ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF FURNITURE

TRUSLOVE AND BRAY
PRINTERS
WEST NORWOOD S E

ENGLISH SATIN-WOOD
DRESSING-TABLE.
WITH PAINTED DECORATION.
END OF XVIII CENTURY.

ILLUSTRATED
HISTORY OF
FURNITURE

FROM THE EARLIEST TO
THE PRESENT TIME BY
FREDERICK LITCHFIELD
AUTHOR OF "POTTERY AND PORCELAIN"
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON: TRUSLOVE & HANSON LIMITED
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE MDCCCCIII

AN OLD ENGLISH "GRANDFATHER" CLOCK.

LATE XVIII. CENTURY.

(See pp. [121]-2.)

PREFACE.

N the following pages the Author has placed before the reader an account of the changes in the design of Decorative Furniture and Woodwork, from the earliest period of which we have any reliable or certain record until the present time.

A careful selection of illustrations has been made from examples of established authenticity, the majority of which are to be seen, either in the Museums to which reference is made, or by permission of the owners; and the representations of the different "interiors" will convey an idea of the character and disposition of the Furniture of the periods to which they refer. These illustrations are arranged, so far as possible, in chronological order, and the descriptions which accompany them are explanatory of the historical and social changes which have influenced the manners and customs, and directly or indirectly affected the Furniture of different nations. An endeavour is made to produce a "panorama," which may prove acceptable to many, who, without wishing to study the subject deeply, may desire to gain some information with reference to it generally, or with regard to some part of it, in which they may feel a particular interest.

It will be obvious that within the limits of a single volume of moderate dimensions it is impossible to give more than an outline sketch of many periods of design and taste which deserve far more consideration than is here bestowed upon them; the reader is, therefore, asked to accept the first chapter, which refers to "Ancient Furniture" and covers a period of several centuries, as introductory to that which follows, rather than as a serious attempt to examine the history of the Furniture during that space of time. The fourth chapter, which deals with a period of some hundred and fifty years, from the time of King James the First until that of Chippendale and his contemporaries, and the last three chapters, are more fully descriptive than some others, partly because trustworthy information as to these times is more accessible, and partly because it is probable that English readers will feel greater interest in the Furniture of which they are the subject. The French meubles de luxe, from the latter half of the seventeenth century until the Revolution, are also treated more fully than the Furniture of other periods and countries, on account of the interest which has been manifested in this description of the cabinet maker's and metal mounter's work during the past fifteen or twenty years. There is evidence of this appreciation in the enormous prices realised at notable auction sales, when such Furniture has been offered for competition to wealthy connoisseurs.

In order to gain a more correct idea of the design of Furniture of different periods, it has been necessary to notice the alterations in architectural styles which influenced, and were accompanied by, corresponding changes in the fashion of interior woodwork. Such comments are made with some diffidence, as it is felt that this branch of the subject would have received more fitting treatment by an architect, who was also an antiquary, than by an antiquary with only a limited knowledge of architecture.

Some works on "Furniture" have taken the word in its French interpretation, to include everything that is "movable" in a house; other writers have combined with historical notes, critical remarks and suggestions as to the selection of Furniture. The Author has not presumed to offer any such advice, and has confined his attention to a description of that which, in its more restricted sense, is understood as "Decorative Furniture and Woodwork." For his own information, and in the pursuit of his business, he has been led to investigate the causes and the approximate dates of the several changes in taste which have taken place, and has recorded them in as simple and readable a story as the difficulties of the subject permit.

Numerous acts of kindness and co-operation, received while preparing the work for the Press, have rendered the task very pleasant; and while the Author has endeavoured to acknowledge, in a great many instances, the courtesies received, when noticing the particular occasion on which such assistance was rendered, he would desire generally to record his thanks to the owners of historic mansions, the officials of our Museums, the Clerks of City Companies, Librarians, and others, to whom he is indebted. The views of many able writers who have trodden the same field of enquiry have been adopted where they have been confirmed by the writer's experience or research, and in these cases he hopes he has not omitted to express his acknowledgments for the use he has made of them.

The large number of copies subscribed for, accompanied, as many of the applications have been, by expressions of goodwill, and confidence beforehand, have been very gratifying, and have afforded great encouragement during the preparation of the work.

If the present venture is received in such a way as to encourage a larger effort, the writer hopes both to multiply examples and extend the area of his observations.

F. L.
32, ST. JAMES'S STREET, S.W.

CONTENTS.

[CHAPTER I.]

PAGE
BIBLICAL REFERENCES: Solomon's House and Temple—Palace of Ahasuerus. ASSYRIAN FURNITURE: Nimrod's Palace—Mr. George Smith quoted. EGYPTIAN FURNITURE: Specimens in the British Museum—The Workman's Stool—Various Articles of Domestic Furniture—Dr. Birch quoted. GREEK FURNITURE: The Bas-reliefs in the British Museum—The Chest of Cypselus—Laws and Customs of the Greeks—House of Alcibiades—Plutarch quoted. ROMAN FURNITURE: Position of Rome—The Roman House—Cicero's Table—Thyine Wood—Customs of wealthy Romans—Downfall of the Empire [1]

[CHAPTER II.]

Period of 1,000 years from Fall of Rome, A. D. 476, to Capture of Constantinople, 1453—The Crusades—Influence of Christianity—Chairs of St. Peter and Maximian at Rome, Ravenna, and Venice—Edict of Leo III. prohibiting Image worship—The Rise of Venice—Charlemagne and his successors—The Chair of Dagobert—Byzantine character of Furniture—Norwegian carving—Russian and Scandinavian—The Anglo-Saxons—Sir Walter Scott quoted—Descriptions of Anglo-Saxon Houses and Customs—Art in Flemish Cities—Gothic Architecture—The Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey—Penshurst—French Furniture in the 14th Century—Description of rooms—The South Kensington Museum—Transition from Gothic to Renaissance—German carved work; the Credence, the Buffet, and Dressoir [17]

[CHAPTER III.]

THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY: Leonardo da Vinci and Raffaelle—Church of St. Peter, contemporary great artists—The Italian Palazzo—Methods of gilding, inlaying and mounting Furniture—Pietra-durá and other enrichments—Ruskin's criticism. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE: François I. and the Chateau of Fontainebleau—Influence on Courtiers—Chairs of the time—Design of Cabinets—M. E. Bonnaffé on The Renaissance—Bedstead of Jeanne d'Albret—Deterioration of taste in time of Henry IV.—Louis XIII. Furniture—Brittany woodwork. THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS: Influence of the House of Burgundy on Art—The Chimney-piece at Bruges, and other casts of specimens at South Kensington Museum. THE RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN: The resources of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Influence of Saracenic Art—High-backed Leather Chairs, the Carthusian Convent at Granada. THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY: Albrecht Dürer Famous Steel Chair of Augsburg—German seventeenth century carving in St. Saviour's Hospital. THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND: Influence of Foreign Artists in the time of Henry VIII.—End of Feudalism—Hampton Court Palace—Linen Pattern Panels—Woodwork in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey—Livery Cupboards at Hengrave—Harrison quoted—The "parler," alteration in English customs—Chairs of the sixteenth century—Coverings and Cushions of the time, extract from old inventory—South Kensington Cabinet—Elizabethan Mirror at Goodrich Court—Shaw's "Ancient Furniture"—The Glastonbury Chair—Introduction of Frames into England—Characteristics of Native Woodwork—Famous Country Mansions—Alteration in design of Woodwork and Furniture—Panelled Rooms at South Kensington—The Charterhouse—Gray's Inn Hall and Middle Temple—The Hall of the Carpenters' Company—The Great Bed of Ware—Shakespeare's Chair—Penshurst Place [47]

[CHAPTER IV.]

English Home Life in the Reign of James I.—Sir Henry Wotton quoted—Inigo Jones and his work—Ford Castle—Chimney Pieces in South Kensington Museum—Table in the Carpenters' Hall—Hall of the Barbers' Company—The Charterhouse—Time of Charles I.—Furniture at Knole—Eagle House, Wimbledon—Mr. Charles Eastlake—Monuments at Canterbury and Westminster—Settles, Couches, and Chairs of the Stuart period—Sir Paul Pindar's House—Cromwellian Furniture—The Restoration—Indo-Portuguese Furniture—Hampton Court Palace—Evelyn's description—The Great Fire of London—Hall of the Brewers' Company—Oak Panelling of the time—Grinling Gibbons and his work—The Edict of Nantes—Silver Furniture at Knole—William III. and Dutch influence—Queen Anne—Sideboards, Bureaus, and Grandfather's Clocks—Furniture at Hampton Court [91]

[CHAPTER V.]

CHINESE FURNITURE: Probable source of artistic taste—Sir William Chambers quoted—Racinet's "Le Costume Historique"—Dutch Influence—The South Kensington and the late Duke of Edinburgh Collections—Processes of making Lacquer—Screens in the Kensington Museum. JAPANESE FURNITURE: Early History—Sir Rutherford Alcock and Lord Elgin—The Collection of the Shôgun—Famous Collections—Action of the present Government of Japan—Special characteristics. INDIAN FURNITURE: Early European influence—Furniture of the Moguls—Racinet's Work—Bombay Furniture—Ivory Chairs and Tables—Specimens in the India Museum. PERSIAN WOODWORK: Collection of Objets d'Art formed by General Murdoch Smith, R.E.—Industrial Arts of the Persians—Arab influence—South Kensington Specimens. SARACENIC WOODWORK: Oriental customs—Specimens in the South Kensington Museum of Arab Work—M. d'Aveune's Work [125]

[CHAPTER VI.]

PALACE OF VERSAILLES: "Grand" and "Petit Trianon"—The three Styles of Louis XIV., XV., and XVI.—Colbert and Lebrun—André Charles Boule and his Work—Carved and Gilt Furniture—The Regency and its Influence—Alteration in Condition of French Society—Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher. LOUIS XV. FURNITURE: Famous Ébenistes—Vernis Martin Furniture—Caffieri and Gouthière Mountings—Sêvres Porcelain introduced into Cabinets—Gobelins Tapestry—The "Bureau du Roi." LOUIS XVI. AND MARIE ANTOINETTE: The Queen's Influence—The Painters Chardin and Greuze—More simple Designs—Characteristic Ornaments of Louis XVI. Furniture—Riesener's Work—Gouthière's Mountings—Specimens in the Louvre—The Hamilton Palace Sale—French influence upon the design of furniture in other countries—The Jones Collection—Extract from the "Times" [145]

[CHAPTER VII.]

Chinese Styles—Sir William Chambers—The Brothers Adams' work—Pergolesi, Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffmann—Architects of the time—Wedgwood and Flaxman—Chippendale's Work and his Contemporaries—Chair in the Barbers' Hall—Lock, Shearer, Hepplewhite, Ince, Mayhew, Sheraton—Introduction of Satinwood and Mahogany—Gillows, of Lancaster and London—History of the Sideboard—The Dining Room—Furniture of the time [173]

[CHAPTER VIII.]

The French Revolution and the First Empire—Influence on design of Napoleon's Campaigns—The Cabinet presented to Marie Louise—Dutch Furniture of the time—English Furniture—Sheraton's later work—Thomas Hope, architect—George Smith's designs—Fashion during the Regency—Gothic revival—Seddon's furniture—Other makers—Influence on design of the Restoration in France—Furniture of William IV. and early part of Queen Victoria's reign—Baroque and Rococo styles—The Panelling of Rooms, Dado, and Skirting—The Art Union—The Society of Arts—Sir Charles Barry and the new Palace of Westminster—Pugin's designs—Auction Prices of Furniture—Christie's—The London Club Houses—Steam—Different Trade Customs—Exhibitions in France and England—Harry Rogers' work—The late Queen's cradle—State of Art in England during the first part of Queen Victoria's reign—Continental designs—Italian carving—Cabinet work—General remarks [203]

[CHAPTER IX.]

THE GREAT EXHIBITION:—Exhibitors and contemporary Cabinet Makers—Exhibition of 1862, London; 1867, Paris; and subsequently—Description of Illustrations—Fourdinois, Wright and Mansfield—The South Kensington Museum—Talbert's Work—Revival of Marquetry—Comparison of Present Day with that of a Hundred Years ago—Æstheticism—Traditions—Trades-Unionism—The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society—Kensington School of Woodcarving—Independence of Furniture—Present Fashions—Writers on Design—The New Renaissance—"Trade" Journals—Modern Furniture in other Countries—Concluding Remarks [229]

[APPENDIX.]

Lists of Artists and Manufacturers of Furniture—Woods—Tapestry used for French Furniture—The processes of Gilding and Polishing—The Pianoforte [251]

[INDEX] [268]

CARVED OAK NAPKIN PRESS.

Lent to the South Kensington Museum by II. Farrer, Esq.

EARLY XVII. CENTURY.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES: Solomon's House and Temple—Palace of Ahasuerus. ASSYRIAN FURNITURE: Nimrod's Palace—Mr. George Smith quoted. EGYPTIAN FURNITURE: Specimens in the British Museum—The Workman's Stool—Various Articles of Domestic Furniture—Dr. Birch quoted. GREEK FURNITURE: The Bas-reliefs in the British Museum—The Chest of Cypselus—Laws and Customs of the Greeks—House of Alcibiades—Plutarch quoted. ROMAN FURNITURE: Position of Rome—The Roman House—Cicero's Table—Thyine Wood—Customs of wealthy Romans—Downfall of the Empire.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES.

HE first well-known reference to woodwork is to be found in the Book of Genesis, in the instructions given to Noah to make an Ark of gopher[1] wood, "to make a window," to "pitch it within and without with pitch," and to observe definite measurements. From the specific directions thus handed down to us, we may gather that mankind had acquired at a very early period of the world's history a knowledge of the different kinds of wood, and of the use of tools.

We know, too, from the bas-reliefs and papyri in the British Museum, how advanced were the Ancient Egyptians in the arts of civilization, and that the manufacture of comfortable and even luxurious furniture was not neglected. In them, the Hebrews must have had excellent workmen for teachers and taskmasters, to have enabled them to acquire sufficient skill and experience to carry out such precise instructions as were given for the erection of the Tabernacle, some 1,500 years before Christ—as to the kinds of wood, measurements, ornaments, fastenings ("loops and taches"), curtains of linen, and coverings of dried skins. We have only to turn for a moment to the 25th chapter of Exodus to be convinced that all the directions there mentioned were given to a people who had considerable experience in the methods of carrying out work, which must have resulted from some generations of carpenters, joiners, weavers, dyers, goldsmiths, and other craftsmen.

A thousand years before Christ, we have those descriptions of the building and fitting by Solomon of the glorious work of his reign, the great Temple, and of his own, "the King's house," which gathered from different countries the most skilful artificers of the time, an event which marks an era of advance in the knowledge and skill of those who were thus brought together to do their best work towards carrying out the grand scheme. It is worth while, too, when we are referring to Old Testament information bearing upon the subject, to notice some details of furniture which are given, with their approximate dates as generally accepted, not because there is any particular importance attached to the precise chronology of the events concerned, but because, speaking generally, they form landmarks in the history of furniture. One of these is the verse (2 Kings chap. iv.) which tells us the contents of the "little chamber in the wall," when Elisha visited the Shunammite, about B.C. 895; and we are told of the preparations for the reception of the prophet: "And let us set for him there a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick." Another incident is some 420 years later, when, in the allusion to the grandeur of the Palace of Ahasuerus, we catch a glimpse of Eastern magnificence in the description of the drapery which furnished the apartment: "Where were white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple, to silver rings and pillars of marble; the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue and white and black marble." (Esther i. 6.)

There are, unfortunately, no trustworthy descriptions of ancient Hebrew furniture. The illustrations in Kitto's Bible, Mr. Henry Soltau's "The Tabernacle, the Priesthood, and the Offerings," and other similar books, are apparently drawn from imagination, founded on descriptions in the Old Testament. In these, the "table for shew-bread" is generally represented as having legs partly turned, with the upper portions square, to which rings were attached for the poles by which it was carried. As a nomadic people, their furniture would be but primitive, and we may take it that as the Jews and Assyrians came from the same stock, and spoke the same language, such ornamental furniture as there was would, with the exception of the representations of figures of men or of animals, be of a similar character.

ASSYRIAN FURNITURE.

PART OF ASSYRIAN BRONZE THRONE AND FOOTSTOOL, ABOUT B. C. 888, REIGN OF ASSHURNAZIRPAL.

(From a Photo by Mansell & Co. of the Original in the British Museum.)

The discoveries which have been made in the oldest seat of monarchical government in the world, by such enterprising travellers as Sir Austin Layard, Mr. George Smith, and others who have thrown so much light upon domestic life in Nineveh, are full of interest in connection with this branch of the subject. We learn from these authorities that the furniture was ornamented with the heads of lions, bulls, and rams; tables thrones, and couches were made of metal and wood, and probably inlaid with ivory; the earliest chair, according to Sir Austin Layard, having been made without a back, and the legs terminating in lion's feet or bull's hoofs. Some were of gold, others of silver and bronze. On the monuments of Khorsabad, representations have been discovered of chairs supported by animals, and by human figures, probably those of prisoners. In the British Museum is a bronze throne, found by Sir A. Layard amidst the ruins of Nimrod's Palace, which shews ability of high order for skilled metal work.

Mr. Smith, the famous Assyrian excavator and translator of cuniform inscriptions, has told us in his "Assyrian Antiquities" of his finding close to the site of Nineveh, portions of a crystal throne somewhat similar in design to the bronze one mentioned above, and in another part of this interesting book we have a description of an interior that is useful in assisting us to form an idea of the condition of houses of a date which can be correctly assigned to B.C. 860:—"Altogether in this place I opened six chambers, all of the same character, the entrances ornamented by clusters of square pilasters, and recesses in the rooms in the same style; the walls were colored in horizontal bands of red, green, and yellow, and where the lower parts of the chambers were panelled with small stone slabs, the plaster and colours were continued over these." Then follows a description of the drainage arrangements, and finally we have Mr. Smith's conclusion that this was a private dwelling for the wives and families of kings, together with the fact that on the other side of the bricks he found the legend of Shalmeneser II. (B.C. 860), who probably built this palace.

ASSYRIAN CHAIR FROM KHORSABAD. ASSYRIAN CHAIR FROM XANTHUS. ASSYRIAN THRONE.

(In the British Museum.) (In the British Museum.) (In the British Museum.)

In the British Museum is an elaborate piece of carved ivory, with depressions to hold colored glass, etc., from Nineveh, which once formed part of the inlaid ornament of a throne, shewing how richly such objects were ornamented. This carving is said by the authorities to be of Egyptian origin. The treatment of figures by the Assyrians was more clumsy and more rigid, and their furniture generally was more massive than that of the Egyptians.

An ornament often introduced into the designs of thrones and chairs is a conventional treatment of the tree sacred to Asshur, the Assyrian Jupiter; the pine cone, another sacred emblem, is also found, sometimes as in the illustration of the Khorsabad chair on page [4], forming an ornamental foot, and sometimes being part of the merely decorative design.

The bronze throne, illustrated on page [3], appears to have been of sufficient height to require a footstool, and in "Nineveh and its Remains" these footstools are specially alluded to. "The feet were ornamented, like those of the chair, with the feet of lions or the hoofs of bulls."

The furniture represented in the following illustration, from a bas-relief in the British Museum, is said to be of a period some two hundred years later than the bronze throne and footstool.

REPOSE OF KING ASSHURBANIPAL.

(From a Bas-relief in the British Museum.)

EGYPTIAN FURNITURE.

Stool. Stand for a Vase. Head Rest or Pillow. Workman's Stool. Vase on a Stand.

FOLDING STOOL. EBONY SEAT INLAID WITH IVORY.

(From Photos by Mansell & Co. of the Originals in the British Museum.)

In the consideration of ancient Egyptian furniture we find valuable assistance in the examples carefully preserved to us, and accessible to every one in the British Museum, and one or two of these deserve passing notice. Nothing can be more suitable for its purpose than the "Workman's Stool:" the seat is precisely like that of a modern kitchen chair (all wood), slightly concaved to promote the sitter's comfort, and supported by three legs curving outwards. This is simple, convenient, and admirably adapted for long service. For a specimen of more ornamental work, the folding stool in the same glass case should be examined; the supports are crossed in a similar way to those of a modern camp-stool and the lower parts of the legs carved as heads of geese, with inlayings of ivory to assist the design and give richness to its execution.

AN EGYPTIAN OF HIGH RANK SEATED.

(From a Photo by Mansell & Co. of the Original Wall Painting in the British Museum.)

PERIOD: B.C. 1500-1400.

Portions of legs and rails, turned as if by a modern lathe, mortice holes and tenons, fill us with wonder as we look upon work which, at the most modern computation, must be 3,000 years old, and may be of a date still more remote.

In the same room, arranged in cases round the wall, is a collection of several objects which, if scarcely to be classed under the head of furniture, are articles of luxury and comfort, and demonstrate the extraordinary state of civilisation enjoyed by the old Egyptians, and help us to form a picture of their domestic habits.

AN EGYPTIAN BANQUET.

(From a Wall Painting at Thebes.)

Amongst these are boxes, some inlaid with various woods, and also with little squares of bright turquoise blue pottery let in as a relief; others veneered with ivory; wooden spoons carved in most intricate designs, of which one, representing a girl amongst lotus flowers, is a work of great artistic skill; boats of wood, head rests, and models of parts of houses and granaries, together with writing materials, different kinds of tools and implements, and a quantity of personal ornaments and requisites.

"For furniture, various woods were employed, ebony, acacia, or sont, cedar, sycamore, and others of species not determined. Ivory, both of the hippopotamus and elephant, were used for inlaying, as also were glass pastes; and specimens of marquetry are not uncommon. In the paintings in the tombs, gorgeous pictures and gilded furniture are depicted. For cushions and mattresses, linen cloth and colored stuffs, filled with feathers of the waterfowl, appear to have been used, while seats have plaited bottoms of linen cord or tanned and dyed leather thrown over them, and sometimes the skins of panthers served this purpose. For carpets they used mats of palm fibre, on which they often sat. On the whole an Egyptian house was lightly furnished, and not encumbered with so many articles as are in use at the present day."

The above paragraph forms part of the notice with which the late Dr. Birch, the eminent antiquarian, formerly at the head of this department of the British Museum, has prefaced a catalogue of the antiquities alluded to. The visitor to the Museum should be careful to procure one of these useful and inexpensive guides to this portion of its contents.

Some illustrations taken from ancient statues and bas-reliefs in the British Museum, from copies of wall paintings at Thebes and other sources, give us a good idea of the furniture of this ancient people. Amongst the group of illustrations on p. [6] will be seen a representation of a wooden head-rest, which prevented the disarrangement of the coiffure of an Egyptian lady of rank. A very similar head-rest, with a cushion attached for comfort to the neck, is still in common use by the Japanese of the present day.

CHAIR WITH CAPTIVES AS SUPPORTS.

(From Papyrus in British Museum.)

BACCHUS AND ATTENDANTS VISITING ICARUS.

(Reproduced from a Bas-relief in the British Museum.)

PERIOD: ABOUT A.D. 100.

GREEK FURNITURE.

An early reference to Greek furniture is made by Homer, who describes coverlids of dyed wool, tapestries, carpets, and other accessories, which must therefore have formed part of the contents of a great man's residence centuries before the period which we recognise as the "meridian" of Greek Art.

GREEK BEDSTEAD WITH A TABLE.

(From an old Wall Painting.)

In the second Vase-room of the British Museum the painting on one of these vases represents two persons sitting on a couch, upon which is a cushion of rich material, while for the comfort of the sitters there is a footstool, probably of ivory. Facing page 8 there is an illustration of a bas-relief in stone, "Bacchus received as a guest by Icarus," in which the couch has turned legs and the feet are ornamented with carved leaf work. Illustrations of tripods used for sacred or other purposes, and as supports for braziers, lead us to the conclusion that tables were made of wood, of marble, and of metal; also folding chairs, and couches for sleeping and resting, but not for reclining at meals, as was the fashion at a later period. In most of the designs for these various articles of furniture there is a similarity of treatment of the head, legs, and feet of lions, leopards, and sphinxes to that which we have noticed in the Assyrian patterns.

GREEK FURNITURE.

(From Antique Bas-reliefs.)

The description of an interesting piece of furniture may be noticed here, because its date is verified by its historical associations, and it was seen and described by Pausanias about 800 years afterwards. This is the famous chest of Cypselus of Corinth, the story of which runs that when his mother's relations, having been warned by the Oracle of Delphi, that her son would prove formidable to the ruling party, sought to murder him, his life was saved by his concealment in this chest, and he became ruler of Corinth for some 30 years (B.C. 655-625). It is said to have been made of cedar, carved and decorated with figures and bas-reliefs, some in ivory, some in gold or ivory part gilt, and inlaid on all four sides and on the top.

The peculiar laws and customs of the Greeks at the time of their greatest prosperity were not calculated to encourage display or luxury in private life, or the collection of sumptuous furniture. Their manners were simple and their discipline was very severe. Statuary, sculpture of the best kind, painting of the highest merit—in a word, the best that Art could produce—were all dedicated to the national service in the enrichment of Temples and other public buildings, the State having indefinite and almost unlimited power over the property of all wealthy citizens. The public surroundings of an influential Athenian were therefore in direct contrast to the simplicity of his home, which contained the most meagre supply of chairs and tables, while the chefs d'œuvre of Phidias, Apelles and Praxiteles adorned the Senate House, the Theatre, and the Temple.

There were some exceptions to this rule, and we have records that during the later years of Greek prosperity such simplicity was not observed. Alcibiades is said to have been the first to have his house painted and decorated, and Plutarch tells us that he kept the painter Agatharcus a prisoner until his task was done, and then dismissed him with an appropriate reward. Another ancient writer relates that "The guest of a private house was enjoined to praise the decorations of the ceilings and the beauty of the curtains suspended from between the columns." This occurs, according to Mr. Perkins, the American translator of Dr. Falke's German book "Kunst im Hause," in the "Wasps of Aristophanes," written B.C. 422.

The illustrations, taken from the best authorities in the British Museum, the National Library of Paris, and other sources, shew the severe style adopted by the Greeks in their furniture.

ROMAN FURNITURE.

As we are accustomed to look to Greece in the time of Pericles for purity of style and perfection of taste in Art, so do we naturally expect its gradual demoralisation in its transfer to the great Roman Empire. From that little village on the Palatine Hill, founded some 750 years B.C., Rome had spread and conquered in every direction, until in the time of Augustus she was mistress of the whole civilized world, herself the centre of wealth, civilisation, luxury, and power. Antioch in the East, and Alexandria in the South, ranked next to her as great cities of the world.

