity had materially altered the social position of
-women, and they appeared in public or moved about with their families
-without the restraints which in the old Roman society forbad their
-appearance in chariots and open carriages, and made the covered couch
-or closed litter the usual conveyance for ladies of rank in Rome.
-Several forms of chariots or carriages of this larger kind can be seen
-in the sculptures of the column of Theodosius in Constantinople.
-
-The art and the domestic manners and customs that had been in
-fashion in Rome maintained themselves with some modifications in
-Constantinople. The life there was more showy and pompous, but it was
-free from the cruelties and the corruption of the elder society. It
-was founded on the profession of Christianity, and the numbers and
-magnificence of the religious hierarchy formed an important feature
-in the splendid social aspect of the Greek capital. The games of
-the circus, without the cruelties of gladiatorial combats, were
-maintained. Chariots were in constant use, much wealth was spent on
-their construction, and chariot races were kept up. Furniture, such as
-chairs, couches, chests, caskets, mirrors and articles of the toilet,
-was exceedingly rich. Gold and silver were probably more abundant in
-the great houses of Constantinople than they had been in Rome. As the
-barbarous races of the east and north encroached on the flourishing
-provinces of the Roman empire, constant immigration took place to
-Constantinople and the provinces still under its sway. Families
-brought with them such property as could be easily moved, gold of
-course and jewels; and, naturally, these precious materials were
-afterwards used for the decoration of their furniture and dress.
-
-The ancient custom of reclining at meals had ceased. The guests sat on
-benches or chairs. At the same time the "triclinia aurea," or golden
-dining room, was still the title of the great hall of audience in
-the palace at Constantinople. The term only served to illustrate
-the jealous retention of the old forms and names by the emperors and
-patricians. The last branch of the ancient empire did little for
-the arts of painting and sculpture, though it long preserved the old
-traditions of art, gradually becoming more and more debased with every
-succeeding generation, whilst outward splendour was increased because
-of the greater quantity of the precious metals that had accumulated or
-been inherited during so many centuries.
-
-The decay of art and skill in the old world was, however,
-counterbalanced by the rise of new societies, which were gradually
-being formed in various parts of the empire. These consisted partly
-of the races of Huns, Goths, Saxons, and others, who had invaded
-Italy and settled themselves in it, partly of the old municipal
-corporations, who defended their property and maintained their
-privileges in the great walled towns of Italy. The cities profited to
-a great extent by this infusion of new blood; and became the parents
-of the future provinces of Italy, so rich in genius and industry, so
-wealthy and powerful in peace and war. The most important of them was
-Venice, and it is in Venice that, in the later middle ages, we
-find the birthplace of most of the art with which the furniture and
-utensils of home and warlike use were so profusely decorated.
-
-We point to Constantinople as the last stronghold of the old arts of
-the Roman period, but it is because it was from the Greeks that the
-new states borrowed their first notions of art. Nearly all the early
-art we meet with throughout the west in manuscripts and ivories bears
-a Byzantine character.
-
-A remarkable piece of monumental furniture has survived from these
-early centuries of the Christian era, half Byzantine and half western
-in character, the chair of St. Maximian of Ravenna, preserved in
-the treasury at Ravenna, and engraved and described in the "Arts
-Somptuaires" of M. Du Sommerard. Ravenna was the portion of the empire
-that most intimately connected the east with the west. The domed
-churches of San Vitale, San Giovanni in Fonte, the tomb of Galla
-Placidia, the round church of Santa Maria, built by Theodoric,
-together with the great basilica of Saint Apollinare in Chiasse, and
-others of the Latin form, unite the characteristics of the eastern
-and western architecture. What is true of architecture can also
-be pronounced as to painting, sculpture, textile fabrics, and all
-decoration applied to objects, sacred or domestic, that were in daily
-use.
-
-But events occurred in the declining state of the empire that went far
-to transfer what remained of art to northern Europe. The sect of the
-iconoclasts, or image-breakers, rose into power and authority
-under the emperor Leo the Isaurian, who published an edict in 726
-condemnatory of the veneration and use of religious images and
-paintings. During a century this principle was at work, and it caused
-the destruction not only of innumerable antique statues, such as those
-defaced in the Parthenon of Athens, but the loss of vast quantities
-of ivory and wood sculpture and precious objects of all kinds. Many
-artists took refuge in western Europe, and were welcomed in the
-Rhenish provinces of the empire by Charlemagne.
-
-How much ancient and domestic art in the form of bronze or other
-metal furniture, such as chairs, thrones, tripods, &c., whole or in
-fragments, survived the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. we
-cannot conjecture. Perhaps the royal palaces, or still more possibly
-the mosques which have been the banks and depositories of family
-treasures under Mahometan rule, may contain valuable bronzes, ivories,
-and carved wood, relics of the luxurious life of the latter days of
-the Greek empire, and such evidences may some day come to light. No
-doubt, however, much antique art and much that belonged to the first
-eight centuries of our era survived the ordinary shocks of time and
-war, only to be destroyed by the quiet semi-judicial action of a
-furious sect protected by imperial decrees, after the manner in
-which mediæval art suffered under the searching powers of fanatical
-government commissioners in our own country, in the sixteenth century.
-
-It is to the impulse which the Lombard and Frankish monarchs gave to
-art in western and northern Europe by the protection of Greek refugee
-sculptors and artists that we should trace the beginnings of the
-northern school called Rhenish-Byzantine.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-THE MIDDLE AGES.
-
-
-We cannot easily determine on a date at which we can assign a
-beginning to mediæval art. It differs from the art that succeeded it
-in the sixteenth century in many respects, and from the late classic
-art that preceded it still more widely. That peculiar character which
-we call romantic enters into the art of mediæval times, as it does
-into the literature and manners of the same ages. It took a living
-form in the half religious institution of chivalry. The northern
-nations grew up under the leadership of monks quite as much as under
-that of kings. They lived in territories only partially cleared from
-forests, pushed their way forward to power pioneered by the great
-religious orders, and their world was one surrounded by opportunities
-of endless adventures. But this romantic standard, though it took its
-rise from the times in which the Christians carried their lives in
-their hands, under the persecuting emperors, did not pervade Europe
-for many centuries. Classic art, in its decay, still furnished both
-forms and symbols, such, _e.g._, as that of Orpheus, to the new
-societies, and the names of Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn, have
-survived as the titles of days of the week. The two art traditions
-overlapped each other for a while. Mediævalism grew very gradually.
-
-We have just said that Charlemagne welcomed Byzantine artists to the
-Rhine. It must be remembered, however, that the Roman empire had been
-firmly planted beyond the Alps, and that Gaul produced good Roman art
-in the second and third centuries. Architecture, sculpture, bronze
-casting, and the numberless appliances of daily life were completely
-Roman in many parts of France and Britain. The theatres and
-amphitheatres of Arles and Orange and the collections in various
-museums are enough to show how extended this character was. It was
-not till the old traditions had been much developed or modified by
-oriental influences that a thorough mediæval character of art was
-established in Italy, France, Germany, and England. To the last it
-remained semi-classic in Rome itself.
-
-We can give reference to few specimens of household furniture or
-to woodwork of any kind before the eleventh century, with a great
-exception to be noticed presently. Ivories, in any form, belonging
-to these ages are rare. The best objects are Byzantine. Anglo-saxon
-ivories, though not unknown, are all but unique examples. Ivory was
-probably rarely employed for any objects of secular use, unless on
-mirror cases, combs, or the thrones of kings; on horns, caskets, sword
-hilts, and the like.
-
-Metallurgy in the precious metals and in bronze, including the gilding
-of bronze, was probably the one art that survived the departure, if
-it had not even preceded the invasion, of the Romans in Britain. It is
-scarcely probable that tin and copper ores would have been sought for
-from Britain if manufactured ornaments of metal had not found their
-way in the first instance from this country to the south. Be that,
-however, as it may, the art of metallurgy survived the downfall of
-such architectural and sculpturesque skill as had been attained in
-England under Roman traditions; and that metal thrones, chairs, and
-other utensils were made here as in Gaul can hardly be doubted.
-
-There is an interesting collection, lately bequeathed by Mr. Gibbs,
-of Saxon ornaments in gold, bronze, and bronze ornamented with gilding
-and enamel, in the South Kensington museum. These objects were dug up
-chiefly at Faversham, a village in Kent. Most of these antiquities
-are _fibulæ_, brooches, and buckles, or portions of horse trappings,
-bosses, &c., and not recognisable as parts of bronze furniture,
-such as the chair of Dagobert. But it is difficult to examine these
-personal ornaments and not believe that during the Saxon occupation
-bronze thrones, tripods, mirrors, and other objects of household use
-were also made.
-
-The earliest example of mediæval furniture in the Kensington museum is
-a cast of the chair known as that of Dagobert, in the Louvre. A full
-description and history of this chair is to be found in the large
-catalogue, n^{o.} 68: and we here give a woodcut of it. This work (it
-is said) was executed by a monk.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-When we consider the rapacity of the barbarian inroads into Italy and
-Rome, and the amount of spoil carried bodily away from Constantinople,
-Rome, and the great municipal centres of Italy, it is remarkable that
-so little precious furniture should have survived in other parts
-of Europe. The Goths under Adolphus in the fifth century carried an
-immense plunder into Gaul and Spain. "When the treasuries, after the
-conquest of Spain," says Gibbon, "were plundered by the Arabs, they
-admired, and they have celebrated, a table of considerable size, of
-one single piece of solid emerald [that is, glass], encircled with
-three rows of fine pearls, supported by three hundred and sixty-five
-feet of gems and massy gold, estimated at the price of five hundred
-thousand pieces of gold,"--probably the most expensive table on
-record. It is the value of the materials that has prevented the
-preservation of many such objects, while the chair of Dagobert is of
-gilt bronze only.
-
-Early mediæval art, included under the general name of Gothic,
-continued down to the twelfth century full of Romanesque forms and
-details. Figures were clothed in classic draperies, but stiff and
-severe with upright lines and childish attempts to indicate the limbs
-or joints beneath. Nevertheless, the work of these centuries, rude
-and archaic as it is, is full of dignity and force. The subjects were
-often sacred, sometimes of war or incidents of the chase. These last
-were commonly mixed with animals, lions and dogs, or eagles and hawks,
-or leaves of the acanthus and other foliage. Throughout these ages the
-foliated sculpture, the paintings of books and carving of ivory,
-and no doubt of wood also, was, moreover, composed in endless
-convolutions, such as may be seen on sculptured stones in Ireland and
-on the Norwegian doors of the twelfth century. Whether the different
-convolutions are formed by figures or dragons, or by stalks of foliage
-twined and knotted together in bold curved lines, symmetrically
-arranged, each portion is generally carefully designed and traceable
-through many windings as having a distinct intention and purpose.
-Ornamental work was thus apparently conventional, but made up of
-individual parts separately carried out, and in some degree, though
-not altogether, realistic: a character gradually lost after the early
-thirteenth century till the new revival in the sixteenth.
-
-The tenth century was not favourable to the development of the
-requirements or comfort of personal life. Towards the year one
-thousand a superstition prevailed over many parts of Europe that the
-world would come to an end when the century was completed; and many
-fields were left uncultivated in the year 999. The eleventh century
-made a great advance in architecture and other arts, but down to the
-Norman invasion our own country was far behind the continental nations
-in the fine arts; metallurgy only excepted. The Anglo-saxons perhaps
-advanced but very slowly, as the century wore on to the period of the
-Norman conquest; and manners remained exceedingly simple.
-
-Early illuminations, though conventional, give us some details of
-Anglo-saxon houses. They were of one story, and contained generally
-only one room. The addition of a second was rare before the Norman
-conquest. The furniture of the room consisted of a heavy table,
-sometimes fixed; on which the inhabitants of the house and the guests
-slept. A bedstead was occasionally reserved for the mistress of the
-house. Bedsteads when used by the women or the lord of the house were
-enclosed in a shed under the wall of enclosure and had a separate
-roof, as may be seen in many manuscripts. In the Bayeux tapestry a
-bed roof is tiled, and the framework shut in with curtains. In many
-instances such a design represents only a tester with posts. Otherwise
-beds of straw stuffed into a bag or case were spread on the table,
-and soldiers laid their arms by their heads ready for use in case of
-alarm. Benches, some with lion or other heads at the corners, like
-elongated chairs or settles (with backs, for the lord and lady of
-the house), were the usual seats. Thrones, something like that of
-Dagobert, were the property of kings. King Edward the Confessor is
-seated on such a chair (metal, and in the Roman shape) in the Bayeux
-tapestry, and folding chairs of various forms, more or less following
-classical types, were used by great personages. Benches were also used
-as beds; so were the lids or tops of chests, the sack or bag being
-sometimes kept in it and filled with straw when required. The tables
-were covered with cloths at dinner. Stained cloths and tapestries,
-commonly worked with pictorial designs, were used to hang the walls
-of the house or hall. They were called wah-hrægel, wall coverings.
-Personal clothing was kept in chests of rude construction. Silver
-candlesticks were used in churches. Candles were stuck anywhere in
-houses, on beams or ledges.
-
-With regard to carriages during the Saxon and Anglo-norman period,
-carts on two wheels were common for agricultural use, and served to
-transport the royal property. Four-wheeled cars drawn by hand labour
-are used for carrying warlike stores in the Bayeux tapestry. In the
-battle of the Standard the standard of the English host was carried
-on a wheeled car or platform, and remained as the head-quarters or
-rallying point during action.
-
-The Norman invasion of England caused a new advance in the luxury
-and refinement, such as it was, of daily life. The houses began to
-grow--upper rooms or rooms at the side of the great hall were added,
-called solars (solaria), the sunny or light rooms. These seem to have
-been appropriated to the ladies. In due time they added a parloir or
-talking room, a name derived from the rooms in which conversation
-was allowed in monasteries where silence was the general rule. In
-the upper rooms fireplaces were made occasionally, but not always
-chimneys. In the halls, when the upper room did not cover the whole
-under room or when an upper room was not constructed, fire was made
-in the centre of the floor. Stairs were of wood. Glass was all but
-unknown in the windows of houses, and wooden shutters kept out the
-weather.
-
-The houses of landowners in England were called manoir or manor. The
-furniture was simple and consisted of few objects. The table was on
-trestles; the seats were benches. _Armaria_, armoires, cupboards or
-presses, either stood in recesses in the wall or were complete wooden
-enclosures. These had doors opening horizontally. The frames were not
-panelled. The doors were ledge doors of boards, nailed to stout cross
-bars behind, and decorated with iron hinges and clamps beaten out into
-scrolls and other ornaments.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Bedrooms were furnished with ornamental bed testers, and benches at
-the bed foot. Beds were furnished with quilts and pillows, and with
-spotted or striped linen sheets; over all was laid a covering of green
-say, badgers' furs, the skins of beavers or of martin cats, and a
-cushion. A perch for falcons to sit on was fixed in the wall. A chair
-at the bed head, and a perch or projecting pole on which clothes could
-be hung, completed the furniture of the Anglo-norman bedroom. In the
-foregoing woodcut from Willemin there is no tester, but carving on the
-posts, and the coverings are of the richest description.
-
-Woodwork was decorated with painted ornament or with fanciful work
-on the hinges; and nails and clamps were applied to hold it together,
-rather than with sculpture, down to the fourteenth century; and in
-England, France, and Germany, oak was the wood employed for furniture.
-Both in England and in the countries which had retained old artistic
-traditions on the continent, such as Italy, France, and Spain (which
-profited by the skill of the Moors in painted decoration), colour was
-used not less on walls and wood than on metal and pottery. Tapestry
-was an important portion of the furniture of all houses of the richer
-classes.
-
-During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries mediæval art in Europe
-reached its greatest perfection. The classic traditions were at last
-forgotten everywhere except in Rome itself, where a chain lingered
-almost continuous between the old ideas and those which succeeded in
-the sixteenth century. Elsewhere the feeling in sculpture, whether of
-wood or other materials, was in unison with the pointed architecture
-and reigned unchallenged. All sorts of enrichments were used in the
-decoration of furniture. A chest of the time of John is preserved in
-the castle of Rockingham. It is of oak richly decorated with hammered
-iron plates, hinges, &c. The jewel chest of Richard of Cornwall was
-long preserved in the state treasury of Aix-la-Chapelle, and is now at
-Vienna. It belongs to the first half of the century, and was left at
-Aix when Richard was crowned king of the Romans. The body is of oak
-decorated with wrought-iron hinges, lock, and clamps, and with bosses
-of metal on which are enamelled heraldic shields.
-
-The construction of woodwork gradually became more careful and
-scientific. Panelled framework came into use, though seldom for
-doors of rooms. With this method of construction the chests were
-put together that formed the chief article of furniture during two
-centuries in the mediæval sleeping, sitting, or private room.
-
-In the middle of the thirteenth century Eleanor of Provence was
-escorted on her journey to England by an army of ladies, knights,
-nobles and troubadours, from Provence to the shores of the channel.
-Kings were continually making progress in this manner through their
-dominions, like the Indian governors of our own days, and carried
-their furniture and property in chests, called standards, on the backs
-of mules or sumpter horses. Portable furniture and hangings were the
-principal objects of household use on such occasions. A precept in
-the twentieth year of the reign of Henry the third directed that "the
-king's great chamber at Westminster be painted a green colour like a
-curtain, that in the great gable frontispiece of the said chamber
-a French inscription should be painted, and that the king's little
-wardrobe should be painted of a green colour to imitate a curtain."
-The queen's chamber was decorated with historical paintings. Remains
-of similar wall decoration are in tolerable preservation still in one
-of the vaulted rooms of Dover castle.
-
-Till the fourteenth century candles were generally placed on a beam
-in the hall, whether in the castle of a king or baron. Frames of wood
-with prickets were also suspended for the lighting of rooms, or were
-fixed to the sides of the fire-place when that was made in the wall
-and had a chimney constructed for it. More generally, as regards
-halls, the hearth was in the middle of the room and a lantern
-just above it in the roof acted as a chimney. Iron chandeliers, or
-branches, were ordered to be fixed to the piers of the king's halls at
-Oxford, Winchester, and other places. Though the royal table might be
-lighted with valuable candlesticks of metal, they were not in general
-use till a century later. Besides the numerous rows of tallow candles
-pieces of pine wood were lighted and stuck into iron hasps in the
-wall, or round the woodwork at the back of the dais to give more
-abundant light.
-
-The wardrobe was a special room fitted with hanging closets, and in
-these clothes, hangings, linen, as well as spices and stores, were
-preserved. This arrangement was common in all large castles during the
-thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Great preparations
-were made in the bedrooms of queens of England to which they retired
-before the birth of children. Henry the third directed that his
-queen's bedroom should be freshly wainscoted and lined, and that a
-list or border should be made, well painted with images of our
-Lord and angels, with incense pots scattered over it; that the four
-evangelists should be painted in the chamber, and a crystal vase be
-made to keep his collection of relics.
