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SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS. 
 
 Edited by WILLIAM MASKELL. 
 
 No. 3 -FURNITURE ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 
These Handbooks are reprints of the dissertations prefixed to 
 the large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the 
 Museum at Soitth Kensington ; arranged and so far abridged as 
 to bring each into a portable shape . The Lords of the Committee 
 of Council on Education having determined on the publication of 
 them , the editor trusts that they will meet the purpose intended ; 
 namely , to be useful , not alone for the collections at South Ken- 
 sington but for other collections, by enabling the public at a 
 trifling cost to understand something of the history and character 
 of the subjects treated of. 
 
 The authorities referred to in each book are given in the large 
 catalogues ; where will also be found detailed descriptions of the 
 very numerous examples in the South Kensington Micseum. 
 
 W. M. 
 
 August, 1875. 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN 
 
 FURNITURE AND WOODWORK 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN HUNGERFORD POLLEN 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS 
 
 Published foj' the Committee of Council on Education 
 
 BY 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY 
 
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., 
 CITY ROAD. 
 
 the. 
 
 G£UT 06 NiHR 
 
LIST OF WOODCUTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Egyptian chair . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Assyrian chairs . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 Greek chair 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 IO 
 
 Greek chairs 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ii 
 
 Greek couches 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 Greek mirror 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 Greek chariot 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i5 
 
 Pompeian interior 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 Roman tripod 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 Roman candelabra 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Roman candelabra 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 Roman table 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 Roman couch . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 7 
 
 Roman ceremonial chair . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 Roman sella 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 Roman kitchen utensils . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 St. Peter’s chair 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 35 
 
 The chair of king Dagobert 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 Anglo-norman bedstead . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 The Coronation chair 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 Interior of English medieval bedroom 
 
 
 
 
 
 51 
 
 SKP 2 0 '05 5409 c op/L 
 
vi FURNITURE . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Anglo-saxon dinner-table . , . . , , . , , . 52 
 
 Dinner-table of middle-class, fifteenth century , , . , . . 53 
 
 Table of fifteenth century . . . , . . . . , , 53 
 
 Travelling carriage of fifteenth century ; “ Tullia driving over the body of 
 
 her father” .. .. .. .. .. ..55 
 
 Oriental panels .. .. .. .. .. .. •• 57 
 
 A royal dinner-table of the fourteenth century . . . , . . 58 
 
 French panel ; fifteenth century . . . . . . . . . . 60 
 
 Venetian cornice . . . . . , . , , . . . 68 
 
 Portion of carved Italian chest . . . . . . . . . . 69 
 
 Venetian chair .. .. .. .. .. •• 7 1 
 
 Italian bellows . . . . . . . . , , . . . . 7 2 
 
 Another example . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 
 
 Knife-case; 1564 .. .. .. . . .. ..76 
 
 Carved panels . . . . . . . , . . . , 80 
 
 French table ; sixteenth century . . . . . . . . ..81 
 
 French panel; 1577 .. .. .. .. .. ..82 
 
 English panel ; about 1590 .. .. .. .. ..86 
 
 French cabinet ; sixteenth century . . . . . . . . . . 88 
 
 Italian oak pedestal . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 
 
 Venetian mirror-frame . . . . . . . . . . ..91 
 
 German arm-chair ; seventeenth century . . . . . . • • 93 
 
 English bracket ; about 1660 . . . . . . . . • • 97 
 
 English doorway ; about 1690 .. .. .. .. ..98 
 
 Venetian looking-glass .. .. .. .. .. ..100 
 
 Holy-water stoup . . . . . . . . . . • • 101 
 
 English dinner-table ; 1633 .. .. .. •• •• 102 
 
 Italian distaff . . . . . . . . • . • • • • I0 ^ 
 
 Roman triclinium .. .. .. •• •• • • 1 1 7 
 
 Bedstead; fifteenth century .. .. .. .. .. 118 
 
 The great bed of Ware . . . . . . • . • • • • 1 *9 
 
FURNITURE. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bedstead at Hampton Court . . . . . . . . . . 120 
 
 Mediaeval room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 
 
 Cradle ; fifteenth century . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 1 
 