From the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii we have learned enough to conceive some general idea of the social life of a wealthy Roman in the time of Rome's highest prosperity. The houses had no upper story, but enclosed two or more quadrangles, or courts, with arcades into which the rooms opened, receiving air and ventilation from the centre open court. The illustration opposite p. [12] will give an idea of this arrangement.

In Mr. Hungerford Pollen's useful handbook there is a description of each room in a Roman house, with its proper Latin title and purpose; and we know from other descriptions of Ancient Rome that the residences in the Imperial City were divided into two distinct classes—that of the domus and insula, the former being the dwellings of the Roman nobles, and corresponding to the modern Palazzi, while the latter were the habitations of the middle and lower classes. Each insula consisted of several sets of apartments, generally let out to different families, and was frequently surrounded by shops. The houses described by Mr. Pollen appear to have had no upper story, but as ground became more valuable in Rome, houses were built to such a height as to be a source of danger, and in the time of Augustus there were not only strict regulations as to building, but the height was limited to 70 feet. The Roman furniture of the time was of the most costly kind. Tables were made of marble, gold, silver, and bronze, and were engraved, damascened, plated, and enriched with precious stones. The chief woods used were cedar, pine, elm, olive, ash, ilex, beech, and maple. Ivory was much used, and not only were the arms and legs of couches and chairs carved to represent the limbs of animals, as has been noted in the Assyrian, Egyptian, and Greek designs, but other parts of furniture were ornamented by carvings in bas-relief of subjects taken from Greek mythology and legend. Veneers were cut and applied, not as some have supposed for the purpose of economy, but because by this means the most beautifully marked or figured specimens of the woods could be chosen, and a much richer and more decorative effect produced than would be possible when only solid timber was used. As a prominent instance of the extent to which the Romans carried the costliness of some special pieces of furniture, we have it recorded on good authority (Mr. Pollen) that the table made for Cicero cost a million sesterces, a sum equal to about £9,000, and that one belonging to King Juba was sold by auction for the equivalent of £10,000.

INTERIOR OF AN ANCIENT ROMAN HOUSE.

Said to have been that of Sallust.

PERIOD: B.C. 20 TO A.D. 20.

A ROMAN STUDY.

Shewing Scrolls or Books in a "Scrinium;" also Lamp, Writing Tables, etc.

Cicero's table was made of a wood called Thyine—wood which was brought from Africa and held in the highest esteem. It was valued not only on account of its beauty but also from superstitious or religious reasons. The possession of thyine wood was supposed to bring good luck, and its sacredness arose from the fact that from it was produced the incense used by the priests. Dr. Edward Clapton, of St. Thomas' Hospital, who made a collection of woods named in the Scriptures, managed to secure a specimen of thyine, which a friend of his obtained on the Atlas Mountains. It resembles the woods which we know as tuyere and amboyna.[2]

Roman, like Greek houses, were divided into two portions—the front for the reception of guests and the duties of society, with the back for household purposes, and the occupation of the wife and family; for although the position of the Roman wife was superior to that of her Greek contemporary, which was little better than that of a slave, still it was very different to its later development.

The illustration following p. [16], of a repast in the house of Sallust, represents the host and his eight male guests reclining on the seats of the period, each of which held three persons, and was called a triclinium, making up the favourite number of a Roman dinner party, and possibly giving us the proverbial saying—"Not less than the Graces nor more than the Muses"—which is still held to be a popular regulation for a dinner party.

ROMAN SCAMNUM OR BENCH.

ROMAN BISELLIUM, OR SEAT FOR TWO PERSONS.

But generally occupied by one, on occasions of festivals, etc.

From discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii a great deal of information has been gained of the domestic life of the wealthier Roman citizens, and there is a useful illustration on the preceding page of the furniture of a library or study in which the designs are very similar to the Greek ones we have noticed; it is not improbable they were made and executed by Greek workmen.

It will be seen that the books such as were then used, instead of being placed on shelves or in a bookcase, were kept in round boxes called Scrinia, which were generally of beech wood, and could be locked or sealed when required. The books in rolls or sewn together were thus easily carried about by the owner on his journeys.

Mr. Hungerford Pollen mentions that wearing apparel was kept in vestiaria, or wardrobe rooms, and he quotes Plutarch's anecdote of the purple cloaks of Lucullus, which were so numerous that they must have been stored in capacious hanging closets rather than in chests.

In the atrium, or public reception room, was probably the best furniture in the house. According to Moule's "Essay on Roman Villas," "it was here that numbers assembled daily to pay their respects to their patron, to consult the legislator, to attract the notice of the statesman, or to derive importance in the eyes of the public from the apparent intimacy with a man in power."

The growth of the Roman Empire eastward, the colonisation of Oriental countries, and subsequently the establishment of an Eastern Empire, produced gradually an alteration in Greek design, and though, if we were discussing the merits of design and the canons of taste, this might be considered a decline, still its influence on furniture was doubtless to produce more ease and luxury, more warmth and comfort, than would be possible if the outline of every article of useful furniture were decided by a rigid adherence to classical principles. We have seen that this was more consonant with the public life of an Athenian; but the Romans, in the later period of the Empire, with their wealth, their extravagance, their slaves, their immorality and gross sensuality, lived in a splendour and with a prodigality that well accorded with the gorgeous coloring of Eastern hangings and embroideries, of rich carpets and comfortable cushions, of the lavish use of gold and silver, and meretricious and redundant ornament.

ROMAN COUCH, GENERALLY OF BRONZE.

(From an Antique Bas-relief.)

This slight sketch, brief and inadequate as it is, of a history of furniture from the earliest time of which we have any record, until from the extraordinary growth of the vast Roman Empire, the arts and manufactures of every country became as it were centralised and focussed in the palaces of the wealthy Romans, brings us down to the commencement of what has been deservedly called "the greatest event in history"—the decline and fall of this enormous empire. For fifteen generations, for some five hundred years, did this decay, this vast revolution, proceed to its conclusion. Barbarian hosts settled down in provinces they had overrun and conquered, the old Pagan world died as it were, and the new Christian era dawned. From the latter end of the second century until the last of the Western Cæsars, in A.D. 476, it is, with the exception of a short interval when the strong hand of the great Theodosius stayed the avalanche of Rome's invaders, one long story of the defeat and humiliation of the citizens of the greatest power the world has ever known. It is a vast drama that the genius and patience of a Gibbon has alone been able to deal with, defying almost by its gigantic catastrophes and ever raging turbulence the pen of history to chronicle and arrange. When the curtain rises on a new order of things, the age of Paganism has passed away, and the period of the Middle Ages will have commenced.

ROMAN BRONZE LAMP AND STAND.

(Found in Pompeii.)

THE ROMAN TRICLINIUM, OR DINING ROOM.

The plan in the margin shews the position of guests; the place of honor was that which is indicated by "No. 1," and that of the host by "No. 9."

(The Illustration is taken from Dr. Jacob von Falke's "Kunst im Hause.")

Plan of Triclinium.

CHAPTER II.

Period of 1,000 years from Fall of Rome, A.D. 476, to Capture of Constantinople, 1453—The Crusades—Influence of Christianity—Chairs of St. Peter and Maximian at Rome, Ravenna, and Venice—Edict of Leo III. prohibiting Image worship—The Rise of Venice—Charlemagne and his successors—The Chair of Dagobert—Byzantine character of Furniture—Norwegian carving—Russian and Scandinavian—The Anglo-Saxons—Sir Walter Scott quoted—Descriptions of Anglo-Saxon Houses and Customs—Art in Flemish Cities—Gothic Architecture—The Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey—Penshurst—French Furniture in the 14th Century—Description of rooms—The South Kensington Museum—Transition from Gothic to Renaissance—German carved work; the Credence, the Buffet, and Dressoir.

HE history of furniture is so thoroughly a part of the history of the manners and customs of different peoples, that one can only understand and appreciate the several changes in style, sometimes gradual and sometimes rapid, by reference to certain historical events and influences by which such changes were effected.

Thus, we have during the space of time known as the Middle Ages, a stretch of some 1,000 years, dating from the fall of Rome itself, in A.D. 476 to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks under Mahomet II. in 1453, an historical panorama of striking incidents and great social changes bearing upon our subject. It was a turbulent and violent period, which saw the completion of Rome's downfall, the rise of the Carlovingian family, the subjection of Britain by the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans; the extraordinary career and fortunes of Mahomet; the conquest of Spain and a great part of Africa by the Moors; and the Crusades, which united in a common cause the swords and spears of friend and foe.

It was the age of monasteries and convents, of religious persecutions and of heroic struggles of the Christian Church. It was the age of feudalism, chivalry, and war, but towards its close a time of comparative civilisation and progress, of darkness giving way to the light which followed; the night of the Middle Ages preceding the dawn of the Renaissance.

With the growing importance of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire, families of well-to-do citizens flocked thither from other parts, bringing with them all their most valuable possessions: and the houses of the great became rich in ornamental furniture, the style of which was a mixture of Eastern and Roman,—that is, a corruption of the early Classic Greek developing into the style known as Byzantine. The influence of Christianity upon the position of women materially affected the customs and habits of the people. Ladies were allowed to be seen in chariots and open carriages, the designs of which, therefore, improved and became more varied; the old custom of reclining at meals ceased, and guests sat on benches; and though we have, with certain exceptions, such as the chair of St. Peter at Rome, and that of Maximian in the Cathedral at Ravenna, no specimens of furniture of this time, we have in the old Byzantine ivory bas-reliefs such representations of circular throne chairs and of ecclesiastical furniture, as suffice to show the class of woodwork then in vogue.

The chair of St. Peter is one of the most interesting relics of the Middle Ages. The woodcut will shew the design, which is, like other work of the period, Byzantine, and the following description is taken from Mr. Hungerford Pollen's introduction to the South Kensington catalogue:—"The chair is constructed of wood, overlaid with carved ivory work and gold. The back is bound together with iron. It is a square with solid front and arms. The width in front is 39 inches; the height in front 30 inches, shewing that a scabellum or footstool must have belonged to it.... In the front are 18 groups or compositions from the Gospels, carved in ivory with exquisite fineness, and worked with inlay of the purest gold. On the outer sides are several little figures carved in ivory. It formed, according to tradition, part of the furniture of the house of the Senator Pudens, an early convert to the Christian faith. It is he who gave to the Church his house in Rome, of which much that remains is covered by the Church of St. Pudenziana. Pudens gave this chair to St. Peter, and it became the throne of the See. It was kept in the old Basilica of St. Peter's." Since then it has been transferred from place to place, until now it remains in the present Church of St. Peter's, but is completely hidden from view by the seat or covering made in 1667, by Bernini, out of bronze taken from the Pantheon.

Much has been written about this famous chair. Cardinal Wiseman and the Cavaliere de Rossi have defended its reputation and its history, and Mr. Nesbitt, some years ago, read a paper on the subject before the Society of Antiquaries.

CHAIR OF ST. PETER, ROME.

Formerly there was in Venice another "chair of St. Peter," of which there is a sketch from a photograph in Mrs. Oliphant's "Makers of Venice." It is said to have been a present from the Emperor Michael, son of Theophilus (824-864), to the Venetian Republic in recognition of services rendered, by either the Doge Gradonico, who died in 864, or his predecessor, against the Mahommedan incursions. Fragments only now remain, and these are preserved in the Church of St. Pietro, at Castello.

There is also a chair of historic fame preserved in Venice, and now kept in the treasury of St. Mark's. Originally in Alexandria, it was sent to Constantinople and formed part of the spoils taken by the Venetians in 1204. Like both the other chairs, this was also ornamented with ivory plaques, but these have been replaced by ornamental marble.

The earliest of the before-mentioned chairs, namely, the one at Ravenna, was made for the Archbishop about 546 to 556, and is thus described in Mr. Maskell's "Handbook on Ivories," in the Science and Art series:—"The chair has a high back, round in shape, and is entirely covered with plaques of ivory arranged in panels carved in high relief with scenes from the Gospels and with figures of saints. The plaques have borders with foliated ornaments, birds and animals; flowers and fruits filling the intermediate spaces. Du Sommerard names amongst the most remarkable subjects, the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Wise Men, the Flight into Egypt, and the Baptism of Our Lord." The chair has also been described by Passeri, the famous Italian antiquary, and a paper upon it was read by Sir Digby Wyatt, before the Arundel Society, in which he remarked that as it had been fortunately preserved as a holy relic, it wore almost the same appearance as when used by the prelate for whom it was made, save for the beautiful tint with which time had invested it.

Long before the general break up of the vast Roman Empire, influences had been at work to decentralise Art, and cause the migration of trained and skilful artisans to countries where their work would build up fresh industries, and give an impetus to progress, where hitherto there had been stagnation. One of these influences was the decree issued in A.D. 726 by Leo III., Emperor of the Eastern Empire, prohibiting all image worship. The consequences to Art of such a decree were doubtless similar to the fanatical proceedings of the English Puritans of the seventeenth century; and artists, driven from their homes, were scattered to the different European capitals, where they were gladly received and found employment and patronage.

It should be borne in mind that at this time Venice was gradually rising to that marvellous position of wealth and power which she afterwards held.

"A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was;—her daughters had their dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers;

In purple was she robed and of her feasts

Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased."

Her wealthy merchants were well acquainted with the arts and manufactures of other countries, and Venice would be just one of those cities to attract the artist refugee. It is indeed here that wood carving as an Art may be said to have specially developed itself, and though, from its destructible nature, there are very few specimens extant dating from this early time, yet we shall see that two or three hundred years later, ornamental woodwork flourished in a state of perfection which must have required a long probationary period.

DAGOBERT CHAIR.

Chair of Dagobert, of gilt bronze, now in the Museé de Souverains, Paris. Originally as a folding chair said to be the work of St. Eloi, 7th century; back and arms added by the Abbe Suger in 12th century. There is an electrotype reproduction in the South Kensington Museum.

Turning from Venice. During the latter end of the eighth century the star of Charlemagne was in the ascendant, and though we have no authentic specimen, and scarcely a picture of any wooden furniture of this reign, we know that, in appropriating the property of the Gallo-Romans, the Frank Emperor-King and his chiefs were in some degree educating themselves to higher notions of luxury and civilisation. Paul Lacroix, in "Manners, Customs, and Dress of the Middle Ages," tells us that the trichorum, or dining room, was generally the largest hall in the palace: two rows of columns divided it into three parts, one for the royal family, one for the officers of the household, and the third for the guests, who were generally numerous. No person of rank who visited the King could leave without sitting at his table or at least draining a cup to his health. The King's hospitality was magnificent, especially on great religious festivals, such as Christmas and Easter.

In other portions of this work of reference we read of "boxes" to hold articles of value, and of rich hangings, but beyond such allusions little can be gleaned of any furniture besides. The celebrated chair of Dagobert (illustrated on p. [21]), now in the Louvre, and of which there is a cast in the South Kensington Museum, dates from some 150 years before Charlemagne, and is probably the only specimen of furniture belonging to this period which has been handed down to us. It is made of gilt bronze, and is said to be the work of a monk.

For the designs of furniture of the tenth to the fourteenth centuries we are in a great measure dependent upon old illuminated manuscripts and missals of these remote times. There are some illustrations of the seats of State used by sovereigns on the occasions of grand banquets, or of some ecclesiastical function, to be found in the valuable collections of old documents in the British Museum and the National Libraries of Paris and Brussels. It is evident from these authorities that the designs of State furniture in France and other countries dominated by the Carlovingian monarchs were of Byzantine character, that pseudo-classic style which was the prototype of furniture of about a thousand years later, when the Cæsarism of Napoleon I., during the early years of the nineteenth century, produced so many designs which we now recognise as "Empire."

No history of mediæval woodwork would be complete without noticing the Scandinavian furniture and ornamental wood carving of the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. There are in the South Kensington Museum plaster casts of some three or four carved doorways of Norwegian workmanship, of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, in which scrolls are entwined with contorted monsters, or, to quote Mr. Lovett's description, "dragons of hideous aspect and serpents of more than usually tortuous proclivities." The woodcut of a carved lintel conveys a fair idea of this work, and also of the old juniper wood tankards of a much later time.

There are also at Kensington other casts of curious Scandinavian woodwork of more Byzantine treatment, the originals of which are in the Museums of Stockholm and Copenhagen, where the collection of antique woodwork of native production is very large and interesting, and proves how wood carving, as an industrial Art, has flourished in Scandinavia from the early Viking times. One can still see in the old churches of Borgund and Hitterdal much of the carved woodwork of the seventh and eighth centuries; and lintels and porches full of national character are to be found in Thelemarken.

A CARVED NORWEGIAN DOORWAY.

PERIOD: X. TO XI. CENTURY.

Under the heading of "Scandinavian" may be included the very early Russian school of ornamental woodwork. Before the accession of the Romanoff dynasty in the sixteenth century, the Ruric race of kings came originally from Finland, then a province of Sweden; and so far as one can see from old illuminated manuscripts, there was a similarity of design to those of the early Norwegian and Swedish carved lintels which have been noticed above.

CARVED WOOD CHAIR, SCANDINAVIAN WORK.

PERIOD: 12th and 13th Century.

The coffers and caskets of early mediæval times were no inconsiderable items in the valuable furniture of a period when the list of articles coming under that definition was so limited. These were made in oak for general use, and some were of good workmanship; but of the very earliest none remain. There were, however, others, smaller and of a special character, made in ivory of the walrus and elephant, of horn and whalebone, besides those of metal. In the British Museum is one of these, of which the cover is illustrated on the following page, representing a man defending his house against an attack by enemies armed with spears and shields. Other parts of the casket are carved with subjects and runic inscriptions which have enabled Mr. Stephens, an authority on this period of archæology, to assign its date to the eighth century, and its manufacture to that of Northumbria. It most probably represents a local incident, and part of the inscription refers to a word signifying "treachery." It was purchased by the late Sir A. W. Franks, F.S.A., and is one of the many valuable specimens given to the British Museum by its generous curator.

COVER OF A CASKET CARVED IN WHALEBONE.

(Northumbrian, 8th Century. British Museum.)

Of the furniture of our own country previous to the eleventh or twelfth centuries we know but little. The habits of the Anglo-Saxons were rude and simple, and they advanced but slowly in civilisation until after the Norman invasion. To convey, however, to our minds some idea of the interior of a Saxon thane's castle, we may avail ourselves of Sir Walter Scott's antiquarian research, and borrow his description of the chief apartment in Rotherwood, the hospitable hall of Cedric the Saxon. Though the time treated of in "Ivanhoe" is quite at the end of the twelfth century, yet we have in Cedric a type of man who would have gloried in retaining the customs of his ancestors, who detested and despised the new-fashioned manners of his conquerors, and who came of a race that had probably done very little in the way of "refurnishing" for some generations. If, therefore, we have the reader's pardon for relying upon the mise en scéne of a novel for an authority, we shall imagine the more easily what kind of furniture our Anglo-Saxon forefathers indulged in.

"In a hall, the height of which was greatly disproportioned to its extreme length and width, a long oaken table—formed of planks rough hewn from the forest, and which had scarcely received any polish—stood ready prepared for the evening meal.... On the sides of the apartment hung implements of war and of the chase, and there were at each corner folding doors which gave access to the other parts of the extensive building.

SAXON HOUSE OF 9TH OR 10TH CENTURY.

(From the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum.)

"The other appointments of the mansion partook of the rude simplicity of the Saxon period, which Cedric piqued himself upon maintaining. The floor was composed of earth mixed with lime, trodden into a hard substance, such as is often employed in flooring our modern barns. For about one quarter of the length of the apartment, the floor was raised by a step, and this space, which was called the daïs, was occupied only by the principal members of the family and visitors of distinction. For this purpose a table richly covered with scarlet cloth was placed. transversely across the platform, from the middle of which ran the longer and lower board, at which the domestic and inferior persons fed, down towards the bottom of the hall. The whole resembled the form of the letter T, or some of those ancient dinner tables which, arranged on the same principles, may still be seen in the ancient colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Massive chairs and settles of carved oak were placed upon the daïs, and over these seats and the elevated tables was fastened a canopy of cloth, which served in some degree to protect the dignitaries who occupied that distinguished station from the weather, and especially from the rain, which in some places found its way through the ill-constructed roof. The walls of this upper end of the hall, as far as the daïs extended, were covered with hangings or curtains, and upon the floor there was a carpet, both of which were adorned with some attempts at tapestry or embroidery, executed with brilliant or rather gaudy colouring. Over the lower range of table the roof had no covering, the rough plastered walls were left bare, the rude earthen floor was uncarpeted, the board was uncovered by a cloth, and rude massive benches supplied the place of chairs. In the centre of the upper table were placed two chairs more elevated than the rest, for the master and mistress of the family. To each of these was added a footstool curiously carved and inlaid with ivory, which mark of distinction was peculiar to them."

A drawing in the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum is shewn on page [25], illustrating a Saxon mansion in the ninth or tenth century. There is the hall in the centre, with "chamber" and "bower" on either side; there being only a ground floor, as in the earlier Roman houses. According to Mr. Wright, F.S.A., who has written on the subject of Anglo-Saxon manners and customs, there was only one instance recorded of an upper floor at this period, and that was in an account of an accident which happened to the house in which the Witan or Council of St. Dunstan met, when, according to the ancient chronicle which he quotes, the Council fell from an upper floor, and St. Dunstan saved himself from a similar fate by supporting his weight on a beam.

The illustration here given shews the Anglo-Saxon chieftain standing at the door of his hall, with his lady, distributing food to the needy poor. Other woodcuts represent Anglo-Saxon bedsteads, which were little better than raised wooden boxes, with sacks of straw placed therein, and these were generally in recesses. There are old inventories and wills in existence which shew that some value and importance was attached to these primitive contrivances, which at this early period in our history were the luxuries of only a few persons of high rank. A certain will recites that the "bedclothes (bed-reafs) with a curtain (hyrfte) and sheet (hepp-scrytan), and all that thereto belongs," should be given to his son.

In the account of the murder of King Athelbert by the Queen of King Offa, as told by Roger of Wendover, we read of the Queen ordering a chamber to be made ready for the Royal guest, which was adorned for the occasion with what was then considered sumptuous furniture. "Near the King's bed she caused a seat to be prepared, magnificently decked and surrounded with curtains, and underneath it the wicked woman caused a deep pit to be dug." The author from whom the above translation is quoted adds with grim humour, "It is clear that this room was on the ground floor."

ANGLO-SAXON FURNITURE OF ABOUT THE 10TH CENTURY.

(From old MSS. in the British Museum.)

1. A Drinking Party.

2. A Dinner Party, in which the attendants are serving the meal on the spits on which it has been cooked.

3. Anglo-Saxon Beds.

There are in the British Museum other old manuscripts whose illustrations have been laid under contribution, representing more innocent occupations of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. "The seat on the daïs," "an Anglo-Saxon drinking party," and other illustrations which are in existence, prove generally that, when the meal had finished, the table was removed and drinking vessels were handed round from guest to guest; the story-tellers, the minstrels, and the gleemen (conjurers) or jesters, beguiling the festive hour with their different performances.

THE SEAT ON THE DAÏS. SAXON STATE BED.

Some of these Anglo-Saxon houses had formerly been the villas of the Romans during their occupation, which were altered and modified to suit the habits and tastes of their later possessors. Lord Lytton has given us, in the first chapter of his novel "Harold," the description of one of such Saxonized Roman houses, in his reference to Hilda's abode.

The gradual influence of Norman civilisation, however, had its effect, though the unsettled state of the country prevented any rapid development of industrial arts. The feudal system, by which every powerful baron became a petty sovereign, often at war with his neighbour, rendered it necessary that household treasures should be few and easily transported or hidden, and the earliest oak chests which are still preserved date from about this time. Bedsteads were not usual, except for kings, queens, and great ladies; tapestry covered the walls, and the floors were generally sanded. As the country became more calm, and security for property more assured, this comfortless state of living disappeared; the dress of the ladies was richer, and the general habits of the upper classes were more refined. Stairs were introduced into houses, the "parloir" or "talking room" was added, and fire places of brick or stonework were made in some of the rooms, where previously the smoke was allowed to escape through an aperture in the roof. Bedsteads were carved and draped with rich hangings. Armoires made of oak and enriched with carvings, and "Presses" date from about the end of the eleventh century.

ENGLISH FOLDING CHAIR, 14TH CENTURY. CRADLE OF HENRY V.

It was during the reign of Henry III., 1216-1272, that wood-panelling was first used for rooms, and considerable progress generally appears to have been made about this period. Eleanor of Provence, whom the King married in 1236, encouraged more luxury in the homes of the barons and courtiers. Mr. Hungerford Pollen has quoted a royal precept which was promulgated in this year, and it plainly shews that our ancestors were becoming more refined in their tastes. The terms of this precept were as follows, viz., "The King's great chamber at Westminster to be painted a green colour like a curtain, that in the great gable or 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."

In another 100 or 150 years we find mediæval Art approaching its best period, not only in England, but in the great Flemish cities, such as Bruges and Ghent, which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries played so important a part in the history of that time. The taste for Gothic architecture had now well set in, and we find that in this, as in every change of style, the fashion in woodwork naturally followed that of ornament in stone; indeed, in many cases it is more than probable that the same hands which planned the cathedral or monastery also drew the designs for furniture, especially as the finest specimens of wood carving were devoted to the service of the church.

The examples, therefore, of the woodwork of this period to which we have access are found to be mostly of Gothic pattern, with quaint distorted conceptions of animals and reptiles, adapted to ornament the structural part of the furniture, or for the enrichment of the panels.

To the end of the thirteenth century belongs the Coronation Chair made for King Edward I., 1296-1300, and now in Westminster Abbey. This historic relic is of oak, and the woodcut on the opposite page gives an idea of the design and decorative carving. It is said that the pinnacles on each side of the gabled back were formerly surmounted by two leopards, of which only small portions remain. The famous Coronation Stone, which, according to ancient legend, is the identical one on which the patriarch Jacob rested his head at Bethel, when "he tarried there all night because the sun was set, and he took of the stones of that place and put them up for his pillows" (Gen. xxviii.), can be seen through the quatrefoil openings under the seat.[3]

The carved lions which support the chair are not original, but modern work; and were re-gilt in honour of the Jubilee of Her Majesty in 1887, when the chair was last used. The rest of the chair now shews the natural colour of the oak, except the arms, which have a slight padding on them. The wood was, however, formerly covered with a coating of plaster, gilded over, and it is probably due to this protection that it is now in such excellent preservation.