-
-Room panelling was introduced into England during the same reign.
-Henry ordered a chamber at Windsor castle to be panelled with Norway
-pines specially imported; the men worked day and night. The boards
-were radiated and coloured, and two clear days only were allowed for
-the fixing and completion.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Edward the first married a Spanish queen, and household furniture was
-further developed under his reign in many particulars. Pottery for the
-table was imported from Spain, and oriental carpets were introduced; a
-luxury naturally borrowed from the extensive use of them by the Moors
-in that country. Italian artists had already been invited to England.
-Master William, the Florentine, was master of the works at Guildford
-castle. John of St. Omer was another foreign artist employed by Henry
-the third. To the former of these we probably owe the introduction
-into this country of the method of gilding and tooled gold work, with
-which wood was decorated. Specimens of the work are still discernible
-on the famous coronation chair (of which we give a woodcut, p. 49) in
-Westminster abbey; made about the year 1300.
-
-The decoration and comfort of furnished houses during Henry's reign
-was further promoted by the general use of tapestry. Queen Eleanor is
-traditionally and incorrectly said to have first brought this kind
-of furniture into houses; it was certainly adopted for churches
-at earlier periods, and hangings of various materials, stained or
-embroidered, were employed as far back as the Anglo-saxon times.
-Tapestries and cypress chests to carry them probably became more
-general in Eleanor's reign.
-
-Amongst the particulars collected in the history of the city companies
-and by the record commission are lists of the royal plate, showing
-that objects of personal use besides table plate were made in silver
-and gold. We find mention of pitchers of gold and silver, plates and
-dishes of silver, gold salts, alms bowls, silver hannapers or baskets,
-a pair of knives with enamelled silver sheaths, a fork of crystal,
-and a silver fork with handle of ebony and ivory, combs and
-looking-glasses of silver. Edward had six silver forks and one of
-gold. Ozier mats were laid over the benches on which he and his
-queen sat at meals. These were also put under the feet, especially in
-churches where the pavement was of stone or tiles.
-
-In the furniture of bedrooms linen chests and settles, cupboards and
-the beds themselves were of panelled wood. The next woodcut shows the
-interior of a well-furnished bedroom, from a manuscript life of St.
-Edmund written about the year 1400.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Chests served as tables, and are often represented with chess-boards
-on them in old illuminations, and husband and wife sitting on the
-chest and using it for the game, which had become familiar to most
-European nations. Chests of later date than the time of Edward, of
-Italian make, still show the same use of the lids of coffers. As the
-tops of the coffers served for tables, and for seats they began in the
-thirteenth century to be furnished with a panelled back and arm-pieces
-at either end. This development of the chest was equally common in
-France. It does not seem to have been placed on legs or to have grown
-into a cabinet till a later period. The raised dorsal or back of the
-seats in large rooms was a protection from the cold, and in the rude
-form of a _settle_ is still the comfort of old farm and inn kitchens
-in this country; it became the general type of seats of state in the
-great halls, and was there further enlarged by a canopy projecting
-forwards to protect the heads of the sitters, panelled also in oak.
-In the fifteenth century in many instances this hood or canopy was
-attached to the panelling of the upper end of the hall, and covered
-the whole of that side of the dais. The backing and canopy were
-sometimes replaced by temporary arrangements of hangings, as in
-modern royal throne rooms, the cloth being called cloth of estate and
-generally embroidered with heraldic devices. Panelled closets called
-_dressoirs_ or cupboards, to lock up food, were general in properly
-furnished rooms; a cloth was laid on the top at meals, with lights,
-and narrow shelves rose in steps at the back for the display of plate,
-the steps varying in number according to the rank of the persons
-served.
-
-Tables used at meals were generally frames of boards, either in one
-piece or folding in the middle. These were laid on trestles, as in the
-woodcut from an early manuscript in the Bodleian library, and could
-be removed as soon as the dinner was over, so that the company might
-dance and divert themselves. Somewhat later, about the year 1450, the
-tables although still on trestles were made more solidly, even for the
-use of people of the middle class.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-All houses, however, even of kings could not be completely or even
-comfortably furnished in such a manner, far less those of feudal
-lords, not princes or sovereigns. The kings moved incessantly to their
-various strongholds and manors in time of peace to collect dues and
-revenues, much of which was paid in kind and could only be profitably
-turned to account by carrying the Court to different estates and
-living on their produce as long as it lasted. Orders were continually
-sent to sheriffs to provide food, linen and other requisites, while
-hangings and furniture were carried by the train in its progress. Much
-of the household belongings of persons of wealth was, therefore, of
-a movable kind. We engrave (p. 53) a very curious table standing on a
-pedestal shaped like a chalice, from a manuscript of the beginning of
-the fifteenth century. The ladies are playing at cards.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-A most oppressive privilege was exercised in France, which went beyond
-the legal right of the lord or owner to the rents of his estates
-whether paid in money, agricultural produce, or manufactures carried
-on in his towns or villages. This was the _droit de prisage_, a
-privilege of seizing furniture of all kinds by the hands of stewards
-and others for the use of the king. Chairs, tables, and beds
-particularly were included in these requisitions. The _droit
-de prisage_ was modified at various times in consequence of the
-remonstrance of the commons at so oppressive an exaction; but as late
-as the year 1365 Charles the fifth seized beds. In 1313 Philippe le
-Bel entertained the English king and his queen at Pontoise with no
-other furniture than such as had been seized in this manner. A fire
-broke out in the night during their stay, the furniture was consumed,
-and the royal personages escaped in their shirts. It was not till 1407
-that this privilege was finally abandoned.
-
-Though the usual conveyance during the thirteenth century was a horse
-litter for women of rank, and men rode on horseback, yet covered
-and open carriages or waggons were not unknown in that and in the
-following century. A charette containing a number of maids of honour
-in attendance on Anne of Bohemia at her public reception in London in
-1392, was upset on London bridge from the rush of the crowd to get
-a sight of the queen, and her ladies were not without difficulty
-replaced. These charettes, cars, or waggons were covered carts on four
-wheels, like country waggons of our days, panelled at the sides, and
-the tilt covered with leather, sometimes with lead, and painted.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-We must not pass without a very brief notice the large constructions
-of roofs of wood begun as early as the twelfth, and continued and
-improved through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period
-during which the finest efforts of mediæval Gothic art were embodied
-all over the north and over parts of the south of Europe. The older
-part of Westminster hall dates from the reign of Rufus, and the walls
-of the present building belong to that period, though faced at a later
-time. How the roof of the enormous space, sixty-five feet diameter,
-was at first constructed there is no evidence to show. It had,
-perhaps, a row of arches down the middle, like the great hall of
-the palace of Blois, said to be of the thirteenth century, or huge
-kingposts supporting the ties between rafters, which in that case may
-have been as long as those of the later roof. The present roof, work
-of the fourteenth century, marks the beginning of a change in the
-style of architecture that accompanied and caused great changes in
-furniture and household woodwork. The ties are supported by curved
-braces that descend like arches on the stone corbels made in the wall
-to receive them. These braces take two flights, being tied back where
-they meet by hammer beams into a lower part of the rafter. The lower
-brace upholds another upright or collar post which supports the
-junction of these beams with the rafter, at its weakest part. A rich
-subdivision of upright mullions with cusped arch heads fills up the
-spandrels between these braces and the beams they support, and adds
-stiffness as well as decoration to the whole.
-
-Such constructions were not only more scientific than those of older
-date, but they are more pompous and complicated, and have a greater
-apparent affinity with the architecture of the day. This architectural
-character, from the date of the change to the third period of pointed
-architecture, began to show itself in furniture and wood structure of
-every kind. Until then a certain originality and inventiveness
-were preserved in the decoration both of architective woodwork and
-furniture, notwithstanding the strictest observance of the rules and
-unities of architectural law in buildings, ecclesiastical and civil.
-Small sculpture, such as that on ivories and utensils made of metal,
-or that which decorated woodwork as well as stone, and the general
-forms of furniture, were designed without immediate imitation of
-architectonic detail. Figure sculpture of great dignity remains
-in ivories of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries,
-illustrative of the general character given to things of daily use
-which were not, probably, nearly so numerous as in a later age, and
-were each carefully elaborated for the person for whom they were
-made. We need go no further than some of the objects in the Kensington
-museum, such as the statuettes and caskets of ivory, English and
-French work of that time.
-
-We can point to few large pieces of furniture, except the coronation
-chair, illustrating the fashions of this early period. Examples of
-wooden movable furniture are extremely rare in this country. There are
-large semicircular cope chests in the cathedrals of Wells, York, and
-other cities. These are merely chests or boxes in which the copes
-are spread out full size, one over the other, and the only
-decoration consists in the floriated ironwork attached to the hinges.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-We must not omit to remark that some examples of very beautiful
-oriental panelling of this period are to be seen in various
-collections. The woodcuts represent the fittings of a series of such
-panels from a mosque at Cairo, now at South Kensington, n^{o.} 1,051;
-and a single piece to show the detail. The delicacy of the carving
-and the apparent intricacy of the geometrical arrangement are very
-remarkable.
-
-[Illustration: A royal dinner table, from a manuscript of the
-fourteenth century.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
-In discussing the great wood structures such as screens, house
-fronts, roofs, and other large pieces of mechanism, which developed in
-boldness and variety in the fifteenth century, we must not forget that
-the abundance of oak timber in the north of Europe both suggested much
-of this timber art and admitted of bold features of construction from
-the size of the logs and the tenacity of the material. A large portion
-of England and perhaps an equal proportion of Ireland were covered
-with dense forests of oak. The eastern frontier of France, great
-portions of Burgundy, and many other districts in France, Germany,
-Flanders, and other northern countries, were still forests, and timber
-was to be had at low prices and in any quantity. Spanish chestnut had
-been introduced probably by the Romans into England.
-
-Though churches, castles, and manors were built of stone or brick,
-or both, yet whole cities seem to have been mainly constructed out
-of timber. The London of the fifteenth century, like a hundred other
-cities, though abounding in noble churches and in great fortified
-palaces, yet presented the aspect of a timber city. The houses
-were framed together, as a few still are in some English towns and
-villages, of vast posts sixteen to twenty-four inches square in
-section, arching outwards and meeting the projecting floor timbers,
-and so with upper stories, till the streets were darkened by the
-projections. The surfaces of these posts were covered with delicate
-tracery, niches and images. In the streets at Chester an open gallery
-or passage is left on the first floor _within_ the timbers of the
-house fronts. In the court of St. Mary's guild in Coventry, whole
-chambers and galleries are supported on vast arches of timber like
-bridges. Oriels jutted out under these overhanging stories, and
-the spaces between the framing posts were filled in, sometimes with
-bricks, sometimes with laths and mortar, or parts (as the century wore
-on) more frequently with glass.
-
-In London and Rouen, in Blois and in Coventry, these angle posts were
-filled with niches and statuettes or fifteenth century window tracery
-sunk into the surfaces. The dark wooden houses were externally a mass
-of imagery. In the great roofs of these centuries, such as the one
-spoken of at Westminster, the hammer beams were generally carved into
-figures of angels gracefully sustaining the timber behind them
-with outstretched wings; and these figures were painted and gilt.
-A magnificent example remains intact in the church of Knapton in
-Norfolk.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The number of excellent workmen and the size and architectural
-character of so much of the woodwork of the day contributed to give
-all panelled work, no matter of what description, an architectural
-type; and furniture shared in this change. Coffers and chests, as well
-as standards or stall-ends in churches, and bench-ends in large rooms
-and halls, were designed after the pattern of window tracery. The
-panel in the above woodcut from a French chest of this date, is a very
-delicate and beautiful example. Little buttresses and pinnacles were
-often placed on the angles or the divisions between the panels. At
-South Kensington, the buffet, n^{o.} 8,439 and the chest, n^{o.}
-2,789, with other pieces are of this kind; also a grand cabinet of
-German make in the same collection. This last, n^{o.} 497, is of the
-rudest construction, but a few roughly cut lines of moulding and some
-effective ironwork give it richness and dignity that are wanting in
-many pieces more scientifically made and more decoratively treated.
-
-The quantity of tapestry employed in these centuries in fitting up
-houses and the tents used either during a campaign or in progresses
-from one estate to another was prodigious, and kept increasing.
-Lancaster entertained the king of Portugal in his tent between Mouçal
-and Malgaço, fitted up with hangings of arras "as if he had been at
-Hertford, Leicester, or any of his manors." As early as 1313, when
-Isabel of Bavaria made her entry into Paris, the whole street of St.
-Denis, Froissart tells us, "was covered with a canopy of rich camlet
-and silk cloths, as if they had the cloths for nothing, or were at
-Alexandria or Damascus. I (the writer of this account) was present,
-and was astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments
-could have come, for all the houses on each side of the street of St.
-Denis, as far as the Châtelet, or indeed to the great bridge, were
-hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histories, to
-the delight of all beholders." The expense incurred in timber work on
-these occasions may be estimated from the long lists of pageants, and
-the scale on which each was prepared on this and like occasions.
-
-Of the early Italian furniture of the mediæval period there is at
-South Kensington one fine specimen, a coffer of cypress, covered with
-flat surface imagery filled in with coloured wax composition. It dates
-from the fourteenth century. The better known Italian furniture of
-the quattrocento or "fourteen hundred period," _i.e._ the fifteenth
-century, is gilt and painted. The richness of this old work is owing
-to the careful preparation of the ground or bed on which the gold is
-laid and the way in which the preparation was modelled with the tool.
-The old gold is, besides, both thicker and purer, more malleable, and
-less liable to suffer from the action of the atmosphere than the gold
-we now use for this purpose. The paintings executed on such pieces
-of furniture as offered suitable surfaces to the artist, boxes and
-coffers (and, for church uses, reliquaries), are equal to the finest
-works of that kind and of the same period.
-
-Many artists worked in this way. Dello Delli was the best known in
-regard to such productions. His work became so entirely the fashion
-that, according to Vasari, no house was complete without a specimen
-of it. Andrea di Cosimo was another. It need not be said that such men
-and their contemporaries had a number of pupils similarly employed.
-Every piece of painted furniture attributed to Dello Delli cannot be
-warranted. There are, however, specimens which we believe to be from
-his hand in the Kensington collection, and numbers of fronts and
-panels and fragments of great merit which illustrate his style.
-
-Besides this kind of decoration, the Venetians had derived from Persia
-and India another beautiful system of surface ornament; marquetry, a
-fine inlay of ivory, metal, and woods, stained to vary the colour. The
-work is in geometric patterns only. It is found on the ivory boxes and
-other objects sculptured in that material, and attributed to Italian
-as well as to Byzantine sources. In the fifteenth century Florence
-also came prominently to the front in the manufacture of these and
-other rich materials; as well as of ivory inlaid into solid cypress
-wood and walnut, known as Certosina work. The style is Indian in
-character, and consists in geometric arrangements of stars made of
-diamond-shaped pieces: varied with conventional flowers in pots, &c.
-The name Certosina is derived from the great Certosa, charterhouse,
-or Carthusian monastery between Milan and Pavia: where this kind of
-decoration is employed in the choir fittings of the splendid church of
-that monastery.
-
-We are inclined to the belief (as already said) that the manufacture
-of geometrical work of this kind was originally imported from Persia
-by the Venetians. There are in the Kensington museum some very
-interesting old chairs made for the castle of Urbino, and part of the
-furniture of Guidobaldo II., whose court, like that of Réné, king
-of Provence, was the resort of troubadours, poets, and philosophers.
-These chairs are covered with geometric marquetry of white and stained
-ivory, &c., the very counterpart of the Bombay work now brought to
-this country. That manufacture, in the opinion of Dr. Birdwood,
-was also of Persian origin and thence found its way to Bombay. The
-Persians continued long into the last century the inlaying of ivory in
-walnut wood, and their geometric marquetry is still made.
-
-The forms of chairs in use in Italy early in the fifteenth century
-were revivals of the old Roman folding chair. The pairs of crosspieces
-are sometimes on the sides, sometimes set back and front, and in that
-case arm and back pieces are added. Generally we may say that the fine
-Italian furniture of that day owed its beauty to inlaying, surface
-gilding, tooling and painting. Gilt chests and marriage trays, inlaid
-tables, and chairs are also to be seen at South Kensington.
-
-As in Italy, so in England, France, Germany, and later in Spain, the
-splendour hitherto devoted to the glory of ecclesiastical furniture,
-utensils, or architectural decoration was gradually adopted in the
-royal and other castles and houses. State rooms, halls of justice,
-sets of rooms for the use of the king or his barons were furnished and
-maintained. The large religious establishments also demanded the skill
-of artists and workmen, and to a greater extent north than south of
-the Alps. Many monastic houses in the north of Europe were seats of
-feudal jurisdiction. These communities executed great works in wood,
-stall-work, presses, coffers, &c., as large and continuous societies
-alone are able to carry through tasks that want much time for
-completion. All this helped to encourage the manufacture of woodwork
-of the finest kind. Hence the mediæval semi-ecclesiastical character
-maintained sway in every art connected with architecture and furniture
-longer in northern countries than in Italy, where both old traditions
-and monumental remains recalled rather the glories of antique art, and
-where the revival of classic learning had begun.
-
-As regards English art it is certain that, partly from the influence
-of foreign queens, partly from foreign wars, and partly from the
-incessant intercourse with the rest of Europe kept up by religious
-houses, many of the accomplishments of other countries were known and
-practised here by foreign or native artists.
-
-It is true that the wars of the Roses, more bloody and ruinous than
-any experienced in this country, delayed that growth of domestic
-luxury which might have been expected from the then wealth of England.
-But when Henry the seventh established a settled government, and from
-his time downwards, the decorations and the accumulation of furniture
-in houses, libraries, and collections of works of art rapidly
-increased. Many of the books in the "King's library," and many
-pictures and movables still in possession of the crown, may be traced
-to that day.
-
-It is difficult, indeed, to imagine the England which Leland saw in
-his travels. It must have been full of splendid objects, and during
-the reign of Henry the feudal mansions, as well as the numerous royal
-palaces of Windsor, Richmond, Havering, and others, were filled with
-magnificent furniture. Mabuse and Torrigiano were employed by the
-king, and this example found many imitations; artists, both foreign
-and English, made secular furniture, as rich and beautiful as that of
-the churches and religious houses which covered the country.