 Foldingchair; fifteenth century .. .. ,, ,, ..122 
 
 Italian chair ; sixteenth century .. .. .. .. ..123 
 
 Antique Roman tables . . .. .. .. .. ..125 
 
 Folding table ; English, 1620 (?) . . . . . . , . . . 126 
 
 Mediaeval chest .. .. .. , . .. .. ..127 
 
 Roman carriages . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 
 
 English carriage ; fourteenth century .. .. ..131 
 
 State carriages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 
 

FURNITURE, 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The study of a collection of old furniture has an interest beyond 
 the mere appreciation of the beauty it displays. The carving or 
 the ornaments that decorate the various pieces and the skill and 
 ingenuity with which they arq put together are well worthy of our 
 attention. A careful examination of them carries us back to the 
 days in which they were made and to the taste and manners, the 
 habits and the requirements, of bygone ages. The Kensington 
 museum, for example, contains chests, caskets, cabinets, chairs, 
 carriages, and utensils of all sorts and of various countries. 
 Some of these have held the bridal dresses, fans, and trinkets of 
 French and Italian beauties, whose sons and daughters for many 
 generations have long gone to the dust ; there are inlaid folding 
 chairs used at the court of Guido Ubaldo, in the palace of 
 Urbino, and of other Italian princes of the fifteenth century ; 
 buffets and sideboards that figured at mediaeval feasts ; boxes in 
 which were kept the jesses and bells of hawks; love-tokens of 
 many kinds, christening-spoons, draught and chess men, card 
 boxes, belonging to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth cen- 
 turies ; carriages of the London of Cromwell and Hogarth, and of 
 the Dublin of Burke ; panelling of the date of Raleigh ; a com- 
 plete room made for a lady of honour to Marie Antoinette. 
 
 E 
 
2 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 Besides these memorials of periods comparatively well known 
 to us, we shall find reproductions of the furniture of ages the 
 habits of which we know imperfectly, such as the chair of Dago- 
 bert, and various relics illustrating the old classic manners and 
 civilisation, as they have come down to us from Roman and 
 Greek artists, and brought to light by the discoveries at Hercu- 
 laneum and Pompeii. 
 
 The field through which a collection of old furniture stretches 
 is too wide to be filled with anything like completeness ; but the 
 South Kensington collection is already rich in some very rare 
 examples, such as carved chests and cabinets, decorated with 
 the most finished wood carving of Flanders, France, and Italy, 
 as well as of our own country. 
 
 As wood is the material of which furniture for domestic use has 
 generally been made, there are, of course, limits to its endurance, 
 and not much furniture is to be found anywhere older than the 
 renaissance. Objects for domestic use, such as beds, chairs, 
 chests, tables, &c., are rare, and have not often been collected 
 together. The museum of the hotel de Cluny, in Paris, is the 
 best representative collection of woodwork anterior to the quattro 
 or cinque cento period — i.e. the end of the fifteenth and begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth centuries. Some carved and gilt carriages 
 belonging to the last century are also there ; and a set of car- 
 riages, carved and gilt, made for state ceremonials, used during 
 the latter part of the last century and down to the days of the 
 empire of Napoleon III. are, or were till the war of 1870, kept 
 at the Trianon at Versailles. 
 
 Many cabinets and tables in Boule work, Vernis-Martin work, 
 and in marquetry by Riesener, Gouthiere, David, and others, in 
 the possession of Sir Richard Wallace, were lately exhibited . in 
 the museum at Bethnal Green, and examples by the same artists 
 from St. Cloud and Meudon are in the Louvre in Paris. A fine 
 collection of carriages, belonging to the royal family of Portugal, 
 is kept in Lisbon. These are decorated in the “Vernis-Martin ” 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 3 
 
 method. Several old royal state carriages, carved and gilt, the 
 property of the emperor of Austria, are at Vienna. 
 
 In order to take a general review of the kinds, forms, and 
 changes of personal and secular woodwork and furniture, as 
 manners and fashions have influenced the wants of different 
 nations and times, it will be well to divide the subject in chrono- 
 logical order into antique ; Egyptian, Ninevite, Greek, Roman : — 
 modern; early and late mediaeval: — renaissance; seventeenth 
 and eighteenth century work : to be followed by an inquiry into 
 the changes that some of the pieces of furniture in most frequent 
 use have undergone. 
 