Standing by its side in Henry III.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey is another chair, similar, but lacking the trefoil Gothic arches, which are carved on the sides of the original chair; this was made for and used by Mary, daughter of James II. and wife of William III., on the occasion of their double coronation. Mr. Hungerford Pollen has given us a long description of this chair, with quotations from the different historical notices which have appeared concerning it. The following is an extract which he has taken from an old writer:—

"It appears that the King intended, in the first instance, to make the chair in bronze, and that Eldam, the King's workman, had actually begun it. Indeed, some parts were even finished, and tools bought for the clearing up of the casting. However, the King changed his mind, and we have accordingly 100s. paid for a chair in wood, made after the same pattern as the one which was to be cast in copper; also 13s. 4d. for carving, painting, and gilding two small leopards in wood, which were delivered to Master Walter, the King's painter, to be placed upon and on either side of the chair made by him. The wardrobe account of 29th Ed. I. shows that Master Walter was paid £1 19s. 7d. 'for making a step at the foot of the new chair in which the Scottish stone is placed; and for the wages of the carpenters and of the painters, and for colours and gold employed, and for the making a covering to cover the said chair.'"

CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

In 1328, June 1, there was a royal writ ordering the abbot to deliver up the stone to the Sheriff of London, to be carried to the Queen-Mother; however, it was not sent. The chair has been used upon the occasion of every coronation since that time, except in the case of Mary, who is said to have used a chair specially sent by the Pope for the occasion.

CHAIR IN THE VESTRY OF YORK MINSTER.

Late 14th Century.

The above drawing of a chair in York Minster, and the two more throne-like seats on a full-page illustration, will serve to shew the best kind of ornamental Ecclesiastical furniture of the fourteenth century. In the choir of Canterbury Cathedral there is a chair which has played its part in history, and, although earlier than the above, it may be conveniently mentioned here. This is the Archbishop's throne, and it is also called the chair of St. Augustine. According to legend, the Saxon kings were crowned thereon, but it is probably not earlier than the thirteenth century. It is an excellent piece of stonework, with a shaped back and arms, relieved from being quite plain by the back and sides being panelled with a carved moulding.

CHAIR. CHAIR.

In St. Mary's Hall, Coventry. From an Old English Monastery.

PERIOD XV. CENTURY.

"STANDING" TABLE AT PENSHURST, STILL ON THE DAÏS IN THE HALL.

Penshurst Place, near Tonbridge, the residence of the late Lord de l'Isle and Dudley, the historic home of the Sydneys, is almost an unique example of what a wealthy English gentleman's country house was about the time of which we are writing, say the middle of the fourteenth century, or during the reign of Edward III. By the courtesy of the late Lord de l'Isle, the writer was allowed to examine many objects of great interest there, and from the careful preservation of many original fittings and articles of furniture, one may still gain some idea of the "hall" as it appeared when that part of the house was the scene of the chief events in the daily life of the family—the raised daïs for host and honoured guests, the better table which was placed there (illustrated on the preceding page), and the commoner ones for the body of the hall; and though the ancient buffet which displayed the gold and silver cups is gone, one can see where it would have stood. Penshurst is said to possess the only hearth of that period now remaining in England, an octagonal space edged with stone in the centre of the hall, over which was once the simple opening for the outlet of smoke through the roof; and the old andirons or firedogs are still there.

BEDROOM IN WHICH A KNIGHT AND HIS LADY ARE SEATED.

(From a Miniature in "Othea," a Poem by Christine de Pisan. XIV. Century, French.)

BEDSTEAD AND CHAIR IN CARVED OAK.

(From Miniatures in the Royal Library, Brussels.)

PERIOD: XIV. CENTURY.

An idea of the furniture of an apartment in France during the fourteenth century is conveyed by the illustration on this page, and it is very useful, because, although we have on record many descriptions of the appearance of the furniture of state apartments, we have very few authenticated accounts of the way in which such domestic chambers as the one occupied by "a knight and his lady" were arranged. The prie-dieu chair was generally at the bedside, and had a seat which lifted up, the lower part forming a boxlike receptacle for devotional books, then so regularly used by a lady of the time. Towards the end of the fourteenth century there was in high quarters a taste for bright and rich coloring; we have the testimony of an old writer who describes the interior of the Hotel de Bohême, which, after having been the residence of several great personages, was given by Charles VI. of France in 1388 to his brother the Duke of Orleans. "In this palace was a room used by the duke, hung with cloth of gold, bordered with vermilion velvet embroidered with roses; the Duchess had a room hung with vermilion satin embroidered with crossbows, which were on her coat of arms; that of the Duke of Burgundy was hung with cloth of gold embroidered with windmills. There were besides eight carpets of glossy texture with gold flowers, one representing 'the seven virtues and seven vices,' another the history of Charlemagne, another that of Saint Louis. There were also cushions of cloth of gold, twenty-four pieces of vermilion leather of Aragon, and four carpets of Aragon leather, 'to be placed on the floor of rooms in summer.' The favourite arm-chair of the Princess is thus described in an inventory—'a chamber chair with four supports, painted in fine vermilion, the seat and arms of which are covered in vermilion morocco, or cordovan, worked and stamped with designs representing the sun, birds, and other devices bordered with fringes of silk and studded with nails.'"

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had been remarkable for a general development of commerce; merchants of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and many other famous cities had traded extensively with the East and had grown opulent, and their homes naturally shewed signs of wealth and comfort that in former times had been impossible to any but princes and rich nobles. Laws had been made in compliance with the complaints of the aristocracy, to place some curb on the growing ambition of the "bourgeoisie"; thus we find an old edict in the reign of Philippe the Fair (1285-1314)—"No bourgeois shall have a chariot, nor wear gold, precious stones, nor crowns of gold and silver. Bourgeois not being prelates or dignitaries of state shall not have tapers of wax. A bourgeois possessing 2,000 pounds (tournois) or more, may order for himself a dress of 12 sous[4] 6 deniers, and for his wife one worth 16 sous at the most," etc., etc., etc.

This and many other similar regulations were made in vain: the trading classes became more and more powerful, and we quote the description of a furnished apartment from P. Lacroix's "Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages."

"The walls were hung with precious tapestry of Cyprus, on which the initials and motto of the lady were embroidered, the sheets were of fine linen of Rheims, and had cost more than 300 pounds, the quilt was a new invention of silk and silver tissue, the carpet was like gold. The lady wore an elegant dress of crimson silk, and rested her head and arms on pillows ornamented with buttons of oriental pearls. It should be remarked that this lady was not the wife of a great merchant, such as those of Venice and Genoa, but of a simple retail dealer who was not above selling articles for 4 sous; such being the case, we cannot wonder that Christine de Pisan should have considered the anecdote 'worthy of being immortalized in a book.'"

"THE NEW BORN INFANT."

Shewing the interior of an Apartment at the end of the 14th or commencement of the 15th century.

(From a Miniature in "Histoire de la Belle Hélaine," National Library of Paris.)

As we approach the end of the fourteenth century, we find canopies added to the "chaires" or "chayers á dorseret," which were carved in oak or chestnut, and sometimes elaborately gilded and picked out in color. The canopied seats were very bulky and throne-like constructions, and were abandoned towards the end of the fifteenth century; and it is worthy of notice that though we have retained our word "chair," adopted from the Norman French, the French people discarded their synonym in favour of its diminutive "chaise" to describe the somewhat smaller and less massive seat which came into use in the sixteenth century.

PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINE DE PISAN.

Seated on a Canopied Chair of carved wood the back lined with tapestry.

(From Miniature on MS., in the Burgundy Library, Brussels.)

PERIOD: XV. CENTURY.

The skilled artisans of Paris had arrived at a very high degree of excellence in the fourteenth century, and in old documents describing valuable articles of furniture, care is taken to note that they are of Parisian workmanship. According to Lacroix, there is an account of the court silversmith, Etienne La Fontaine, which gives us an idea of the amount of extravagance sometimes committed in the manufacture and decorations of a chair, into which it was then the fashion to introduce the incrustations of precious stones; thus for making a silver arm chair and ornamenting it with pearls, crystals, and other stones, he charged the King of France, in 1352, no less a sum than 774 louis.

The use of rich embroideries at state banquets and on grand occasions appears to have commenced during the reign of Louis IX.—Saint Louis, as he is called—and these were richly emblazoned with arms and devices. Indeed, it was probably due to the fashion for rich stuffs and coverings of tables, and of velvet embroidered cushions for the chairs, that the practice of making furniture of the precious metals died out, and carved wood came into favour.

STATE BANQUET, WITH ATTENDANT MUSICIANS.

(From Miniatures in the National Library, Paris.)

PERIOD: XV. CENTURY.

Chairs of this period appear only to have been used on very special occasions; indeed, they were too cumbersome to be easily moved from place to place, and in a miniature from some MSS. of the early part of the fifteenth century, which represents a state banquet, the guests are seated on a long bench with the back carved in Gothic ornament of the time. In Skeat's Dictionary, our modern word "banquet" is said to be derived from the "bancs" or benches used on these occasions.

A HIGH BACKED CHAIR IN CARVED OAK (GOTHIC STYLE).

PERIOD: XV. CENTURY. FRENCH.

The great hall of the King's Palace, where such an entertainment as that given by Charles V. to the Emperor Charles of Luxemburg would have taken place, was also furnished with three "dressoirs" for the display of the gold and silver drinking cups, and vases of the time; the repast itself was served upon a marble table, and above the seat of each of the Princes present was a separate canopy of gold cloth embroidered with fleur de lis.

MEDIÆVAL BED AND BEDROOM.

(From Viollet-le-Duc.)

PERIOD: XIV. TO XV. CENTURY. FRENCH.

The furniture of ordinary houses of this period was very simple. Chests, more or less carved, and ornamented with iron work, settles of oak or of chestnut, stools or benches with carved supports, a bedstead and a prie-dieu chair, a table with plain slab supported on shaped standards, would nearly complete the inventory of the furniture of the chief room in a house of a well-to-do merchant in France until the fourteenth century had turned. The table was narrow, apparently not more than some 30 inches wide, and guests sat on one side only, the service taking place from the unoccupied side of the table. In palaces and baronial halls, the servants with dishes were followed by musicians, as shewn in an old miniature of the time, reproduced on page [39].

SCRIBE OR COPYIST

Working at his desk in a room in which are a reading desk and a chest with manuscript.

(From an Old Miniature.)

PERIOD: XV. CENTURY.

Turning to German work of the fifteenth century, there is, in the South Kensington Museum, a cast of the famous choir stalls in the Cathedral of Ulm, which are considered to be the finest work of the Swabian school of German wood carving. The magnificent panel of foliage on the front, the Gothic triple canopy with the busts of Isaiah. David, and Daniel, are thoroughly characteristic specimens of design; the signature of the artist, Jörg Syrlin, with date 1468, are carved on the work. There were originally 89 choir stalls, and the work occupied the master from the date mentioned, 1468, until 1474.

The illustrations of the two chairs of German Gothic furniture, formerly in some of the old castles, are good examples of their time, and are from drawings made on the spot by Prof. Heideloff.

TWO GERMAN CHAIRS, LATE 15TH CENTURY.

(From Drawings made in Old German Castles by Prof. Heideloff.)

There are in our South Kensington Museum some full sized plaster casts of important specimens of woodwork of the fifteenth and two previous centuries, and being of authenticated dates, we can compare them with the work of the same countries after the Renaissance had been adopted and had completely altered the design. Thus in Italy there was, until the latter part of the fifteenth century, a mixture of Byzantine and Gothic, of which we can see a capital example in the casts of the celebrated Pulpit in the Baptistry of Pisa, the date of which is 1260. The pillars are supported by lions, which, instead of being introduced heraldically into the design, as would be the case some two hundred years later, are bearing the whole weight of the pillars and an enormous superstructure on the hollow of their backs in a most impossible manner. The spandril of each arch is filled with a saint in a grotesque position amongst Gothic foliage, and there is in many respects a marked contrast to the casts of examples of the Renaissance period which are in the Museum.

CARVED OAK BUFFET IN GOTHIC STYLE (VIOLLET LE DUC).

PERIOD: XV. CENTURY. FRENCH.

This transition from Mediæval and Gothic, to Renaissance, is clearly noticeable in the woodwork of many cathedrals and churches in England and in continental cities. It is evident that the chairs, stalls, and pulpits in many of these buildings have been executed at different times, and the change from one style to another is more or less marked. The Flemish buffet illustrated (opposite page [44]) is an example of this transition, and may be contrasted with the French Gothic buffet illustrated on page [43], and referred to on page [44]. There is also in the central hall of the South Kensington Museum a plaster cast of a carved wood altar stall in the Abbey of Saint Denis, France: the pilasters at the sides have the familiar Gothic pinnacles, while the panels are ornamented with arabesques, scrolls, and an interior in the Renaissance style; the date of this is late in the fifteenth century.

OLD ENGLISH OAK BUFFET, 15TH CENTURY.

(Drawn from the original in the possession of Seymour Lucas, Esq., R.A.)

English examples of this period are very scarce, and the buffet illustrated here is a favourable specimen of our national work late in the fifteenth century. While the crocketted enrichment in the brackets shews the Gothic taste, there are mouldings and some flutings in the upper part which mark the tendency to adopt classic ornament, which came in at the end of the fifteenth century. It was probably made for one of our old abbeys, but Mr. Seymour Lucas, R.A., to whom it belongs, and from whose drawing the illustration is made, says it was for a long time at Freenes Court, Sutton, the ancient seat of Sir Henry Linger.

The buffet on page [43] is an excellent example of the best fifteenth century French Gothic oak work, and the woodcut shews the arrangement of gold and silver plate on the white linen cloth with embroidered ends, in use at this time.

FLEMISH BUFFET

Of Carved Oak; open below, with panelled cupboards above. The back evidently of later work, after the Renaissance had set in.

(From a Photo by Messrs. R. Sutton & Co. from the Original in the S. Kensington Museum.)

PERIOD: GOTHIC TO RENAISSANCE, XV. CENTURY.

A TAPESTRIED ROOM IN A FRENCH CHATEAU. CARVED OAK SEAT.

With Oak Chests as Seats. With movable Backrest, in front of Fireplace.

PERIOD: LATE XV. CENTURY. FRENCH.

We have now arrived at a period in the history of furniture which is confused, and difficult to arrange and classify. From the end of the fourteenth century to the Renaissance is a time of transition, and specimens may be easily mistaken as being of an earlier or later date than they really are. M. Jacquemart notices this "gap," though he fixes its duration from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and he quotes as an instance of the indecision which characterised this interval, that workers in furniture were described in different terms; the words coffer maker, carpenter, and huchier (trunk-maker) frequently occurring to describe the same class of artisan.

It is only later that the word "menuisier," or joiner, appears, and we must enter upon the period of the Renaissance before we find the term "cabinet maker," and later still, after the end of the seventeenth century, we have such masters of their craft as Riesener described as "ébenistes," the word being derived from ebony, which, with other eastern woods, came into use after the Dutch settlement in Ceylon. Jacquemart also notices the fact that as early as 1360 we have record of a specialist, "Jehan Petrot," as a "chessboard maker."

INTERIOR OF AN APOTHECARY'S SHOP.

Late XIV. or Early XV. Century. Flemish.

(From an Old Painting.)

INTERIOR OF A FRENCH CHATEAU SHEWING FURNITURE OF THE TIME.

PERIOD: LATE XIV. OR EARLY XV. CENTURY.

COURT OF THE LADIES OF QUEEN ANNE OF BRITTANY.

(From a Miniature in the Library of St. Petersburg.)

Representing the Queen weeping on account of her Husband's absence during the Italian War.

PERIOD: XV. CENTURY.

CHAPTER III.

THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY: Leonardo da Vinci and Raffaelle—Church of St. Peter, contemporary great artists—The Italian Palazzo—Methods of gilding, inlaying and mounting Furniture—Pietra-dura and other enrichments—Ruskin's criticism. THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE: François I. and the Chateau of Fontainebleau—Influence on Courtiers—Chairs of the time—Design of Cabinets—M. E. Bonnaffé on The Renaissance—Bedstead of Jeanne d'Albret—Deterioration of taste in time of Henry IV.—Louis XIII. Furniture—Brittany woodwork. THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS: Influence of the House of Burgundy on Art—The Chimney-piece at Bruges, and other casts of specimens at South Kensington Museum. THE RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN: The resources of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Influence of Saracenic Art, high-backed leather chairs, the Carthusian Convent at Granada. THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY: Albrecht Dürer—Famous Steel Chair of Augsburg—German seventeenth century carving in St. Saviour's Hospital. THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND: Influence of Foreign Artists in the time of Henry VIII.—End of Feudalism—Hampton Court Palace—Linen Pattern Panels—Woodwork in the Henry VII. Chapel at Westminster Abbey—Livery Cupboards at Hengrave—Harrison quoted—The "parler," alteration in English customs—Chairs of the sixteenth century—Coverings and Cushions of the time, extract from old inventory—South Kensington cabinet—Elizabethan Mirror at Goodrich Court—Shaw's "Ancient Furniture"—The Glastonbury Chair—Introductions of Frames into England—Characteristics of Native Woodwork—Famous Country Mansions, alteration in design of Woodwork and Furniture—Panelled Rooms at South Kensington—The Charterhouse—Gray's Inn Hall and Middle Temple—The Hall of the Carpenters' Company—The Great Bed of Ware—Shakespeare's Chair—Penhurst Place.

T IS impossible to write about the period of the Renaissance without grave misgivings as to the ability to render justice to a period which has employed the pens of many cultivated writers, and to which whole volumes, innumerable, have been devoted. Within the limited space of a single chapter all that can be attempted is a brief glance at the influence on design by which furniture and woodwork were affected. Perhaps the simplest way of understanding the changes which occurred, first in Italy, and subsequently in other countries, is to divide the chapter on this period into a series of short notes arranged in the order in which Italian influence would seem to have affected the designers and craftsmen of several European nations.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century there appears to have been an almost universal rage for classical literature, and we believe some attempt was made to introduce Latin as a universal language; it is certain that Italian Art was adopted by nation after nation, and a well-known writer on architecture (Mr. Parker) has observed: "It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the national styles of the different countries of Modern Europe were revived."

As we look back upon the history of Art, assisted by the numerous examples in our Museums, one is struck by the want of novelty in the imagination of mankind. The glorious antique has always been our classic standard, and it seems only to have been a question of time as to when and how a return was made to the old designs of the Greek artists, then to wander from them awhile, and again to return when the world, weary of over-abundance of ornament, longed for the repose of simpler lines on the principles which governed the Athenian artists of old.

THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.

Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci and Raffaelle may be said to have guided, or led, the natural artistic instincts of their countrymen to discard the Byzantine-Gothic which, as M. Bonnaffé has said, was adopted by the Italians not as a permanent institution, but "faute de mieux" as a passing fashion.

It is difficult to say with any certainty when the first commencement of a new era actually takes place, but there is an incident related in Michael Bryan's biographical notice of Leonardo da Vinci which gives us an approximate date. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, had appointed this great master Director of Painting and Architecture in his academy in 1494, and, says Bryan, who obtained his information from contemporary writers, "Leonardo no sooner entered on his office, than he banished all the Gothic principles established by his predecessor, Michaelino, and introduced the beautiful simplicity and purity of the Grecian and Roman styles."

A few years after this date, Pope Julius II. commenced to build the present magnificent Church of St. Peter's, designed by Bramante d'Urbino, kinsman and friend of Raffaelle, to whose superintendence Pope Leo X. confided the work on the death of the architect in 1514. Michael Angelo had the charge committed to him some years after Raffaelle's death.

These dates give us a very fair idea of the time at which this important revolution in taste was taking place in Italy, at the end of the fifteenth and the commencement of the following century, and carved woodwork followed the new direction.

REPRODUCTION OF DECORATION BY RAFFAELLE.

In the Loggie of the Vatican.

PERIOD: ITALIAN RENAISSANCE.

SALON OF M. EDMOND BONNAFFE.

DECORATED AND FURNISHED IN THE RENAISSANCE STYLE.

A SIXTEENTH CENTURY ROOM.

Reproduced from the "Magazine of Art." (By Permission.)

Leo X. was Pope in 1513. The period of peace which then ensued after war, which for so many decades had disturbed Italy, as France or Germany had in turn striven to acquire her fertile soil, gave the princes and nobles leisure to rebuild and adorn their palaces; and the excavations which were then made, brought to light many of the Works of Art which had remained buried since the time when Rome was mistress of the world. Leo X. was a member of that remarkable and powerful family the Medicis, the very mention of which is to suggest the Renaissance, and under his patronage, and with the co-operation of the reigning dukes and princes of the different Italian states, artists were given encouragement and scope for the employment of their talents. Michael Angelo, Titian, Raffaelle Sanzio, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, and many other great artists were raising up monuments of everlasting fame; Palladio was re-building the palaces of Italy, which were then the wonder of the world; Benvenuto Cellini and Lorenzo Ghiberti were designing those marvellous chefs d'œuvre in gold, silver, and bronze which are now so rare; and a host of illustrious artists were producing work which has made the sixteenth century famous for all time.

CHAIR IN CARVED WALNUT.

Found in the house of Michael Angelo.

The circumstances of the Italian noble caused him to be very amenable to Art influence. Living chiefly out of doors, his climate rendered him less dependent on the comforts of small rooms, to which more northern people were attached, and his ideas would naturally incline towards pomp and elegance, rather than to home life and utility. Instead of the warm chimney corner and the comfortable seat, he preferred furniture of a more palatial character for the adornment of the lofty and spacious saloons of his palace, and therefore we find the buffet elaborately carved with a free treatment of the classic antique which marks the time; it was frequently "garnished" with the beautiful majolica of Urbino, of Pesaro, and of Gubbio. The sarcophagus, or cassone, of oak, or more commonly of chestnut or walnut, sometimes painted and gilded, sometimes carved with scrolls and figures; the cabinet designed with architectural outline, and fitted up inside with steps and pillars like a temple; chairs which are wonderful to look upon as guardians of a stately doorway, but uninviting as seats; tables inlaid, gilded, and carved, with slabs of marble or of Florentine mosaic work, but which from their height are as a rule impossible to use for any domestic purpose; mirrors with richly carved and gilded frames: these are all so many evidences of a style which is palatial rather than domestic, in design as in proportion.

VENETIAN CENTRE TABLE, CARVED AND GILT.

(In the South Kensington Museum.)

The walls of these handsome saloons or galleries were hung with rich velvet of Genoese manufacture, with stamped and gilt leather, and a composition ornament was also applied to woodwork, and then gilded and painted, a kind of decoration termed "gesso work."

MARRIAGE COFFER IN CARVED WALNUT.

(Collection of Comte de Briges).

PERIOD: RENAISSANCE (XVI. CENTURY) VENETIAN.

A rich effect was produced on the carved console tables, chairs, stools and frames intended for gilding, by the method employed by the Venetian and Florentine craftsmen, the gold leaf being laid on a red preparation, and then the chief portions highly burnished. There are in the South Kensington Museum several specimens of such work, and now that time and wear have caused this red groundwork to shew through the faded gold, the harmony of color is very satisfactory. Other examples of fifteenth century Italian carving, such as the old Cassone fronts, are picked out with gold, the remainder of the work displaying the rich warm color of the walnut or chestnut wood, either of which was most invariably used.

MARRIAGE COFFER.

Carved and Gilt, with Painted Subject.

ITALIAN. XVI. CENTURY.

PAIR OF ITALIAN CARVED BELLOWS, IN WALNUT WOOD.

(South Kensington Museum.) on other drawings

Of the smaller articles of furniture, the "bellows" and wall brackets of this period deserve mention; the carving of these is very carefully finished, and is frequently very elaborate. The illustration on page [51] is that of a pair bellows in the South Kensington Collection. In the famous Magniac Collection, which was sold in July, 1892, a pair of very finely carved Venetian bellows of this description realised the high price of 455 guineas.

CARVED ITALIAN MIRROR FRAME, 16TH CENTURY.

(In the South Kensington Museum.)

The enrichment of woodwork, by means of inlaying, deserves mention. In the chapter on Ancient Furniture we have seen that ivory was used as an inlaid ornament as early as six centuries before Christ, but its revival and development in Europe probably commenced in Venice about the end of the thirteenth century, in copies of geometrical designs, let into ebony and brown walnut, and into a wood something like rosewood; parts of boxes and chests of these materials are still in existence. Mr. Maskell tells us in his Handbook on "Ivories," that probably owing to the difficulty of procuring ivory in Italy, bone of fine quality was frequently used in its place. All this class of work was known as "Tarsia," "Intarsia," or "Certosina," a word supposed to be derived from the name of the well-known religious community—the Carthusians—on account of the dexterity of those monks at this work.[5]

A SIXTEENTH CENTURY "COFFRE-FORT."

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, makers of ornamental furniture began to copy marble mosaic work, by making similar patterns of different woods, and subsequently this branch of industrial Art developed from such modest beginnings as the simple pattern of a star, or bandings of different kinds of wood in the panel of a door, to elaborate picture making, in which landscapes, views of churches, houses, and picturesque ruins were copied, figures and animals being also introduced. This work was naturally facilitated and encouraged by increasing commerce between different nations, which rendered available a greater variety of woods. In some of the early Italian "intarsia" the decoration was cut into the surface of the panel, piece by piece. As artists became more skilful, veneers were applied, and the effect was heightened by burning with hot sand the parts requiring shading; and the lines caused by the thickness of the sawcuts were filled in with black wood or stained glue, to define the design more clearly.

The "mounting" of articles of furniture with metal enrichments doubtless originated in the iron corner pieces and hinge plates which were used to strengthen the old chests, of which mention has been already made, and as the artificers began to render their productions decorative as well as useful, what more natural progress than that the iron corners, bandings, or fastenings, should be of ornamental forged or engraved iron. In the sixteenth century, metal workers reached a point of excellence which has never been surpassed, and those marvels of mountings in steel, iron and brass were produced in Italy and Germany, which are far more important as works of Art than the plain and unpretending productions of the coffer maker, which are their raison d'etre. The woodcut on p. [53] represents a very good example of a "Coffre-fort" in the South Kensington Collection. The decoration is bitten in with acids so as to present the appearance of its being damascened, and the complicated lock, shewn on the inside of the lid, is characteristic of those safeguards for valuable documents at a time when the modern burglar-proof safe had not been invented.