-
-Taste in furniture, as in architecture, both in continental Europe and
-in these islands had nevertheless passed the fine period of mediæval
-design. The "Gothic" or pointed forms and details had become
-uninventive and commonplace. The whole system awaited a change. The
-figure sculpture, however, of the latter years of this century, though
-life-sized statues had lost much of the dignity and simplicity of the
-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was approaching the realization
-of natural form, which it attained in such excellence in the
-succeeding century. The ingenuity and raciness of the smaller figure
-carving both in stall-work of churches and on the tops and fronts of
-boxes and caskets, in panel-work of cabinets or doors, &c., during the
-last half of the fifteenth century are scarcely surpassed by the more
-academic and classical figure design of the sixteenth. Carvers on all
-kinds of wood furniture and decoration of houses delighted in doubling
-their figures up into quaint and ingenious attitudes, and if the
-architecture was latterly tame, though showy and costly, imagery
-continued to be full of individuality and inventiveness.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
-
-
-There are few matters regarding art more worthy of consideration than
-the narrowness of the limits that bound human invention: or, to speak
-more exactly, we should say the simplicity of the laws and principles
-in obedience to which the imaginations of men are exercised. The
-return of the painters, sculptors, and architects to the old types of
-classical art after the reign of the Gothic seems at first sight as
-if in the arts there could be nothing new under the sun: as if the
-imagination, so fertile in creation during many centuries since the
-establishment of Christianity, had been utterly worked out and come
-to an end, and that there was nothing left but to repeat and copy what
-had been done ages before.
-
-There is, however, in reality more connection between classic and
-mediæval art than appears on the surface, and although all the great
-masters of the revival studied eagerly such remains of antique art as
-were discovered in Italy during the early years of the renaissance,
-they only came into direct contact with or absolute imitation of those
-models occasionally; and the works of that age have a grace that is
-peculiarly their own, and an inventiveness in painting and sculpture,
-if not in architecture, that seems, when we look at such cities as
-Venice and Florence, inexhaustible. The renaissance began in Italy
-many years before the year 1500. Most changes, indeed, of manners or
-arts which are designated by any century are perhaps more correctly
-dated twenty years before or after its beginning, and in the notices
-which we are here putting together we are compelled to make divisions
-of time occasionally overlap each other.
-
-The revival of learning in Italy was accompanied by other
-circumstances which had a powerful influence on the arts, and
-particularly on the sumptuary arts of the century. It has been already
-remarked that while the nations of Europe were more or less convulsed
-with war it was not easy or possible for the inhabitants, even the
-wealthy, to do much in furnishing dwelling-houses with any kind of
-comfort. Rich furniture consisted in a few costly objects and in
-hangings such as could be carried about on sumpter horses or in
-waggons, and, with the addition of rough benches, tables, and
-bedsteads, could make bare walls look gay and comfortable, and offer
-sufficient accommodation in the empty halls of granges and manors
-seldom lived in, for the occasions of a visit or a temporary
-occupation. Churches indeed were in those ages respected by both sides
-in the furious contests that raged throughout Europe. The violation of
-holy places was a crime held in abhorrence by all combatants, and
-the treasuries and sacristies, therefore, of churches were full of
-examples of every kind of accomplishment possessed by the artists
-of the day. They contained objects collected there during many
-generations, as was the case of shrines like that of the Virgin del
-Pillar in Spain, of which the offerings so long preserved have been
-very lately sold and dispersed, and represented the art of many
-successive ages. But in private houses it was scarcely possible to
-have any corresponding richness, though in the instance of kings and
-potentates there was often much splendour.
-
-As in England the fifteenth century saw the close of a series of great
-wars and the establishment of one powerful government, so during its
-conclusion and the beginning of the next century a similar disorder
-gradually gave place to tranquillity in Italy.
-
-The practices of painting gilt furniture of all kinds, and of
-modelling terra-cotta work on the wood, were not altogether new
-accomplishments or confined to the artists of one city. When,
-therefore, the French having been driven out of Italy, the popes were
-in security in Rome and the accomplished Medici family reigned
-in Florence, those states as well as Urbino, Ferrara, and other
-independent cities were free from the perpetual attitude of defence
-against foreign invasion; they could indulge their enthusiasm for
-classic art, and the impulse given to the study of it found a ready
-response, as great noblemen while building palaces and digging
-gardens came upon statues, frescoes, vases, bronzes, and many glorious
-remnants of antiquity. In the various Italian states were artists well
-skilled and carefully trained, and there was no difficulty in finding
-distinguished names with whole schools of enthusiastic admirers behind
-them who, with these precious objects in their view, formed their
-style on the old classic models. We are to consider such acquirements
-here only so far as they came to be applied to secular woodwork (of
-which this cornice from Venice is an example) and the objects of daily
-use; to coffers, chests, caskets, mirrors, or cabinets, sideboards
-of various kinds, seats, tables, carriages and furniture of every
-description.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The best artists of the day did not hesitate to give their minds to
-the making of woodwork and furniture in various materials and employed
-every kind of accomplishment in beautifying them. Of this fine
-renaissance period there are so many examples in the South Kensington
-collection, and some of them of such excellence, that the student need
-scarcely have occasion to travel beyond the limits of that museum to
-illustrate the quattrocento and cinquecento furniture and woodwork.
-
-Many materials were employed by the renaissance artists. Wood first
-and principally in making furniture, but decorated with gilding and
-paintings; inlaid with agate, carnelian, lapis lazuli and marbles of
-various tints; with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl; and with
-other woods. They also made many smaller objects, such as mirror cases
-in iron, damascened or inlaid with gold and silver. For many years,
-however, mirrors continued to be of polished metal, the enrichment
-being devoted to the outer case. Glass mirrors were not common till a
-somewhat later period.
-
-As the general material of furniture in the sixteenth century
-continued to be wood, its chief decoration was sculpture. The number
-of remarkable pieces of carved wood furniture belonging to this period
-in the museum is considerable. The most striking are the chests,
-cassoni, large coffers for containing clothes or ornamental hangings
-and stuffs that were kept in them when not in use. Rooms, however
-large, of which the walls, floors, and ceilings are decorated, do not
-require many substantial objects in addition; and these chests, with
-a table and chairs placed against the wall, nearly complete the
-requirements of great Italian halls and corridors.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The general form of the carved chests is that of a sarcophagus. They
-are supported on claw feet, and have masks, brackets, or caryatid
-figures worked into the construction as in the accompanying woodcut,
-leaving panels, borders, or other spaces for historic sculpture. The
-subjects are sometimes from Scripture, often from the poems of Ovid.
-They are carved in walnut wood, which is free in grain and very
-tenacious: and the work, like most of the old furniture carving, is
-helped out with gilding. Sometimes the ground, at others the relieved
-carvings are touched or completely covered with gilding. Most of these
-fine chests are in pairs, and probably formed parts of still larger
-sets, fours or sixes, according as they were intended for the wall
-spaces of larger or smaller rooms or portions of wall between two
-doors.
-
-Carved chests commonly in use, and given to brides as part of their
-dowry or as presents to married couples, or simply provided as the
-most convenient objects both for receptacles and occasionally
-for seats, were often made at less cost in cypress wood. They are
-generally decorated with surface designs etched with a pen on the
-absorbent grain of that wood, the ground being slightly cut out and
-worked over with punches shaped like nail heads, stars, &c. Cypress
-chests were especially used for keeping dresses or tapestries; the
-aromatic properties of that timber being considered as a specific
-against moth. This kind of chest, when intended to hold a bridal
-trousseau, was occasionally made with small drawers and receptacles
-inside for fans, lace, combs, or other feminine ornaments. Allusions
-to cypress chests in England are numerous in the wardrobe and privy
-purse accounts of Edward the fourth and his successors.
-
-The tables of this period are sometimes solid (as n^{o.} 162, which is
-covered with spirited designs of mythological subjects). Dinner tables
-were "boards" fastened on trestles, according to the old usage already
-alluded to, and could be removed when the meal was over; or several
-could be laid together, as in our modern dining-room tables, to meet
-the demands of the noble hospitality exercised in those days.
-
-The Italian chairs of the quattrocento period have been spoken of
-above. We have, however, another very rich and effective form of
-chairs usual in the sixteenth century, and which were in general use
-in Venice. In these the seat is fastened into two planks, one before
-and one behind, as in the woodcut. The planks are richly carved, and
-a third plank is let in to form a back. The several portions,
-particularly the back, were sometimes sufficiently thick to admit of
-carving in massive relief. The flanks of the back piece are usually
-grotesque monsters, and the arms of the owner carved on a scutcheon
-in the centre. They seem to have been generally richly gilt. They
-also formed the decoration of a great corridor or hall, and were used
-without cushions.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The frames of pictures were bold and rich. Those of the previous
-century had been mostly imitative of small Gothic shrines, being
-generally for religious subjects and for use in churches or oratories.
-In the cinquecento period they were square panels, carved and richly
-gilt. There are in the Kensington museum remarkable examples of frames
-made for mirrors, either for the sitting-rooms or saloons of the lady
-of the house, or for her bedroom. Three of these are type pieces of
-such productions. N^{o.} 7695 is a square frame carved in walnut,
-standing on a foot, and meant to be carried about. From the daisies in
-relief on the foot it may perhaps be ascribed to Marguerite of Valois,
-and have been used in the court of Provence. Nothing in the collection
-surpasses the elegance and perfection of the ornamental work on the
-mouldings. The mirror itself is of polished metal. Another is in a
-circular frame, n^{o.} 7694, shaped like a shield, and meant to be
-hung up. It was probably made for a duchess of Ferrara. There are
-classical details of architectonic kind on the edges of the carving,
-which is highly finished. The mirror itself is of metal, and the back
-has figures on it in relief and is solidly gilt. The third of these,
-n^{o.} 7226, is larger. In design it is like a monumental mural
-tablet, with a carved rich finish on the four sides, and the mirror
-furnished with a sliding cover in the form of a medallion, containing
-a female head of singular nobleness and beauty. In this case the
-material is walnut relieved by broad surfaces of inlaid wood. We may
-also mention the superb Soltykoff mirror, n^{o.} 7648. This is an
-example of metal work throughout, the case, stand, and sliding cover
-being of iron damascened with gold and silver in every variety of that
-costly process.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Some of the richest pieces of carved walnut furniture belonging
-to this period are the bellows. As these are characteristic of the
-Italian style of the period in furniture of various kinds, we give
-woodcuts of two examples in the South Kensington collection. They
-are generally of walnut touched with gilding; and in the form still
-familiar to ourselves, which is as old as the classic times.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Besides furniture carved in this way out of solid wood, there were
-other materials used and other methods of decorating household
-furniture. The tarsia or inlaid work has been alluded to. The
-first methods were by geometrical arrangements of small dies; but
-magnificent figure designs had been executed in inlaid wood in the
-early period of the renaissance, and before it. Work of this kind was
-made in two or three woods, and much of it is in pine or cypress. The
-large grain is used to express lines of drapery and other movements by
-putting whole folds or portions of a dress or figure with the grain
-in one direction or another, as may be required. The picture is thus
-composed of pieces inclined together; a few bold lines incised and
-blackened give such outlines of the form as are not attainable by the
-other method, and slight burning with an iron is sometimes added to
-produce tone or shadow.
-
-"'Tarsie' or 'Tarsiatura,'" says Mrs. Merrifield, "was a kind of
-mosaic in woods. This consisted in representing houses and perspective
-views of buildings, by inlaying pieces of wood of various colours and
-shades into panels of walnut wood. Vasari speaks rather slightingly of
-this art, and says that it was practised chiefly by those persons who
-possessed more patience than skill in design; that although he had
-seen some good representations in figures, fruits, and animals, yet
-the work soon becomes dark, and was always in danger of perishing
-from the worms and by fire. Tarsia work was frequently employed in
-decorating the choirs of churches as well as the backs of seats and
-the wainscoting. It was also used in the panels of doors."
-
-Another method of ornamentation dependent on material that came into
-use in this century was the Pietra Dura or mosaic panelling of hard
-pebbles. The work is laborious and costly. Not only are the materials
-(agate, carnelian, amethyst and marbles of all colours) expensive, but
-each part must be ground laboriously to an exact shape and the whole
-mosaic fitted together, a kind of refinement of the old marble work
-called Alexandrinum. Besides being formed into marble panels for table
-tops and cabinet fronts, pietra dura was let into wood, and helped
-out with gay colours the more sombre walnut or ebony base of the
-furniture.
-
-Vasari, speaking of particular pieces of furniture of his day,
-mentions a "splendid library table" made at the expense and by the
-order of Francesco de' Medici in Florence. This table was "constructed
-of ebony," that is, veneered with ebony, "divided into compartments by
-columns of heliotrope, oriental jasper, and lapis lazuli, which have
-the bases and capitals of chased silver. The work is furthermore
-enriched with jewels, beautiful ornaments of silver, and exquisite
-little figures, interspersed with miniatures and terminal figures of
-silver and gold, in full relief, united in pairs. There are, besides,
-other compartments formed of jasper, agates, heliotropes, sardonyxes,
-carnelians, and other precious stones." This piece was the work of
-Bernardo Buontalenti. Another piece of such work is described as a
-table "wholly formed of oriental alabaster, intermingled with great
-pieces of carnelian, jasper, heliotrope, lapis, and agate, with other
-stones and jewels, worth twenty thousand crowns." Another artist,
-Bernardino di Porfirio of Leccio, executed an "octangular table of
-ebony and ivory inlaid with jaspers." This precious manufacture has
-been patronised in the grand ducal factories down to recent times, and
-is continued in the royal establishments of the king of Italy.
-
-A feature which was strongly developed in the sixteenth century
-furniture is the architectural character of the outlines. It has
-already been observed that in the fifteenth century, chests, screens,
-stall fronts, doors and panelling followed or fell into the prevailing
-arrangements of architectural design in stonework, such as window
-tracery, or wall tracery. But in the cinquecento furniture an
-architectural character, not proper to woodwork for any constructive
-reasons, was imparted to cabinets, chests, &c. They were artificially
-provided with parts that imitated the lines, brackets, and all the
-details of classic entablatures which have constructive reasons in
-architecture, but which, reduced to the proportions of furniture, have
-not the same propriety. These subdivisions brought into use the art of
-"joinery." The parts obviously necessary for the purpose of framing
-up wood, whether a box or chest, a door, a piece of panelling, or a
-chair, offer certain opportunities for mouldings or carvings; some
-are the thicker portions forming the frames, some the thin flat
-boards that fill up the spaces. To add a variety of mouldings, such as
-subdivide the roofs of temples or their peristyles, is, of course,
-to depart from the carpenter's province and work, and rather to
-take furniture out of its obvious forms for the express purpose of
-impressing on it the renaissance type.
-
-[Illustration: Knife case. Dated 1564.]
-
-The artists of that time did this with the object of designing "in
-character," and special models, such as the old triumphal arches, and
-sarcophagi, at Rome, were in view in these designs. On both arches
-and tombs sculptured bas-reliefs abounded. Figures reclined over the
-arches, and were arranged in square compositions in the panels, for
-which the upper stories of the arches made provision. The renaissance
-cabinets fell into modifications of this ideal. A century later they
-grew into house fronts, and showed doors, arches, and balustrades
-inside, with imitative paved floors, looking-glasses set at angles
-of 45°, so as to make reflections of these various parts; and in this
-humorous fashion the inside of a walnut or ebony cabinet was turned
-into the model of an Italian villa.
-
-Again, in place of the running foliated borders and mouldings having
-a continuous design, or of compositions of foliage, animals, &c.,
-forming in each arch moulding or cornice line a homogeneous line or
-circle, the renaissance arabesques introduced an entirely new method
-of decoration. In arabesque ornament all sorts of natural objects are
-grafted on a central stalk, or, as in the best work, on something like
-the stem of a candelabrum. The resources of this method are limited
-only by the fancy and skill of the artist, who grafts here a mask,
-there a leaf on his stem, and so on. The temptation is the license
-and discordance that come in when no unity is needed in a piece of
-ornament, and no continuous effort of mind required to think out and
-execute one definite idea in designing it. The central stem leads
-to an exact balance or reversal of one half of each element in
-the ornament, so that one half only of a panel or border has to be
-_designed_. In the hands of great artists this kind of ornamentation
-has been used with consummate grace.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND, FLANDERS, FRANCE, GERMANY, AND SPAIN.
-
-
-In the foregoing sketch of the furniture, designs, and manufactures
-of central Italy, we have described the history of contemporaneous
-furniture throughout Europe. Pope Leo the tenth gave every
-encouragement to the reviving arts in Rome, and left that capital the
-great nursery of art down to our day. To Italy the great princes
-of Europe sent the most promising artists of their dominions,
-or encouraged such resort. Most of these men were architects and
-sculptors.
-
-Classical learning and splendid living were both encouraged by Henry
-the eighth. He is, probably, to be credited with the impulse given
-to the court and the country in the direction of the arts and
-accomplishments of Italy. If Jean de Mabuse had been patronised by
-Henry the seventh, his successor offered tempting terms to Primaticcio
-to exchange the service of his brother king, Francis, for his own.
-Other artists, contemporaries of Raphael and his scholars, found their
-way to England; to these we must add the great master of the German or
-Swiss school, Holbein. That the artists both of Holbein's and of the
-Italian schools designed furniture in this country we have proofs in
-the drawing for a panelled chimney-piece now in the British museum,
-and the woodwork of King's college chapel in Cambridge. Another piece
-of furniture of this date, showing the mixed character of Italian
-and Holbeinesque design, is the very fine "Tudor" cabinet at South
-Kensington.
-
-Though the court of Henry and the palaces of his wives were furnished
-with splendour, and works of art, especially those of the gold and
-silversmith, and jewellery, found their way from foreign parts to such
-great houses, the general manners of the country changed less in these
-respects than was the case in France and the more wealthy states and
-courts of Germany. In the portrait pictures of Henry and his family we
-see furniture of a renaissance character, but in the great monuments
-of the woodwork of the day the old style prevailed throughout the
-reign. The roofs, magnificent specimens of wood construction, were
-still subdivided, and supported by king posts, queen posts, hammer
-beams, arches connecting these portions and tracery panels in the
-spandrels, as in the two previous centuries. All parts were carved and
-coloured. The architecture of country houses began to change from
-the old form of a castle or a fortress to that of the beautiful and
-characteristic style to which we give the name of Tudor. Moats were
-retained, but still the principal features of the building were the
-depressed arches and perpendicular window mullions that had been
-long familiar in England, and were suggested by the wooden houses so
-general in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The
-woodwork also and the panelling of halls and chambers retained the
-upright lines and mouldings forming the various "linen" patterns.
-Leafwork and heads, busts of the reigning princes, or of heroes
-such as the Cæsars, filled up the more ornamental sections, giving a
-certain classical element which was not fully developed till later:
-and most of the renaissance ornamentation of this reign has a Flemish
-rather than an Italian character. The woodcuts on the next page show a
-series of panels of different countries, many of which are to be found
-introduced with slight variations in English work of about the same
-period.