 B 2 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ANTIQUE ; EGYPT, NINEVEH, AND GREECE. 
 
 Considering the perishable nature of the material, we cannot 
 expect to meet with many existing specimens of the woodwork or 
 furniture of ancient Egypt. There are to be found, however, 
 abundant illustrations of these objects in the paintings and sculp- 
 tures of monuments. The most com- 
 plete are on the walls of the tombs, 
 where we see detailed pictures of 
 domestic life, and the interiors of 
 houses are shown, with entertain- 
 ments of parties of ladies and gentle- 
 men talking, listening to music, eating 
 and drinking. The guests are seated 
 on chairs of wood, framed up with 
 sloping backs, of which specimens 
 are in the British museum ; others 
 are on stools or chairs of greater 
 splendour, stuffed and covered on the 
 seat and back with costly textiles, 
 having the wooden framework carved 
 and gilt, generally in the form of the fore and hind legs of tigers, 
 panthers, and other animals of the chace, sometimes supported, 
 as in the accompanying woodcut, on figures representing captives. 
 
 The British museum contains six Egyptian chairs. One of 
 these is made of ebony, turned in the lathe and inlaid with 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 5 
 
 collars and dies of ivory. It is low, the legs joined by light rails 
 of cane, the back straight, with two cross-bars and light rails 
 between. The seat is slightly hollowed, and is of plaited cane as 
 in modern chairs. Another is square, also with straight back, 
 but with pieces of wood sloped into the seat to make it comfort- 
 able for a sitter. Small workmen’s stools of blocks of wood 
 hollowed out and with three or four legs fastened into them may 
 also be referred to, and a table on four legs tied by four bars near 
 the lower ends. 
 
 The Egyptians used couches straight, like ottomans ; with head 
 boards curving over as in our modern sofas, sometimes with the 
 head and tail of an animal carved on the ends, and the legs and 
 feet carved to correspond. These were stuffed and covered with 
 rich material. The Egyptians did not recline at meals. Their 
 double seats, 8/^pot, or bisellia, were such as were used by the 
 Greeks and Romans. They had shelve^ and recesses, chests and 
 coffers, made of pine or cedar woody apd of a material still used 
 in Egypt, the cafass — palm sticks -formed into planks by thin 
 pegs or rods of harder wood passing through a series of these 
 sticks laid together. “ Of their bedroom furniture,” says Sir 
 Gardner Wilkinson, “ we know but little.” They used (he tells 
 us) their day couches probably, or lay on mats, and on low 
 wooden pallets made of palm sticks. These last had curved 
 blocks, which served for a pillow, forming a hollow to receive the 
 head. Examples in alabaster and wood are in the Louvre and 
 in the British museum. 
 
 Their materials for dress were of the most delicate and costly 
 description. The robes of the ladies were often transparent, and 
 the gold and silver tissues, muslins, and gossamer fabrics made in 
 India and Asia were probably also used in Egypt. All these, as 
 well as their jewels and valuables, imply corresponding chests and 
 smaller coffers. Small toilet boxes elegantly carved into the form 
 or with representations of leaves and animals, are preserved in 
 the Louvre and in the British museum and other collections. 
 
6 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 They were generally of sycamore wood, sometimes of tamarisk or 
 sont (acacia), and occasionally the more costly ivory or inlaid 
 work was substituted for wood. Larger boxes may also be seen 
 in the Louvre, some large enough to contain dresses. They are 
 square, with flat, curved, or gable tops, painted on the surface, 
 and generally lifted from the ground by four short legs or prolon- 
 gations of the rails that form the framework. These boxes are 
 dovetailed, and secured by glue and nails. 
 
 Their chariots and the harness of their horses were rich in 
 proportion, the former painted, inlaid with ivory and gold, or with 
 surface gilding, containing cases for their bows and arms, and 
 made of wood filled in with the lightest materials, perhaps 
 canvas stiffened with preparations of lac in the Japanese manner, 
 and put together with a skill that made the carriage-makers of 
 Egypt famous in their day. It will be sufficient to add that the 
 great Jewish kings had their chariots' supplied from Egypt. 
 Solomon paid about ^75 of our money for a chariot, and of these 
 he kept (for war purposes alone) a force of fourteen hundred, with 
 forty thousand horses. 
 