The illustration on the following page is from an example in the same Museum, shewing a different decoration, the oval plaques of figures and coats of arms being of carved ivory let into the surface of the coffer. This is an early specimen, and belongs as much to the period treated in the previous chapter as to that now under consideration.

"Pietra-durá," as an ornament, was first introduced into Italy during the sixteenth century and became a fashion. This was an inlay of highly-polished rare marbles, agates, hard pebbles, lapis lazuli, and other stones; ivory was also carved and applied as a bas-relief, as well as inlaid in arabesques of the most elaborate designs; tortoise-shell, brass, mother-of-pearl, and other costly materials, were introduced, as enrichments in the decoration of cabinets and of caskets. Silver plaques embossed and engraved were pressed into the service as the native princes of Florence, Urbino, Ferrara, and other independent cities vied with Rome, Venice, and Naples in sumptuousness of ornament, and lavishness of expense, until the inevitable period of decline supervened in which exaggeration of ornament and prodigality of decoration gave the eye no repose.

ITALIAN COFFER WITH MEDALLIONS OF IVORY. 15TH CENTURY.

(South Kensington Museum.)

Edmond Bonnaffé, contrasting the latter period of Italian Renaissance with that of sixteenth century French woodwork, has pithily remarked: "Chez eux, l'art du bois consiste à le dissimuler chez nous à le fair valoir."

Mr. Ruskin, in his "Stones of Venice," alludes to this over-ornamentation of the later Renaissance in severe terms. After describing the progress of Art in Venice from Byzantine to Gothic, and from Gothic to Renaissance, he sub-divides the latter period into three classes:—1. Renaissance grafted on Byzantine. 2. Renaissance grafted on Gothic. 3. Renaissance grafted on Renaissance; and this last the veteran Art critic calls "double darkness," one of his characteristic terms of condemnation which many of us cannot follow, but the spirit of which we can appreciate.

Speaking generally of the character of ornament, we find that whereas in the furniture of the Middle Ages, the subjects for carving were taken from the lives of the saints or from metrical romance, the Renaissance carvers illustrated scenes from classical mythology and allegories, such as representations of the elements, seasons, months, the cardinal virtues, or the battle scenes and triumphal processions of earlier times.

CARVED WALNUT WOOD ITALIAN CHAIRS. 16TH CENTURY.

(From Drawings of the Originals in the South Kensington Museum.)

EBONY CABINET.

With marble mosaics, and bronze gilt ornaments, Florentine work.

PERIOD: XVII. CENTURY.

The outlines and general designs of the earlier Renaissance cabinets were apparently suggested by the old Roman triumphal arches and sarcophagi; afterwards these were modified and became varied, elegant and graceful, but latterly as the period of decline was marked, the outlines, as shewn in the two chairs on the preceding page, became confused and dissipated by over-decoration.

VENETIAN STATE CHAIR.

Carved and Gilt Frame, upholstered with Embroidered Velvet. Date about 1670.

(In the possession of H.M. the King at Windsor Castle.)

The illustrations given of specimens of furniture of Italian Renaissance render lengthy descriptions unnecessary. So far as it has been possible to do so, a selection has been made to represent the different classes of work, and as there are in the South Kensington Museum numerous examples of cassone fronts, panels, chairs, and cabinets which can be examined, it is easy to form an idea of the decorative woodwork made in Italy during the period we have been considering.

THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE.

From Italy the great revival of industrial Art travelled to France. Charles VIII., who for two years had held Naples (1494-96), brought among other artists from Italy, Bernadino de Brescia and Domenico de Cortona; and Art, which at this time was in a feeble, languishing state in France, began to revive. Francis I. employed an Italian architect to build the chateau of Fontainebleau, which had hitherto been but an old-fashioned hunting-box in the middle of the forest, and Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto came from Florence to decorate the interior. Guilio Romano, who had assisted Raffaelle to paint the loggie of the Vatican, exercised an influence in France, which was transmitted by his pupils for generations. The marriage of Henry II. with Catherine de Medici increased the influence of Italian Art, and the subsequent union of Marie de Medici with Henri Quatre continued that influence. Diane de Poictiers, mistress of Henry II., was the patroness of artists; and Fontainebleau has been well said to "reflect the glories of gay and splendour loving kings, from François Premier to Henri Quatre."

Besides Fontainebleau, Francis I. built the Chateau of Chambord,[6] that of Chenonceaux on the Loire, the Chateau de Madrid, and others, and commenced the Louvre.

Following their King's example, the more wealthy of his subjects rebuilt or altered their chateaux and hotels, decorated them in the Italian style, and furnished them with cabinets, chairs, coffers, armoires, tables, and various other articles, designed after the Italian models.

The character of the woodwork naturally accompanied the design of the building. Fireplaces, which until the end of the fifteenth century had been of stone, were now made of oak, richly carved and ornamented with the armorial bearings of the "seigneur." The Prie dieu chair, which Viollet le Duc tells us came into use in the fifteenth century, was now made larger and more ornate, in some cases becoming what might almost be termed a small oratory, the back being carved in the form of an altar, and the utmost care lavished on the work. It must be remembered that in France, until the end of the fifteenth century, there were no benches or seats in the churches, and therefore, prayers were said by the aristocracy in the private chapel of the chateau, and by the middle classes in the chief room of the house.

The large high-backed chair of the sixteenth century "chaire à haut dossier," the arm chair "chaire à bras," "chaire tournante," for domestic use, are all of this time, and some illustrations will shew the highly finished carved work of Renaissance style which prevailed.

ORNAMENTAL PANELLING IN ST. VINCENT'S CHURCH, ROUEN.

PERIOD: EARLY FRENCH RENAISSANCE. TEMP. FRANÇOIS I.

CHIMNEY PIECE.

In the Gallery of Henri II., Chateau of Fontainebleau.

PERIOD: FRENCH RENAISSANCE, EARLY XVI. CENTURY.

Besides the "chaire," which was reserved for the "seigneur," there were smaller and more convenient stools, the

form supports of which were also carved.

CARVED OAK PANEL, DATED 1577.

Cabinets were made with an upper and lower part; sometimes the latter was in the form of a stand with caryatides figures like the famous cabinet in the Chateau Fontainebleau, a vignette of which forms the initial letter of this chapter; or were enclosed by doors generally decorated with carving, the upper part having richly carved panels, which when opened disclosed drawers with fronts minutely carved.

M. Edmond Bonnaffé, in his work on the sixteenth century furniture of France, gives no less than 120 illustrations of "tables, coffres, armoires, dressoirs, sieges, et bancs", manufactured at Orleans, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Le Berri, Lorraine, Burgundy, Lyons, Provence, Auvergne, Languedoc, and other towns and districts, besides the Capital, which excelled in the reputation of her "menuisiers," certain articles of furniture being particularised in old documents as "fait a Paris."

He also mentions that Francis I. preferred to employ native workmen, and that the Italians were retained only to furnish the designs and lead the new style; and in giving the names of the most noted French cabinet makers and carvers of this time, he adds that Jacques Lardant and Michel Bourdin received no less than 15,700 livres for a number of "buffets de salles," "tables garnies de leur tréteaux," "chandeliers de bois," and other articles.

FAC SIMILES OF ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.

By J. Amman, in the 16th century, shewing interiors of Workshops of the period.

The bedstead, of which there is an illustration on the opposite page, is a good representation of French Renaissance. It formed part of the contents of the Chateau of Pau, and belonged to Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henri Quatre, who was born at Pau in 1553. The bedstead is of oak, and by time has acquired a rich warm tint, the details of the carving remaining sharp and clear. On the lower cornice moulding, the date 1562 is carved.

This, like other furniture and contents of Palaces in France, forms part of the State or National Collection, of which there are excellent illustrations and descriptions in M. Williamson's "Mobilier National" a valuable contribution to the literature of this subject which should be consulted.

Another example of four-post bedsteads of French sixteenth century work is that of the one in the Cluny Museum, which is probably some years later than the one at Pau, and in the carved members of the two lower posts more resembles our English Elizabethan work.

CARVED OAK BEDSTEAD OF JEANNE D'ALBRET.

From the Chateau of Pau. (Collection "Mobilier National.")

PERIOD: FRENCH RENAISSANCE (Date 1562).

FRENCH CARVED OAK CABINET.

In the Musée du Louvre. (Collection Sauvageot.)

PERIOD: EARLY XVI. CENTURY.

(Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Boussod Valadon et Cie.)

CARVED OAK CABINET.

Made at Lyons.

PERIOD: LATTER PART OF XVI. CENTURY.

An important collection of carved furniture of French Renaissance was exhibited in l'exposition rétrospective de Lyon, held in that city in 1877, and M. J. B. Giraud, conservateur of the Archæological Museums of Lyons, has reproduced some fifty of the more important specimens in his valuable work,[7] published in 1880, giving the name of the lender of each example and other details. The "Lyons" cabinet, of which there is an illustration, following p. [60], is one of these, and is in the Collection of Mr. E. Aynard. The "Spitzer" Collection, sold in Paris in 1893, contained several fine examples of French Renaissance oak furniture, which realised large prices.

Towards the latter part of the reign of Henri IV. the style of decorative Art in France became debased and inconsistent. Construction and ornamentation were guided by no principle, but followed the caprice of the individual. Meaningless pilasters, entablatures, and contorted cornices replaced the simpler outline and subordinate enrichment of the time of Henri II., and until the great revival of taste under the "grand monarque," there was in France a period of richly ornamented but ill-designed decorative furniture. An example of this can be seen at South Kensington in a plaster cast of a large chimney piece from the Chateau of the Seigneur de Villeroy, near Menecy, by German Pillon, who died in 1590. In this the failings mentioned above will be readily recognized, and also in another example, namely, that of a carved oak door from the Church of St. Maclou, Rouen, by Jean Goujon, in which the work is very fine, but somewhat overdone with enrichment.

During the "Louis Trieze" period, chairs became more comfortable than those of an earlier time. The word "chaise" as a diminutive of "chaire" found its way into the French vocabulary to denote the less throne-like seat which was in more ordinary use, and, instead of being at this period entirely carved, it was upholstered in velvet, tapestry, or needlework; the frame was covered, and only the legs and arms were visible and slightly carved. In the illustration on p. [62], the King and his courtiers are seated on chairs such as have been described. Marqueterie was more common; large armoires, chests of drawers and knee-hole writing tables were covered with an inlay of vases of flowers and birds, of a brownish wood, with enrichments of bone and ivory, inserted in a black ground of stained wood, very much like the Dutch inlaid furniture of some years later, but with less color in the various veneers than is found in the Dutch work. Mirrors became larger, the decoration of rooms had ornamental friezes with lower portions of the walls panelled, and the bedrooms of ladies of position began to be more luxuriously furnished.

LOUIS XIII. AND HIS COURT IN A HALL WITNESSING A PLAY.

(From a Miniature dated 1643.)

It is somewhat singular that while Normandy very quickly adopted the new designs in her buildings and her furniture, and Rouen carvers and joiners became famous for their work, the neighbouring province, Brittany, was conservative of her earlier designs. The sturdy Breton has through all changes of style preserved much of the rustic quaintness of his furniture, and when some years ago the writer was stranded in a sailing trip up the Rance, owing to the shallow state of the river, and had an opportunity of visiting some of the farm houses in the country district a few miles from Dinan, there were still to be seen many examples of this quaint rustic furniture. Curious beds, consisting of shelves for parents and children, form a cupboard in the wall and are shut in, during the day, by a pair of lattice doors of Moorish design, with the wheel pattern and spindle perforations. These, with the armoire of similar design, and the "huche" or chest with relief carving, of a design part Moorish, part Byzantine, used as a step to mount to the bed and also as a table, are still the garniture of a good farm house in Brittany.

DECORATION FOR A SALON IN LOUIS XIII. STYLE.

The earliest date of this quaint furniture is about the middle of the fifteenth century, and has been handed down from father to son by the more well-to-do farmers. The manufacture of armoires, cupboards, tables, and doors, is still carried on near St. Malo, where also some of the old specimens may be found.

THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS.

In the Netherlands, the reigning princes of the great House of Burgundy had prepared the soil for the Renaissance, and, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy with the Archduke Maximilian, the countries which then were called Flanders and Holland passed under the Austrian rule. This influence was continued by the taste and liberality of Margaret of Austria, who, being appointed "Governor" of the Low Countries in 1507, seems to have introduced Italian artists and to have encouraged native craftsmen. We are told that Corneille Floris introduced Italian ornamentation and grotesque borders; that Pierre Coech, architect and painter, adopted and popularised the designs of Vitruvius and Serlio. Wood carvers multiplied and embellished churches and palaces, houses of Burgomasters, Town Halls, and residences of wealthy citizens.

Oak, at first almost the only wood used, became monotonous, and as a relief, ebony and other rare woods, introduced by the then commencing commerce with the Indies, were made available for the embellishments of furniture and woodwork of this time.

One of the most famous examples of rich wood carving is the well known hall and chimney piece at Bruges with its group of cupidons and armorial bearings, amongst an abundance of floral detail. This over ornate chef d'œuvre was designed by Lancelot Blondel and Guyot de Beauregrant, and its carving was the combined work of three craftsmen celebrated in their day, Herman Glosencamp, André Rash and Roger de Smet. There is in the South Kensington Museum a full-sized plaster cast of this gigantic chimney piece, the lower part being colored black to indicate the marble of which it was composed, with panels of alabaster carved in relief, while the whole of the upper portion of the richly carved ceiling of the room is of oak. This chimney piece is noteworthy, not only artistically but historically, as being a monument in its way, in celebration of the victory gained by Charles V. over Francis I. of France, in 1529, at Pavia, the victorious sovereign being at this time not only Emperor of Germany, but also enjoying amongst other titles those of Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders, King of Spain and the Indies, etc., etc. The large statues of the Emperor, of Ferdinand and Isabella, with some thirty-seven heraldic shields of the different royal families with which the conqueror claimed connection, are prominent features in the intricate and elaborate design.

There is in the same part of the Museum a cast of the oak door of the Council Chamber of the Hotel de Ville at Oudenarde, of a much less elaborate character. Plain mullions divide sixteen panels carved in the orthodox Renaissance style, with cupids bearing tablets, from which are depending floral scrolls, and at the sides the supports are columns, with the lower parts carved and standing on square pedestals. The date of this work is 1534, somewhat later than the Bruges carving, and is a representative specimen of the Flemish work of this period.

AN EBONY ARMOIRE, RICHLY CARVED. FLEMISH RENAISSANCE.

(In South Kensington Museum.)

The clever Flemish artist so thoroughly copied the models of his different masters, that it has become exceedingly difficult to speak positively as to the identity of much of the woodwork, and to distinguish it from German, English, or Italian, although as regards the latter we have seen that walnut wood was employed very generally, whereas in Flanders, oak was nearly always used for figure work.

After the period of the purer forms of the first Renaissance, the best time for carved woodwork and decorative furniture in the Netherlands was probably the seventeenth century, when the Flemish designers and craftsmen had ceased to copy the Italian patterns, and had established the style which we recognise as "Flemish Renaissance."

A BARBER'S SHOP. A FLEMISH WORKSHOP.

Showing Furniture of the time.

(From Wood Engravings by J Amman. 16th CENTURY.)

Lucas Faydherde, architect and sculptor (1617-1694)—whose boxwood group of the death of John the Baptist is in the South Kensington Museum—both the Verbruggens, and Albert Bruhl, who carved the choir work of St. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, are amongst the most celebrated Flemish wood carvers of this time. Vriedman de Vriesse and Crispin de Passe, although they worked in France, belong to Flanders and to the century. Some of the most famous painters—Francis Hals, Jordaens, Rembrandt, Metsu, Van Mieris—all belong to this time, and in some of the fine interiors represented by these Old Masters, in which embroidered curtains and rich coverings relieve the sombre colors of the dark carved oak furniture, there is a richness of effect which the artist could scarcely have imagined, but which he must have observed in the houses of the rich burghers of prosperous Flanders.

In the chapter on Jacobean furniture, we shall see the influence and assistance which England gained from Flemish woodworkers; and the similarity of the treatment in both countries will be noticed in some of the South Kensington Museum specimens of English marqueterie, made at the end of the seventeenth century. The figure work in Holland has always been of high order, and, although as the seventeenth century advanced, this perhaps became less refined, the proportions have always been well preserved, and the attitudes are free and unconstrained.

A very characteristic article of seventeenth century Dutch furniture is the large and massive wardrobe, with the doors handsomely carved, not infrequently having three columns, one in the centre and one at each side, generally forming part of the doors, which are also enriched with square panels, carved in the centre and finished with mouldings. There are specimens in the South Kensington Museum of these, and also of some of earlier Flemish work when the Renaissance was purer in style and, as has been observed, of less national character.

The marqueterie of this period is extremely rich, the designs are less severe, but the coloring of the woods is varied, and the effect is heightened by the addition of small pieces of mother of pearl and ivory. Later, this marqueterie became florid, badly finished, and the coloring of the veneers crude and gaudy. Old pieces of plain mahogany furniture were decorated with a thin layer of highly colored veneering, a meretricious ornamentation altogether lacking refinement.

There is, however, a peculiarity and character about some of the furniture of North Holland, in the town of Alkmaar, Hoorn, and others in this district, which is worth noticing. The treatment has always been more primitive and quaint than in the Flemish cities to which allusion has been made—and it was here that the old farmhouses of the Nord-Hollander were furnished with the rush-bottomed chairs, painted green; with three-legged tables, and dower chests painted in flowers and figures of a rude description; the coloring of which is chiefly green and bright red, and is extremely effective.

A FLEMISH CITIZEN AT MEALS.

(From a XVI. Century MS.)

THE RENAISSANCE IN SPAIN.

We have seen that Spain, as well as Germany and the Low Countries, was under the rule of the Emperor Charles V., and therefore it is unnecessary to look further for the sources of influence which carried the wave of Renaissance to the Spanish carvers and cabinet makers.

SEDAN CHAIR OF CHARLES V.

Probably made in the Netherlands. Arranged with movable back and uprights to form a canopy when desired.

(In the Royal Academy, Madrid.)

After Van Eyck was sent for to paint the portrait of King John's daughter, the Low Countries continued to export to the Peninsula painters, sculptors, tapestry weavers, and books on Art. French artists also found employment in Spain, and the older Gothic became superseded as in other countries. Berruguete, a Spaniard, who had studied in the atelier of Michael Angelo, returned to his own country with the new influence strong upon him, and the vast wealth and resources of Spain at this period of her history enabled her nobles to indulge their taste in cabinets, richly ornamented with repoussé plaques of silver, and later of tortoise-shell, of ebony, and of scarce woods from her Indian possessions; though in a more general way chestnut was still a favorite medium.

SILVER TABLE, LATE 16TH OR EARLY 17TH CENTURY.

(In the King's Collection, Windsor Castle.)

Contemporaneously with decorative woodwork of Moorish design there was also a great deal of carving, and of furniture made, after designs brought from Italy and the North of Europe; and Mr. J. H. Pollen, quoting a trustworthy Spanish writer, Señor J. F. Riaño, says:—"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 Borgoñu. 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 the time great productive and artistic centres."

The same writer, after discussing the characteristic Spanish cabinets, decorated outside with fine ironwork and inside with columns of bone painted and gilt, which were called "Vargueños," says:—"The other cabinets or escritoires belonging to that period (sixteenth century) were to a large extent imported from Germany and Italy, while others were made in Spain in imitation of these, and as the copies were very similar it is difficult to classify them." * * *

CHAIR OF WALNUT OR CHESTNUT WOOD.

Covered in Leather, with embossed pattern. Spanish. (Collection of Baron de Vallière.)

PERIOD: EARLY XVII. CENTURY.

WOODEN COFFER.

With wrought iron mounts and falling flap, on carved stand. Spanish.

(Collection of M. Monbrison.)

PERIOD: XVII. CENTURY.

"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, braziers, shoes, tables, or other articles decorated with stamped, raised, carved, or plain silver should be manufactured."

The beautiful silver table in His Majesty's collection at Windsor Castle, illustrated on page [68], is probably one of Spanish make of late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.

Although not strictly within the period treated of in this chapter, it is convenient to observe that much later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one finds the Spanish cabinet maker ornamenting his productions with an inlay of ivory let into tortoise-shell, representing episodes in the history of Don Quichotte, and scenes from the National pastime of bull-fighting. These cabinets generally have simple rectangular outlines with numerous drawers, the fronts of which are decorated in the manner described, and when the stands are original they are formed of turned legs of ebony or stained wood. In many Spanish cabinets the influence of Saracenic Art is very dominant; these have generally a plain exterior, the front is hinged as a fall-down flap, and discloses a decorative effect which reminds one of some of the Alhambra work—quaint arches inlaid with ivory, of a somewhat bizarre coloring of blue and vermilion—altogether a rather barbarous but rich and effective treatment.

To the seventeenth century also belonged the high-backed Spanish and Portuguese chairs, of dark brown leather, stamped with numerous figures, birds and floral scrolls, studded with brass nails and ornaments, while the legs and arms are alone visible as woodwork. They are made of chestnut, with some leafwork or scroll carving. There is a good representative woodcut of one of these chairs.

Until Baron Davillier wrote his work on Spanish Art, very little was known of the various peculiarities by which we can now distinguish examples of woodwork and furniture of that country from many Italian or Flemish contemporary productions. Some of the Museum specimens will assist the reader to mark some of these characteristics, and it may be observed generally that in the treatment of figure subjects in the carved work, the attitudes are somewhat strained and, as has been stated, the outlines of the cabinets are without any special feature. Besides the Spanish chestnut (noyer), which is singularly lustrous and was much used, one also finds cedar, cypress wood and pine.

In the Chapel of Saint Bruno, attached to the Carthusian Convent at Granada, the doors and interior fittings are excellent examples of inlaid Spanish work of the seventeenth century; the monks of this order at a somewhat earlier date are said to have produced the "tarsia," or inlaid work, to which some allusion has already been made.

THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY.

German Renaissance may be said to have made its debût under Albrecht Dürer. There was already in many of the German cities a disposition to copy Flemish artists, but under Dürer's influence this new departure became developed in a high degree, and, as the sixteenth century advanced, the Gothic designs of an earlier period were abandoned in favour of the more free treatment of figure ornament, scrolls, enriched panels and mouldings, which mark the new era in all Art work.

Many remarkable specimens of German carving are to be met with in Augsburg, Aschaffenburg, Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Gotha, Munich, Manheim, Nuremberg, Ulm, Regensburg, and other old German towns.

Although made of steel, the celebrated chair at Longford Castle in Wiltshire is worthy of some notice as a remarkable specimen of German Renaissance. It is fully described in Richardson's "Studies from Old English Mansions." It was the work of Thomas Rukers, and was presented by the city of Augsburg to the Emperor of Germany in 1577. The city arms are at the back, and also the bust of the Emperor. The other minute and carefully finished decorative subjects represent various events in history; a triumphal procession of Cæsar, the Prophet Daniel explaining his dream, the landing of Æneas, and other events. The Emperor Rudolphus placed the chair in the City of Prague, Gustavus Adolphus plundered the city and removed it to Sweden, whence it was brought by Mr. Gustavus Brander about 100 years ago, and sold by him to Lord Radnor.

As is the case with Flemish wood-carving, it is often difficult to identify German work, but its chief characteristics may be described as an exuberant realism and a fondness for minute detail. M. Bonnaffé has described this work in a telling phrase: "l'ensemble est tourmenté, laborieux, touffu tumultueux."

THE STEEL CHAIR.

At Longford Castle, Wiltshire.

There is a remarkable example of rather late German Renaissance oak carving in the private chapel of S. Saviour's Hospital, in Osnaburg Street, Regent's Park, London. The choir stalls, some 31 in number, and the massive doorway, formed part of a Carthusian monastery at Buxheim, Bavaria, which was sold and brought to London after the monastery had been secularised and had passed into the possession of the territorial landlords, the Bassenheim family. At first intended to ornament one of the Colleges at Oxford, it was afterwards resold and purchased by the author, and fitted to the interior of S. Saviour's, and, so far as the proportions of the chapel would admit of such an arrangement, the relative positions of the different parts are maintained. The figures of the twelve apostles—of David, Eleazer, Moses, Aaron, and of the eighteen saints at the back of the choir stalls, are marvellous work, and the whole must have been a harmonious and well-considered arrangement of ornament. The work, executed by the monks themselves, is said to have been commenced in 1600, and to have been completed in 1651, and though a little later than, according to some authorities, the best time of the Renaissance, is so good a representation of German work of this period that it will well repay an examination. As the author was responsible for its arrangement in its present position, he has the permission of the authorities of S. Saviour's to say that anyone who is interested in Art will be allowed to see the chapel.

GERMAN CARVED OAK BUFFET, 17TH CENTURY.

(From a Drawing by Prof. Heideloff.)

THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND.

England under Henry the Eighth was peaceful and prosperous, and the king was ambitious to outvie his French contemporary, François I., in the sumptuousness of his palaces. John of Padua, Holbein, Havernius of Cleves, and other artists, were induced to come to England and to introduce the new style. It, however, was of slow growth, and we have in the mixture of Gothic, Italian, and Flemish ornament, the style which is known as "Tudor."

It has been well said that "Feudalism was ruined by gunpowder." The old-fashioned feudal castle was certainly no longer proof against cannon, and with the new order of things, threatening walls and serried battlements gave way as if by magic to the pomp and grace of the Italian mansion. High roofed gables, rows of windows and glittering oriels looking down on terraced gardens, with vases and fountains, mark the new epoch.

CARVED OAK CHEST IN THE STYLE OF HOLBEIN.

The joiner's work plays very important part in the interior decoration of the castles and country seats of this time, and the roofs were magnificently timbered with native oak, which was available in longer lengths than that of foreign growth. The great Hall in Hampton Court Palace, which was built by Cardinal Wolsey and presented to his master, the halls of Oxford, and many other public buildings which remain to us, are examples of fine woodwork in the roofs. Oak panelling was largely used to line the walls of the great halls, the "linen scroll pattern" being a favorite form of ornament. This term describes a panel carved to represent a napkin folded in close convolutions, and appears to have been adopted from German work; specimens of this can be seen at Hampton Court, and in old churches decorated in the early part of the sixteenth century. There is also some fine panelling of this date in King's College, Cambridge.