-
-Flanders was in advance of this country in renaissance art. This
-remark extends to ornament of all kinds, whether of church woodwork,
-glass-painting, or domestic furniture. Still the Flemish work of this
-renaissance, or (speaking of England) this early Tudor period retains
-a mixture of details of the pointed style that makes us sometimes
-doubtful how to characterise the style of individual pieces. We may
-point to sideboards and chests in illustration. Belgium abounds in
-examples of this transition period.
-
-[Illustration: English, 15th century.]
-
-[Illustration: Flemish, 16th century.]
-
-[Illustration: French, 16th century.]
-
-[Illustration: German, 15th century.]
-
-[Illustration: Italian, 16th century.]
-
-In France, the most advanced and most luxurious and cultivated of the
-transalpine courts, the renaissance art had advanced far beyond that
-of England. Not only had Francis the first and the Medici princesses
-invited famous artists out of Italy, but they aimed at imitating
-Florentine luxuries and refinements as completely as they could.
-Admirable schools of ornamental art, such as that of the Limoges
-enamellers and carvers in ivory, were and had been long established
-in France. Classic sculpture was produced of great merit in all
-materials. Primaticcio and Cellini founded new schools of architects,
-painters, and sculptors in France. They employed pupils, and the most
-promising found their way to Rome and Florence, associated themselves
-with the great masters then practising, and brought back all the
-instruction they could obtain.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Jean Goujon stands at the head of these French masters. Besides being
-a sculptor and architect, there is little doubt of his having designed
-and even sculptured wood furniture. Probably the carved woodwork of
-the king's bedroom and adjoining rooms in the old Louvre are by his
-hand. Bachelier, of Toulouse, did the same, and pieces are attributed
-to him now in the Kensington Museum. Philibert de L'Orme was another
-artist in a similar field. Both Goujon and Bachelier showed the
-influence of the great Italian masters in their work. The table
-engraved (p. 81) is a very elegant example of French sixteenth century
-furniture.
-
-[Illustration] [SEMPER FESTINA LENTE 1577 A. REID. DEL.]
-
-The woodwork in the renaissance houses--the panelling and fittings
-of the rooms--was designed by the architect, and was full of quaint,
-sometimes extravagant imagery. For example, the architectural and
-decorative plates of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau will give some idea
-of the dependence of all these details on the architects of the day.
-This author published designs for marquetry or wood mosaics, as well
-as for all sorts of woodwork. A glance at the heavy cabinets of the
-later sixteenth century, of French origin, will show how completely
-great pieces of furniture fell into the same character of forms.
-Shelves are supported on grotesque figures, while in the mouldings,
-instead of simple running lines worked with the plane, as in fifteenth
-century woodwork, we see the egg and tongue, acanthus leaves, dentils
-and other members of classical architecture, constantly recurring. The
-ornaments of French woodworkers show a fondness for conventional bands
-or straps interspersed with figures and other ornaments. The panel,
-of which we give a woodcut, is French, and dated 1577. It contains
-armorial bearings and a monogram, said to be of the Aldine family. In
-1577, however, Aldus Manutius the elder was dead, and his son did not
-live in France.
-
-Germany and Spain took up the renaissance art in a still more Italian
-spirit than England or France. Parts of Italy as well as Spain were
-under the same ruler; they both, as far as regards art, felt the
-influence of powerful imperial patronage. We are only concerned with
-their art here as it refers to woodwork. German wood carvers were
-more quaint, minute, and redundant as to decoration. Something of the
-vigour, manliness, and inexhaustible sense of humour of the Germans
-characterises their woodwork, as it does other art, of which ornament
-forms the main feature. The well-known "Triumph of Maximilian," though
-a woodcut only, may be taken as a type of German treatment. The great
-cities of the empire are full of carved woodwork, house fronts, and
-gables. Timber was abundant. The imagery of the period, in wood as
-in stone, is intentionally quaint, contorted, humorous. It would
-be essentially ugly but for the inexhaustible fecundity of thought,
-allegory, and satire that pervades it. It should be added also that
-designers and architects had an immense sense of dignity, which we
-recognise immediately when we see their architectural compositions as
-a whole. Depths and hollows, points of light, prominences and relative
-retirement of parts in their arrangements of carved ornament, were
-matters thoroughly understood; and they succeed in imparting that
-general agreeableness which we call "effect" to the mind of the
-observers.
-
-As regards Spanish art we cannot do better than adopt the statements
-of Señor J. F. Riaño, who says that "the brilliant epoch of sculpture
-in wood belongs to the sixteenth century, and was due to the great
-impulse it received from the works of Berruguete and Felipe de
-Borgoña. He was the chief promoter of the Italian style, and the choir
-of the cathedral of Toledo, where he worked so much, is the finest
-specimen of the kind in Spain. Toledo, Seville, and Valladolid were at
-that time great productive and artistic centres. As a specimen of wood
-carving of the Italian renaissance period, applied to an object of
-furniture, the magnificent wardrobe by Gregorio Pardo (1549) outside
-the chapter house at Toledo may be mentioned as one of the most
-beautiful things of its kind. These various styles of ornamentation
-were applied to the cabinets 'Bufetes' of such varied form and
-materials which were so much the fashion in the sixteenth and
-seventeenth centuries. The most characteristic of Spain are such as
-are called 'Vargueños.' These cabinets are decorated outside with fine
-ironwork, and inside with columns of bone painted and gilt. The
-other cabinets or escritoires belonging to that period, which are so
-frequently met with in Spain, were to a large extent imported from
-Germany and Italy, _while others were made in Spain in imitation of
-these_" (the italics are ours), "and as the copies were very similar
-it is difficult to classify them. It may be asserted, however, that
-cabinets of inlaid wood were made in great perfection in Spain at the
-end of the sixteenth century, for in a memorial written by a maker
-of tapestry, Pedro Gretierez, who worked for queen Isabella, he says,
-'The escritoires and cabinets brought from Germany are worth 500,
-600, and 700 reales each, and those of the same kind made in Spain by
-Spaniards are to be had for 250 and 300 reales.' Besides these inlaid
-cabinets others must have been made in the sixteenth century inlaid
-with silver. An edict was issued in 1594 prohibiting, with the utmost
-rigour, the making and selling of this kind of merchandise, in order
-not to increase the scarcity of silver. The edict says that 'no
-cabinets, desks, coffers, brasiers, shoes, tables, or other articles
-decorated with stamped, raised, carved, or plain silver, should be
-manufactured.'"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-TUDOR AND STUART STYLES.
-
-
-The list of reigns supplies more convenient dates than the beginning
-or the end of a century for marking changes of national tastes in such
-matters as furniture. The names of kings or queens are justly given to
-denote styles, whether of architecture, dress, or personal ornaments,
-and utensils of the household. Society in most countries adopts those
-habits that are first taken up by the sovereign. In England, the reign
-of Elizabeth was pre-eminently a period during which the tastes,
-even the fancies, of the queen were followed enthusiastically by her
-people. Elizabethan is the name of the style of architecture gradually
-developed during her reign. Italian taste, though not perhaps so
-pure as it had been a few years earlier, had become far more general;
-classical details, however, were mixed even more in England than in
-other countries (Flanders excepted) with relics of older styles, the
-love of which was still strong in this country. The fireplaces and the
-panelling of our old houses, Crewe hall, Speke in Lancashire, Haddon
-hall in Derbyshire, Kenilworth castle, Raglan castle, and many other
-old buildings, are thoroughly characteristic of this mixed classical
-revival. The fashion is quaint and grotesque, the figure sculpture
-being good enough to look well in the form of caryatid monsters, half
-men, half terminal posts or acanthus foliations, but not sufficiently
-correct or graceful to stand altogether alone. Specimens, however,
-of very good work can be pointed out, and we give here some of the
-details of a panelled room brought lately from Exeter, and now in the
-South Kensington collection.
-
-We may say that the character of the woodwork throughout this period
-consists in actual architectural façades or portions of façades,
-showy arrangements wherever they are possible of the "five orders" of
-architecture, or of pedimental fronts. Doorways and chimney fronts
-are the principal opportunities in interiors for the exercise of this
-composing skill. Panelling remained in use in the great halls and most
-of the chambers of the house, but the linen pattern, so graceful and
-effective, went out of fashion. The angles of the rooms, the cornices,
-and spaces above the doors were fitted with groups of architectural
-cornice mouldings, consisting of dentil, egg and tongue, and running
-moulds, and sometimes room walls were divided into panels by regular
-columns.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Heraldry, with rich carved mantlings and quaint forms of scutcheons
-(the edges notched and rolled about as if made of the notched edges
-of a scroll of parchment), was a frequent ornament. Grotesque terminal
-figures, human-headed, supported the front of the dresser--the chief
-furniture of the dining-room and of the cabinet. Table supports and
-newels of stair rails grew into heavy acorn-shaped balusters. In the
-case of stair balusters, these were often ornamented with well-cut
-sculpture of fanciful and heraldic figures. Inlaid work also began to
-be used in room-panelling as well as furniture; bed heads and testers,
-chest fronts, cabinets, &c., were inlaid, but scarcely with delicacy,
-during the early Elizabethan period. The art was developed during the
-reign of James, when, in point of fact, the larger number of the Tudor
-houses were erected.
-
-When the Tudor period was succeeded by that of the Stuarts the same
-general characteristics remained, but all the forms of carving grew
-heavier and the execution coarser. The table legs, baluster newels,
-and cabinet supports, had enormous acorn-shaped masses in the middle.
-The objects themselves, such as the great hall tables, instead of
-being moveable on trestles, became of unwieldy size and weight.
-
-The general character of Flemish work was much of the same kind and
-form. It is not easy to distinguish the nationality of pieces of
-Flemish and English oak furniture of this period. The Flemings,
-however, retained a higher school of figure carvers, and their
-church-stall work and some of their best things are of a higher stamp
-and better designed; and where figure sculpture was employed this
-superiority is always apparent. A good example of Flemish panelling
-can be studied in the doorway at South Kensington, n^{o.} 4329. Their
-furniture is represented by an excellent specimen, amongst others, of
-this mixed period in the cabinet, n^{o.} 156. Though large and heavy,
-and divided into massive parts, the treatment of ornament is well
-understood on such pieces. The scroll-work is bold but light, and the
-general surface of important mouldings or dividing members is not cut
-up by the ornamentation. The panels are very generally carved with
-graceful figure subjects, commonly biblical. As the years advanced
-into the seventeenth century Flemish work became bigger and less
-refined. Diamond-shaped panels were superimposed on the square, turned
-work was split and laid on, drop ornaments were added below tables and
-from the centres of the arches of arched panels; all these unnecessary
-ornaments were mere additions and encumbrances to the general
-structure.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Our own later Jacobean or Stuart style borrowed this from the Flemish.
-The Flemings and the Dutch had long imported woodwork into England,
-and it is to that commerce that we may trace the greater likeness
-between the late Flemish renaissance carving and corresponding English
-woodwork, than between the English and the French. Dutch designs
-in furniture, though allied to the Flemish, were swelled out into
-enormous proportions. The huge wardrobe cabinets made by the Dutch of
-walnut wood with ebony inlaid work and waved ebony mouldings are still
-to be met with. The panels of the fronts are broken up into numerous
-angles and points.
-
-In France the fine architectural wood construction of the style of
-Philibert de l'Orme and so many great masters maintained itself, and
-a number of fine cabinets and sideboards in various collections attest
-the excellence of the work. The cabinet on the opposite page (n^{o.}
-2573 in the Kensington museum) is of late French sixteenth century
-work, and combines the characteristics of the heavy furniture made in
-the north of Europe with a propriety of treatment in the ornamentation
-of mouldings and cornices peculiar to French architects, who continued
-to design such structures for the houses they built and fitted up. The
-descendants of Catherine de' Medicis and their generation were trained
-by Italian artists and altogether in Italian tastes, and no great
-change occurred in France in woodwork or furniture till the sixteenth
-century had closed.
-
-In German and in Italian furniture the principal changes were in the
-direction of veneered and marquetry work. The same vigorous quaintness
-continued to distinguish German decorative detail as has been already
-noticed.
-
-The Italians carved wood during the later sixteenth and the whole of
-the seventeenth centuries with extraordinary grace and vigour. The
-next woodcut, a pedestal in oak, shows their power in hard material:
-and smaller objects, such as the frames of pictures, were cut out in
-great sweeping leaves, perhaps of the acanthus, showing an ease and
-certainty in the artist that look as if he were employed upon some
-substance more yielding than the softest wood. Chairs were cut in
-the same rich style, and this luxurious carving was not unfrequently
-applied to the decoration of state carriages. Venice maintained a
-pre-eminence in this perhaps in a greater degree than Florence, though
-in the valley of the Arno the willow, lime, sycamore, and other soft
-white woods were to be had in abundance, and invited great freedom in
-carving.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-We may now treat of an important epoch in the history of modern
-furniture. Venice was the seat of the manufacture of glass. In the
-sixteenth century workmen had received state protection for the
-manufacture of mirrors, which till that time had been mere hand
-mirrors and made of mixed metals highly polished. Gilt wood frames
-were extensively manufactured for these Venetian looking-glasses,
-which found their way all over Europe. Besides gilt frames, gilt
-chairs, carved consoles, and other highly ornate furniture were
-introduced as the century went on, and most of this took its origin
-from Venice. The woodcut represents a small frame, n^{o.} 1605, at
-South Kensington.
-
-Another remarkable class of gilt woodwork, for which Florence
-and other cities had found trained carvers, was the framework of
-carriages. In England, France, Germany, and Italy carriages during the
-seventeenth century were stately, and certainly wonderful pieces of
-furniture. Examples of these showy carriages exist still. There is a
-collection belonging to the royal family of Portugal, now preserved
-at Lisbon, one or two in the museum of the hôtel de Cluny at Paris,
-dating from the time of Martin and painted by him, and there are a few
-carriages of old date at Vienna and probably in some private
-houses. The state-coach of the Speaker is an English example of the
-seventeenth century.
-
-Germany differed less from Italy even than France in wood carving,
-interior room fittings, and the frequent pedimental compositions
-containing grotesques, or heraldic achievements on a scale of
-sumptuous display. The German princes were many of them skilful and
-intelligent patrons of art, and made collections in their residences.
-A well-known piece belonging to the early seventeenth century
-is preserved in the royal museum at Berlin. This is known as the
-Pomeranian art cabinet. It is 4 ft. 10 in. high, 3 ft. 4 in. wide by 2
-ft. 10 in. deep, made of ebony with drawers of sandal wood lined with
-red morocco leather, and is mounted with silver and pietra dura work,
-and fitted inside with utensils of various kinds. The chair, of which
-we give a woodcut, is German of about the same date.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In the west of Europe, during the seventeenth century, marquetry
-was extensively used, and became the leading feature of furniture
-decoration. Inlaying had long been in use; but the new marquetry was
-a picturesque composition, a more complete attempt at pictorial
-representation. It comes before us in old furniture under various
-forms, and many examples of it may be studied in different
-collections. In this country we may consider it mainly as an imported
-art of the reign of William and Mary, when Dutch marquetry furniture
-became the fashion in the form of bandy-legged chairs, upright clock
-fronts, secrétaires or bureaux, or writing cabinets which were closed
-in the upper and middle parts with doors, and other pieces that
-offered surfaces available for such decoration. The older designs on
-work of this kind represent tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds,
-&c., all in gay colours, generally the self colours of the woods
-used. Sometimes the eyes and other salient points are in ivory
-or mother-of-pearl. In France, in the earlier marquetry designs,
-picturesque landscapes, broken architecture, and figures are
-represented. Colours are occasionally stained on the wood. Ivory and
-ebony were favourite materials; as also in Germany and in Italy.
-
-It is to be noted that as the vigour of the great sixteenth century
-movement died out, the mania for making furniture in the form of
-architectural models died out also; nor do we find it becoming a
-fashion again till quite modern times, under the Gothic and other
-revivals at the end of the last and the beginning of the present
-century. The architectural idea was in itself full of grandeur, and
-it was productive of very beautiful examples in the sarcophagus-shaped
-chests or cassoni, and in cabinet work, though the façades of temples
-and the vaults and columns of triumphal arches in Rome do not bear
-to be too completely reduced to such small proportions. With the
-introduction of marquetry into more general use we recognise not
-only a new or renewed method of decoration, but a changed ideal of
-construction. Boxes, chests, tables, cabinets, &c., were conceived
-as such. They were made more convenient for use, and were no longer
-subdivided by architectural mouldings and columns, all so much extra
-work added to the sides and fronts.
-
-About the middle of the seventeenth century a kind of work altogether
-new in the manufactory of modern furniture made its appearance under
-the reign of Louis the fourteenth of France. That king rose to a
-position in Europe that no monarch of modern times had occupied
-before, and the great ministers of his reign had the wisdom to
-take special measures for the establishment of the various arts and
-manufactures in which either the Italians or Flemings excelled the
-French as well as other nations. Colbert, his minister of finance,
-amongst his commercial reforms of learned societies and schools of
-art, founded in 1664 an "Academie royale de peinture d'architecture
-et de sculpture." It was into this that the designers of architecture,
-woodwork, ornament or furniture, were admitted. He established also
-the famous factory of the "Gobelins" for making pictorial tapestry.
-The place took its name from the brothers Gobelin, Flemings, who had a
-dyeing-house in the Rue Mouffetard. Lebrun, the painter, was the first
-head of it. Another important name is that of Jean Lepautre. He has
-left numerous designs of ornament behind him for panelling, mirror
-frames, carriages, &c. Lepautre was a pupil of Adam Philippon. This
-artist, whose chief calling was that of a joiner and cabinet maker,
-has also left designs.
-
-To Colbert is due the credit of pushing forward the renewal or
-completion of the royal palaces; especially the château of Versailles.
-For the furniture of this palace we find the new material employed,
-namely, boule marquetry, which owes its name to the maker. The
-orthography of proper names was still often unsettled at that time,
-and we find the name variously spelt. The correct way seems to have
-been Boulle; but we shall retain the more usual mode, both for the
-artist and for his work. André Charles Boule was born in 1642, and
-made the peculiar kind of veneered work composed of tortoiseshell and
-thin brass, to which are sometimes added ivory and enamelled metal;
-brass and shell, however, are the general materials. Boule was made
-head of the royal furniture department and was lodged in the Louvre. A
-very interesting early specimen of this work is now at Windsor
-castle, and other early pieces belong to Sir Richard Wallace. The date
-attributed to the first makes it doubtful whether Boule may not have
-seen the same sort of work practised in other workshops. This kind of
-marquetry has, however, been assigned by general consent to Boule.