 Mummy cases of cedar, a material readily procured and valued 
 for its preservative qualities, are to be seen in many collections, 
 and examples can be examined in the British museum. They are 
 richly decorated with hieroglyphic paintings executed in tempera, 
 and varnished with gum mastic. 
 
 The furniture of Nineveh is not so elaborately or completely 
 represented as that of Egypt, where the preservation of sculpture 
 and painting was helped out by a climate of extraordinary dry- 
 ness. But the discoveries of Mr. Layard have thrown on the 
 details of Ninevite domestic life light enough to give us the means 
 of forming a judgment on their furniture. 
 
 “ Ornaments,” says Mr. Layard, “ in the form of the heads of 
 animals, chiefly the lion, bull, and ram, were very generally intro- 
 duced, even in parts of the chariot, the harness of the horses, and 
 domestic furniture.” In this respect the Assyrians resembled the 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 7 
 
 Egyptians. “ Their tables, thrones, and couches were made both 
 of metal and wood, and probably inlaid with ivory. We learn from 
 Herodotus that those in the temple of Belus in Babylon were of 
 solid gold.” 
 
 According to Mr. Layard, 
 the chair represented in the 
 earliest monuments is without 
 a back, and the legs tastefully 
 carved. This form occurs in 
 the palace of Nimrud, and is 
 sculptured on one of the bas- 
 reliefs now in the British mu- 
 seum. Often the legs ended 
 in the feet of a lion or the 
 
 hoofs of a bull, and were made of gold, silver, or bronze. “ On 
 the monuments of Khorsabad and by the rock tablets of Mal- 
 thaiyah we find representations of chairs supported by animals 
 and by human figures, sometimes 
 prisoners, like the Caryatides of the 
 Greeks. In this they resemble the 
 arm-chairs of Egypt, but appear to 
 have been more massive. This 
 mode of ornamenting the throne of 
 the king was adopted by the Per- 
 sians, and is seen in the sculpture 
 of Persepolis.” The woodcut repre- 
 sents such a chair, from a bas-relief 
 at Khorsabad. The lion head and 
 lion foot were used by other oriental 
 nations. The throne of king Solo- 
 mon was supported by lions for 
 arms, probably in the same position as the horses in the Khorsa- 
 bad chair ; and lions of gold or chryselephantine work stood 
 , six on each side on the six steps before the throne. 
 
3 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 The forms of furniture of a later date in the sculptures of 
 Nineveh at Khorsabad are of an inferior style. “ The chairs have 
 generally more than one cross-bar, and are somewhat heavy and 
 ill-proportioned, the feet resting upon large inverted cones, re- 
 sembling pine-apples.” All these seats, like the St'0poi and sella 
 of important personages in Greece and Rome, were high enough 
 to require a footstool. “ On the earlier monuments of Assyria 
 footstools are very beautifully carved or modelled. The feet 
 were ornamented, like those of the chair, With the feet of lions or 
 the hoofs of bulls.” 
 
 The tables seem in general to have been of similar form and 
 decoration to the thrones or seats, the ends of the frame project- 
 ing and carved as in the woodcut above, only on a larger scale. 
 The couches were of similar form, but made of gold and silver, 
 stuffed and covered on the surface with the richest materials. 
 The tables and the chairs were often made in the shape also 
 found in Greece and Rome, with folding supports that open on a 
 central rivet like our camp-stools, and like the curule chairs which 
 were common not only in Rome but throughout Italy during the 
 renaissance. 
 
 A large piece of wood of pine or cedar is in the British 
 museum. It is of a full red colour, the effect of time. Cedar 
 was probably most in use ; but both in Egypt and Nineveh, as 
 also in Judaea under Solomon and his successors, woods were 
 imported from Europe and India ; ebony certainly, perhaps rose- 
 wood, teak, and Indian walnut. Ebony and ivory were con- 
 tinually used for inlaying furniture. Of their bedroom furniture 
 we can say little, nor do we know of what kind were the cabinets 
 or chests made to preserve their dresses and valuables. It is 
 probable, however, that these were occasionally as rich and 
 elaborate as any of their show or state furniture. 
 