In this class of work, which accompanied the style known in architecture as the "Perpendicular," some of the finest specimens of ornamented interiors are to be found, that of the roof and choir stalls in the beautiful Chapel of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey being world famous. The carved enrichments of the under parts of the seats, or "misericords," are remarkably minute, the subjects apparently being taken from old German engravings. This work was done in England before architecture and wood carving had altogether flung aside their Gothic trammels, and shews an admixture of the new Italian style which was afterwards so generally adopted.

There are in the British Museum some interesting records of contracts made in the ninth year of Henry VIII.'s reign for joyner's work at Hengrave, in which the making of "livery" or service cupboards is specified.

"Ye cobards they be made ye facyon of livery y is wᵀᴴout doors."

These were fitted up by the ordinary house carpenters, and consisted of three stages or shelves standing on four turned legs, with a drawer for table linen. They were at this period not enclosed, but the mugs or drinking vessels were hung on hooks, and were taken down and replaced after use: a ewer and basin was also part of the complement of a livery cupboard, for cleansing these cups. In Harrison's description of England in the latter part of the sixteenth century the custom is thus described:

"Each one as necessitie urgeth, calleth for a cup of such drinke as him liketh, so when he hath tasted it, he delivereth the cup again to some one of the standers by, who maketh it clean by pouring out the drinke that remaineth, restoreth it to the cupboard from whence he fetched the same."

It must be borne in mind, in considering the furniture of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, that the religious persecutions of the time, together with the general break up of the feudal system, had gradually brought about the disuse of the old custom of the master of the house taking his meals in the large hall or "houseplace," together with his retainers and dependants; and a smaller room leading from the great hall was fitted up with a "dressoir" or "service cupboard," for the drinking vessels in the manner just described, with a bedstead, and a chair, some benches, and the board on trestles, which formed the table of the period. This room, called a "parler" or "privee parloir," was the part of the house where the family enjoyed domestic life, and it is a singular fact that the Clerics of the time, and also the Court party, saw in this tendency towards private life so grave an objection that, in 1526, this change in fashion was the subject of a Court ordinance, and also of a special Pastoral from Bishop Grosbeste. The text runs thus: "Sundrie noblemen and gentlemen and others doe much delighte to dyne in corners and secret places," and the reason given, was that it was a bad influence, dividing class from class; the real reason was probably that by more private and domestic life, the power of the Church over her members was weakened.

CHAIR SAID TO HAVE BELONGED TO ANNA BOLEYN, HEVER CASTLE.

(From the Collection of Mr. Godwin, F.S.A.)

In spite, however, of opposition in high places, the custom of using the smaller rooms became more common, and we shall find the furniture, as time goes on, designed accordingly.

TUDOR CABINET IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.

(Described below.)

In the South Kensington Museum there is a very remarkable cabinet, the decoration of which points to its being made in England at this time—that is, about the middle, or during the latter half of the sixteenth century; but the highly finished and intricate marqueterie and carving would seem to prove that Italian or German craftsmen had executed the work. It should be carefully examined as a very interesting specimen. The Tudor arms, the rose and portcullis, are inlaid on the stand. The arched panels in the folding doors and at the ends of the cabinet are in high relief, representing battle scenes, and bear some resemblance to Holbein's style. The general arrangement of the design reminds one of a Roman triumphal arch. The woods employed are chiefly pear tree, inlaid with coromandel and other woods. Its height is 4ft. 7in. and width 3ft. 1in., but there is in it an immense amount of careful detail which could only be the work of the most skilful craftsmen of the day, and it was evidently intended for a room of moderate dimensions where the intricacies of design could be observed. Mr. Hungerford Pollen has described this cabinet fully, giving the subjects of the ornament, the Latin mottoes and inscriptions, and other details, which occupy over four closely-printed pages of his Museum catalogue. It cost the nation £500, and was a very judicious purchase.

Chairs were during the first half of the sixteenth century very scarce articles, and, as we have seen with other countries, only used for the master or mistress of the house. The chair which is said to have belonged to Anna Boleyn, of which an illustration is given on page [74], is from the collection of the late Mr. Geo. Godwin, F.S.A., formerly editor of "The Builder," and was part of the contents of Hever Castle, in Kent. It is of carved oak, inlaid with ebony and boxwood, and was probably made by an Italian workman. "Settles" were largely used, and both these and such chairs as then existed, were dependent, for richness of effect, upon the loose cushions with which they were furnished.

If we attempt to gain a knowledge of the designs of the tables of the sixteenth, and the early part of the seventeenth centuries, from interiors represented in paintings of this period, the visit to the picture gallery will be almost in vain, for in nearly every case the table is covered by a cloth. As these cloths or "carpets," as they were then termed, to distinguish them from the "tapet" or floor covering, often cost far more than the articles they covered, a word about them may be allowed.

Most of the old inventories from 1590, after mentioning the "framed" or "joyned" table, name the "carpett of Turky werke" which covered it, and in many cases there was still another covering to protect the best one, and when Frederick, Duke of Wurtemburg, visited England in 1592, he noted a very extravagant "carpett" at Hampton Court, which was embroidered with pearls and cost 50,000 crowns.

The cushions or "quysshens" for the chairs, of embroidered velvet, were also very important appendages to the otherwise hard oaken and ebony seats, and as the actual date of the will of Alderman Glasseor quoted below is 1589, we may gather from the extract given, something of the character and value of these ornamental accessories which would probably have been in use for some five and twenty or thirty years previously.

"Inventory of the contents of the parler of St. Jones, within the cittie of Chester," of which place Alderman Glasseor was vice-chamberlain:—

• "A drawinge table of joyned work with a frame", valued at "xl shillings," equilius Labour £20 your present money.
• Two formes covered with Turkey work to the same belonginge xiij shillings and iiij pence.
• A joyned frame xvjd.
• A bord ijs. vjd.
• A little side table with a frame ijs. vjd.
• A pair of virginalls with the frame xxxs.
• Six joyned stooles covr'd with nedle werke xvs.
• Sixe other joyned stooles vjs.
• One cheare of nedle werke iijs. iiijd.
• Two little fote stooles iiijd.
• One longe carpett of Turky werke vili.
• A shortte carpett of the same work xijs. iiijd.
• One cupbord carpett of the same xs.
• Sixe quysshens of Turkye xijs.
• Sixe quysshens of tapestree xxs.
• And others of velvet "embroidered wt gold and silver armes in the middesle."
• Eight pictures xls. Maps, a pedigree of Earl Leicester in "joyned frame" and a list of books.

This Alderman Glasseor was apparently a man of taste and culture for those days; he had "casting bottles" of silver for sprinkling perfumes after dinner, and he also had a country house "at the sea," where his parlour was furnished with a "canapy bedd."

As the century advances, and we get well into Elizabeth's reign, wood carving becomes more ambitious, and although it is impossible to distinguish the work of Flemish carvers who had settled in England from that of our native craftsmen, these doubtless had acquired from the former much of their skill. In the costumes and in the faces of figures or busts, produced in the highly ornamental oak chimney pieces of the time, or in the carved portions of the fourpost bedsteads, the national characteristics are preserved, and, with a certain grotesqueness introduced into the treatment of accessories, combine to distinguish the English school of Elizabethan ornament from other contemporary work.

Knole, Longleat, Burleigh, Hatfield, Hardwick, and Audley End are familiar instances of the change in interior decoration which accompanied that in architecture; terminal figures, that is, pedestals diminishing towards their bases, surmounted by busts of men or women, elaborate interlaced strap work carved in low relief, trophies of fruit and flowers, take the places of the more Gothic treatment formerly in vogue. The change in the design of furniture naturally followed, for when Flemish or Italian carvers were not employed, the actual execution was often by the hand of the house carpenter, who was influenced by what he saw around him.

The great chimney-piece in Speke Hall, near Liverpool, portions of the staircase of Hatfield, and of other English mansions before mentioned, are good examples of the wood carving of this period, and the illustrations from authenticated examples which are given will assist the reader to follow these remarks.

THE GLASTONBURY CHAIR.

(In the Palace of the Bishop of Bath and Wells.)

There is a mirror frame at Goodrich Court of early Elizabethan work, carved in oak and partly gilt; the design is in the best style of Renaissance, and more like Italian or French, than English work. Architectural mouldings, wreaths of flowers, cupids, and an allegorical figure of Faith are harmoniously combined in the design, the size of the whole frame being 4ft. 5ins. by 3ft. 6ins. It bears the initials R.M., and is dated 1359, the year in which Roland Meyrick became Bishop of Bangor; it is still in the possession of the Meyrick family. A careful drawing of this frame was made by Henry Shaw, F.S.A., and published in "Specimens of Ancient Furniture drawn from existing Authorities," in 1836. This valuable work of reference also contains finished drawings of other noteworthy examples of the sixteenth century furniture and woodwork. Amongst these is one of the Abbot's chair at Glastonbury, temp. Henry VIII., the original of the chair familiar to us now in the chancel of most churches; also a chair in the State-room of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, covered with crimson velvet embroidered with silver tissue, and others, very interesting to refer to because the illustrations are all drawn from the articles themselves, and their descriptions are written by an excellent antiquarian and collector, Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick.

The mirror frame just described was probably one of the first of its size and kind in England. It was the custom, as has been already stated, to paint the walls with subjects from history or Scripture, and there are many precepts in existence from early times until about the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, directing how certain walls were to be decorated. The discontinuance of this fashion brought about the framing of pictures, and some of the paintings by Holbein, who came to this country about 1511, and received the patronage of Henry VIII. some fourteen or fifteen years later, are probably the first pictures that were framed in England. There are some two or three of these at Hampton Court Palace, the ornament being a scroll in gold on a black background, the width of the frame very small in comparison with its canvas. Some of the old wall paintings were on a small scale, and, where long stories were represented, the subjects, instead of occupying the whole flank of the wall, had been divided into rows some three feet or less in height, these being separated by battens, and therefore the first frames would appear to be really little more than the addition of vertical sides to the horizontal top and bottom which such battens had formed. Subsequently, frames became more ornate and elaborate. After their application to pictures, their use for mirrors was but a step in advance, and the mirror in a carved and gilt or decorated frame, probably at first imported and afterwards copied, came to replace the older mirror of very small dimensions which had been used for toilet purposes.

Until early in the fifteenth century, mirrors of polished steel in the antique style, framed in silver and ivory, had been used; in the wardrobe account of Edward I. the item occurs: "A comb and a mirror of silver gilt," and we have an extract from the privy purse of expenses of Henry VIII. which mentions the payment "to a Frenchman for certayne loking glasses," which would probably be a novelty then brought to his Majesty's notice.

Indeed, there was no glass used for windows[8] previous to the fifteenth century, the substitute being shaved horn, parchment, and sometimes mica, let into the shutters which enclosed the window opening.

The oak panelling of rooms during the reign of Elizabeth was very handsome, and in the example at South Kensington, of which there is here an illustration, the country possesses a very excellent representative specimen. This was removed from an old house at Exeter, and its date is given by Mr. Hungerford Pollen as from 1550-75. The pilasters and carved panels under the cornice are very rich, and in the best style of Elizabethan Renaissance, while the panels themselves, being plain, afford repose, and bring the ornament into relief. The entire length is 52ft., and average height 8ft. 3in. If this panelling could be arranged as it was fitted originally in the house of one of Elizabeth's subjects, with models of fireplace, moulded ceiling, and accessories added, we should then have an object lesson of value, and be able to picture a Drake or a Raleigh in his West of England home.

CARVED OAK ELIZABETHAN BEDSTEAD.

A later purchase by the Science and Art Department, which was added to the Museum in 1891 for the extremely moderate price of £1,000, is the panelling of a room some 23ft. square and 12ft. 6in. high, from Sizergh Castle, Westmoreland. The chimney piece was unfortunately not purchased, but the Department has arranged the panelling as a room with a plaster model of the extremely handsome ceiling. The panelling is of richly figured oak, entirely devoid of polish, and is inlaid with black bog oak and holly, in geometrical designs, being divided at intervals by tall pilasters with flutings of bog oak and having Ionic capitals. The work was probably done locally, and from wood grown on the estate, and is one of the most remarkable examples in existence. The date is about 1560 to 1570, and it has been described in local literature as of nearly 200 years' age.

OAK WAINSCOTING.

From an old house in Exeter. S Kensington Museum.

PERIOD: ENGLISH RENAISSANCE (ABOUT 1550-75.)

While we are on the subject of panelling, it may be worth while to point out that with regard to old English work of this date, one may safely take it for granted that where, as in the South Kensington (Exeter) example, the pilasters, frieze, and frame-work are enriched, and the panels plain, the work was designed and made for the house, but when the panels are carved and the rest plain, they were bought, and then fitted up by the local carpenter.

Another Museum specimen of Elizabethan carved oak is a fourpost bedstead, with the arms of the Countess of Devon, which bears date 1593, and has all the characteristics of the time.

There is also a good example of Elizabethan woodwork in part of the interior of the Charterhouse, immortalised by Thackeray, when, as "Greyfriars," in the "Newcomes," he described it as the old school "where the colonel, and Clive, and I were brought up", and it was here that, as a "poor brother," the old colonel had returned to spend the evening of his gentle life, and, to quote Thackeray's pathetic lines, "when the chapel bell began to toll, he lifted up his head a little, and said 'Adsum!' It was the word we used at school when names were called."

This famous relic of old London, which fortunately escaped the Great Fire in 1666, was formerly an old monastery, which Henry VIII. dissolved in 1537, and the house was given some few years later to Sir Edward, afterwards Lord North, from whom the Duke of Norfolk purchased it in 1565, and the handsome staircase, carved with terminal figures and Renaissance ornament, was probably built either by Lord North or his successor. The woodwork of the Great Hall, where the pensioners still dine every day, is very rich, the fluted columns with Corinthian capitals, the interlaced strap work, and other details of carved oak, are characteristic of the best sixteenth century woodwork in England; the shield bears the date of 1571. This was the year when the Duke of Norfolk, who was afterwards beheaded, was released from the Tower on a kind of furlough, and probably amused himself with the enrichment of his mansion, then called Howard House. In the old Governors' room, formerly the drawing room of the Howards, there is a specimen of the large wooden chimney-piece of the end of the sixteenth century, painted instead of carved. After the Duke of Norfolk's death, the house was granted by the Crown to his son, the Earl of Suffolk, who sold it in 1611 to the founder of the present hospital, Sir Thomas Sutton, a citizen who is reputed to be one of the wealthiest of his time. Some of the furniture given by him will be found noticed in the chapter on the Jacobean period.

DINING HALL IN THE CHARTERHOUSE.

Shewing Oak Screen and front of Minstrels' Gallery, dated 1571.

PERIOD: ELIZABETHAN.

OAK SCREEN.

IN THE HALL OF GRAY'S INN. SHEWING FURNITURE AT THAT END OF THE HALL.

HALL OF GRAY'S INN.

Shewing Tables and Benches.

There are in London other excellent examples of Elizabethan oak carving. Amongst those easily accessible and valuable for reference, are the Hall of Gray's Inn, built in 1560, the second year of the Queen's reign, and Middle Temple Hall, built in 1570-2. By permission of Mr. William R. Douthwaite, librarian of "Gray's Inn," and author of "Gray's Inn, its History and Associations," we are enabled to give illustrations of the interior of the Hall, and also of the carved screen supporting the Minstrels' Gallery. The interlaced strap work, generally found in Elizabethan carving, encircles the shafts of the columns as a decoration. The table in the centre has also some low relief carving on the drawer front which forms its frieze, but the straight and severe style of leg leads us to place its date at some fifty years later than the Hall. The desk on the left, and the table on the right, are probably of a still later period. It may be mentioned here, too, that the long table which stands at the opposite end of the Hall, on the daïs, said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth, is not of the design with which the furniture of her reign is associated by experts; the heavy cabriole legs, with bent knees, corresponding with the legs of the chairs (also on the daïs) are of unmistakable Dutch origin, and so far as the writer's observations and investigations have gone, were probably introduced into England about the time of William III.

The same remarks apply to a table in Middle Temple Hall, also said to have been there during Elizabeth's time. Mr. Douthwaite alludes to the rumour of the Queen's gift in his book, and endeavoured to substantiate it from records at his command, but in vain. The authorities at Middle Temple are also, so far as we have been able to ascertain, without any documentary evidence to prove the claim of their table to any greater age than the end of the seventeenth century.

The carved oak screen of Middle Temple Hall is magnificent, and no one should miss seeing it. Terminal figures, fluted columns, panels broken up into smaller divisions, and carved enrichments of various devices, are all combined in a harmonious design, rich without being overcrowded, and its effect is enhanced by the rich color given to it by age, by the excellent proportions of the Hall, by the plain panelling of the three other sides, and above all by the grand oak roof, which is certainly one of the finest of its kind in England. Some of the tables and forms are of a much later date, but an interest attaches even to this furniture from the fact of its having been made from oak grown close to the Hall; and as one of the tables has a slab composed of an oak plank nearly thirty inches wide, we can imagine what fine old trees once grew and flourished close to the now busy Fleet Street, and the bustling Strand. There are frames, too, in Middle Temple made from the oaken timbers which once formed the piles in the Thames on which rested "the Temple Stairs."

In Mr. Herbert's "Antiquities of the Inns of Court and Chancery," there are several facts of interest in connection with the woodwork of Middle Temple. He mentions that the screen was paid for by contributions from each bencher of twenty shillings, each barrister of ten shillings, and every other member of six shillings and eightpence; that the Hall was founded in 1562, and furnished ten years later, the screen being put up in 1574; and that the memorials of some two hundred and fifty "Readers" which decorate the otherwise plain oak panelling, date from 1597 to 1804, the year in which Mr. Herbert's book was published. Referring to the furniture, he says:—"The massy oak tables and benches with which this apartment was anciently furnished, still remain, and so may do for centuries, unless violently destroyed, being of wonderful strength." Mr. Herbert also mentions the masks and revels held in this famous Hall in the time of Elizabeth: he also gives a list of quantities and prices of materials used in the decoration of Gray's Inn Hall.

THREE CARVED OAK PANELS.

Now in the Court Room of the Hall of the Carpenters' Company. Removed from the former Hall.

PERIOD: ELIZABETHAN.

In the Hall of the Carpenters' Company, in Throgmorton Avenue, are three curious carved oak panels, worth noticing here, as they are of a date bringing them well into this period. They were formerly in the old Hall, which escaped the Great Fire, and in the account books of the Corporation is the following record of the cost of one of these panels:—

"Paide for a planke to carve the arms of the Companie iijs."

"Paide to the Carver for carving the arms of the Companie xxiijs. iiijd."

The price of material (3s.) and workmanship (23s. 4d.) was certainly not excessive. All three panels are in excellent preservation, and the design of a harp, being a rebus of the Master's name, is a quaint relic of old customs. Some other oak furniture, in the Hall of this ancient Company, will be noticed in the following chapter. Mr. Jupp, a former Clerk of the Company, has written an historical account of the "Carpenters," which contains many facts of interest. The office of King's Carpenter or Surveyor, the powers of the Carpenters to search, examine, and impose fines for inefficient work, and the trade disputes with the "Joyners," the "Sawyers," and the "Woodmongers," are all entertaining reading, and throw many side-lights on the woodwork of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

PART OF AN ELIZABETHAN STAIRCASE.

The illustration of Hardwick Hall shews oak panelling and decoration of a somewhat earlier, and also somewhat later, time than Elizabeth, while the carved oak chairs are of Jacobean style. At Hardwick is still kept the historic chair in which it is said that William, fourth Earl of Devonshire, sat when he and his friends compassed the downfall of James II. In the curious little chapel, hung with ancient tapestry, and containing the original Bible and Prayer Book of Charles I., are other quaint chairs covered with cushions of sixteenth or early seventeenth century needlework.

THE ENTRANCE HALL, HARDWICK HALL.

PERIOD OF FURNITURE, JACOBEAN, XVII. CENTURY.

Before concluding the remarks on this period of English woodwork and furniture, further mention should be made of Penshurst Place, to which there has been already some reference in the chapter on the period of the Middle Ages. It was here that Sir Philip Sydney spent much of his time, and produced his best literary work, during the period of his retirement when he had lost the favour of Elizabeth: and in the room known as the "Queen's Room," illustrated on page [89], some of the furniture is of this period. The crystal chandeliers are said to have been given by Leicester to his Royal Mistress, and some of the chairs and tables were sent down by the Queen, and presented to Sir Henry Sydney (Philip's father) when she stayed at Penshurst during one of her Royal progresses. The room, with its vases and bowls of old Oriental china and the contemporary portraits on the walls, gives us a good idea of the very best effect that was attainable with the material then available.

Richardson's "Studies" contains, amongst other examples of furniture, and carved oak decorations of English Renaissance, interiors of Little Charlton, East Sutton Place, Stockton House, Wilts, Audley End, Essex, and the Great Hall, Crewe, with its beautiful hall screens and famous carved "parloir," all notable mansions of the sixteenth century.

To this period of English furniture belongs the celebrated "Great Bed of Ware," of which there is an illustration. This was formerly at the "Saracen's Head" at Ware, but has been removed to Rye House, about two miles away. Shakespeare's allusion to it in the "Twelfth Night" has identified the approximate date and gives the bed a character. The following are the lines:—

SIR TOBY BELCH.—And as many lies as shall lie in thy sheet of paper altho' the sheet were big enough for the Bed of Ware in England, set em down, go about it.

Another illustration shews the chair which is said to have belonged to William Shakespeare: it may or may not be the actual one used by the poet, but it is most probably a genuine specimen of about his time, though perhaps not made in England. There is a manuscript on its back which states that it was known in 1769 as the Shakespeare Chair, when Garrick borrowed it from its owner, Mr. James Bacon, of Barnet, and since that time its history is well known. The carved ornament is in low relief, and represents a rough idea of the dome of S. Marc and the Campanile Tower.

SHAKESPEARE'S CHAIR.

We have now briefly and roughly traced the advance of what may be termed the flood-tide of Art from its birthplace in Italy to France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and England; and by explanation and description, assisted by illustrations, have endeavoured to show how the Gothic of the latter part of the Middle Ages gave way before the revival of classic forms and arabesque ornament, with the many details and peculiarities characteristic of each different nationality which had adopted the general change. During this period the "bahut" or chest has become a cabinet with all its varieties; the simple prie dieu chair, as a devotional piece of furniture, has been elaborated into almost an oratory, and, as a domestic seat, into a dignified throne; tables have, towards the end of the period, become more ornate, and made as solid pieces of furniture, instead of the planks and tressels which we found when the Renaissance commenced. Chimney pieces, which in the fourteenth century were merely stone smoke shafts or hoods supported by corbels, have been replaced by handsome carved oak erections, ornamenting the hall or room from floor to ceiling, and the English livery cupboard, with its foreign contemporary the buffet, is the forerunner of the sideboard of the future.

THE GREAT BED OF WARE.

Formerly at the Saracen's Head, Ware, but now at Rye House, Broxbourne, Herts.

PERIOD: XVI. CENTURY.

Carved oak panelling has replaced the old arras and ruder wood lining of an earlier time, and with the departure of the old feudal customs and the indulgence in greater luxuries of the more wealthy nobles and merchants in Italy, Flanders, France, Germany, Spain, and England, we have the elegances and grace with which Art, and increased means of gratifying taste, enabled the sixteenth century virtuoso to adorn his home.

THE "QUEEN'S ROOM," PENSHURST PLACE.

(Reproduced from "Historic Houses of the United Kingdom," by permission of Messrs. Cassell & Co., Limited.)

CARVED OAK CHIMNEY PIECE IN SPEKE HALL, NEAR LIVERPOOL.

PERIOD: ELIZABETHAN.

CHAPTER IV.

English Home Life in the Reign of James I.—Sir Henry Wotton quoted—Inigo Jones and his work—Ford Castle—Chimney Pieces in South Kensington Museum—Table in the Carpenters' Hall—Hall of the Barbers' Company—The Charterhouse—Time of Charles I.—Furniture at Knole—Eagle House, Wimbledon—Mr. Charles Eastlake—Monuments at Canterbury and Westminster—Settles, Couches, and Chairs of the Stuart period—Sir Paul Pindar's House—Cromwellian Furniture—The Restoration—Indo-Portuguese Furniture—Hampton Court Palace—Evelyn's description—The Great Fire of London—Hall of the Brewers' Company—Oak Panelling of the time—Grinling Gibbons and his work—The Edict of Nantes—Silver Furniture at Knole—William III. and Dutch influence—Queen Anne—Sideboards, Bureaus, and Grandfathers' Clocks—Furniture at Hampton Court.

N the chapter on "Renaissance" the great Art revival in England has been noticed; in the Elizabethan oak work of chimney pieces, panelling, and furniture, are to be found varying forms of the free classic style which the Renaissance had brought about. These fluctuating changes in fashion continued in England from the time of Elizabeth until the middle of the eighteenth century, when, as will be shewn presently, a distinct alteration in the design of furniture took place.

The domestic habits of Englishmen were getting more established. We have seen how religious persecution during preceding reigns, at the time of the Reformation, had encouraged private domestic life of families in the smaller rooms and apart from the gossiping retainer, who might at any time bring destruction upon the household by giving information about items of conversation he had overheard. There is a quaint passage in one of Sir Henry Wotton's letters, written in 1600, which shews that this home life was now becoming a settled characteristic of his countrymen.

"Every man's proper mansion house and home, being the theatre of his hospitality, the seate of his selfe fruition, the comfortable part of his own life, the noblest of his son's inheritance, a kind of private princedom, nay the possession thereof an epitome of the whole world well deserve by these attributes, according to the degree of the master, to be delightfully adorned."

OAK CHIMNEY PLACE IN SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S HOUSE, YOUGHAL, IRELAND.

Said to be the work of a Flemish Artist, who was brought over for the purpose of executing this and other carved work at Youghal.

Sir Henry Wotton was Ambassador in Venice in 1604, and is said to have been the author of the well-known definition of an ambassador's calling, namely, "an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country's good." This offended the piety of James I., and caused him for some time to be in disgrace. He also published, some 20 years later, "Elements of Architecture," and being an antiquarian and man of taste, sent home many specimens of the famous Italian wood carving.

It was during the reign of James I. and that of his successor that Inigo Jones, our English Vitruvius, was making his great reputation; he had returned from Italy full of enthusiasm for the Renaissance of Palladio and his school, and of knowledge and taste gained by a diligent study of the ancient classic buildings of Rome. His influence would be speedily felt in the design of woodwork fittings, for the interiors of his edifices. There is a note in his own copy of Palladio, which is now in the library of Worcester College, Oxford, which is worth quoting:—

"In the name of God: Amen. The 2 of January, 1614, I being in Rome compared these desines following, with the Ruines themselves.—INIGO JONES."