-
-In the earlier work of Boule the inlay was produced at great cost,
-owing to the waste of valuable material in cutting; and the shell is
-left of its natural colour; in later work the manufacture was more
-economical. Two or three thicknesses of the different material were
-glued or stuck together and sawn through at one operation. An
-equal number of figures and of matrices or hollow pieces exactly
-corresponding were thus produced, and by counter-charging two or more
-designs were obtained by the same sawing. These are technically known
-as "boule and counter," the brass forming the groundwork and the
-pattern alternately. In the later or "new boule," the shell is laid on
-a gilt ground or on vermilion. The brass is elaborately chased with a
-graver.
-
-Besides these plates of brass for marquetry ornaments, Boule, who
-was a sculptor of no mean pretensions, founded and chased up feet,
-edgings, bracket supports, &c., to his work in relief, or in the
-round, also in brass. The original use of these parts was to protect
-the edges and angles, and bind the thin inlaid work together where it
-was interrupted by angles in the structure. Afterwards brass mounts,
-more or less relieved, were added to enrich the flat designs of
-the surfaces. Classical altars, engraved or chased as mere surface
-decoration, would receive the addition of claw feet actually relieved.
-Figures standing on such altars, pedestals, &c., were made in relief
-more or less bold. In this way Boule's later work is not only a
-brilliant and rich piece of surface decoration, but its metallic parts
-are repoussé or embossed with thicknesses of metal ornament. In boule
-work all parts of the marquetry are held down by glue to the bed,
-usually of oak. The metal is occasionally fastened down by small brass
-pins or nails, which are hammered flat and chased over so as to be
-imperceptible.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In England, during the reign of Charles the second and of James,
-French furniture was imported; the old Tudor oak lingered in country
-houses. Boule hardly found its way till the following century to
-England. Splendid silver furniture consisting of plates embossed and
-repoussé, heightened with the graver and of admirable design, was
-occasionally made for the Court and for great families. Wood carving,
-in the manner of the school of Sir Christopher Wren, as in the bracket
-here shown, was long continued in connexion with architecture and
-furniture. Another style was carried to the highest pitch of technical
-execution and finish, as well as of truth of natural forms in the
-carving of Grinling Gibbons. This artist was English, but partially of
-Dutch descent. He carved foliage, birds, flowers, busts and figures,
-pieces of drapery, &c., with astonishing dexterity. We find his
-work principally on mirror frames, wall panels, chimney pieces, &c.
-Specimens may be seen over the communion table of St. James's church,
-Westminster, and in the choir of St. Paul's cathedral. The finest
-examples known are probably the carved work at Petworth house in
-Sussex, and at Chatsworth. His material is generally lime and other
-white woods. The flowers and foliage of his groups or garlands sweep
-round in bold and harmonious curves, making an agreeable whole, though
-for architectural decorative carving no work was ever so free from
-conventional arrangements. His animals or his flowers appear to be so
-many separate creations from nature, laid or tied together separately,
-though in reality formed out of a block, and remaining still portions
-of a group cut in the solid wood.
-
-[Illustration: A. REID PEARSON, S.C.]
-
-Gibbons died in 1721. Walpole mentions Watson as having been his pupil
-and assistant at Chatsworth. Drevot of Brussels and Laurens of Mechlin
-were other pupils: the former did not survive him. His school had
-many followers, for we find the acanthus carvings on mouldings, round
-doorways and chimney pieces, down to the middle of the eighteenth
-century, executed in England with a masterly hand. Specimens of such
-work have been recently acquired in the Kensington museum, the fruits
-of the demolition of old London, continually in progress. The border
-of this page represents one of these admirable pieces; a door and
-frame from a house in Lincoln's-inn. Nothing can surpass the perfect
-mastery of execution. All the work is cut clean and sharp out of wood
-which admits of no tentative cuts, and requires no rubbing down with
-sand paper, and in which errors are not to be repaired. Lengths of
-these mouldings were worked off by hand, evidently without hesitation
-and without mishap. Country houses abound with this fine though
-unpretending work, and give ample evidence of the existence of a
-school of fine workmen, carvers at the command of the architects of
-the day.
-
-We may here revert to an important addition to room furniture, which
-became European during this century. Mirrors had been made from the
-earliest times in polished metal, but were first made of glass at
-Venice. In 1507 Andrea and Dominico, two glass workers of Murano,
-declared before the Council of ten that they had found a method of
-making "good and perfect mirrors of crystal glass." A monopoly of
-the right of manufacture was granted to the two inventors for twenty
-years. In 1564, the mirror makers became a distinct guild of glass
-workers. The plates were not large: from four to five feet are the
-largest dimensions met with till late in the eighteenth century. They
-were commonly bevilled on the edges. The frames in soft wood (as
-in the woodcut, p. 100) are specimens of free carving during the
-seventeenth century. Both in Venice and in Florence soft woods, such
-as willow or lime, were used. The mirror-plates were, at first, square
-or oblong. Towards the end of the century we find them shaped at the
-top. In the eighteenth century they were generally shaped at the top
-and bottom. Figures were sunk in the style of intaglio or gem cutting
-on the back of the glass and left with a dead surface, the silver
-surface of the mercury showing through as the mirror is seen from the
-front.
-
-The looking-glasses made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
-by colonies of Venetian workmen in England and France had the plates
-finished by an edge gently bevilled of an inch in width, following
-the form of the frame, whether square or shaped in curves. This gives
-preciousness and prismatic light to the whole glass. It is of great
-difficulty in execution, the plate being held by the workman over his
-head and the edge cut by grinding. The feats of skill of this kind in
-the form of interrupted curves and short lines and angles are rarely
-accomplished by modern workmen, and the angle of the bevil itself
-is generally too acute, whereby the prismatic light produced by this
-portion of the mirror is in violent and too showy contrast to the
-remainder.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In England, looking-glasses came into general use soon after the
-Restoration. "Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room at Vauxhall in
-1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains, very pleasant
-to behold. It stands in the middle of the garden covered with Cornish
-slate, on the point whereof he placed a Punchinello." At about the
-same period the house of Nell Gwynne, "the first good one as we enter
-St. James' Square from Pall Mall, had the back room on the ground
-floor entirely lined with looking-glass within memory," writes
-Pennant, "as was said to have been the ceiling." "La rue St.
-André-des-arts," says Savarin, speaking of Paris in the seventeenth
-century, "eut le premier café _orne de glaces_ et de tables de marbre
-à peu près comme on les voit de nos jours."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-During the seventeenth century, tapestry, the material in use for
-hanging and decorating the walls of splendid rooms in France, was made
-also in this country. Factories were set up at Mortlake, where several
-copies were made of the Raphael tapestries, the cartoons of which were
-in this country; and in Soho fields. Sometimes tapestry was hung on
-bare walls; occasionally it was strained over the older panelled work
-of the days of the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns, the fruitful period of
-country house architecture in England.
-
-[Illustration: An English table and chairs of the year 1633, from a
-woodcut of that date.]
-
-With a woodcut (on preceding page) of a bedroom holy-water vessel we
-finish the account of this period.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-FURNITURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
-As the eighteenth century draws on, we arrive at furniture of which
-examples are more readily to be met with, and we are reminded of
-houses and rooms more or less unaltered which have come under general
-observation.
-
-The fashions were led in France. Boule work grew into bigger and more
-imposing structures as the manufacture passed into the hands of a
-greater number of workmen. Commodes or large presses were made with
-edgings and mounts, in the form of "egg and tongue" and other classic
-or renaissance mouldings. The tops were formed into one or three
-pedestals, to hold clocks and candelabra. Other changes were
-introduced to carry out the taste for gilding which then prevailed,
-and the broken shell-shaped woodwork, popularly known as Louis quinze
-work, began to be adopted for the frames of large glasses and the
-mouldings of room panels. The panels grew tall, were arched or shaped
-at the top, and occupied the wall space from the dado to the moulded
-and painted ceilings, in narrow panels. The fantastic forms of curve,
-emblems of the affected manners of the day, called Rococo from the
-words _rocaille coquille_, rock and shell curves, were well calculated
-to show off the lustre of gilding. The gold was admirably laid on,
-thick and very pure, and both in bronze gilding and in the woodwork,
-maintains its lustre to the present time. The severe classical
-grandeur of the old roll mouldings of fireplace jambs, wall and door
-panels, of the former reign gave way everywhere to this lighter work.
-
-Much early eighteenth century furniture was bombé, or rolled about in
-curious curves or undulations of surface, partly to display the skill
-of the cabinet-makers, and partly to show off the marquetry, which
-formed its only decoration. Another step was the introduction of
-mechanical applications and contrivances. The tops of tables lift off,
-and the action causes other portions to rise, to open, and so on.
-It is to be remembered that bedrooms were often used as boudoirs or
-studies, and that furniture which could shut private papers up without
-requiring that they should be put away into drawers was convenient
-in such rooms. As the century advanced, it became customary to form
-a sort of alcove at the end of bedrooms in France. The centre portion
-contained the bed, hidden by curtains, the spaces between it and the
-two walls were shut in with doors, and formed dressing closets, which
-could be used while the rest of the room was shut off. The bedroom
-then became a reception room and was thrown open with other receiving
-rooms of the house. Bureaux or mechanically shutting tables, writing
-desks, and the like, under this arrangement were a necessity for small
-rooms.
-
-A school of painters arose in the reign of Louis the fifteenth who
-devoted themselves to the decoration of room woodwork and ceilings;
-Charles Delafosse, Antoine Coypel, Jean Restout, and many pupils. We
-must associate the names of these artists with those of the Le Pautre
-family. Jean died before the end of the seventeenth century, but
-Pierre took part in the later works of the Louvre and of Versailles
-under Jules Hardouin Mansard, "surintendant des bastiments." Juste
-Aurèle Meissonnier did still more to make this showy work popular. He
-designed all sorts of room furniture and woodwork. It is amongst the
-published works of these artists that we must seek the eighteenth
-century designs of French fashion. Painted panels were inserted
-into the wood ceilings, over the tops of looking-glasses, and
-_dessus-portes_ or the short panels between the tops of doors and the
-line of cornice. These are generally in chiaro scuro, or light and
-shade only, and represent families of cupids. Nymphs and fauns,
-shepherdesses, and the supposed inhabitants of a fanciful Arcadia,
-formed the general subjects of room decorations.
-
-A process belonging to the same reign should be noticed, called after
-the inventor, Vernis-Martin, a carriage painter, born about the year
-1706. By carriage painter we must understand a painter of heraldic
-ornaments, flower borders, &c. His varnish is a fine transparent lac
-polish, probably derived from Japan through missionaries, who had
-resided there before the occurrence of the great massacres which
-closed Japan to all but the Dutch traders. The work which we commonly
-associate with his name is generally found on furniture such as tables
-or book cases, as well as on needle cases, snuff boxes, fans, and
-étuis, on a gold ground. The gold is waved or striated by some of
-those ingenious processes still in use amongst the Japanese, by which
-the paste or preparation on which their gold is laid is worked
-over while still soft. One or two carriages beautifully painted in
-vernis-martin are kept in the hotel de Cluny at Paris. Although it is
-popularly held that Martin declared his secret should die with him,
-and that he kept his word, yet it is certain that he left imitators
-and pupils who painted and enamelled in his manner furniture of
-various kinds. In Sir R. Wallace's collection there are two pieces,
-coloured green and varnished, one a table and the other a cabinet
-or bookcase, of vernis-martin work. There is on these no ornament
-excepting the varnish and the gold mounts that are added at the edges.
-The most beautiful objects that bear his name are the small wares,
-such as fans, needle books, or snuff boxes.
-
-Later in the century we meet with other French names, Riesener, David,
-and Gouthière, who gained great reputation, the two first as makers of
-marquetry, and the latter as a founder and chaser of metal furniture
-mounts, such as edgings and lock scutcheons.
-
-The history of French furniture is in general the history of that of
-other nations. The art of wood carving was still maintained in Italy
-and applied, as in the instance of this distaff, to utensils of all
-kinds. In England we had, about the middle of the century, a school of
-carvers, gilders, and ornamenters following the extravagant style of
-the French. The most prominent name is that of Thomas Chippendale,
-who worked from the middle till towards the end of the century. He was
-descended from a family of carvers, and inherited the skill which
-had been general in his craft since the days of Gibbons. We find much
-rococo carving on bed testers, round fireplaces, over doors, &c., in
-our English houses built during the reign of Anne and the two first
-Georges. Other pieces of furniture, such as carved tables, wardrobe
-cabinets, chair backs or dinner trays, go by Chippendale's name. They
-are in mahogany, and follow the architectural moulding lines often
-seen in the works of Sir William Chambers and the brothers Adam.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Among the room decorations of the century we may notice the shelves
-for holding Chinese porcelain and imitations of Chinese designs in
-delft pottery, a taste imported by William the third and the members
-of his court who had lived in Holland. The chimney pieces at
-Hampton court and elsewhere are provided with woodwork to hold these
-ornaments. Hogarth paints them in his interiors, and the rage for
-purchasing such objects at sales became a popular subject of ridicule.
-
-To the early eighteenth century belongs a class of furniture of which
-the decorations consisted of panels of old Chinese and Japanese lac
-work; fitted, as the marquetry of the day was, with rich gilt metal
-mounts. In England it was the fashion to imitate the Japan work, and
-such old furniture is occasionally met with: black, with raised figure
-decorations of Chinese character done in gold dust.
-
-A great change is observable in the French furniture, panel carving
-and such decorations from the period of Louis the sixteenth. Several
-causes at the time combined to give art of this kind a new as well as
-a healthier direction. Amongst these we may mention the discoveries
-made at Herculaneum and Pompeii. It is needless to say that the
-peculiar cause of the destruction of both those towns had preserved
-in them perfect memorials, in many forms, of the social life of
-antiquity. Decorations, utensils and furniture of all kinds that were
-made of metal, and had resisted the action of damp and time, were
-recovered in fair condition. One result, both in France and England,
-was a return to a better feeling for classical style.
-
-Room decorations and furniture soon reached the highest point of
-elegance which French renaissance art of a sumptuous kind has touched
-since the sixteenth century. The panelling of rooms, usually in
-oak and painted white, was designed in severe lines with straight
-mouldings and pilasters. The pilasters were decorated with
-well-designed carved work, small, close, and splendidly gilt. The
-quills that fill the fluted columns still seen round so many interiors
-were cut into beads or other subdivisions with much care. Fine
-arabesque work in the style of the "loggie" of Raphael was partly
-carved in relief, partly drawn and painted, or gilt, with gold of a
-yellow or of a green hue; the green being largely alloyed with silver.
-An example of the best work of this kind may be referred to in the
-beautiful room brought from Paris and now preserved, reconstructed, at
-South Kensington. The houses built for members of the brilliant court
-of queen Marie Antoinette were filled with admirable work in this
-manner, or in the severer but still delicate carved panelling in wood
-plainly painted. The royal factories of the Gobelins and of Sèvres
-turned out also their most beautiful productions to decorate rooms,
-furniture, and table service. In the former of these, tapestries were
-made for wall hangings, for chair backs, seats, and sofas. Rich silks
-from the looms of Lyons, and from those of Lucca, Genoa, and Venice
-were also employed for this kind of furniture both in France and
-Flanders, Germany, Italy, and Spain, as well as in our own country. In
-all these matters France led the fashions.
-
-During this brilliant period, from 1774 to 1790, we meet with the
-names of several artists employed for painting the panelling of
-rooms, the lunettes over chimney fronts, and the panels of ceilings.
-Fragonard, Natoire, Boucher (the director of the Academy) are among
-the foremost of these. Their history perhaps belongs rather to that of
-painters than of our present subject; but they are too much mixed up
-with eighteenth century furniture not to find mention even in a sketch
-like the present.
-
-Other artists such as Delafosse, Lalonde, Cauvet and Salembier
-designed arabesques, decorative woodwork, and furniture. The designs
-of many of them are still extant: and Cauvet dedicated a book of them
-to Monsieur, the king's brother. Four tables with silver-gilt mounts
-of his design were made for the queen's house of the Trianon, and
-afterwards removed to the favourite residence of the emperor Napoleon
-at St. Cloud. Robert and Barthélemy were sculptors and bronze workers
-who made mounts for furniture, and engravers. Meissonnier, Oppenord,
-Queverdo worked in the same way. Hubert Robert, a painter, helped
-Micque in all the decorations of the Trianon.
-
-Two or three cabinet-makers have transmitted a great name, though
-little seems to be known of their history. Of these Riesener and David
-Roentgen were _ébénistes_, or workers in fine cabinet making. The
-designation is taken from the ebony and other exotic woods, which had
-come into more general use in Europe from the end of the seventeenth
-century subsequently to 1695, when the Dutch settled in Ceylon. The
-French obtained ebony from Madagascar, but in very small quantities.
-After the settlements at Ceylon we find it introduced into Europe on a
-larger scale. There are green and yellow varieties but the black wood
-is the most valuable, and Ceylon is the country in which the greatest
-quantities are produced. We still find in English houses much old
-carved ebony furniture, mainly chairs and cabinets, dating generally
-from the early years of the Dutch occupation.
-
-Riesener used tulip (_Liriodendron tulipifera_), rosewood, holly
-(_ilex aquifolium_), maple (_acer campestre_), laburnum (_cytisus
-Alpinus_), purple wood (_copaifera pubiflora_), &c. Wreaths and
-bunches of flowers, exquisitely worked and boldly designed, form
-centres of his marquetry panels which are often plain surfaces of
-one wood. On the sides, in borders and compartments, we find diaper
-patterns in three or four quiet colours. These conventional sides or
-corners of diaper work help to give point to the graceful compositions
-that form the principal feature in his marquetry. Chests of drawers
-and cabinets are sometimes met with in snake wood and other varieties
-of brown wood, of which the grain is waved or curled without
-marquetry. The name of Riesener is to be found stamped sometimes
-on the panel itself, sometimes on the oak lining of the pieces of
-furniture made by him.
-
-A number of exceptional examples of Riesener's cabinets are described
-in the appendix to the detailed catalogue of furniture in the South
-Kensington museum. The best pieces are from the collection now
-belonging to Sir Richard Wallace. The most imposing of these is the
-rounded bureau or secrétaire, made for Stanislaus, king of Poland.
-It is beautifully inlaid on the top, ends, and back with designs
-emblematic of the sciences, &c., and with bust heads. The letters S.
-R. are put upon a broad band of decoration that runs round the lower
-portion of the bureau. A similar piece of furniture with gilt bronze
-candle branches by Gouthière, on the sides, is now in the Louvre. Both
-are signed.
-
-David Roentgen was born at Niewid near Luneville, in which latter city
-he worked as a contemporary of Riesener, but younger by some years
-in age. He also made marquetry in lighter woods and of rather a
-gayer tone than those of Riesener. Both of them often worked in plain
-mahogany, and in such cases trusted for the effectiveness of their
-pieces to the excellence of the mounts of chased and gilt metal by
-their contemporary, Gouthière. In his light marquetry David used
-various white woods. Pear, lime, and light-coloured woods were
-occasionally tinted with various shades by burning. This process,
-originally effected by hot irons, is better and more delicately
-managed by hot sand. Only browns and dark ochrous yellows are obtained
-by this means, and the more delicately toned marquetry is without hues
-of green or blue. Those tints, however, can be obtained by steeping
-the wood in various chemical solutions.