 Of Hebrew furniture we can give few details. It is probable 
 that the Jews differed but little from the Assyrians in this respect. 
 The throne of Solomon has been already noticed. In the story 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 of Judith the canopy and curtains of the bed of Holofernes may 
 have been taken by the chronicler from familiar examples at 
 home, or may have been strictly drawn from traditional details. 
 In the figurative language of the Canticles, the bed of Solomon 
 is of cedar of Lebanon, the pillars of silver, the bottom of gold. 
 Ordinary bedroom furniture is spoken of in the Chronicles, when 
 the Shunamite woman, a person of great wealth, built for the 
 prophet Elias “ a little chamber on the wall, and set therein a 
 bed, a table, a stool, and a candlestick.” Ivory wardrobes are 
 mentioned in the 45th psalm, but of what size or form we cannot 
 determine. In the book of Esther allusions are made to Persian 
 furniture decorations, white, green, and blue hangings fastened 
 with fine linen to silver rings and pillars of marble. The beds 
 were of gold and silver, &c. The bed of Og, king of Bashan, was 
 nine cubits long by fouq and was of iron : it was preserved as a 
 trophy. 
 
 As the chariots of 
 artists employed on th 
 reasonable to suppose 
 workmen, or that the Hebrews borrowed freely the forms and 
 decorations of surrounding Asiatic nations. Though specially 
 and purposely jealous of any innovation or interference with 
 religious rites and observances, we have no cause to think that 
 they objected to the use of furniture or utensils such as they 
 found first during the long sojourn in Egypt, and afterwards in 
 other countries. They are said in earlier times to have spoiled 
 the Egyptians with reference to the ornaments and jewels carried 
 away at the migration. We know that Moses was “ learned in 
 all the wisdom of the Egyptians;” and two particular artists, 
 and two only, are named in the book of Exodus as qualified to 
 execute the sacred vessels and utensils. Whatever their technical 
 qualifications were, these had been acquired in Egypt. 
 
 In any attempt to picture to ourselves the kind of furniture 
 and objects of daily use apart from chariots, arms, &c., that sur- 
 
 SoJornon were^nade in Egypt, and the 
 2 triVilpit ea^aeyfrom Tyre, it is not un- 
 thS^ufniture*'Was either made by foreign 
 
10 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 rounded the Greeks in early ages, it will be necessary to bear 
 in mind the close connection which that people must have had 
 with the Asiatic races, and the splendour and refinement that 
 surrounded the wealthy civilisation of the oriental monarchies. 
 
 They were so continually the allies or the rivals of the various 
 states in Asia Minor, and pushed out into that fertile region so 
 many vigorous colonies, that it cannot be doubted that the 
 splendid stuffs, beds, couches, thrones, chariots, &c., used by 
 Greeks on the Asiatic continent or in Europe, had much ot 
 eastern character in form and method of execution ; perhaps, at 
 
 first, in decoration also. This wood- 
 cut represents a chair of Assyrian 
 character on a bas-relief from Xan- 
 thus, in the British museum. 
 
 Much that is oriental figures in 
 poetic accounts of the arms, furni- 
 ture, and equipments of the Greek 
 heroic ages. The chiefs take the 
 field in chariots. These could have 
 been used but in small numbers on 
 ground so uneven as the rocky 
 territories of the Morea. The beds 
 described by Homer, the coverlids 
 of dyed wool, tapestries, or carpets, 
 and other instances of coloured and showy furniture, were genuine 
 descriptions of objects known and seen, though not common. 
 Generally the furniture of the heroic age was simple. Two beds 
 of bronze of Tartessus, one Dorian and one Ionian, the smallest 
 weighing fifty talents, of uncertain date, were kept in the treasury 
 at Altis, and seen there by Pausanias towards the end of the 
 second century. The chariots differed little except in the orna- 
 mental carving, modelling, or chasing, from those of Egypt. 
 
 The oldest remaining models of Greek furniture to which we 
 can point are the chairs in which the antique figures in the Syrian 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 1 1 
 
 room at the British museum are seated. These are dated six, or 
 nearly six, centuries before Christ. They represent chairs with 
 backs, quite perpendicular in front and behind. The frame- 
 pieces of the seats are morticed into the legs, and the mortices 
 and tenons are accurately marked in the marble, the horizontal 
 passing right through the upright bars. These early pieces of 
 furniture were probably executed in wood, not metal, which was 
 
 at first but rarely used. The woodcuts show the different forms 
 taken from antique bas-reliefs. 
 