CHIMNEY PIECE IN BYFLEET HOUSE.

EARLY JACOBEAN.

In the following year he returned from Italy on his appointment as King's Surveyor of Works, and until his death in 1652 was full of work, although unfortunately for us, much that he designed was never carried out, and much that he carried out has been destroyed by fire. The Banqueting Hall of Whitehall, now Whitehall Chapel; St. Paul's, Covent Garden; the old water gate originally intended as the entrance to the first Duke of Buckingham's Palace, close to Charing Cross; Nos. 55 and 56, on the south side of Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn; and one or two monuments and porches, are amongst the examples that remain to us of this great master's work; and of interiors, that of Ashburnham House is left to remind us, with its quiet dignity of style, of this great master. It has been said in speaking of the staircase, plaster ornament, and woodwork of this interior, "upon the whole is set the seal of the time of Charles I." As the work was probably finished during the King's reign, the impression intended to be conveyed was that after wood carving had rather run riot towards the end of the sixteenth century, we had now in the interior designed by Inigo Jones, or influenced by his school, a more quiet and sober style.

THE KING'S CHAMBER, FORD CASTLE.

The above woodcut shews a portion of the King's room, in Ford Castle, which still contains souvenirs of Flodden Field—according to an article in the Magazine of Art. The room is in the northernmost tower, which still preserves externally the stern, grim character of the border fortress; and the room looks towards the famous battle-field. The chair shews a date 1638, and there is another of Dutch design of about fifty or sixty years later; but the carved oak bedstead, with tapestry hangings, and the oak press, which the writer of the article mentions as forming part of the old furniture of the room, scarcely appear in the illustration.

Mr. Hungerford Pollen tells us that the majority of so-called Tudor houses were actually built during the reign of James I., and this may probably be accepted as an explanation of the otherwise curious fact of there being much in the architecture and woodwork of this time which would seem to belong to the earlier period.

The illustrations of wooden chimney pieces will shew this change. There are in the South Kensington Museum some three or four chimney pieces of stone, having the upper portions of carved oak, the dates of which have been ascertained to be about 1620; these were removed from an old house in Lime Street, City, and give us an idea of the interior decoration of a residence of a London merchant. The one illustrated is somewhat richer than the others, the columns supporting the cornice of the others being almost plain pillars with Ionic or Doric capitals, and the carving of the panels of all of them is in less relief, and simpler in character, than those which occur in the latter part of Elizabeth's time.

CARVED OAK CENTRE TABLE.

In the Hall of the Carpenters' Company.

The earliest dated piece of Jacobean furniture which has come under the writer's observation is the octagonal table belonging to the Carpenters' Company. The illustration, taken from Mr. Jupp's book referred to in the last chapter, hardly does the table justice; it is really a very handsome piece of furniture, and measures about 3 feet 3 inches in diameter. In the spandrils of the arches between the legs are the letters R.W., G.I., J.R., and W.W., being the initials of Richard Wyatt, George Isack, John Reeve, and William Willson, who were Master and Wardens of the Company in 1606, which date is carved in two of the spandrils. While the ornamental legs shew some of the characteristics of Elizabethan work, the treatment is less bold, the large acorn-shaped member has become more refined and attenuated, and the ornament is altogether more subdued. This is a remarkable specimen of early Jacobean furniture, and is the only one of the shape and kind known to the writer; it is in excellent preservation, save that the top is split. It shews signs of having been made with considerable skill and care.

CARVED OAK CHAIR. CARVED OAK CHAIR.

From Abingdon Park. In the Carpenters' Hall.

(From Photos in the S. Kensington Museum Album.)

EARLY XVII. CENTURY. ENGLISH.

The Science and Art Department keep for reference an album containing photographs, not only of many of the specimens in the different museums under its control, but also of some of those which have been lent for a temporary exhibition. The illustration of the above two chairs is taken from this source, the album having been placed at the writer's disposal by the courtesy of Mr. Jones, of the Photographic Department. The left-hand chair, from Abingdon Park, is said to have belonged to Lady Barnard, Shakespeare's grand-daughter, and the other may still be seen in the Hall of the Carpenters' Company.

OAK CHIMNEY PIECE.

Removed from an old house in Lime Street, City.

(South Kensington Museum.)

PERIOD: JAMES I.

In the Hall of the Barbers' Company in Monkswell Street, the Court room, which is lighted with an octagonal cupola, was designed by Inigo Jones as a Theatre of Anatomy, when the Barbers and Surgeons were one corporation. There are some three or four tables of this period in the Hall, having four legs connected by stretchers, quite plain; the moulded edges of the table tops are also without enrichment. These plain oak slabs, and also the stretchers, have been renewed, but in exactly the same style as the original work; the legs, however, are the old ones, and are simple columns with plain turned capitals and bases. Other tables of this period are to be found in a few old country mansions; there is one in Longleat, which, the writer has been told, has a small drawer at the end, to hold the copper coins with which the retainers of the Marquis of Bath's ancestors used to play a game of shovel penny. In the Chapter House in Westminster Abbey, there is also one of these plain substantial James I. tables, which is singular in being nearly double the width of those which were usually made at this time. As the Chapter House was, until comparatively recent years, used as a room for the storage of records, this table was probably made, not as a dining table, but for some other purpose requiring greater width.

OAK SIDEBOARD IN THE S. KENSINGTON MUSEUM.

PERIOD: WILLIAM III.

In the chapter on Renaissance there was an allusion to Charterhouse, which was purchased for its present purpose by Thomas Sutton in 1611, and in the chapel may be seen to-day the original communion table placed there by the founder. It is of carved oak, with a row of legs running lengthways underneath the middle, and four others at the corners; these, while being cast in the simple lines already noticed in describing the tables in the Barbers' Hall, and the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey, are enriched by carving from the base, to the third of the height of the leg, and the frieze of the table is also carved in low relief. The rich carved wood screen which supports the organ loft is also of Jacobean work.

There is in the South Kensington Museum a carved oak chest, with a centre panel representing the Adoration of the Magi, of about this date, 1615-20; it is mounted on a stand which has three feet in front and two behind, which are much more primitive and quaint than the ornate supports of Elizabethan carving; while the only ornaments on the drawer fronts which form the frieze of the stand are moulded panels, in the centre of each of which there is a turned knob by which to open the drawer. This chest and the table which forms its stand were probably not intended for each other. The illustration on the previous page shews the stand, which is a good representation of the carving of this time, i.e., early seventeenth century. The round-backed arm chair which the Museum purchased in 1891 from the Hailstone Collection, though dated 1614, is really more Elizabethan in design than one would expect.

There is no greater storehouse for specimens of furniture in use during the Jacobean period than Knole, that stately mansion of the Sackville family, then the property of the Earls of Dorset. In the King's Bedroom, which is said to have been specially prepared and furnished for the visit of King James I., the public, owing to the courtesy and generous spirit of the present Lord Sackville, can still see the bed, originally of crimson silk, but now much faded, elaborately embroidered with gold. It is said to have cost £8,000, and the chairs and seats, which are believed to have formed part of the original equipment of the room, are in much the same position as they then occupied.

In the carved work of this furniture we cannot help thinking that the hand of the Venetian craftsman is to be traced, and it is probable that they were either imported or copied from a pattern brought over for that purpose. A suite of furniture of that time appears to have consisted of six stools and two arm chairs, almost entirely covered with velvet, having the "

" form supports, which, so far as the writer's investigations have gone, appear to have come from Venice. In the "Leicester" gallery at Knole there is a portrait of the King, painted by Mytens, seated on such a chair, and just below the picture is placed the chair which is said to be identical with the one portrayed. It is similar to the one reproduced on page [100] from a drawing of Mr. Charles Eastlake's.

SEATS AT KNOLE.

Covered with Crimson Silk Velvet.

PERIOD: JAMES I.

In the same gallery also are three sofas or settees upholstered with crimson velvet, and one of these has an accommodating rack, by which either end can be lowered at will, to make a more convenient lounge.

ARM CHAIR.

Covered with Velvet, trimmed with Fringe, and studded with Copper Nails.

EARLY XVII. CENTURY.

(From a Drawing of the Original at Knole, by Mr. Charles Eastlake.)

This excellent example of Jacobean furniture has been described and sketched by Mr. Charles Eastlake in "Hints on Household Taste." He says: "The joints are properly 'tenoned' and pinned together in such a manner as to ensure its constant stability. The back is formed like that of a chair, with a horizontal rail only at its upper edge, but it receives additional strength from the second rail, which is introduced at the back of the seat." In Marcus Stone's well-known picture of "The Stolen Keys," this is the sofa portrayed. The arm chair illustrated above is part of the same suite of furniture. The furniture of another room at Knole is said to have been presented by King James to the first Earl of Middlesex, who had married into the Dorset family. The author has been furnished with a photograph of this room; and the illustration prepared from this will give the reader a better idea than a lengthy description.

THE "SPANGLE" BEDROOM AT KNOLE.

The Furniture of this room was presented by James I. to the Earl of Middlesex.

(From a Photo by Mr. Corke, of Sevenoaks.)

It seems from a comparison of the Knole furniture with the designs of some of the tables and other woodwork produced during the same reign, bearing the impress of the more severe style of Inigo Jones, that there were then in England two styles of decorative furniture. One of these, simple and severe, shewing a reaction from the grotesque freedom of Elizabethan carving, and the other, copied from Venetian ornamental woodwork, with cupids on scrolls forming the supports of stools, having these ornamental legs connected by stretchers, the design of which is, in the case of those in the King's Bedchamber at Knole, a couple of cupids in a flying attitude holding up a crown. This kind of furniture was generally gilt, and under the black paint of those at Knole, traces of the gold are still to be seen.

Mr. Eastlake visited Knole, and made a careful examination and sketches of the Jacobean furniture there, and has well described and illustrated it in his book just referred to; he mentions that he found there a slip of paper tucked beneath the webbing of a settle, with an inscription in Old English characters which fixed the date of some of the furniture at 1620. Mr. Lionel Sackville West has confirmed this date in a letter to the author, by a reference to the heirloom book, which also bears out the author's opinion that some of the more richly-carved furniture of this time was imported from Italy.

In the Lady Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral there is a monument of Dean Boys, who died in 1625. This represents the Dean seated in his library, at a table with turned legs, over which there is a tapestry cover. Books line the walls of the section of the room shewn in the stone carving; it differs little from the sanctum of a literary man of the present day. There are many other monuments which represent furniture of this period, and amongst the more curious is that of a child of King James I., in Westminster Abbey, close to the monument of Mary Queen of Scots. The child is sculptured about life size, in a carved cradle of the time.

Holland House, Kensington, is a good example of a Jacobean mansion. The chief interest, inseparable from this house, is, of course, associated with the memory of the third Lord Holland, "nephew of Fox and friend of Grey," who gathered around him within its walls the most brilliant and distinguished society of the day, presiding over it with that genial courtesy which was the rich inheritance of his family.

Macaulay, at the conclusion of his essay on Lord Holland, has, with his unrivalled power of description, told us of the charm and fascination of "that circle in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place"—enumerating also the names of many of those who formed it, and expatiating on "the grace and the kindness, far more admirable than grace, with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed." Princess Liechtenstein has also preserved for us, in "Holland House," a charming record of many of the historical associations of this famous old place.

There are in the house also many objects of great interest, of various periods, which, by the courtesy of Lady Ilchester, the writer has been allowed to examine. Our business, however, is with the 17th century, and we must now return to a consideration of the furniture and woodwork of that time.

The Holland House of the time of James I. was commenced in the year 1607, as "Cope Castle," by Sir Walter Cope, who then owned the extensive "Manor" of Kensington. Cope's daughter married Sir Henry Rich, who became Earl of Holland in 1624, and was executed by the Parliamentarians in 1649. He it was who added to the house the wings and arcades. Princess Liechtenstein tells us the story of "the solitary ghost of its first lord, who, according to tradition, issues forth at midnight from behind a secret door, and walks slowly through the scenes of his former triumph with his head in his hand."

There is some good old woodwork of the early part of the seventeenth century, and the panelling and chimney piece of the famous "white parlour" are of the times of James I., the work, still in good preservation, being in the best Jacobean taste. The panels are formed by bold uncarved mouldings, separated at intervals by flat pilasters with fluted shafts and carved capitals; the panels in the frieze, between the trusses, which support a "dentilled" cornice, are enriched with fretwork ornaments in relief, and the whole has a simple but decorative architectural effect of the best English rendering of the Renaissance. The "gilt room," where the ghost is said to commence its nocturnal promenade, was decorated by Francesco Cleyn, an Italian, who also worked for the King.[9] The room was prepared for a ball which was purposed to be given in honor of the marriage of Prince Charles to Henrietta Maria. There are now on the chief staircase of Holland House, two chairs with their backs carved as shells, and with legs shaped and ornamented with scrollwork, and masks with swags of foliage, which are also attributed to Cleyn. Horace Walpole, in a reference to Holland House, has mentioned these chairs in "Anecdotes of Painters." "Two chairs, carved and gilt, with large shells for backs ... were undoubtedly from his designs, and are evidences of his taste." Walpole also mentions a garden seat of similar design by Cleyn. A drawing of one of these chairs forms the tail piece of this chapter.

There is another Jacobean house of considerable interest, the property of Mr. T. G. Jackson, A.R.A. An account of it has been written by him, and was read to some members of the Surrey Archæological Society, who visited Eagle House, Wimbledon, in 1890. It appears to have been the country seat of a London merchant, who lived early in the seventeenth century. Mr. Jackson bears witness to the excellence of the workmanship, and expresses his opinion that the carved and decorated enrichments were executed by native and not by foreign craftsmen. He gives an illustration in his pamphlet of the sunk "Strap Work," which, though Jacobean in its date, is also found in the carved ornament of Elizabeth's time.

It is very probable that had the reign of Charles I. been less troublous, this would have been a time of much progress in the domestic arts in England. The Queen was of the Medici family, Italian literature was in vogue, and Italian artists therefore would probably have been encouraged to come over and instruct our workmen. The King himself was an excellent mechanic, and boasted that he could earn his living at almost any trade save the making of hangings. His father had established the tapestry works at Mortlake; he himself had bought the Raffaelle Cartoons to encourage the work—and much was to be hoped from a monarch who had the taste and judgment to induce a Vandyke to settle in England. The Civil war, whatever it has achieved for our liberty as subjects, certainly hindered by many years our progress as an artistic people.

COUCH, ARM CHAIR, AND SINGLE CHAIR.

Carved and Gilt.

Upholstered in Rich Silk Velvet. Part of Suite at Penshurst Place.

Also an Italian Cabinet.

PERIOD: CHARLES II.

But to consider some of the furniture of this period in detail. Until the sixteenth century was well advanced the word "table" in our language meant an index or pocket book (tablets), or a list, not an article of furniture. The table was, as we have noticed in the time of Elizabeth, composed of boards generally hinged in the middle for convenience of storage, and supported on trestles which were sometimes ornamented by carved work. The word trestle, by the way, is said to be derived from the "threstule," i.e., three-footed supports, and these three-legged stools and benches formed in those days the seats for everyone except the master of the house. Chairs were, as we have seen, scarce articles; sometimes there was only one, a throne-like seat for an honoured guest or for the master or mistress of the house, and doubtless our present phrase of "taking the chair" is a survival of the high place a chair then held amongst the household gods of a gentleman's mansion. Shakespeare possibly had the boards and trestles in his mind when, about 1596, he wrote in "Romeo and Juliet"—

"Come, musicians, play!

A hall! a hall! give room and foot it, girls

More light, ye knaves, and turn the tables up"

And as the scene in "King Henry the Fourth" is placed some years earlier than that of "Romeo and Juliet," it is probable that "table" had then its earlier meaning, for the Archbishop of York is made to say:—

". . . . The King is weary

Of dainty and such picking grievances;

And, therefore, will he wipe his tables clean,

And keep no tell-tale to his memory."

Mr. Maskell, in his handbook on "Ivories," tells us that the word "table" was also used, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to denote the religious carvings and paintings in churches; and he quotes Chaucer to show that the word was also used to describe the game of draughts.

"They dancen and they play at chess and tables."

Now, however, at the time of which we are writing, chairs were becoming more plentiful and the table was a definite article of furniture. In inventories of the time and for some twenty years previous, as has been already noticed in the preceding chapter, we find mention of "joyned table," framed table, "standing" and "dormant" table, and the word "board" had gradually disappeared. It remains to us, however, as a souvenir of the past, in the name we still give to a body of men meeting for the transaction of business, and, in connection with social life, in the phrase "the festive board." The width of these earlier tables had been about 30 inches, and guests sat on one side only, with their backs to the wall, in order, it may be supposed, to be the more ready to resist any sudden raid which might be made on the house during the relaxation of the supper hour, and this custom remained in use long after there was any necessity for its observance.

In the time of Charles the First the width was increased, and a contrivance was introduced for doubling the area of the top when required, by drawing out two flaps from either end, and by means of a wedge-shaped arrangement, the centre or main table top was lowered, and the whole table, thus increased, became level. Illustrations taken from Mr. G. T. Robinson's article on furniture in the "Art Journal" of 1881, represent a "Drawinge table," which was the name by which these "latest improvements" were known. The black lines were of stained pear tree, let into the oak: the acorn shaped member of the leg is an imported Dutch design, which became very common about this time, and was applied to the supports of cabinets, sometimes as in the illustration, plainly turned, but frequently carved. Another table of this period was the "folding table," which was made with twelve, sixteen, or with twenty legs, is shewn in the illustration of this example, and which, as its name implies, would shut up into about one third of its extended size. There is one of these tables in the Stationers' Hall.

FOLDING TABLE AT PENSHURST PLACE.

PERIOD: CHARLES II. TO JAMES II.

"DRAWINGE" TABLE WITH BLACK LINES INLAID.

PERIOD: CHARLES II.

It was probably in the early part of the seventeenth century that the Couch became known in England. It was not common, nor quite in the form in which we now recognize that luxurious article of furniture, but was probably a carved oak settle, with cushions so arranged as to form a resting lounge by day. Shakespeare speaks of the "branch'd velvet gown" of Malvolio having come from a "day bed," and there is also an allusion to one in Richard III.[10]

THEODORE HOOK'S CHAIR.

SCROWLED CHAIR IN CARVED OAK.

In a volume of "Notes and Queries" there is a note which would shew that the lady's wardrobe of this time (1622) was a very primitive article of furniture. Mention is made there of a list of articles of wearing apparel belonging to a certain Lady Elizabeth Morgan, sister to Sir Nathaniel Rich, which, according to the old document there quoted, dated the 13th day of November, 1622, "are to be found in a great bar'd chest in my Ladie's Bedchamber." To judge from this list, Lady Morgan was a person of fashion in those days. We may also take it for granted that beyond the bedstead, a prie-dieu chair, a bench, some chests, and the indispensable mirror, there was not much else with which to furnish a lady's bedroom in the reign of James I. or that of his successor.

CHAIR USED BY KING CHARLES I. DURING HIS TRIAL.

The "long settle" and "scrowled chair" were two other kinds of seats in use from the time of Charles I. to that of James II. The illustrations are taken from authenticated specimens in the collection of Mr. Dalton, of Scarborough. They are most probably of Yorkshire manufacture, about the middle of the seventeenth century. The ornament in the panel of the back of the chair is inlaid with box or ash, stained to a greenish black to represent green ebony, and with a few small pieces of rich red wood then in great favour. Mr. G. T. Robinson, to whose article mentioned above we are indebted for the description, says that this wood was "probably brought by some buccaneer from the West." He also mentions another chair of the Stuart period, which formed a table, and subsequently became the property of Theodore Hook, who carefully preserved its pedigree. It was purchased by its late owner, Mr. Godwin, editor of "The Builder." A woodcut of this chair is on page [107].

SETTLE OF CARVED OAK.

Probably made in Yorkshire.

PERIOD: CHARLES II.

Another chair to which there is an historical interest attached is that in which Charles I. sat during his trial; this was exhibited in the Stuart Exhibition in London in 1889. The illustration on page [108] is taken from a print in "The Illustrated London News" of the time.

In addition to the chairs of oak, carved, inlaid, and plain, which were in some cases rendered more comfortable by having cushions tied to the backs and seats, the upholstered chair, which we have seen had been brought from Venice in the early part of the reign of James I., now came into general use. Few have survived, but there are still to be seen in pictures of the period, chairs represented as covered with crimson velvet, studded with brass nails, the seat being trimmed with fringe, similar to that at Knole, illustrated on page [100].

CARVED OAK CHAIR. CARVED OAK CHAIR, JACOBEAN STYLE.

Said to have been used by some of Cromwell's family. (The original in the Author's possession.)

(The original in the possession of T. Knowles Parr, Esq.)

There is in the Historical Portrait Gallery in Bethnal Green Museum, a painting by an unknown artist, but dated 1642, of Sir William Lenthall, who was Speaker of the House of Commons on the memorable occasion when, on the 4th of January in that year, Charles I. entered the House to demand the surrender of the five members. The chair on which Sir William is seated answers this description, and is very similar to the one used by Charles I. (illustrated on page [108]).

The importation of scarce foreign woods gave an impetus to inlaid work in England, which had been crude and rough in the time of Elizabeth. In the marqueterie of Italy, France, Holland, Germany, and Spain, considerable excellence had already been attained. Mahogany had been discovered by Raleigh as early as 1595, but did not come into general use until the middle of the eighteenth century.

During the year 1891, owing to the extension of the Great Eastern Railway premises at Bishopsgate Street, an old house of antiquarian interest was pulled down, and generously presented by the Company to the South Kensington Museum. This has been erected so as to enable the visitor to see a good example of the exterior as well as some of the interior woodwork of a quaint house of the middle of the seventeenth century. It was the residence of Sir Paul Pindar, during the time of Charles I., and it contained a carved oak chimneypiece, with some other good ornamental woodwork of this period.

STAIRCASE IN GENERAL IRETON'S HOUSE, DATED 1630.

In the illustration of a child's chair, which is said to have been used by some of Cromwell's family, can be seen an example of carved oak of this time; it was lent to the writer by its present owner, in whose family it is an heirloom, one of his ancestors having married the Protector's daughter. The ornament has no particular style, and it may be taken for granted that the period of the Commonwealth was not marked by any progress in decorative Art. The illustration of a staircase on p. [110] proves that there were exceptions to the prevalent Puritan objection to figure ornament. In one of Mrs. S. C. Hall's papers, "Pilgrimages to English Shrines," contributed in 1849 to "The Art Journal," she describes the interior of the house which was built for Bridget, the Protector's daughter, who married General Ireton. The handsome oak staircase had the newels surmounted by carved figures, representing different grades of men in the General's army—a captain, common soldier, piper, drummer, etc., etc., while the spaces between the balustrades were filled in with devices emblematical of warfare, the ceiling being decorated in the fashion of the period. At the time Mrs. Hall wrote, the house bore Cromwell's name and the date 1630.

SETTEE AND CHAIR.

In carved ebony, part of the Indo-Portuguese Suite at Penshurst Place, with Flemish Folding Chair.

PERIOD: CHARLES II.

We may date from the Commonwealth the more general use of chairs; people sat as they chose, and no longer regarded the chair as the lord's place. A style of chair we still recognise as Cromwellian was imported from Holland about this time—plain square backs and seats covered with brown leather, studded with brass nails. The legs, which are now generally turned with a spiral twist, were in Cromwell's time plain and simple.

The residence of Charles II. abroad had accustomed him and his friends to the much more luxurious furniture of France and Holland. With the Restoration came a foreign Queen, a foreign Court, French manners, and French literature. Cabinets, chairs, tables, and couches were imported into England from the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal; and our craftsmen profited by new ideas and new patterns, and what was of equal consequence, an increased demand for decorative articles of furniture. The King of Portugal had ceded Bombay, one of the Portuguese Indian Stations, to the new Queen of England, and there is a chair of this Indo-Portuguese work, carved in ebony, now in the Museum at Oxford, which was given by Charles II. either to Elias Ashmole or to Evelyn. The chair is very similar to one at Penshurst; it is grouped with a settee of like design, together with a small folding chair which Mr. G. T. Robinson, in his article on "Seats," has described as Italian, but which we take the liberty of pronouncing to be Flemish, judging by a similar one now in the South Kensington Museum.

In connection with this Indo-Portuguese furniture, it would seem that spiral turning became known and fashionable in England during the reign of Charles II., and in some chairs of English make, which have come under the writer's notice, the legs have been carved to imitate the effects of spiral turning—an amount of superfluous labour which would scarcely have been incurred, but for the fact that the country house-carpenter of this time had an imported model, which he copied, without knowing how to produce by means of the lathe the effect which had just come into fashion. There are, too, in certain illustrations in "Shaw's Ancient Furniture," some lamp-holders, in which this spiral turning is overdone, a fault which is frequently to be met with when any particular kind of ornament comes into vogue.

The suite of furniture at Penshurst Place (illustrated), which comprises thirteen pieces, was probably imported about this time; two of the smaller chairs appear to have their original cushions, the others have been re-covered by the late Lord de l'Isle and Dudley. The spindles of the backs of two of the chairs are of ivory; the carving, which is in solid ebony, is much finer on some than on others.

We gather a good deal of information about the furniture of this period from the famous diary of Evelyn. He thus describes Hampton Court Palace, as it appeared to him at the time of its preparation for the reception of Catherine of Braganza, the bride of Charles II., who spent the royal honeymoon in this historic building, which had in its time sheltered for their brief spans of favour the six wives of Henry VIII., and the sickly boyhood of Edward VI.:—

"It is as noble and uniform a pile as Gothic architecture can make it. There is incomparable furniture in it, especially hangings designed by Raphael, very rich with gold. Of the tapestries I believe the world can show nothing nobler of the kind than the stories of Abraham and Tobit.[11]... The Queen's bed was an embroidery of silver on crimson velvet, and cost £8,000, being a present made by the States of Holland when his Majesty returned. The great looking-glass and toilet of beaten massive gold were given by the Queen Mother. The Queen brought over with her from Portugal such Indian cabinets as had never before been seen here." Evelyn wrote, of course, before Wren made his Renaissance additions to the Palace.