-
-As a maker of gilt bronze furniture mounts Gouthière had a wide
-reputation. He belongs to the period of Louis the sixteenth. With
-him Riesener and David worked in concert; all their best pieces are
-finished with the mounts of Gouthière. Among examples in this country
-is the cabinet in the royal collection at Windsor. No signature has
-been discovered on this piece, but the exquisite modelling of
-the flower borders, the metal mouldings and mounts, and the crown
-supported by figures of cupids that surmounts the whole, leave us in
-no hesitation as to its authorship.
-
-Gouthière modelled and chased up similar work for carriages, and
-mounts for marble chimney pieces, such as that in the boudoir just
-above referred to. The gilding on these mounts is so good and has
-been laid on so massively that the metal has in general suffered no
-substantial injury down to our own times, and can be restored to its
-original lustre by soap and water. Indeed, the fine old work dating
-from the two previous reigns by André Boule and other artists, after
-the designs of Berain, has suffered little. The boule clocks, with
-arched glass panels in front and spreading supports and figure
-compositions on the top, have in most cases come down to us clothed
-in their original water gilding, easily to be cleaned though looking
-black when they have been long left to neglect.
-
-Contemporaneous with Riesener in France was the Italian maker of
-marquetry, Maggiolino. In Florence, Venice, Milan, and Genoa, cabinets
-and commodes of marquetry were produced. German cabinet-makers
-manufactured the same work through the earlier part of the century.
-Bombé or curved furniture was also made by the Germans with great, we
-may almost say with extravagant, skill. To maintain mouldings on the
-angles of these curved and waving surfaces is a feat in workmanship
-of difficult attainment, and German cabinet-makers seem to have
-taken delight in exhibiting such skill. The quaint work of the minute
-carvings in box and other hard woods, admirably carried out during the
-times of the immediate pupils of Dürer and the school of well-trained
-artists who succeeded him, was no longer to be found. The desolating
-wars that swept over this part of Europe during the days of Louis the
-fourteenth and Frederick the great seem to have exhausted the country,
-and worn out the ancient industry of the cities. Guilds died away, the
-men who composed them being required for the exigencies of war, and
-the wealth of the inhabitants was so reduced that the leisure to enjoy
-and even the means to buy fine productions of art existed no longer.
-
-Few collectors have done greater service to the study of English art
-than Horace Walpole; and few have had the opportunities he enjoyed
-a century ago, when he was able to fill Strawberry Hill with a
-collection of mediæval, renaissance, and later works of art of every
-description. A lively passage, alluding to the contract for the roof
-and the glazing of King's college chapel, Cambridge, commemorates his
-value for these art traditions. "As much," he says, "as we imagine
-ourselves arrived at higher perfection in the arts, it would not
-be easy for a master of a college to go into St. Margaret's parish,
-Southwark, to _bespeak_ such a roof as that of King's college, and a
-dozen or two of windows so admirably drawn, and order them to be sent
-home by such a day, as if they were bespeaking a chequered pavement."
-
-A certain sort of revival of Gothic design took place in England
-about this period: and later in the century feeble attempts at Gothic
-woodwork were made here and there; but there was little national taste
-in furniture apart from a close imitation of French fashions. A still
-greater change was produced by Sir William Chambers, the architect of
-modern Somerset house, who wrote a book on civil architecture and room
-decorations. Another name connected with furniture has been already
-mentioned, that of Thomas Chippendale. He published his book of
-designs in 1764, containing complete sides of rooms, looking-glass
-frames, chimney fronts, &c. He and his contemporaries designed tables,
-cabinets and moveable furniture of every description, including
-carriages, on which, indeed, furniture designers of all periods were
-employed. Chippendale and his sons or assistants produced frames and
-cornices for gilding so different from his well-made wardrobes, &c.,
-that there must have been more than one of the family engaged
-in superintending these dissimilar kinds of objects. He is a
-representative maker. The son has been sometimes credited with
-the mahogany woodwork of which delicacy and exactness are the
-characteristics. Satin wood came into fashion in England during the
-last half of the century. Both Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann painted
-medallions, cameo ornaments and borders on table tops and fronts,
-harpsichord cases, &c., made of satin wood or coloured in the manner
-of the vernis-martin work. The former decorated Carlton house.
-
-Mathias Lock, with whom was associated a cabinet maker named Copeland,
-also published designs of furniture of every kind. A semi-classic
-Pompeian or Roman arabesque feeling runs through the ornamentation of
-these pieces of furniture. They are light in make, often elegant, and
-more or less follow the taste prevailing in France and Italy. Gillow,
-the founder of a respectable existing firm, belongs to this period;
-but, as yet, nothing has come to light regarding his early history
-or apprenticeship. Another name connected both with furniture and
-decorative arts of all kinds was that of Robert Adam; he was of Scotch
-extraction and had travelled in Italy; and his brother John built
-many private houses; for example, the Adelphi and Portland place.
-Furniture, carriages, sedan chairs, and plate were amongst the objects
-for which Robert, perhaps both the brothers, gave designs. Classical
-capitals, mouldings and niches, circles and lunettes, with shell
-flutings and light garlands, were favourite features in their façade
-ornaments. The sideboards, bust terms (or pedestals), urn-shaped knife
-boxes; the chairs, commodes, &c., were all designed to accord with the
-architectural decorations. Polished-steel fire-grates belong to this
-period, and we believe to the authorship of the brothers Adam.
-
-A cabinet maker named A. Heppelwhite published in 1789 a large set of
-designs for every sort of reception room and bedroom furniture. We see
-in these the mahogany chairs with pierced strapwork backs, library
-and pedestal tables, mechanical desks and bureaux, which continued in
-fashion during the early years of this century. Fanciful sashed glass
-doors closed in the bookcases; interrupted pediments and pedestals
-provided space for busts round the tops of these cases. Fluted legs,
-and occasionally lion-headed supports, uphold the tables and chairs.
-Knife cases to set on the sideboard, and urn stools for the breakfast
-table, are among these designs. Tea chests and tea caddies indicate
-that tea was then coming into general use. Thomas Sheraton, another
-cabinet-maker, published towards the end of the century an extensive
-"Dictionary" of his trade. His designs, like those just mentioned,
-embrace beds, sofas, &c. Mechanical dressing and washing tables, very
-ingeniously contrived, were among his productions. We meet with these
-still; of Spanish mahogany, and admirable workmanship. The structure
-of all these pieces was light and strong. Time has had little effect
-on wood so well seasoned and on pieces put together in so workmanlike
-a manner.
-
-The French revolution put a complete stop to the old arts of domestic
-life in France. As in the sixteenth century, so in the eighteenth
-the new ideas rushed extravagantly in the direction of republican
-antiquity and Roman taste and sentiment. It was under the empire,
-after the Italian wars and the Egyptian expedition, that the means and
-taste for expenditure upon civil furniture and decorations revived,
-with an assumption of classicalism. The art of the time however,
-inspired by the hard paintings of David, is but a dry and affected
-attempt at a fresh renaissance. In furniture mounts, chairs, &c., of
-supposed classical designs, it is known as the art of the "empire."
-This country copied the fashion as soon as the return of peace opened
-the continent to English travellers. Furniture and room decorations
-were designed after classical ideals, and we see chairs and tables
-imitating bas-reliefs and the drawings on antique vases. It is
-probable that collectors, such as Sir William Hamilton and the members
-of the Dilettanti society, sensibly influenced the prevailing style.
-
-James Wyatt the architect, about the end of the last century, rebuilt
-or cleared out many of our mediæval churches and houses, and took to
-designing what he called Gothic for room decoration and furniture.
-Sir Jeffrey Wyatt or Sir Jeffrey Wyattville (as he became) made great
-changes at Windsor castle, under George the fourth. Pugin designed
-some flimsy Gothic furniture for the same palace. At a later period of
-his life, however, he did much, both as a designer and a writer upon
-art, to turn attention to the principles on which mediæval designs of
-all kinds were based.
-
-We are now, perhaps, returning to renaissance art in furniture, and
-it is certain that collections such as those lately exhibited by Sir
-Richard Wallace; the Exposition Retrospective in Paris in 1865; the
-loan exhibitions of 1862 in London, and that of Gore house at an
-earlier period; and above all the great permanent collection at South
-Kensington, must contribute to form the public taste.
-
-In the review which we have made of what may be called the household
-art of so many ages, it would be difficult to assign an absolute
-superiority to the artists of any one generation, considering what
-countless beautiful objects have been made for the personal use and
-enjoyment of men. The sculptured thrones of ivory and gold, the seats
-and couches of bronze overlaid with gold and damascened with the
-precious metals, the inlaid chariots, tables, chests, and jewelled
-caskets of antiquity; the imagery, the shrines, the stalls, and
-roofs of the middle ages; the wood sculpture, tarsia, pietra dura,
-damascening and the endless variety of objects produced during the
-days of Leonardo, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, down to the carving of
-Gibbons, and the splendid work of Boule, Riesener and Gouthière, are
-all in various ways excellent.
-
-We must not venture to call one class of productions finer than
-another where the differences are so great and such high perfection
-has been attained in each. Every style and fashion when at its best
-has resulted from the utmost application of mind and time on the part
-of trained artists; and the highest art can never be cheap, neither
-can any machinery or any help from mechanical assistance become
-substitutes for art. Beauty which is created by the hand of man is
-not the clever application of mechanical forces or of scientific
-inventions, but is brought to light, whether it be a cabinet front or
-the Venus of Milo, often with pain, always by the entire devotion of
-the labour, the intellect, the experience, the imagination and the
-affection, of the artist and the workman.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-CHANGES OF TASTE AND STYLE.
-
-
-It is interesting to trace the changes that the more common and
-necessary pieces of furniture have undergone during successive
-historic ages. The social life of ancient times, even of the middle
-ages which come so much nearer to us in point of years, differs from
-that of our own in its whole aspect. Yet though personal habits have
-so greatly altered the general wants of men remain much the same.
-Hence such objects as beds, chairs, tables, chests, dressers,
-wardrobes or cabinets, carriages or litters, have been always used and
-maintained a certain identity. With a summary of the changes of
-form and methods of decoration of a few of the principal objects of
-personal use we shall conclude.
-
-
-_Bedsteads and Couches._
-
-Beds served often in antiquity and in the middle ages, and have served
-at all times, almost as much for sitting or reclining by day as for
-sleeping on at night.
-
-To what has been already said on the subject of antique beds little
-need be added. The Egyptian bed and the pillow or crutch, of wood or
-more valuable materials, have been described. Examples of the crutch
-are numerous in the British museum and in the Louvre. "The Egyptians
-had couches," says Sir G. Wilkinson, "but they do not appear to have
-reclined upon them more frequently than modern Europeans, in whose
-houses they are equally common. The ottomans were simple square sofas
-without backs, raised from the ground nearly to the same level as
-the chair. The upper part was of leather, or of cotton stuff, richly
-coloured, like the cushions of the fauteuils, and the box was of
-wood painted with various devices and ornamented with the figures of
-captives, who were supposed to be degraded by holding so humiliating
-a position. And the same idea gave them a place on the footstools of a
-royal throne."
-
-The bed, [Greek: lexos], of the Greeks was covered with skins, over
-the skins with woollen blankets; sometimes a linen cloth or sheet was
-added. The finest coverlids were from Miletus, Carthage, and Corinth.
-These varied in the softness of their woollen texture and the delicate
-disposition of the colours. Later Greek beds had girths of leather or
-string; a mattress; and a pillow.
-
-The Roman bed had the side by which it was entered open, the other was
-protected by a shelf. The mattresses were stuffed with herbs, in later
-times with wool or feathers. Precious counterpanes embroidered with
-gold were occasionally used. Canopies or frames for curtains, in one
-form or another, have always been necessary adjuncts to beds. Testers
-were placed on cradles, with gauze curtains to keep off flies. Beds
-on wheels were in use for the sick in classical and mediæval times: as
-also a low and portable bed, _grabatum_, with mats for bedding. This
-is the word used in St. John's gospel, translated "take up thy bed and
-walk."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Besides beds, couches, and stools, used in antiquity, as in our own
-times, we find amongst the ancients the habit, unknown since,
-of reclining on the left elbow at meals. The Romans called the
-conventional arrangement the _triclinium_. The accompanying woodcut
-represents the plan of a _triclinium_, the guest reclining on the left
-elbow and the faces of each directed from 1 to 3, 4 to 6, and so on.
-These numbers and positions indicated a sort of superiority, or a
-highest, middle, and lowest to every table. A passage from Horace,
-often quoted, enumerates the guests in this order. Fundanius, who was
-at the top, giving an account of a dinner to his friends, says: "I sat
-at the top, Viscus Thurinus next to me; Varius, if my memory serves
-me, below him; Vibidius along with Servilius Balatro, whom Mæcenas
-brought as humble companions. Nomentanus was above, and Porcius below
-the host himself."
-
-The beds of the early middle ages in England had testers with
-curtains, often of valuable material. These slid on rings on an iron
-rod. Sometimes the rod, with a frame to sustain it, was on one or on
-three sides of the bed, and the tester wanting. Sometimes the beds
-were slung on uprights, as cots are at sea. No great expense was
-incurred in the framework till the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
-The splendour of state beds, or those of great people, consisted
-in the curtains, which were occasionally taken down, and hung up in
-churches on festivals. In the illuminations of manuscripts and in
-pictures representing scenes in which there is a bed, we find the
-tester strained by cords to the sides of the room or to the ceiling,
-as in the accompanying woodcut. The curtains ran round this frame,
-as in our modern four-posters; but we see them hoisted out of the way
-during the daytime, not round a post, only raised beyond reach.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The finest examples of bedsteads that can be called mediæval are
-French, and only met with in fragments, or more or less complete. This
-is unfortunately the case also as regards early English bedsteads. We
-may refer the reader to the "Mobilier Français" of Viollet le Duc, for
-an idea of the sumptuous carved oak bedstead of the great palaces and
-hotels of France. It was a frame panelled down to the ground, often
-containing chests, drawers, presses, or other safe places under the
-sleeper. The back resembled more or less the reredos of an altar, or
-the great panelled presses that filled the sides of sacristies. Four
-posts supported the canopy. A bedstead of the fifteenth century was
-long preserved at Leicester, and said to have been slept on by Richard
-the third. The under part of it formed his military chest, and the
-discovery of the treasure a century afterwards occasioned a barbarous
-murder. None of the coin found was of a later mint than his reign. It
-is also said by Pennant that a stump bedstead still in Berkeley castle
-is the same on which the murder of Edward the second was committed.
-Fine examples of Tudor bedsteads are preserved there. In the town of
-Ware in Hertfordshire is, and has long been, an inn under the sign of
-the Saracen's head, "In this," says Clutterbuck, "there is a bed of
-enormous proportions, twelve feet square. The head is panelled in the
-Elizabethan style of arched panels, and a date is painted on it--1460.
-[This, however, is not authentic.] It is of carved oak. The top is
-covered by a panelled tester, supported on baluster columns at the
-feet. The bases of these rest on a cluster of four arches or supports
-to each column." Nothing is known of the original history of the
-bedstead. Shakespeare alludes to it in Twelfth Night.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-To the Tudor and Jacobean period of heavy oak furniture succeeded the
-custom of supplying the place of oak-panelled testers and headboards
-with rich hangings either of tapestry, cut Genoa, or Venice velvets
-and other costly materials, with ostrich feathers or other ornaments
-on the angles. The royal beds at Hampton court admirably illustrate
-this stately fashion, as in the accompanying woodcut. More modern
-changes it is unnecessary to trace.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Couches for reclining or sitting upon were, in the middle ages, rather
-benches with cushions on them. The king conversing with a lady in her
-chamber is from a manuscript of about 1390 (the "Romance of Meliadus")
-in the British museum. In the seventeenth century we find the same
-ornaments that were used in chair backs extended to large frames so
-as to form them into couches, and the same plaited cane panels. In the
-last century, sofas were sometimes made in the form of several chair
-backs, with arms at each end, the backs being pierced work or framing
-made of bars in fancy shapes. This work was in mahogany or satin wood,
-or was painted after the fashion of vernis-martin work. In all cases
-such pieces were made to accord with suites of chairs, tables, &c.
-
-Cradles have been made in many shapes. The most approved in antiquity
-was that of a boat, [Greek: skaphos], or a shield; in either case they
-could be rocked. In the fourteenth century the men of Ghent destroyed
-the house of the earl of Flanders, according to Froissart, and all his
-furniture including the cradle in which he was nursed, which was of
-silver. The cradle of Henry the fifth is still preserved. It is in the
-form of a chest, much like the cradle in the Kensington museum, n^{o.}
-1769; and swings on posts, one at each end, standing on cross-bars to
-keep them steady: but there is no higher portion, as in the example in
-the museum, to support a tester. A hundred years later the shape seems
-to have become heavier.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-_Chairs._
-
-In the ancient Egyptian paintings at Thebes, and elsewhere, chairs are
-minutely represented like the throne or arm chair of the Greeks, each
-containing one person. Occasionally they used stools and low seats
-raised a little above the ground. Some sat cross-legged on the ground,
-though this is more rare, or kneeling on one knee. The men and women
-generally were apart, but in the same room, while conversing they sat,
-and did not recline. Wilkinson gives a full description of the old
-Egyptian chairs and stools.
-
-The classical curule chairs were made of ivory; sometimes of solid and
-entire elephants' teeth, which seems to have been the typical idea of
-the ivory chair; sometimes the ivory was veneered on a wooden base.
-The foot or point of the tusk was carved into a head or beak. It is
-from this curved chair of state that the later chairs were derived,
-of which the form remained popular in Italy through the fifteenth and
-sixteenth centuries. The mediæval name was _faldistorium_, rendered
-"faldstool," a stool or seat to support the arms when kneeling, or to
-act as a chair when sitting.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The earliest type of the architectural thrones or chairs of the middle
-ages is the ancient chair of St. Peter, at Rome, of which a woodcut
-has been given in p. 35. A full description and plates of it will be
-found in the "Vetusta monumenta" of the Society of antiquaries for
-1870. Another famous chair, that of St. Mark, is preserved at Venice,
-in the treasury of St. Mark's. Anciently this chair, like that of
-St. Peter in Rome, was covered with plates of ivory, carved panels
-probably fitted into frame pieces of wood as a covering to the stone.
-As it is now seen, however, the work is of oriental marble. It is a
-rudely shaped arm chair, with high back sloping upwards in the form of
-a pediment, truncated and surmounted by a stone, cut into an imperfect
-circle or oval, and having an arm or volute like the reversed
-angle-volute of a column projecting from the lower part of each side.