 The chest or coffer in which Cypselus of Corinth had been 
 concealed was seen by Pausanias in the temple of Olympia. 
 It was made about the middle of the sixth century b.c. The 
 chest was of cedar, carved and decorated with figures and bas- 
 reliefs, some in ivory, some in gold or ivory partly gilt, which 
 were inlaid on the four sides and on the top. The subjects of 
 the sculpture were old Greek myths and local legends, and tradi- 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 I 2 
 
 tions connected with the country. This coffer is supposed to 
 have been executed by Eumelos of Corinth. 
 
 The great period of Greek art began in the fifth century b.c. ; 
 but those were not days favourable to the development of per- 
 sonal luxury among the citizens. An extreme simplicity in 
 private manners balanced the continual publicity and political 
 excitement of Greek life. The rich classes, moreover, had little 
 inducement to make any display of their possessions. The state 
 enjoyed an indefinite right to the property of its members ; the 
 lawgiver in Plato declared “ ye are not your own, still less is 
 your property your own.” In Sparta the exclusive training for 
 war admitted of no manner of earning money by business. In 
 Athens the poorer class had so exclusively the upper hand of 
 the rich that the latter had to provide the public with entertain- 
 ments of sacrificial solemnities, largesses of corn, and banquets. 
 “ The demos,” says the author of the “ Gentile and the Jew,” 
 “ understood the squeezing of the rich like sponges.” Greece 
 was the paradise of the poor. 
 
 It is therefore to be expected that the sculpture of the day, 
 though employed sometimes upon the decoration of thrones 
 or state seats, chariots, chests, looking-glasses, tripods, as the 
 painting was on walls, vases, and movable pictures on panels, 
 should have been employed mostly in temples and, with occa- 
 sional exceptions, on objects of some public use. The chest 
 described above was kept as a relic, and the elaborately carved 
 thrones in the temples were those of the statues of gods and 
 heroes. Ivory and gold laid over a substructure of olive wood 
 were the materials quite as frequently used by great sculptors 
 as marble or bronze for statues which did not form parts of the 
 actual decorations of their architecture. In later times these 
 materials were used in sumptuous furniture. 
 
 The Greeks used couches for sleeping and resting upon, but 
 not for reclining on at meals, till the Macedonian period. We 
 give two or three examples, from marbles : one of which re- 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 13 
 
 sembles the modern sofa. Women sat always, as in Rome, 
 sometimes on the couch at the head or foot, on which the master 
 
 of the house or a guest reclined, generally on chairs. Besides 
 chairs like the one represented here, 
 the Greeks made arm-chairs ; and 
 folding chairs of metal. In the 
 Parthenon frieze Jupiter is seated in 
 a square seat on thick turned legs, 
 with a round bar for a back, resting 
 on short turned posts fitted into the 
 
 seat. The arms are less high than the back ; they are formed 
 by slight bars framed into the uprights at the back, and resting 
 on winged sphinxes. 
 
 Mirrors of mixed metal alloys, 
 silver, tin, and copper, have come 
 down to our times in great num- 
 bers. They were made occasionally 
 in pure silver, and in gold pro- 
 bably among the Greeks as they 
 were in later times among the 
 Romans. The cases are of bronze, 
 and engraved with figure designs 
 of the highest character. There is, 
 however, no proof that these were 
 used as furniture in houses, as in Rome. They are hand mirrors, 
 and the description of them, as works of art, belongs rather to 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 that of antique bronzes. The woodcut shows the usual type, 
 with the richly ornamented handle. 
 