After the Great Fire, which occurred in 1666, and destroyed some 13,000 houses, and no less than 89 churches, Sir Christopher Wren was given an opportunity, unprecedented in history, of displaying his power of design and reconstruction. Writing of this great architect, Macaulay says, "The austere beauty of the Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was, like most of his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our side of the Alps has imitated with so much success the magnificence of the palace churches of Italy. Even the superb Louis XIV. has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison with St. Paul's."

Sedes, ecce tibi! quæ tot produxit alumnos,

Quot gremio nutrit Granta, quot Isis habet.

From the Original by Sir Peter Lely, presented to Dᴿ. Busby by King Charles.

"SEDES BUSBIANA."

From a Print in the possession of J. C. THYNNE, Esq.

PERIOD: CHARLES II.

Wren's great masterpiece was commenced in 1675, and completed in 1710, and its building therefore covers a period of 35 years, carrying us through the reigns of James II., William III. and Mary, and well on to the end of Anne's reign. The admirable work which he did during this time, and which has effected so much for the adornment of our Metropolis, had a marked influence on the ornamental woodwork of the second half of the seventeenth century: in the additions which he made to Hampton Court Palace, in Bow Church, in the Hospitals of Greenwich and of Chelsea, there is a sumptuousness of ornament in stone and marble, which shew the influence exercised on his mind by the desire to rival the grandeur of Louis XIV., the Fountain Court at Hampton being in direct imitation of the Palace of Versailles. The carved woodwork of the choir of St. Paul's, with fluted columns supporting a carved frieze; the richly carved panels, and the beautiful figure work on both organ lofts, afford evidence that the oak enrichments followed the marble and stone ornament. The swags of fruit and flowers, the cherubs' heads with folded wings, and other details in Wren's work, closely resemble the designs executed by Gibbons, whose carving will be noticed later on.

It may be mentioned here that amongst the few churches in the city which escaped the Great Fire, and contained woodwork of particular note, are St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and the Charterhouse Chapel, which contain the original pulpits of about the sixteenth century.

The famous Dr. Busby, who for 55 years was head master of Westminster School, was a great favourite of King Charles, and a picture, painted by Sir Peter Lely, is said to have been presented to the Doctor by His Majesty; it is called "Sedes Busbiana." Prints from this old picture are scarce, and the writer is indebted to Mr. John C. Thynne for the loan of his copy, from which the illustration is taken. The portrait in the centre, of the Pedagogue aspiring to the mitre, is that of Dr. South, who succeeded Busby, and whose monument in Westminster Abbey is next to his. The illustration is interesting, as although it may not have been actually taken from a chair itself, it shews a design in the mind of a contemporary artist.

Of the Halls of the City Guilds, there is none more quaint, and in greater contrast to the bustle of the neighbourhood, than the Hall of the Brewers' Company, in Addle Street, City. This was partially destroyed, like most of the older Halls, by the Great Fire, but was one of the first to be restored and refurnished. In the kitchen are still to be seen the remains of an old trestle, and other relics of an earlier period, but the hall or dining room, and the Court Room, are complete, with very slight additions, since the date of their interior equipment in 1670 to 1673. The Court Room has a richly carved chimney piece in oak, nearly black with age, the design of which is a shield with a winged head, palms, and swags of fruit and flowers, while on the shield itself is an inscription, stating that this room was wainscoted by Alderman Knight, Master of the Company, and Lord Mayor of the City of London, in the year 1670. The room itself is exceedingly quaint with its high wainscoting and windows, reminding one of the portholes of a ship's cabin, while the chief window looks out on to the old-fashioned garden, giving the beholder altogether a pleasing illusion, carrying him back to the days of Charles II.

The chief room or Hall is still more handsomely decorated with carved oak of this time. The actual date, 1673, is over the doorway on a tablet which bears the names, in the letters of the period, of the master, "James Reading, Esq.," and the wardens, "Mr. Robert Lawrence," "Mr. Samuel Barber," and "Mr. Henry Sell."

The names of other masters and wardens are also written over the carved escutcheons of their respective arms, and the whole room is one of the best specimens in existence of the oak carving of this date. At the western end is the Master's chair, of which by the courtesy of Mr. Higgins, Clerk to the Company, we are able to give an illustration on page [115]; the shield-shaped back, the carved drapery, and the coat-of-arms with the company's motto, are all characteristic features, as are also the Corinthian columns and arched pediments in the oak decorations of the room. The broken swan-necked pediment, which surmounts the cornice of the room over the chair, is probably a more recent addition, this ornament having come in about thirty years later.

There are also the old dining tables and benches: these are as plain and simple as possible. In the Court Room is a table, which was formerly in the Company's barge; it has some good inlaid work in the arcading which connects the two end standards, and some old carved lions' feet; the top and other parts have been renewed. There is also an old oak fire-screen of about the end of the seventeenth century.

Another city hall, the interior woodwork of which dates from just after the Great Fire, is that of the Stationers' Company, in Ave Maria Lane, close to Ludgate Hill. Mr. Charles Robert Rivington, the present Clerk to the Company, has written a pamphlet, full of very interesting records of this ancient and worshipful corporation, from which the following paragraph is a quotation:—"The first meeting of the court after the fire, was held at Cook's Hall, and the subsequent courts, until the hall was re-built, at the Lame Hospital Hall, i.e., St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1670 a committee was appointed to re-build the hall; and in 1674 the Court agreed with Stephen Colledge (the famous Protestant joiner, who was afterwards hanged at Oxford in 1681) to wainscot the hall 'with well-seasoned and well-matched wainscot, according to a model delivered in for the sum of £300.' His work is now to be seen in excellent condition."

THE MASTER'S CHAIR.

Hall of the Brewers' Company. (From a pen and ink sketch by H. Evans.)

Mr. Rivington read his paper to the London and Middlesex Archæological Society in 1881; and the writer can with pleasure confirm his statement as to the condition, in 1899, of this fine specimen of seventeenth century work. Less ornate and elaborate than the Brewers' Hall, the panels are only slightly relieved with carved mouldings; but the end of the room, or main entrance, opposite the place of the old daïs (long since removed), is somewhat similar to that in the Brewers' Hall, and presents a fine architectural effect, which will be observed in the illustration on page [117].

CARVED OAK LIVERY CUPBOARD.

In the Hall of the Stationers' Company. Made in 1674, the curved pediment added later, probably in 1788.

There is above an illustration of one of the two livery cupboards, which formerly stood on the daïs, and these are good examples of the cupboards for display of plate of this period. The lower part was formerly the receptacle for unused viands, which were distributed to the poor after the feast. In their original state these livery cupboards finished with a straight cornice, the broken pediments with the eagle (the Company's crest) having most probably been added when the Hall was, to quote an inscription on a shield, "repaired and beautified in the mayoralty of the Right Honourable William Gill, in the year 1788," when Mr. Thomas Hooke was Master, and Mr. Field and Mr. Rivington (the present Clerk's grandfather) Wardens.

ARM CHAIRS.

Chair upholstered in Spitalfields silk. Carved and upholstered Chair. Chair upholstered in Spitalfields silk.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE. HARDWICK HALL. KNOLE, SEVENOAKS.

PERIOD: WILLIAM III. TO QUEEN ANNE.

There is still preserved in a lumber room one of the old benches of seventeenth century work—now replaced in the hall by modern folding chairs. This is of oak, with turned skittle-shaped legs slanting outwards, and connected and strengthened by plain stretchers. The old tables are still in their original places.

CARVED OAK SCREEN.

In the Hall of the Stationers' Company, erected in 1674: the Royal Coat of Arms has been since added.

Another example of seventeenth century oak panelling is the handsome chapel of the Mercers' Hall—the only city Company possessing their own chapel—but only the lining of the walls and the reredos are of the original work, the remainder having been added some ten or twelve years ago, when some of the original carving was made use of in the new work. Indeed, in this magnificent hall, about the most spacious of the old City Corporation Palaces, there is a great deal of new work mixed with old—new chimney pieces and old overmantels—some of Grinling Gibbons' carved enrichments, so painted and varnished as to have lost much of their character; these have been applied to the oak panels in the large dining hall.

The woodwork lining of living rooms had been undergoing changes since the commencement of the period of which we are now writing. In 1638 a man named Christopher had taken out a patent for enamelling and gilding leather, which was used as a wall decoration over the oak panelling. This decorated leather had hitherto been imported from Holland and Spain; when this was not used, and tapestry, which was very expensive, was not obtainable, the plaster was roughly ornamented. Somewhat later than this, pictures were let into the wainscot to form part of the decoration, for in 1669 Evelyn, when writing of the house of the "Earl of Norwich," in Epping Forest, says, "A good many pictures put into the wainscot which Mr. Baker, his lordship's predecessor, brought from Spaine." Indeed, subsequently the wainscot became simply the frame for pictures, and the same writer deplores the disuse of timber, and expresses his opinion that a sumptuary law ought to be passed to restore the "ancient use of timber." Although no law was enacted on the subject, yet, some twenty years later, the whirligig of fashion brought about the revival of the custom of lining rooms with oak panelling.

It is said that about 1670 Evelyn found Grinling Gibbons in a small thatched house on the outskirts of Deptford, and introduced him to the King, who gave him an appointment on the Board of Works, and patronised him with extensive orders. The character of his carving is well known; generally using lime-tree as the vehicle of his designs, his life-like birds and flowers, groups of fruit, and heads of cherubs, are easily recognised. One of the rooms in Windsor Castle is decorated with the work of his chisel, which can also be seen in St. Paul's Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace, Chatsworth, Burleigh, and perhaps his best, in Petworth House, in Sussex. He also sculptured in stone. The base of King Charles' statue at Windsor, the font of St. James', Piccadilly (round the base of which are figures of Adam and Eve), are his work, as is also the lime-tree border of festoon work over the Communion table. Gibbons was an Englishman, but appears to have spent his boyhood in Holland, where he was christened "Grinling." He died in 1721. His pupils were Samuel Watson, a Derbyshire man, who did much of the carved work at Chatsworth, Drevot of Brussels, and Lawreans of Mechlin. Gibbons and his pupils founded a school of carving in England which has been continued by tradition to the present day.

SILVER FURNITURE AT KNOLE.

(From a Photo by Mr. Corke, of Sevenoaks.)

A somewhat important immigration of French workmen occurred about this time, owing to the persecutions of Protestants in France, which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, by Louis XIV., and these refugees bringing with them their skill, their patterns and ideas, influenced the carving of our ornamental frames, and the designs of some of our furniture. This influence is to be traced in some of the contents of Hampton Court Palace, particularly in the carved and gilt centre tables and the torchères of French design but of English workmanship. It is said that no less than 50,000 families left France, some thousands of whom belonged to the industrial classes, and settled in England and Germany, where their descendants still remain. They introduced the manufacture of crystal chandeliers, and founded our Spitalfields silk industry, and other trades till then little practised in England.

The beautiful silver furniture at Knole belongs to this time, having been made for one of the Earls of Dorset, in the reign of James II. The illustration is from a photograph taken by Mr. Corke, of Sevenoaks. Electrotypes of the originals are in the South Kensington Museum. From two other suites at Knole, consisting of a looking glass, a table, and a pair of torchères, in the one case of plain walnut wood, and in the other of ebony with silver mountings, it would appear that a toilet suite of furniture of the time of James II. generally consisted of articles more or less costly, according to circumstances, but of a similar pattern to those shewn in the illustration. The silver table bears the English Hall mark of the reign.

Specimens of English furniture, dating from about 1680 to 1700, distinctly shew the influence of Flemish design. The Stadtholder, King William III., with his Dutch friends, imported many of their household gods, and our English craftsmen seem to have copied these very closely. The chairs and settees in the South Kensington Museum, and at Hampton Court Palace, have the shaped back, with a wide inlaid or carved upright bar; the cabriole leg and the carved shell ornament on the knee of the leg, and on the top of the back, which are still to be seen in many of the old Dutch houses.

There are a few examples of furniture of this date, which it is almost impossible to distinguish from Flemish, but in some others there is a characteristic decoration in marqueterie, which may be described as a seaweed scroll in holly or box wood, inlaid on a pale walnut ground. A good example of this is to be seen in the upright "grandfather's clock" in the South Kensington Museum, the effect being a pleasing harmony of color.

In the same collection there is also a walnut wood centre table, dating from about 1700, which has twisted legs and a stretcher, the top being inlaid with intersecting circles, relieved by the inlay of some stars in ivory.

As we have observed with regard to French furniture of this time, mirrors came more generally into use, and the frames were both carved and inlaid. There are several of these at Hampton Court Palace, all with bevelled edged plate glass; some have frames entirely of glass, the short lengths which make the frame having, in some cases, the joints covered by rosettes of blue glass, and in others a narrow moulding of gilt work on each side of the frame. In one room (the Queen's Gallery) the frames are painted in colors and relieved by a little gilding.

The taste for importing old Dutch furniture, also lacquer cabinets from Japan, not only gave relief to the appearance of a well furnished apartment of this time, but also brought new ideas to our designers and workmen. Our collectors, too, were at this time appreciating the Oriental china, both blue and white, and colored, which had a good market in Holland, so that with the excellent silversmith's work then obtainable, it was possible in the time of William and Mary to arrange a room with more artistic effect than at an earlier period, when the tapestry and panelling of the the walls, a table, the livery cupboard previously described, and some three or four chairs, had formed almost the whole furniture of reception rooms.

The first mention of corner cupboards appears to have been made in an advertisement of a Dutch joiner in "The Postman" of March 8th, 1711; these cupboards, with their carved pediments, being part of the modern fittings of a room of the time of Queen Anne.

The oak presses common to this and earlier times are formed of an upper and lower part, the former sometimes being three sides of an octagon with the top supported by columns, while the lower half is straight, and the whole is carved with incised ornament. These useful articles of furniture, in the absence of wardrobes, are described in inventories of the time (1680-1720) as "press cupboards," "great cupboards," "wainscot," and "joyned cupboards."

The first mention of a "Buerow," as our modern word "Bureau" was then spelt, is said by Dr. Lyon, in his American book, "The Colonial Furniture of New England," to have occurred in an advertisement in "The Daily Post" of January 4th, 1727. The same author quotes Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum, published in London, 1736, as defining the word "bureau" as "a cabinet or chest of drawers, or 'scrutoir' for depositing papers or accounts."

In the latter half of the eighteenth century these convenient pieces of furniture came into more general use, and illustrations of them as designed and made by Chippendale and his contemporaries will be found in the chapter dealing with that period.

Dr. Lyon also quotes from an American newspaper, "The Boston News Letter" of April 16th, 1716, an advertisement which was evidently published when the tall clocks, which we now call "grandfathers' clocks," were a novelty, and as such were being introduced to the American public. We have already referred to one of those which is in the South Kensington Museum (date 1700), and no doubt the manufacture of similar clocks became more general during the first years of the eighteenth century. The advertisement alluded to runs, "Lately come from London, a parcel of very fine clocks—they go a week and repeat the hour when pulled" (a string caused the same action as the pressing of the handle of a repeating watch) "in Japan cases or walnut."

The style of decoration in furniture and woodwork which we recognise as "Queen Anne," apart from the marqueterie just described, appears, so far as the writer's investigations have gone, to be due to the designs of some eminent architects of the time. Sir James Vanbrugh was building Blenheim Place for the Queen's victorious general, and also Castle Howard. Nicholas Hawksmoor had erected St. George's, Bloomsbury, and James Gibbs, a Scotch architect and antiquary, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and the Royal Library at Oxford: a ponderous style characterises the woodwork interior of these buildings. We give an illustration of three designs for chimney pieces and overmantels by James Gibbs, the centre one of which illustrates the curved or "swan-necked" pediment, which became a favourite ornament about this time, until supplanted by the heavier triangular pediment which came in with "the Georges."

The contents of Hampton Court Palace afford evidence of the transition which took place in the design of woodwork and furniture from the time of William III. until that of George II. There is the Dutch chair with cabriole leg, the plain walnut card table also of Dutch design, which probably came over with the Stadtholder; then, there are the heavy draperies, and chairs almost completely covered by Spitalfields silk velvet, to be seen in the bedroom furniture of Queen Anne. Later on, as the heavy Georgian style predominated, there is the stiff ungainly gilt furniture, console tables with legs ornamented with the Greek key pattern badly applied, and finally, as the French school of design influenced our carvers, an improvement may be noticed in the tables and torchères, which, but for being a trifle clumsy, might pass for the work of French craftsmen of the same time. The state chairs, the bedstead, and some stools, which are said to have belonged to Queen Caroline, are further examples of the adoption of French fashion.

Nearly all writers on the subject of furniture and woodwork are agreed in considering that the earlier part of the period discussed in this chapter—namely, the seventeenth century, gives us the best examples of English work. As we have seen in noticing some of the earlier Jacobean examples already illustrated and described, it was a period marked by increased refinement of design, through the abandonment of the more grotesque and often coarse work of Elizabethan carving, and by soundness of construction and thorough workmanship.

THREE CHIMNEYPIECES.

DESIGNED BY JAMES GIBBS, ARCHITECT, IN 1739.

Oak furniture made in England during the seventeenth century, is still a credit to the painstaking craftsmen of those days, and even upholstered furniture, like the couches and chairs at Knole, after more than 250 years' service, are fit for use. When we come to deal with furniture of the present day, and the methods of production which are now in practice, a comparison will be made which must be to the credit of the Jacobean period.

In the foregoing chapters an attempt has been made to preserve, as far as possible, a certain continuity in the history of the subject matter of this work from the earliest times until after the Renaissance had been generally adopted in Europe. In this endeavour a greater amount of attention has been bestowed upon the furniture of a comparatively short period of English history, than upon that of other countries, but it is hoped that this fault will be forgiven by English readers.

It has now become necessary to interrupt this plan, and before returning to the consideration of European design and work, to devote a short chapter to those branches of the Industrial Arts connected with furniture, which flourished in China and Japan, in India, Persia, and Arabia, at a time anterior and subsequent to the Renaissance period in Europe.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CHAIR IN HOLLAND HOUSE.

See pp. [103], [104].

PATTERN OF A CHINESE LAC SCREEN.

(In the South Kensington Museum.)

CHAPTER V.

CHINESE FURNITURE: Probable source of artistic taste—Sir William Chambers quoted—Racinet's "Le Costume Historique"—Dutch Influence—The South Kensington and the late Duke of Edinburgh Collections—Processes of making Lacquer—Screens in the Kensington Museum. JAPANESE FURNITURE: Early History—Sir Rutherford Alcock and Lord Elgin—The Collection of the Shôgun—Famous Collections—Action of the present Government of Japan—Special characteristics. INDIAN FURNITURE: Early European influence—Furniture of the Moguls—Racinet's Work—Bombay Furniture—Ivory Chairs and Tables—Specimens in the India Museum. PERSIAN WOODWORK: Collection of Objets d'Art formed by General Murdoch Smith, R.E.—Industrial Arts of the Persians—Arab influence—South Kensington Specimens. SARACENIC WOODWORK: Oriental customs—Specimens in the South Kensington Museum of Arab Work—M. d'Aveune's Work.

CHINESE AND JAPANESE FURNITURE.

E have been unable to discover when the Chinese first began to use state or domestic furniture. Whether, like the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians, there was an early civilization which included the arts of joining, carving, and upholstering, we do not know; most probably there was; and from the plaster casts which one sees in our Indian Museum, of the ornamental stone gateways of Sanchi Tope, in Bhopal, Central India, it would appear that, in the early part of our Christian era, the carvings in wood of their neighbours and co-religionists, the Hindoos, represented figures of men and animals in the woodwork of sacred buildings or palaces. The marvellous dexterity in manipulating wood, ivory and stone which we recognize in the Chinese of to-day, is probably inherited from their early ancestors.

Sir William Chambers travelled in China in the early part of the eighteenth century. It was he who introduced "the Chinese style" into furniture and decoration, which was adopted by Chippendale and other makers, as will be noticed in the chapter dealing with that period of English furniture. He gives us the following description of the furniture he found in "The Flowery Land."

"The movables of the saloon consist of chairs, stools, and tables; made sometimes of rosewood, ebony, or lacquered work, and sometimes of bamboo only, which is cheap, and, nevertheless, very neat. When the movables are of wood, the seats of the stools are often of marble or porcelain, which, though hard to sit on, are far from unpleasant in a climate where the summer heats are so excessive. In the corners of the rooms are stands four or five feet high, on which they set plates of citrons, and other fragrant fruits, or branches of coral in vases of porcelain, and glass globes containing goldfish, together with a certain weed somewhat resembling fennel; on such tables as are intended for ornament only they also place the little landscapes, composed of rocks, shrubs, and a kind of lily that grows among pebbles covered with water. Sometimes, also, they have artificial landscapes made of ivory, crystal, amber, pearls, and various stones. I have seen some of these that cost over 300 guineas, but they are at least mere baubles, and miserable imitations of Nature. Besides these landscapes they adorn their tables with several vases of porcelain, and little vases of copper, which are held in great esteem. These are generally of simple and pleasing forms. The Chinese say they were made two thousand years ago, by some of their celebrated artists, and such as are real antiques (for there are many counterfeits) they buy at an extravagant price, giving sometimes no less than £300 sterling for one of them.

"The bedroom is divided from the saloon by a partition of folding doors, which, when the weather is hot, are in the night thrown open to admit the air. It is very small, and contains no other furniture than the bed, and some varnished chests in which they keep their apparel. The beds are very magnificent; the bedsteads are made much like ours in Europe—of rosewood, carved, or lacquered work; the curtains are of taffeta or gauze, sometimes flowered with gold, and commonly either blue or purple. About the top a slip of white satin, a foot in breadth, runs all round, on which are painted, in panels, different figures—flower pieces, landscapes, and conversation pieces, interspersed with moral sentences and fables written in Indian ink and vermilion."

From old paintings and engravings which date from about the fourteenth or fifteenth century, one gathers an idea of such furniture as existed in China and Japan in earlier times. In one of these, which is reproduced in Racinet's "Le Costume Historique," there is a Chinese princess reclining on a sofa which has a frame of black wood, visible, and slightly ornamented; it is upholstered with rich embroidery, for which these artistic people seem to have been famous from a very early period. A servant stands by her side to hand her the pipe of opium with which the monotony of the day was varied—one arm rests on a small wooden table or stand which is placed on the sofa, and which holds a flower vase and a pipe stand. On another old painting two figures are seated on mats playing a game which resembles draughts, the pieces being moved about on a little table with black and white squares like a modern chessboard, with shaped feet to raise it a convenient height for the players; on the floor, cups of tea stand ready at hand. Such pictures are generally ascribed to the fifteenth century, the period of the great Ming dynasty, which appears to have been the time of an improved culture and taste in China.

From this time and a century later (the sixteenth) also date those beautiful cabinets of lacquered wood enriched with ivory, mother-of-pearl, with silver and even with gold, which have been brought to England occasionally; but genuine specimens of this, and of the seventeenth century, are very scarce and extremely valuable.

The older Chinese furniture which one sees generally in Europe dates from the eighteenth century, and was made to order and imported by the Dutch; this explains the curious combination to be found of Oriental and European designs; thus there are screens with views of Amsterdam and other cities copied from paintings sent out for the purpose, while the frames of the panels are of carved rosewood of the fretted bamboo pattern, characteristic of the Chinese. Elaborate bedsteads, tables, and cabinets were also made, with panels of ash stained a dark color, and ornamented with hunting scenes, in which the representations of men and horses are of ivory, or sometimes with ivory faces and limbs, and the clothes chiefly of a brown colored wood.

In a beautiful table in the South Kensington Museum, which is said to have been made in Cochin-China, mother-of-pearl is largely used and produces a rich effect.

The furniture brought back by the late Duke of Edinburgh from China and Japan is of the usual character imported, and the remarks hereafter made on Indian or Bombay furniture apply equally to this adaptation of Chinese detail to European designs.

The most highly prized work of China and Japan in the way of decorative furniture is the beautiful lacquer work, and in the notice on French furniture of the eighteenth century, in a subsequent chapter, we shall see that the process was adopted in Holland, France, and England with more or less success.

It is worth while, however, to allude to it here a little more fully.

The process as practised in China is thus described by M. Jacquemart:—

"The wood when smoothly planed is covered with a sheet of thin paper or silk gauze, over which is spread a thick coating made of powdered red sandstone and buffalo's gall. This is allowed to dry, after which it is polished and rubbed with wax, or else receives a wash of gum water, holding chalk in solution. The varnish is laid on with a flat brush, and the article is placed in a damp drying room, whence it passes into the hands of a workman, who moistens and again polishes it with a piece of very fine grained soft clay slate, or with the stalks of the horse-tail or shave grass. It then receives a second coating of lacquer, and when dry is once more polished. These operations are repeated until the surface becomes perfectly smooth and lustrous. There are never applied less than three coatings and seldom more than eighteen, though some old Chinese and some Japan ware are said to have received upwards of twenty. As regards China, this seems quite exceptional, for there is in the Louvre a piece with the legend 'lou-tinsg,' i.e., six coatings, implying that even so many are unusual enough to be worthy of special mention."

There is as much difference between different kinds and qualities of lac as between different classes of marqueterie. The most highly prized is the LACQUER ON GOLD GROUND, and the first specimens of this work which reached Europe during the time of Louis XV. were presentation pieces from the Japanese Princes to some of the Dutch officials. This lacquer on gold ground is rarely found in furniture, and only as a rule in some of those charming little boxes, in which the luminous effect of the lac is heightened by the introduction of silver foliage on a minute scale, or of tiny landscape work and figures charmingly treated, partly with dull gold, and partly with gold highly burnished. Small placques of this beautiful ware were used for some of the choicest pieces of furniture made for Marie Antoinette, and mounted by Gouthière.

AVANTURINE lacquer closely imitates in color the sparkling mineral from which it takes its name, and a less highly finished preparation of it is used as a lining for the small drawers of cabinets. Another lacquer has a black ground, on which landscapes delicately traced in gold stand out in charming relief. Such pieces also were used by Riesener and mounted by Gouthière in some of the most costly furniture made for Marie Antoinette; specimens of such furniture are in the Louvre. It is this kind of lacquer, in varying qualities, that is usually found in cabinets, folding screens, coffers, tables, étagéres, and other ornamental articles. Enriched with inlay of mother-of-pearl, the effect of which is in some cases heightened and rendered more effective by transparent coloring on its reverse side, as in the case of a bird's plumage or of those beautiful blossoms which both Chinese and Japanese artists can represent so faithfully.