-The chair of St. Maximian at Ravenna dates from the sixth century;
-this is described in Mr. Maskell's "Ivories." A magnificent fourteenth
-century architectural chair of silver is preserved at Barcelona. The
-supports represent window tracery. One large arch supplies the front
-support, being cusped, and these cusps are again subdivided. The two
-sides form each a pair of windows of two lights or divisions, with a
-circle above, the whole cusped and having trefoil leaves on the cusps.
-The back is open tracery work, representing three narrow windows,
-with two lights or openings each. They finish in three lofty gables,
-crocketed outside and divided into tracery within.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Chairs in England during the mediæval period were sometimes made of
-turned wood. Sometimes they were cleverly arranged to fold up, as in
-our own days: the engraving (p. 122) is from a beautiful manuscript
-of the fifteenth century. The chair known as that of Glastonbury is a
-square board on two pairs of cross-trestles, with a square board for
-a back, held to the seat by sloping arm pieces, shaped out to receive
-the arms of a sitter. On the edges of the seat and back tenons
-protrude, long enough to pass through mortices in the leg and arm
-pieces, which are pegged to keep them firm. Like the sixteenth century
-curule chairs these can easily be taken to pieces for travelling.
-During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, high-backed chairs, richly
-cut and pierced, with wooden, afterwards with cane, seats were used
-and remained in use simplified and lightened during more than a
-century. The woodcut (p. 123) represents the fashion of chair common
-in Italy about the year 1620: and from thence introduced into England.
-
-The use of marquetry was not confined to tables and cabinets. Rich
-chairs were made in this material (rarely in boule) during the
-eighteenth century in France, Italy, and Holland, from whence they
-came to this country. Light and very elegant yellow satin-wood
-marquetry chairs were also then in fashion. The use of mahogany for
-chairs, often delicately carved and admirably constructed, was general
-during the last century in England. The French carved chairs of the
-time of Louis the sixteenth covered with silk all but the legs and
-framework, and painted white or gilt, were made to accord with the
-sofas and carved woodwork of the rooms. This example was followed in
-England, with certain national differences.
-
-
-_Tables._
-
-The ancient Egyptian tables were round, square, or oblong; the former
-were generally used during their repasts, and consisted of a circular
-flat summit, supported, like the _monopodium_ of the Romans, on a
-single shaft or leg in the centre or by the figure of a man intended
-to represent a captive. Large tables had usually three or four legs,
-but some were made with solid sides; and though generally of wood
-many were of metal or stone; and they varied in size according to
-the different purposes for which they were intended. Often they were
-three-legged, the legs in a concave shape.
-
-An antique marble table of Græco-Roman work is preserved at Naples,
-supported by a centaur in full relief at one end, and a sea monster,
-Scylla it is supposed, involving a shipwrecked mariner in the folds of
-her tail, with indications of waves, &c., round her body. Other Roman
-tables of larger dimensions had three, four, or five supports of
-sphinxes, lions, and the like. We give representations of three kinds
-of tables from paintings on vases; and another, on three marble legs,
-found at Pompeii.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In the middle ages, as has been before said, tables were generally
-folding boards laid on trestles and moveable. The general disposition
-of the dining table was taken from those of abbeys and convents, and
-may be seen continued in some of our own colleges to this day. The
-principal table was on a raised platform or floor at the upper end of
-the hall, and thence called the "High" table. The guests sat on one
-side only, as in the traditional representations of the Last Supper,
-and the place of honour was the centre, the opposite side being left
-for the service. The principal person sat under a canopy or cloth
-of estate, either made for the occasion, or under a panelled canopy
-curving outward and permanent. Occasionally mediæval tables in England
-were of stone or marble. Of the former material a table is preserved
-belonging to the strangers' hall at Winchester; and a wooden one in
-the chapter-house at Salisbury. The tops of some old English tables
-are made with two thicknesses, the lower pulling out on either side
-to rest on supports drawn from the bed. A table of this description is
-kept at Hill hall, Essex; and the woodcut represents a folding table
-of the time of Elizabeth, long preserved at Flaxton Hall, in Suffolk.
-During the last century mahogany tables with delicate pierced
-galleries round the edge, and similar work to ornament the bed or
-frame, were made by Chippendale and his contemporaries. Many of them
-are light and graceful pieces of construction. Others were massively
-made with goat-footed legs that bulge well beyond the lines of
-the table top, which in these cases is often a slab of marble. The
-workmanship is admirable. Mahogany had then supplanted the use of oak
-for large tables.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-_Chests, Cabinets, and Sideboards._
-
-The wardrobe, both in the Roman house and the mediæval castle, was a
-small room suitably fitted up and provided with receptacles. Chests,
-coffers, and caskets were also in use, and implied moveability. In
-later days the renaissance chests were either mounted on stands or
-gave place to mixed structures; and cabinets of various forms that
-could be kept permanently in the hall or chamber became the fashion.
-They were large, important objects, were never moved or carried
-abroad, descended from father to son, and were the monumental objects,
-as the panelled superstructure of the fireplace was, of halls and
-reception rooms. These pieces have various forms. In dining halls or
-rooms occasionally so used, they were cupboards, dressers, or places
-with a small receptacle to hold food, and a flat top with perhaps a
-step or shelf above it to carry plate, candlesticks, &c. When placed
-in receiving rooms or to hold dresses they were cabinets or wardrobes;
-for the conveniences of writing they are bureaux, sécrétaires, or
-escritoires.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-We have early notices of the use of cypress chests, perhaps cabinets
-as some of them are fitted with drawers, in this country. John of
-Gaunt in his will, 1397, specifies "a little box of cypress wood;"
-probably something like the chest engraved from a manuscript of that
-date: out of which the servant is taking a robe evidently richly
-embroidered with armorial bearings. In the memoirs of the antiquities
-of Great Britain, relating to the reformation, we find an account of
-church plate, money, gold and silver images, &c., delivered to Henry
-the eighth: "Paid William Grene, the king's _coffer-maker_, for making
-of a coffer covered with fustyan of Naples, and being full of drawers
-and boxes lined with red and grene sarcynet to put in stones of
-divers sorts, vi. _li._ xviij. _s._ ij. _d._," by which we may gather
-something of its costly construction, "and to Cornelys the locke
-smythe for making all the iron worke, that is to say, the locke,
-gymours, handels, ryngs to every drawer box, the price xxxvi. _s._ iv.
-_d._"
-
-The marquetry invented or brought to perfection by Boule was displayed
-in greater magnificence on cabinets of various shapes than on any
-other pieces of furniture. The same may be said of the marquetry
-cabinets in wood executed during the eighteenth century in France by
-Riesener and David, with the help of the metal mounts of Gouthière
-and his contemporaries. In these fine pieces the interior is generally
-simple and the conceits of the previous century are omitted. Japan
-cabinets obtained through the Dutch were frequently imported into
-England. The hinges and mounts were of silver or gilt metal, richly
-chased. The bureau, escritoire, or office desk, called in Germany
-Kaunitz after a princely inventor, was a knee-hole table. These tall
-bureaux were of general, almost universal, use in England during the
-last century.
-
-
-_Sideboards._
-
-There are several old sideboards in the Kensington museum, described
-under the names of _dressoir_ or _dressoir de salle à manger_ in the
-large catalogue. They are small cupboards and would be called cabinets
-but for the drawers half-way down, and the rows of the shelves on the
-top; and are of the sixteenth century date. According to Willemin, the
-old etiquette of France, certainly that of Burgundy, prescribed five
-steps or shelves to these dressers for use during meals for queens;
-four for duchesses or princesses; three for their children and for
-countesses and _grandes dames_; two for other noble ladies. In the
-middle ages cupboards or dressers were mere covered boards or shelves
-against a wall on which plate was set out, and were made of three or
-four or more stages according to the splendour of the occasion. The
-cupboard dresser of more modest pretensions was considered as a piece
-of dining-room furniture. It was ordinarily covered with a piece of
-embroidery.
-
-Robert Frevyll bequeaths, 1521, to his "son John a stone cobard in the
-hall." A manuscript inventory of Henry the eighth names, "Item, one
-large cuppbord carpet of grene cloth of gold with workes lyned with
-bockeram, conteyning in length three yards, iii. q'ters, and three
-bredthes." In the herald's account of the feast at Westminster, on the
-occasion of the marriage of prince Arthur, we find "There was also a
-stage of dyvers greas and hannes (degrees and enhancings of height)
-for the cuppbord that the plate shulde stande inn, the which plate for
-the moost part was clene (pure) goold, and the residue all gilte and
-non silver, and was in length from the closet doore to the chimney."
-And when in the next reign Henry entertained Francis at Calais, a
-cupboard of seven stages was provided and furnished with gold and
-silver gilt plate.
-
-Before concluding these remarks on dining-room furniture something may
-be said on painted roundels or wooden platters. Though they have
-long ceased to be used for their original purpose, several sets still
-complete remain in country houses and collections of different kinds;
-and three sets are in the Kensington museum. They are usually twelve
-in number: and all seem to be of the date of the late Tudor princes.
-They were kept in boxes turned out of a block, and decorated with
-painting and gilding. Their size does not differ materially, all the
-sets varying from 5-3/8 to 5-5/8 inches. There are, however, smaller
-sets to be seen which range from 2-3/4 to 5 inches in diameter. The
-top surface is in all instances plain and the under surface painted
-with a border of flowers, generally alternating with knots more or
-less artistically drawn in vermilion: "posyes" or a couple of verses
-are generally added. These platters were used in the sixteenth century
-as dessert plates, the plain side being at the top. Leland speaks
-of the "confettes" at the end of a dinner, "sugar plate fertes, with
-other subtilties with ippocrass" (a sweet wine). Earthenware plates
-though not unknown were still very uncommon in England before the
-reign of Elizabeth. The dinner was served on plate in royal or very
-great houses, on pewter and wooden trenchers in more humble and
-unpretending households. Specimens of the latter may still be seen in
-our old collegiate establishments. Probably the earliest instance of
-the use of earthenware may be found in the time of Edward the first,
-when some dishes and plates of that material were bought from a
-Spanish ship. Pitchers, jugs and the like had been for centuries
-commonly made. "Porselyn" is mentioned in 1587: where we read of
-"five dishes of earth painted, such as are brought from Venice" being
-presented to the queen on one of her progresses.
-
-
-_Carriages._
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The shape and decoration of carriages have changed continually, but
-these changes have not always been in the direction of convenience and
-handiness for rapid motion. Our space will not allow us to enter here
-upon a history of the chariots of ancient nations; Egyptians,
-Greeks, or Romans. A detailed account of them will be found in the
-introduction to the large catalogue of furniture at South Kensington.
-The woodcut represents the Roman "biga," the original of which (in
-marble) is in the Vatican; and the "pilentum," or covered carriage,
-from the column of Theodosius.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-We know but little of the period succeeding the destruction of Rome
-and the extinction of classic customs. In the middle ages we find
-carts, like those now in use for agricultural purposes in France;
-a long frame with spreading rails balanced on one pair of wheels of
-large dimensions, drawn by a string of horses. The woodcut of a family
-carriage is from the well-known Luttrell psalter, an illuminated
-manuscript of the early fourteenth century. Such vehicles seem to have
-been clumsy enough and had no springs: nevertheless they were much
-ornamented with various decorations. They had roofs as a protection
-from the weather, with silk or leather curtains; and the interior was
-fitted with cushions. In the "Squire of low degree" the father of the
-princess of Hungary promises,
-
-  To-morrow ye shall on hunting fare,
-  And ride my daughter in a _chare_,
-  It shall be covered with velvet red,
-  And cloths of fine gold all about your head,
-  With damask white and azure blue,
-  Well diapered with lilies new
-  Your pomelles (knobs) shall be ended with gold,
-  Your chains enamelled many a fold.
-
-The oldest kind of wheel-carriages known in England were called
-_whirlecotes_, and one of these belonged to the mother of Richard the
-second. Whirlecotes were used also at the marriage of Katherine of
-Arragon. Coaches were probably first introduced from Hungary. They
-seem to have been square, not differing greatly in outline from the
-state coaches of which numerous engraved plates can be seen; and
-were considered as too effeminate a conveyance for men in the days of
-Elizabeth. The coach of Henry the fourth of France may be studied in
-the plate by Van Luyken that represents his murder by Ravaillac, 1610.
-It is four-wheeled, square, with a flat awning on four corner pillars
-or supports, and curtains. The centre descends into a kind of boot
-with leather sides. The accompanying woodcut represents the carriage
-of the English ambassador at Rome in 1688: and we add also an
-engraving of a state carriage of about fifty years later, still in the
-possession of Lord Darnley.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX.
-
-NAMES OF DESIGNERS OF WOODWORK AND MAKERS OF FURNITURE.
-
-
-Only very meagre notices are to be found of the artists to whom we owe
-the designs of modern furniture. For a hundred and fifty years after
-the renaissance, furniture partook so generally, and the woodwork of
-rooms so entirely, of the character and followed so continually the
-details of architecture that the history of furniture-designers is
-that of the architects of the day. These found in the members of
-guilds of carvers, carpenters, or image sculptors admirable hands to
-carry out the ornamental details of their woodwork, such as
-chimney-pieces, &c., and who made sideboards, cabinets, chairs, and
-tables to suit the woodwork. We have space here only for the names; in
-the large catalogue a brief notice of almost every one of them is also
-given.
-
-  ------------------------------+-----------------+----------------
-                                |Country in which |
-  Names of Artists.             |  they worked.   |   Date.
-  ------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------
-                A               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Adam, J. (and R.)             |England          |1728-1792.
-                                |                 |
-  Agnolo, B. da                 |Italy            |1460-1563.
-                                |                 |
-  Agnolo, D. da                 |   "             |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Agnola, J. da                 |   "             |  "      "
-                                |                 |
-  Ambrogio, G.                  |   "             |17th     "
-                                |                 |
-  Ards, W.                      |Flanders         |15th     "
-                                |                 |
-  Asinelis, A.                  |Italy            |16th     "
-                                |                 |
-                B               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Bachelier, --                 |France           |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Baerze, J. de                 |Flanders         |14th     "
-                                |                 |
-  Baker, --                     |England          |18th     "
-                                |                 |
-  Barili, A.                    |Italy            |16th     "
-                                |                 |
-  Barili, G.                    |  "              |  "      "
-                                |                 |
-  Barili, S.                    |  "              |  "      "
-                                |                 |
-  Baumgartner, U.               |Germany          |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Beaugreant, G. de             |Flanders         |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Beck, S.                      |Germany          |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Belli, A. A.                  |Italy            |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Belli, G.                     |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Berain, J.                    |France           |1636-1711.
-                                |                 |
-  Bergamo, D. da                |Italy            |1490-1550.
-                                |                 |
-  Bergamo, S. da                |  "              |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Bernardo, --                  |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Berruguete, --                |Spain            |1480-1561.
-                                |                 |
-  Bertolina, B. J.              |Italy            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Beydert, J.                   |Flanders         |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Blondeel, L.                  |   "             |1495-1560.
-                                |                 |
-  Bolgié, G                     |Italy            |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Bonzanigo, G. M.              |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Borello, F.                   |  "              |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Borgona, F. de                |Spain            |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Botto, B.                     |Italy            |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Botto, G. B.                  |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Botto, P.                     |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Botto, S. A.                  |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Boulle, A. C.                 |France           |1642-1732.
-                                |                 |
-  Boulle, P.                    |  "              |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Brescia, R. da                |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Bross, -- de                  |France           |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Bruggemann, H.                |Germany          |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Bruhl, A.                     |Flanders         |16th and 17th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-  Brunelleschi, F.              |Italy            |1377-1446.
-                                |                 |
-  Brustolone, A.                |  "              |1670-1732.
-                                |                 |
-  Buontalenti, B. T.            |  "              |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-                C               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Caffieri, Ph.                 |France           |17th and 18th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-  Cano, A.                      |Spain            |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Canova, J. de                 |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Canozii, C.                   |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Canozii, G. M.                |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Canozii, L.                   |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Capitsoldi, --                |England          |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Capo di Ferro, Brothers       |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Carlone, J.                   |  "              |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Carnicero, A.                 |Spain            |1693-1756.
-                                |                 |
-  Castelli, Q.                  |Italy            |16th century
-                                |                 |
-  Cauner, --                    |France           |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Cauvet, G. P.                 |France           |1731-1788
-                                |                 |
-  Ceracci, G.                   |England          |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Cervelliera, B. del           |Italy            |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Chambers, Sir W.              |England          |1726-1796.
-                                |                 |
-  Chippendale, T.               |  "              |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Cipriani, G. B.               |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Coit, --                      |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Collet, A.                    |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Copeland, --                  |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Cotte, J. de                  |France           |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Cotte, R. de                  |  "              |1656-1735.
-                                |                 |
-  Cotton, C.                    |England          |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Cressent, --                  |France           |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                D               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Davy, R.                      |England          |1750-1794.
-                                |                 |
-  Dello Delli                   |Italy            |14th and 15th
-                                |                 |  centuries
-                                |                 |
-  Dolen, -- van                 |Flanders         |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Donatello, --                 |Italy            |1380-1466.
-                                |                 |
-  Dorsient, A C.; C. Oc.        |Flanders         |16th century
-                                |                 |
-  Ducerceau, A.                 |France           |1515-1585.
-                                |                 |
-  Dugar, E.                     |Italy            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Du Quesnoy, F. H. and J.      |Flanders         |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-                F               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Faydherbe, L.                 |Flanders         |1627-1694.
-                                |                 |
-  Filippo, D. di                |Italy            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Flörein, J.                   |Flanders         |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Flötner, P.                   |Germany          |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-                G               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Gabler, M.                    |Germany          |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Galletti, G.                  |Italy            |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Garnier, P.                   |France           |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Genser, M.                    |Germany          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Gervasius                     |England          |
-                                |                 |
-  Gettich, P.                   |Germany          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Geuser, M.                    |   "             |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Gheel, F. van                 |Flanders         |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Gibbons, G.                   |England          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Giovanni, Fra                 |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Glosencamp, H.                |Flanders         |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Goujon, J.                    |France           |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                H               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Habermann, --                 |France           |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Haeghen,-- van der            |Flanders         |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Hekinger, J.                  |Germany          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Heinhofer, Ph.                |   "             |16th and 17th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-  Helmont, -- van               |Flanders         |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Heppelwhite, A                |England          |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Hernandez, G.                 |Spain            |1586-1646.
-                                |                 |
-  Hool, J. B. van               |Flanders         |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Huet, --                      |France           |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Hyman, F.                     |England          |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                J               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  John of St. Omer              |England          |13th century.
-  Johnson, T.                   |   "             |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Juni, J. D.                   |Spain            |16th and 17th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-                K               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Kauffmann, A.                 |England          |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Kiskner, U.                   |Germany          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Kuenlin, J.                   |   "             |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                L               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Ladetto, F.                   |Italy            |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Lalonde, --                   |France           |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Lawreans, --                  |England          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Lecreux, N. A. J.             |Flanders         |1757-1836.
-                                |                 |
-  Le Moyne, J.                  |France           |1645-1718.
-                                |                 |
-  Leopardi, A.                  |Italy            |1450-1525.
-                                |                 |
-  Le Pautre, J.                 |France           |1617-1682.
-                                |                 |
-  Le Roux, J. B.                |  "              |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Linnell, J.                   |England          |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Lock, M.                      |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Loir, A.                      |France           |1630-1713.
-                                |                 |
-  L'Orme, Ph. de.               |  "              |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Lunigia, A. da                |Italy            |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                M               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Macé, J.                      |France           |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Maifeis, P. di                |Italy            |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Maggiolino, --                |  "              |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Magister, O.                  |  "              |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Majano, B. da                 |  "              |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Majano, G. da                 |Italy            |1432-1490.
-                                |                 |
-  Margaritone, --               |  "              |1236-1313.
-                                |                 |
-  Marot, D.                     |France           |1650-1700?
-                                |                 |
-  Marot, G.                     |  "              |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Marot, J.                     |  "              |1625-1679.
-                                |                 |
-  Martin, R.                    |  "              |1706-1765.
-                                |                 |
-  Martincourt, --               |  "              |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Meissonnier, J. A.            |  "              |1693-1750.
-                                |                 |
-  Mendeler, G.                  |Germany          |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Meulen, R. van der            |Flanders         |1645-1717.
-                                |                 |
-  Minore, G.                    |Italy            |15th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Modena, P. da                 |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Moenart, M.                   |Flanders         |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Montepulciano, G. da          |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Moser, L.                     |Germany          |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Müller, D.                    |  "              |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Müller, J.                    |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                N               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Newrone, G. C.                |Italy            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Nilson, --                    |France           |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Nys, L. de                    |Flanders         |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Nys, P. de                    |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-                O               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Oost, P. van                  |Flanders         |14th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Oppenord, --                  |France           |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-                P               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Pacher, M.                    |Germany          |15th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Padova, Z. da                 |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Panturmo, J. di               |  "              |1492-1556.
-                                |                 |
-  Pardo, G.                     |Spain            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Pareta, G. di                 |Italy            |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Passe, C. de                  |France           |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Passe, C. de, the younger     |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Pergolese, --                 |England          |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Perreal, J.                   |France           |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Philippon, A.                 |  "              |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Picau, --                     |  "              |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Picq, J.                      |Flanders         |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Pigalle, --                   |England          |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Piffetti, A. P.               |Italy            |1700-1777.
-                                |                 |
-  Plumier, P. D.                |Flanders         |1688-1721.
-                                |                 |
-  Porfirio, B. di               |Italy            |16th century
-                                |                 |
-                Q               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Quellin, A.                   |Flanders         |1609-1668.
-                                |                 |
-  Quellin, A., the younger      |  "              |1625-1700.
-                                |                 |
-  Quellin, E.                   |  "              |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-                R               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Raephorst, B. van             |Flanders         |15th century,
-                                |                 |
-  Ramello, F.                   |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Ranson, --                    |France           |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Rasch, A.                     |Flanders         |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Riesener, --                  |France           |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Roentgen, D.                  |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Rohan, J. de                  |  "              |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Rohan, J. de                  |  "              |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Rosch, J.                     |Germany          |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Rossi, P. de                  |Italy            |15th and 16th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-  Rovezzano, B. da              |England          |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-                S               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Salembier, --                 |France           |18th and 19th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-  Sangher, J. de                |Flanders         |17th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Schelden, P. van der          |  "              |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Schwanhard, H.                |Germany          |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Serlius, S.                   |France           |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Servellino, G. del            |Italy            |15th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Sheraton, Th.                 |England          |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Smet, R. de                   |Flanders         |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Stoss, V.                     |Germany          |1438-1533.
-                                |                 |
-  Syrlin, J.                    |  "              |15th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Syrlin, J., the younger       |  "              |15th and 16th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-                T               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Taillebert, U.                |Flanders         |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Tasso, D.                     |Italy            |15th and 16th
-                                |                 |  centuries.
-                                |                 |
-  Tasso, G.                     |  "              |  "    "
-                                |                 |
-  Tasso, G. B.                  |  "              |  "    "
-                                |                 |
-  Tasso, M. D.                  |  "              |15th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Tatham, C. H.                 |England          |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Taurini, R.                   |Italy            |16th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Thomire, P. Ph.               |France           |1751-1843.
-                                |                 |
-  Tolfo, G.                     |Italy            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Toro, --                      |France           |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Torrigiano, --                |England          |1472-1522.
-                                |                 |
-  Toto, --                      |  "              |1331-1351.
-                                |                 |
-  Trevigi, G. da                |  "              |1304-1344.
-                                |                 |
-                U               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Uccello, P.                   |Italy            |1396-1479.
-                                |                 |
-  Ugliengo, C.                  |  "              |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-                V               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Venasca, G. P.                |Italy            |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Verbruggen, P.                |Flanders         |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-  Verbruggen, P., the younger   |   "             |1660-1724.
-                                |                 |
-  Verhaegen, Th.                |   "             |18th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Voyers, --                    |England          |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Vriesse, V. de                |France           |17th    "
-                                |                 |
-                W               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Walker, H.                    |England          |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Weinkopf, W.                  |Germany          |  "     "
-                                |                 |
-  Willemsens, L.                |Flanders         |1635-1702.
-                                |                 |
-  William the Florentine        |England          |13th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Wilton, J.                    |  "              |18th    "
-                                |                 |
-                Z               |                 |
-                                |                 |
-  Zabello, F.                   |Italy            |16th century.
-                                |                 |
-  Zorn, G.                      |Germany          |17th    "
-
-
-
-
-INDEX.
-
-
-  Adam, Robert and John, 112
-
-  Alexandria, ancient centre of civilisation, 17
-
-  Anglo-saxon houses, 44
-
-  Antioch, ancient centre of civilisation, 17
-
-  Architectural style in furniture, 94
-
-  Art, classic, ends in third century, 34
-
-  " Byzantine, 35
-
-  " mediæval, its growth, 41
-
-  "  "  its perfection, 47
-
-  " Romanesque, long continuance, 42
-
-  " renaissance, 66
-
-  " classic, revived in eighteenth century, 107
-
-  "  " early nineteenth century, 114
-
-  Atrium, 18
-
-  Attalus introduces tapestry, 17
-
-
-  Bedrooms, English, fourteenth century, 50
-
-  " French, eighteenth century, 104
-
-  Beds, Byzantine period, 37
-
-  " Norman, 46
-
-  " Egyptian, Greek, &c., 116
-
-  " Mediæval, 118, 119
-
-  " at Hampton court, 120
-
-  Bellows, renaissance, 72
-
-  Bombé furniture, 104, 111
-
-  Boucher, 108
-
-  Boule, 95
-
-  Bureaux in marquetry, 93, 104
-
-  " or knee-hole, 128
-
-  Byzantine period, 35
-
-  " wealth, 38
-
-  " artists welcomed by Charlemagne, 41
-
-
-  Cabinet, French, sixteenth century, 89
-
-  " Japan, 128
-
-  Cafass, Egyptian wood, 4
-
-  Candelabra, 23, 24
-
-  Candles, Anglo-saxon, &c., 45, 48
-
-  Carriage, Anglo-saxon, 45
-
-  " fourteenth century, 54, 131
-
-  " seventeenth century, 92
-
-  " the Speaker's, 132
-
-  " Lord Darnley's, 132
-
-  Caskets, Byzantine, 37
-
-  Ceilings in Roman houses, 21, 31
-
-  Chair, Egyptian, 4, 121
-
-  " Nineveh, 7
-
-  " Greek, 10, 11, 14
-
-  " Roman, 28, 122
-
-  " of St. Peter, 35
-
-  " Byzantine, 37
-
-  " at Ravenna, 39, 122
-
-  " in Bayeux tapestry, 45
-
-  " coronation, 49
-
-  " of Guidobaldo, 63
-
-  " Italian, fifteenth century, 63
-
-  " folding mediæval, 122
-
-  " of silver, at Barcelona, 123
-
-  " the Glastonbury, 123
-
-  " Italian, seventeenth century, 124
-
-  " marquetry, 124
-
-  Chambers, Sir William, 106
-
-  Chariots, Hebrew, 9
-
-  " Greek, 15
-
-  " Roman, 130
-
-  " Byzantine, 37
-
-  Chest, Greek, 11
-
-  " Roman, 29
-
-  " of king John, 47
-
-  " fourteenth century, 51
-
-  " for copes, 56
-
-  " fifteenth century, 60
-
-  Chest, Italian, 61
-
-  " renaissance, 69, 71
-
-  Chimneypieces, eighteenth century, 106
-
-  Chippendale, 106
-
-  Cipriani, 112
-
-  Cluny hôtel, carriages there, 2
-
-  Colbert, his patronage of art, 94
-
-  Couches, Egyptian, 5
-
-  " Roman, 13
-
-  " mediæval, 120
-
-  Coypel, Antoine, 104
-
-  Cradle, mediæval, 121
-
-  Cubicula, 20
-
-  Cypress chests, 70, 127
-
-
-  Dagobert's chair, 43
-
-  David, 105
-
-  Delafosse, 104, 108
-
-  Dilettanti society, influence, 115
-
-  Dining-room, Byzantine, 38
-
-  Diptych of Anastasius, 36
-
-  Distaff, 106
-
-  Doorway, English, seventeenth century, 98
-
-  "Droit de prisage," 54
-
-
-  Ébénistes, fine cabinet makers, 108
-
-  Ebony used seventeenth century, 108
-
-  Egyptian furniture, 5
-
-  Elizabethan style, 85
-
-
-  Flemish furniture, seventeenth century, 87
-
-  Fragonard, 108
-
-  French style prevalent in eighteenth century, 103, 105
-
-  Furniture, use of a collection, 1
-
-  " Byzantine, still perhaps in mosques and treasuries, 40
-
-  " sixteenth century, architectural, 75
-
-  " eighteenth century, 103
-
-  " bombé, explained, 104
-
-
-  German artists in England, sixteenth century, 78
-
-  " work, eighteenth century, 111
-
-  Gillow, 113
-
-  Glass windows in Roman houses, 20
-
-  " mosaics, &c., 22
-
-  " Venetian, 99
-
-  Glue used by the Romans, 33
-
-  Gouthière, 105, 110
-
-  Greek manners, simple, 12
-
-  " houses, 14
-
-  Grinling Gibbons, 97
-
-  " best examples of his work, 97
-
-
-  Halls in Roman villas, 20
-
-  Hebrew furniture, 8
-
-  Heppelwhite, 113
-
-  Hogarth, paintings of chimneypieces, 106
-
-  Holbein, his influence, 78
-
-  Holy-water stoup, 102
-
-  House, Roman, 18
-
-  " Greek, 14
-
-  " how warmed in Rome, 29
-
-  " Anglo-saxon and Norman, 44, 46
-
-  " of timber, fifteenth century, 58
-
-
-  Iconoclasts, destruction by, 40
-
-  Italian coffer at South Kensington, 61
-
-  " artists, sixteenth century, 68
-
-  "  "  in France and England, 78, 89
-
-  " carved woodwork, sixteenth century, 89
-
-  " distaff, 106
-
-
-  Japanese lac-work, 106
-
-
-  Kauffmann (Angelica), 112
-
-  Kaunitz, a kind of bureau, 128
-
-  Kitchen utensils, Roman, 30
-
-  Knife case, sixteenth century, 76
-
-
-  Lac-work, Chinese and Japanese, 106
-
-  Lalonde, 108
-
-  Lares, 28
-
-  Lebrun, first head of the "Gobelins," 95
-
-  Le Pautre family, 104
-
-  Litters, Roman, 31
-
-  Lock (Matthias), 112
-
-  Locks in Roman houses, 21
-
-  Louvre, Egyptian boxes, 6
-
-
-  Maggiolino, 111
-
-  Mansard, 104
-
-  Marquetry, Venetian, 62
-
-  " seventeenth century, 92, 93
-
-  " Boule, 95
-
-  Meissonnier, 104, 108
-
-  Metallurgy, British, 42
-
-  Micque, 108
-
-  Mirror, Greek, 13
-
-  " renaissance, 69
-
-  Mirror frames, sixteenth century, 71
-
-  "  "  Venetian, 91, 99
-
-  " made in England, seventeenth century, 99, 100
-
-  Mosaic, Roman, pavements and on walls, 19
-
-  " or pietra dura, 74
-
-
-  Natoire, 108
-
-  Nero, colossus in his house, 25
-
-  Nineveh furniture, 6
-
-  Nuptiale, 18
-
-
-  [OE]ci, 20
-
-  Oppenord, 108
-
-  Ostium, 18
-
-
-  Paintings and pictures in Roman houses, 22
-
-  " in thirteenth century, of rooms, 48, 49
-
-  Panelling for rooms, 49
-
-  " oriental, 57
-
-  " of a chest, 60
-
-  " English, sixteenth century, 79, 80
-
-  " French, sixteenth century, 84
-
-  " English, 86
-
-  Pedestal, 90
-
-  Penates, 18
-
-  Peristylium, 20
-
-  Persian furniture, 8
-
-  " marquetry, 63
-
-  Picture-frames, renaissance, 71
-
-  Pomeranian cabinet at Berlin, 92
-
-  Pompeii, value of discoveries, 16
-
-  Porcelain given to Queen Elizabeth, 130
-
-  Pottery, time of Edward I., 49
-
-  Pudens, ancient house of, 20
-
-  Pugin, 114
-
-
-  Queverdo, 108
-
-
-  Religious houses, their woodwork, 63
-
-  "  "  safe generally from spoliation, 67
-
-  Renaissance in Italy, 66
-
-  " materials employed, 69
-
-  " in England, France, &c., 78
-
-  Restout, Jean, 104
-
-  Riesener, 105, 108, 109
-
-  Robert, 108
-
-  Rococo furniture, 103
-
-  Roentgen, 108, 109
-
-  Roman habits, at first simple, 16
-
-  " house, 18
-
-  " couches in dining-rooms, 19, 27
-
-  " locks and hinges, 21
-
-  " tables, 25
-
-  " chairs, 28
-
-  " kitchen utensils, 30
-
-  Roof of Westminster Hall, 55
-
-  Room decorations, French, eighteenth century, 107
-
-  Room of Marie Antoinette's time at South Kensington, 107
-
-  Roundels, 129
-
-
-  Salembier, 108
-
-  Scamnum, 28
-
-  Sculpture, architectural, &c., fourteenth century, 56
-
-  " renaissance, 69
-
-  Settle or seat, fourteenth century, 51
-
-  Sheraton, Thomas, 113
-
-  Sideboards, 128
-
-  Silks for furniture, eighteenth century, 107
-
-  Stuart style of woodwork and furniture, 85, 96
-
-
-  Table, Egyptian, 124
-
-  " Nineveh, 8
-
-  " Roman, 25, 125
-
-  "  "  veneered, 27
-
-  "  "  great value, 27
-
-  " Norman, 46
-
-  " furniture of, fourteenth century, 50
-
-  " fourteenth and fifteenth century, 53, 58, 125
-
-  " sixteenth century, 71
-
-  " of Francesco de' Medici, 75
-
-  " French, sixteenth century, 80, 81
-
-  " English, seventeenth century, 102
-
-  " long kept at Flaxton Hall, 126
-
-  Tapestry first brought to Rome, 17
-
-  " in Roman houses, 30
-
-  " in England, fourteenth century, &c., 50, 61
-
-  " Gobelin, 95
-
-  Tarsia, 62, 73, 74
-
-  Temple of Diana, 33
-
-  Theatre of C. Curio, 32
-
-  Tigrinæ tables, 26
-
-  Triclinium, 18, 117
-
-  Tripods, 22
-
-  Tudor cabinet at South Kensington, 78
-
-  " style, 85
-
-
-  Vase from Hadrian's villa, 25
-
-  Venetian mirror-frame, 91
-
-  Vernis-Martin, 105
-
-  Vestiaria, 20
-
-
-  Walpole (Horace), opinion on mediæval art, 111
-
-  Wardrobe, old English, 49
-
-  " Roman, 126
-
-  Wars of the Roses, evil consequences, 64
-
-  Wood used in Nineveh, 8
-
-  "  "  Greece, 15
-
-  "  "  Rome, for tables, &c., 26, 32
-
-  "  "  by Riesener, 109
-
-  Woodwork, English, in thirteenth century, 48
-
-  "  "  sixteenth century, 79
-
-  " Germany, in sixteenth century, 83
-
-  " Spanish, in sixteenth century, 84
-
-  " Tudor and Stuart, 86
-
-  Wren, Sir Christopher, 97
-
-  Wyattville, 114
-
-
-
-
-THE END.
-
-
-DALZIEL BROTHERS, CAMDEN PRESS, N.W.
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-
-
-  Transcriber's Note
-
-  _ _ represents italic print.
-
-  ^ represents a superscript.
-
-
-  The Table of Contents was erected by the transcriber, and placed
-  in the Public Domain.
-
-  Sundry missing or damaged punctuation has been repaired.
-
-  This book, published in England, dates from 1875. Some older, but
-  still correct, spellings may be present. There is also some 16th
-  century spelling. Both hyphenated and un-hyphenated versions of
-  some words appear in the text.
-
-  'Borgoña' and 'Borgona' both appear in the text, as do 'hôtel' and
-  'hotel'.
-
-  English spelling 'rules' have only existed since the second half of
-  the nineteenth century.
-
-  Illustrations which interrupted paragraphs have generally been moved
-  to more convenient positions between paragraphs. An exception is the
-  illustration of St. Edmund's 'well-furnished bedroom' on Page 51,
-  referred to in the first part of the long paragraph beginning on
-  Page 50. It made sense to insert the illustration after 'the year
-  1400', as the following text began a new topic.
-
-  Page 21: 'valves' corected to 'halves'. 'v' would seem to be a
-  misprint for 'h'.
-
-    "The doors were generally in two halves and could be closed with
-    locks,..."
-
-  Page 48: 'candesticks' corrected to 'candlesticks'.
-
-    "Though the royal table might be lighted with valuable candlesticks
-    of metal,..."
-
-  Page 82: [Illustration: SEMPER FESTINA LENTE = Hurry Slowly!]
-
-  Page 121: 'musuem' corrected to 'museum'.
-
-  "... as in the example in the museum,..."
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient and Modern Furniture and
-Woodwork, by John Hungerford Pollen
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT AND MODERN FURNITURE ***
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