A very remarkable screen in Chinese lacquer of later date is in the South Kensington Museum; it is composed of twelve folds, each ten feet high, and measuring when fully extended twenty-one feet. This screen is very beautifully decorated on both sides with incised and raised ornaments painted and gilt on black ground, with a rich border ornamented with representations of sacred symbols and various other objects. The price paid for it was £1,000. There are also in the Museum some very rich chairs of modern Chinese work, in brown wood, probably teak, very elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl; they were exhibited in Paris in 1867.

Of the very early history of Japanese industrial arts we know but little. We have no record of the kind of furniture which Marco Polo found when he travelled in Japan in the thirteenth century; and until the Jesuit missionaries obtained a footing in the sixteenth century, and sent home specimens of native work, there was probably very little of Japanese manufacture which found its way to Europe. The beautiful lacquer work of Japan, which dates from the end of the sixteenth and the following century, leads us to suppose that a long period of probation must have occurred before these processes, which were probably learned from the Chinese, could have been so thoroughly mastered.

Of furniture—with the exception of the cabinets, chests, and boxes, large and small—of this famous lac, there appears to have been little. Until the Japanese developed a taste for copying European customs and manners, the habit seems to have been to sit on mats and to use small tables raised a few inches from the ground. Even the bedrooms contained no bedsteads, but a light mattress served for bed and bedstead.

The process of lacquering has already been described, and in the chapter on French furniture of the eighteenth century it will be seen how specimens of this decorative material reached France by way of Holland, and were mounted into the "meubles de luxe" of that time. With this exception, and that of the famous collection of porcelain in the Japan Palace at Dresden, probably but little of the Art products of this artistic people had been exported until the country was opened up by the expedition of Lord Elgin and Commodore Perry, in 1858-9, and subsequently by the antiquarian knowledge and research of Sir Rutherford Alcock, who has contributed so much to our knowledge of Japanese Industrial Art; indeed, it is scarcely too much to say, that so far as England is concerned, he was the first to introduce the products of the Empire of Japan.

JAPANESE CABINET OF RED CHASED LACQUER-WORK.

XVII. TO XVIII. CENTURY.

The Revolution, and the break up of the feudal system which had existed in that country for some eight hundred years, ended by placing the Mikado on the throne. There was a sale in Paris, in 1867, of the famous collection of the Shôgun, who had sent his treasures there to raise funds for the civil war in which he was then engaged with the Daimio. This was followed by the exportation of other fine native productions to Paris and London; but the supply of old and really fine specimens has, since about 1874, almost ceased, and, in default, the European markets have become flooded with articles of cheap and inferior workmanship, imported to meet the modern demand. The present Government of Japan, anxious to recover many of the masterpieces which were produced in the best time, under the patronage of the native princes of the old régime, have established a museum at Tokio, where many examples of fine lacquer work, which had been sent to Europe for sale, have been placed after repurchase, to serve as examples for native artists to copy, and to assist in the restoration of the ancient reputation of Japan.

There is in the South Kensington Museum a very beautiful Japanese chest of lacquer work made about the beginning of the seventeenth century, the best time for Japanese Art; it formerly belonged to Napoleon I., and was purchased at the Hamilton Palace Sale for £722: it is some 3ft. 3in. long and 2ft. 1in. high, and was intended originally as a receptacle for sacred Buddhist books. There are, most delicately worked on to its surface, views of the interior of one of the Imperial Palaces of Japan, and a hunting scene. Mother-of-pearl, gold, silver, and avanturine, are all used in the enrichment of this beautiful specimen of inlaid work, and the lock plate is a representative example of the best kind of metal work as applied to this purpose.

The late Duke of Saxe-Coburg had several fine specimens of Chinese and Japanese lacquer work in his collection, about the arrangement of which the writer had the honour of advising His Royal Highness, when it arrived some years ago at Clarence House. The earliest specimen is a reading desk, presented to him by the Mikado, with a slope for a book, much resembling an ordinary bookrest, but charmingly decorated with lacquer in landscape subjects on the flat surfaces, while the smaller parts are diapered with flowers and quatrefoils in relief of lac and gold. This is of the sixteenth century. The collections of the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., Mr. Salting, Viscount Gough, and other well-known amateurs, contain some excellent examples of the best periods of Japanese Art work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The grotesque carving of the wonderful dragons and marvellous monsters introduced into furniture made by the Chinese and Japanese, and especially in the ornamental woodwork of the Old Temples, is thoroughly peculiar to those masters of elaborate design and skilful manipulation: and the low rate of remuneration, compared with our European notions of wages, enables work to be produced that would be impracticable under any other conditions. In comparing the ornamentation on Chinese with that of Japanese furniture, it may be said that more eccentricity is effected by the latter than by the former in their designs and general decoration. The Japanese joiner is unsurpassed, and much of the lattice work, admirable in design and workmanship, is so quaint and intricate that only by close examination can it be distinguished from finely cut fret work.

INDIAN FURNITURE.

European influence upon Indian Art and manufactures has been of long duration. It was first exercised by the Portuguese and Dutch in the early days of the United East India Company, afterwards by the French, who established a trading company there in 1664, and lastly by the English, the first charter of the old East India Company dating as far back as 1600. Thus European taste dominated almost everything of an ornamental character until it became difficult to find a decorative article the design of which did not in some way or other shew the predominance of European influence over native conception. Therefore it becomes important to ascertain what kind of furniture, limited as it was, existed in India during the period of the Mogul Empire, which lasted from 1505 to 1739, when the invasion of the Persians under Kouli Khan destroyed the power of the Moguls. The country formerly subject to them was then divided among sundry petty princes.

The throne and State chairs used by the Moguls were rich with elaborate gilding; the legs or supports were sometimes of turned wood, with some of the members carved; the chair was formed like an hour glass, or rather like two bowls reversed, with the upper part extended to form a higher back to the seat. In M. Racinet's sumptuous work, "Le Costume Historique," published in Paris in 20 volumes (1876), there are reproduced some old miniatures from the collection of M. Ambroise Didot. These represent—with all the advantages of the most highly finished printing in gold, silver, and colours—portraits of these native sovereigns seated on their State chairs, with the umbrella, as a sign of royalty. The panels and ornaments of the thrones are picked out with patterns of flowers, sometimes detached blossoms, sometimes the whole plant; the colors are generally bright red and green, while the ground of a panel or the back of a chair is in silver, with arabesque tracery, the rest of the chair being entirely gilt. The couches are rectangular, with four turned and carved supports, some eight or ten inches high, and also gilt. With the exception of small tables, which could be carried into the room by slaves, and used for the light refreshments customary to the country, there was no other furniture. The ladies of the harem are represented as being seated on sumptuous carpets, and the walls are ornamented with gold and silver and color, a style of decoration very well suited to the arched openings, carved and gilt doors, and brilliant costumes of the occupants of these Indian palaces.

After the break up of the Mogul power, the influence of Holland, France, and England brought about a mixture of taste and design which with the concurrent alterations in manners and customs, gradually led to the production of what is now known as the "Bombay Furniture." The patient, minute carving of Indian design applied to utterly uncongenial Portuguese or French shapes of chairs and sofas, or to the familiar round or oval table, carved almost beyond recognition, are instances of this style. One sees these occasionally in the house of an Anglo-Indian, who has employed native workmen to make some of this furniture for him; the European chairs and tables having been given as models, while the details of the ornament have been left to native taste. There are in the Indian Museum at South Kensington several examples of this Bombay furniture, and also some of Cingalese manufacture.

It is scarcely part of our subject to allude to the same kind of influence which has spoiled the quaint bizarre effect of native design and workmanship in silver, in jewellery, in carpets, embroideries, and in pottery, which was so manifest in the contributions sent to South Kensington at the Colonial Exhibition, 1886.

In the Jones Collection at South Kensington Museum, there are two carved ivory chairs and a table, the latter gilded, the former partly gilded, which are a portion of a set taken from Tippo Sahib at the storming of Seringapatam. Warren Hastings brought them to England, and they were given to Queen Charlotte. After her death the set was divided: Lord Londesborough purchased part of it, and this portion is now on loan at the Bethnal Green Museum.

Queen Victoria had also amongst her numerous Jubilee presents some very handsome ivory furniture of Indian workmanship, which may be seen at Windsor Castle. These, however, as well as the Jones Collection examples, though thoroughly Indian in character as regards the treatment of scrolls, flowers, and foliage, shew unmistakably the influence of French taste in their general form and composition. Articles, such as boxes, stands for gongs, etc., are to be found carved in sandal wood, and in dalburgia, or black wood, with rosewood mouldings; and a peculiar characteristic of this Indian decoration, sometimes applied to such small articles of furniture, is the coating of the surface of the wood with red lacquer, the plain parts taking a high polish while the carved enrichment remains dull. The effect of this is precisely that of the article being made of red sealing wax, and frequently the minute pattern of the carved ornament and its general treatment tend to give an idea of an impression made in the wax by an elaborately cut die. The casket illustrated on page [134] is an example of this treatment. It was exhibited in 1851.

The larger examples of Indian carved woodwork are of teak; the finest and most characteristic specimens within the writer's knowledge are the two folding doors which were sent as a present to the Indian Government, and are in the Indian Museum. They are of seventeenth century work, and are said to have enclosed a library at Kerowlee. While the door frames are of teak, with the outer frames carved with bands of foliage in high relief, the doors themselves are divided into panels of fantastic shapes, and yet so arranged that there is just sufficient regularity to please the eve. Some of these panels are carved and enriched with ivory flowers, others have a rosette of carved ivory in the centre, and pieces of talc with green and red color underneath, a decoration also found in some Arabian work. It is almost impossible to convey by words an adequate description of these doors; they should be carefully examined as examples of genuine native design and workmanship. Mr. Pollen has concluded a somewhat detailed account of them by saying:—"For elegance of shape and proportion, and the propriety of the composition of the frame and sub-divisions of these doors, their mouldings and their panel carvings and ornaments, we can for the present name no other example so instructive. We are much reminded by this decoration of the pierced lattices at the S. Marco in Venice."

CASKET OF INDIAN LACQUER WORK.

There is in the Indian Museum another remarkable specimen of native furniture—namely, a chair of the purest beaten gold of octagonal shape, and formed of two bowls reversed, decorated with acanthus and lotus in repousée ornament. This is of eighteenth century workmanship, and was formerly the property of Runjeet Sing. The precious metal is thinly laid on, according to the Eastern method, the wood underneath the gold taking all the weight. This throne was to have been used at the opening of the Imperial Institute by Queen Victoria, but at the last moment another seat was selected.

There is also a collection of plaster casts of portions of temples and palaces from a very early period until the present time, several having been sent over as a loan to the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886.

A careful observation of the ornamental details of these casts leads us to the conclusion that the Byzantine style, which was dominant throughout the more civilized portion of Asia during the power of the Romans, had survived the great changes of the Middle Ages. As native work became subject more or less to the influence of the Indo-Chinese carvers of deities on the one side, and of the European notions of the Portuguese pioneers of discovery on the other, a fashion of decorative woodwork was arrived at which can scarcely be dignified by the name of a style, and which it is difficult to describe. Sir George Birdwood, in his work on Indian Art, points out that, about a hundred years ago, Indian designs were affected by the immigration of Persian designers and workmen. The result of this influence is to be seen in the examples in the Museum, a short notice of which will conclude these remarks on Indian work.

The copy in shishem wood of a carved window at Amritzar, in the Punjaub, with its overhanging cornice, ornamental arches, supported by pillars, and the surface, covered with small details of ornament, is a good example of the sixteenth and seventeenth century work. The façades of dwelling houses in teak wood, carved, and still bearing the remains of paint with which part of the carving was picked out, represent the work of the contemporary carvers of Ahmedabad, famous for its woodwork.

Portions of a lacquer work screen similar in appearance to embossed gilt leather, with the pattern in gold, on a ground of black or red, and the singular Cashmere work, called "mirror mosaic," give us a good idea of the Indian decoration of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This effective decoration is produced by little pieces of looking glass being introduced into the small geometrical patterns of the panels; these, when joined together, form a very rich ceiling.

The bedstead of King Theebaw, brought from Mandalay, is an example of this mixture of glass and wood, which can be made extremely effective. The wood is carved and gilt to represent the gold setting of numerous precious stones, which are counterfeited by small pieces of looking-glass and variously-colored pieces of transparent glass.

Some of King Edward's (at the time Prince of Wales) presents—namely, chairs with carved lions forming arms; tables of shishem wood, inlaid with ebony and ivory, shew the European influence we have alluded to.

Amongst the modern ornamental articles in the Museum are many boxes, pen trays, writing cases, and even photographic albums, of wood and ivory mosaic work, the inlaid patterns being produced by placing together strips of tin wire, sandal wood, ebony, and of ivory, white, or stained green: these strips, when bound into a rod, either triangular or hexagonal, are cut into small sections, and then inlaid into the surface of the article to be decorated.

Papier maché and lacquer work are also frequently found in small articles of furniture; and the collection of drawings by native artists attest the high skill in design and execution attained by Indian craftsmen.

PERSIA.

The Persians have from time immemorial been an artistic people, and their style of Art throughout successive generations has varied but little.

Major-General Murdoch Smith, R.E., the present Director of the branch of the South Kensington Museum in Edinburgh, who resided for some years in Persia, and had the assistance when there of M. Richard (a well-known French antiquary), made a collection of objets d'art some years ago for the Science and Art Department, which is now in the Kensington Museum, but it contains comparatively little that can be actually termed furniture; and it is extremely difficult to meet with important specimens of ornamental woodwork of native workmanship. Those in the Museum, and in other collections, are generally small ornamental articles. The chief reason for this is, doubtless, that little timber is to be found in Persia, except in the Caspian provinces, where, as Mr. Benjamin has told us in "Persia and the Persians," wood is abundant; and the Persian architect, taking advantage of his opportunity, has designed his houses with wooden piazzas—not found elsewhere—and with "beams, lintels, and eaves quaintly, sometimes elegantly, carved, and tinted with brilliant hues." Another feature of the decorative woodwork in this part of Persia is that produced by the large latticed windows, which are well adapted to the climate.

DOOR.

Of carved sandal wood, from Travancore. Indian Museum, South Kensington.

PERIOD: PROBABLY LATE XVIII. CENTURY.

In the manufacture of textile fabrics—notably, their famous carpets of Yezd and Ispahan, and their embroidered cloths in hammered and engraved metal work, and formerly in beautiful pottery and porcelain—they have excelled, and good examples will be found in the South Kensington Museum. It is difficult to find a representative specimen of Persian furniture except a box or a stool; and the illustration of a brass incense burner is, therefore, given to mark the method of native design, which was adopted in a modified form by the Persians from their Arab conquerors.

INCENSE BURNER OF ENGRAVED BRASS.

In the South Kensington Museum.

This method of design has one or two special characteristics which are worth noticing. One of these was due to the teaching of Mahomet forbidding animal representation in design—a rule which in later work has been relaxed; another was the introduction of mathematics into Persia by the Saracens, which led to the adoption of geometrical patterns in design; and a third, the development of "Caligraphy" into a fine art, which has resulted in the introduction of a text, or motto, into so many of the Persian designs of decorative work. The combination of these three characteristics was the origin of the "Arabesque" form of ornament, which, in artistic nomenclature, occurs so frequently.

The general method of decorating woodwork is similar to the Indian method, and consists in either inlaying brown wood (generally teak) with ivory or pearl in geometrical patterns, or in covering the wooden box, or manuscript case, with a coating of lacquer, somewhat similar to the Chinese or Japanese preparations. On this groundwork some good miniature painting was executed, the colors being, as a rule, red, green, and gold, with black lines to give force to the design.

The author of "Persia and the Persians," already quoted, had, during his residence in the country, as American Minister, great opportunities of observation, and in his chapter entitled "A Glance at the Arts of Persia," he has said a good deal of this mosaic work. Referring to the scarcity of wood in Persia, he says: "For the above reason one is astonished at the marvellous ingenuity, skill and taste developed by the art of inlaid work, or mosaic in wood. It would be impossible to exceed the results achieved by the Persian artisans, especially those of Shiraz, in this wonderful and difficult art.... Chairs, tables, sofas, boxes, violins, guitars, canes, picture frames, almost every conceivable object, in fact, which is made of wood, may be found overlaid with an exquisite casing of inlaid work, so minute sometimes that thirty-five or forty pieces may be counted in the space of a square eighth of an inch. I have counted four hundred and twenty-eight distinct pieces on a square inch of a violin, which is completely covered by this exquisite detail of geometric designs, in mosaic."

Mr. Benjamin—who, it will be noticed, is somewhat too enthusiastic over this kind of mechanical decoration—also observes that, while the details will stand the test of a magnifying glass, there is a general breadth in the design which renders it harmonious and pleasing if looked at from a distance.

In the South Kensington Museum there are several specimens of Persian lacquer work, which have very much the appearance of those papier maché articles that used to be so common in England some forty years ago, save that the decoration is, of course, of Eastern character.

Of seventeenth century work, there is also a fine coffer, richly inlaid with ivory, of the best description of Persian design and workmanship of this period, which was about the zenith of Persian Art during the reign of Shah Abbas. The numerous small articles of what is termed Persian marqueterie, are inlaid with tin wire and stained ivory, on a ground of cedar wood, very similar to the same kind of ornamental work already described in the Indian section of this chapter. These were purchased at the Paris Exhibition in 1867.

Persian Art of the present day may be said to be in a state of transition, owing to the introduction and assimilation of European ideas.

SARACENIC WOODWORK FROM CAIRO AND DAMASCUS.

The changes of fashion in Western, as contrasted with Eastern, countries are comparatively rapid. In the former, the record of two or three centuries presents a history of great and well-defined alterations in manners, customs, and, therefore, in furniture: while the more conservative Oriental has been content to reproduce, from generation to generation, the traditions of his forefathers; and we find that, from the time of the Moorish conquest and spread of Arabesque design, no radical change in Saracenic Art occurred until French and English energy and enterprise forced European fashions into Egypt. As a consequence, the original quaintness and orientalism natural to the country, are being gradually replaced by buildings, decoration, and furniture of European fashion.

The carved pulpit, from a mosque in Cairo, which is in the South Kensington Museum, was made for Sultan Kaitbeg, 1468-96. The side panels, of geometrical pattern, though much injured by time and wear, shew signs of ebony inlaid with ivory, and of painting and gilding; they are good specimens of the kind of work. The two doors, also from Cairo, the oldest parts of which are just two hundred years earlier than the pulpit, are exactly of the same style, and, so far as appearances go, might just as well be taken for two hundred years later, so conservative was the Saracenic treatment of decorative woodwork for some four or five centuries. Pentagonal and hexagonal mosaics of ivory, with little mouldings, of ebony dividing the different panels, the centres of eccentric shapes of ivory or rosewood carved with minute scrolls, combine to give these elaborate doors a very rich effect, and remind one of the work still to be seen at the Alhambra, in Granada.

GOVERNOR'S PALACE, MANFALÛT.

Shewing a Window of Arab Lattice Work, similar to that of the Damascus Room in the South Kensington Museum.

The Science and Art Department has been fortunate in securing from the St. Maurice and Dr. Meymar Collections, a great many specimens which are well worth examination. The most remarkable is a complete room brought from a house in Damascus, which is fitted up in the Oriental style, and gives one a good idea of an Eastern interior. The walls are decorated in color and gold; the spaces are divided by flat pilasters; and there are recesses, or cupboards, for the reception of pottery, quaintly formed vessels, and pots of brass. Oriental carpets, octagonal tables, such as the one which ornaments the initial letter of this chapter, hookas, incense burners, and cushions furnish the apartment; while the lattice window is an excellent representation of the "Mesherabijeh," or lattice work with which we are familiar since so much has been imported by Egyptian travellers. In the upper panels of the lattice there are inserted pieces of colored glass, and, looking outwards towards the light, the effect is very pretty. The date of this room is 1756, which appears at the foot of an Arabic inscription, of which a translation is appended to the exhibit. It commences:—"In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate," and concludes, "Pray, therefore, to Him morning and evening."

A number of bosses and panels, detached from their original framework, are also to be seen, and are good specimens of Saracenic design. A bedstead, with inlay of ivory and numerous small squares of glass, under which are paper flowers, is also a fair sample of native work.

SPECIMEN OF SARACENIC PANELLING OF CEDAR, EBONY, AND IVORY.

(In the South Kensington Museum.)

The illustration on page [142] is of a carved wood door from Cairo, considered by the South Kensington authorities to be of Syrian work. It shews the turned spindles, which the Arabs generally introduce into their ornamental woodwork; and the carving of the vase of flowers is a good specimen of its kind. The date is about the seventeenth century.

For those who would gain an extended knowledge of Saracenic or Arabian Art industry, "L'Art Arabe," by M. Prisse d'Aveunes, should be consulted. There will be found in this work many carefully-prepared illustrations of the cushioned seats, the projecting balconies of the lattice work already alluded to, of octagonal inlaid tables, and such other articles of furniture as were used by the Arabs. The South Kensington Handbook, "Persian Art," by Major-General Murdoch Smith, R.E., is also a very handy and useful work in a small compass.

While discussing Saracenic or Arab furniture, it is worth noticing that our word "sofa" is of Arab derivation, the word "suffah" meaning "a place or couch for reclining before the door of Eastern houses." In Skeat's Dictionary the word is said to have first occurred in the "Guardian," in the year 1713, and the phrase is quoted from No. 167 of that old periodical of the day—"He leapt off from the sofa on which he sat."

A CARVED DOOR OF SYRIAN WORK.

(South Kensington Museum.)

From the same source the word "ottoman," which Webster defines as "a stuffed seat without a back, first used in Turkey," is obviously obtained, and the modern low-seated upholsterer's chair of to-day is doubtless the development of a French adaptation of the Eastern cushion or "divan," this latter word having become applied to the seats which furnished the hall or council chamber in an Eastern palace, although its original meaning was probably the council or "court" itself, or the hall in which such was held.

Thus do the habits and tastes of different nations act and re-act upon each other. Western peoples have carried eastward their civilization and their fashions, influencing Arts and industries with their restless energy, and breaking up the crust of Oriental apathy and indolence; and have brought back in return the ideas gained from an observation of the associations and accessories of Eastern life, to adapt them to the requirements and refinements of European luxury.

SHAPED PANEL OF SARACENIC WORK IN CARVED BONE OR IVORY.

BOULE ARMOIRE.

Designed by Le Brun, formerly in the "Hamilton Palace" Collection, and purchased (Wertheimer) for £12,075 the pair.

PERIOD: LOUIS XIV.

CHAPTER VI.

PALACE OF VERSAILLES: "Grand" and "Petit Trianon"—The three Styles of Louis XIV., XV., and XVI.—Colbert and Lebrun—André Charles Boule and his Work—Carved and Gilt Furniture—The Regency and its Influence—Alteration in Condition of French Society—Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher. LOUIS XV. FURNITURE: Famous Ébenistes—Vernis Martin Furniture—Caffieri and Gouthière Mountings—Sêvres Porcelain introduced into Cabinets—Gobelins Tapestry—The "Bureau du Roi." LOUIS XVI. AND MARIE ANTOINETTE: The Queen's Influence—The Painters Chardin and Greuze—More simple Designs—Characteristic Ornaments of Louis XVI. Furniture—Riesener's Work—Gouthière's Mountings—Specimens in the Louvre—The Hamilton Palace Sale—French influence upon the design of furniture in other countries—The Jones Collection—Extract from the "Times."

HERE is something so distinct in the development of taste in furniture, marked out by the three styles to which the three monarchs have given the names of "Louis Quatorze," "Louis Quinze," and "Louis Seize," that it affords a fitting point for a new departure.

This will be evident to anyone who will visit, first the Palace of Versailles,[12] then the Grand Trianon, and afterwards the Petit Trianon. By the help of a few illustrations, such a visit in the order given, would greatly interest anyone having even a smattering of knowledge of the characteristic ornaments of these different periods. A careful examination would demonstrate how the one style gradually merged into that of its successor. Thus the massiveness and grandeur of the best Louis Quatorze meubles de luxe became, in their later development, too ornate and effeminate, with an elaboration of enrichment, culminating in the rococo style of Louis Quinze.

Then we find in the "Petit Trianon," and also in the Château of Fontainebleau, the purer taste of Marie Antoinette dominating the Art productions of her time, which reached their zenith, with regard to furniture, in the production of such elegant and costly examples as have been preserved to us in the beautiful work-table and secretaire—sold some years since at the dispersion of the Hamilton Palace Collection—and in some other specimens which may be seen in the Musée du Louvre, in the Jones Collection in the South Kensington Museum, and in other public and private Collections. Several illustrations of these examples will be found in this chapter.

We have to recollect that the reign of Louis XIV. was the time of the artists Berain, Lebrun, and, later in the reign, of Watteau, also of André Charles Boule, ciseleur et doreur du roi, and of Colbert, that admirable Minister of Finance, who knew so well how to second his royal master's taste for grandeur and magnificence. The Palace of Versailles bears throughout the stamp and impress of the majesty of le Grande Monarque; and the rich architectural ornament of the interior, with moulded, gilded, and painted ceilings, required the furnishing to be carried to an extent which had never been attempted previously.

Louis XIV. had judgment in his taste, and he knew that, to carry out his ideas of a royal palace, he must not only select suitable artists capable of control, but he must centralize their efforts. In 1664 Colbert founded the Royal Academy of Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture, into which designs of furniture were admitted. The celebrated Gobelins tapestry factory was also established; and it was here that the King collected together, and suitably housed, the different skilled producers of his furniture, placing them all under the control of his favourite artist, Lebrun, who was appointed director in 1667.

The most remarkable furniture artist of this time, for surely he merits such title, was Andre Charles Boulle, generally spelt Boule. He was born in 1642, and, therefore, was 25 years of age when Lebrun was appointed Art-director. He appears to have originated the method of ornamenting furniture which has since been associated with his name. This was to veneer his cabinets, pedestals, armoires, encoignures, clocks, and brackets with tortoise-shell, into which a cutting of brass was laid, the latter being cut out from a design, in which were harmoniously arranged scrolls, vases of flowers, satyrs, animals, cupids, swags of fruit and draperies. Fantastic compositions of a free Renaissance character constituted the panels; to which bold scrolls in ormolu formed fitting frames; while handsome mouldings of the same material gave a finish to the extremities. These ormolu mountings were gilt by an old-fashioned process,[13] which left upon the metal a thick deposit of gold, and were cunningly chiselled by the skilful hands of Caffieri or his contemporaries.