 Designs of the Greek couch, whether 
 for sleeping or for reclining at meals, are 
 abundant on tomb paintings, and sculp- 
 tures, and on the paintings of vases. 
 In the British museum we may see a 
 large vase in the second vase room, on 
 which a couch for two persons is ar- 
 ranged with a long mattress covered 
 with rich material, lying within what 
 appears to be a border of short turned 
 rails with a cushion on each end, also 
 covered with rich striped material. A 
 long low stool decorated with ivory lies 
 below the couch as a kind of step. The legs, as in many vase 
 representations, are thick turned supports with lighter parts 
 below, and a turned knob at the foot. On another vase Dionysus 
 reclines on a thick round cushion at the head of the couch, while 
 Ariadne sits on it. Figures feasting or stretched in death on 
 similar couches can be seen in two beautiful and perfect funeral 
 chests in the ^Egina room. All these pieces of furniture seem 
 made of or decorated with ivory, and furnished with coloured 
 cushions or coverings of an oriental character. Tripods were 
 made of bronze in great number for sacred use, and probably also 
 as the supports of brasiers, tables, &c., in private houses. The 
 tables were of wood, marble, and metal ; the supports being 
 either lion or leopard legs and heads, or sphinxes with lifted 
 wings, a favourite form in Greek ornamentation. 
 
 With regard to Greek houses generally, their arrangements 
 differed very little from the earlier houses of the Romans. The 
 bas-relief in the British museum — Bacchus received as a guest by 
 Icarus — represents a couch with turned legs, the feet of which are 
 decorated with leaf work ; a plain square stool, perhaps the top 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 i3 
 
 of a box, on which masks are laid, and a tripod table with lion 
 legs. The houses in the background are tiled. The windows 
 are divided into two lights by an upright mullion or column, and 
 a bas-relief of a charioteer driving two horses ornaments a portion 
 of the wall, and may be intended for a picture hung up or fixed 
 against the wall. The whole shows us an Athenian house, 
 decked for a festive occasion, and garlands and hangings are 
 festooned round its outer walls. 
 
 The Greek chariot was of wood, probably similar to that of the 
 Egyptians. It had sometimes wheels with four strong spokes 
 only, as in the woodcut. The chariot wheel 
 of the car of Mausolus, in the British 
 museum, has six. The Ninevite wheels have 
 sometimes as many as twelve, as may be 
 seen in the sculptured bas-reliefs of the 
 narrow Assyrian gallery of the British 
 museum. 
 
 The woods used by the Greeks for sculpture were ebony, 
 cypress, cedar, oak, smilax, yew, willow, lotus , and citron. These 
 materials were rarely left without enrichments of ivory, gold, and 
 colour. The faces of statues were painted vermilion, the dresses, 
 crowns, or other ornaments were gilt or made in wrought gold. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ROMANS. 
 
 The splendour that surrounded the personal usages of the 
 earlier races of antiquity, the Egyptians, Ninevites, Persians, 
 Greeks, and Tuscans, was inherited by the Romans. Not only 
 did they outlive those powers, but they absorbed their territory 
 as far as they could reach it ; they affected to take in their 
 religions and deities to add to their own system ; they drained 
 the subject populations for slaves, and eagerly adopted from 
 them every art that could administer to the magnificence and 
 luxury of their own private life. They have left both written 
 records in their literature and actual examples of their furniture, 
 made in metal or of marble. The discovery of Herculaneum and 
 of Pompeii has given us not only single pieces of furniture, but 
 very considerable remains of houses, shops, streets, fora or open 
 public places of assembly, theatres, and baths. It is in such 
 evidences of Roman social life that we shall find the materials for 
 our present inquiry. 
 
 The Romans spent their earlier ages in unceasing struggles for 
 independence and dominion : and so long as the elder powers of 
 Italy survived to dispute the growth of Roman greatness, there 
 could not be much expansion of private wealth or splendour in the 
 houses of Roman citizens. Though surrounded by splendid 
 social life among the Etruscans, the Roman people long remained 
 exceptionally simple in personal habits. It was after the Punic 
 wars that oriental luxuries found their way into Italy along with 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 *7 
 
 the Carthaginian armies. Tapestry is said to have been first 
 brought to Rome by Attalus, the king of Pergamus, who died 
 13 . c. 133 possessed of immense wealth, and bequeathed tapestries, 
 generally used in the east from the early ages, to the Roman 
 citizens. When Augustus became emperor the conquest of the 
 world was complete. Thenceforward military habits and simpli- 
 city of individual life were no longer necessary to a state that 
 could find no political rivals. The great capital of the world 
 absorbed like a vast vegetable growth the thought, the skill, and 
 the luxuries of the whole world. Nothing was too valuable to be 
 procured by the great Roman nobles or money-makers, and 
 nothing too strange not to find a place and be welcome in one or 
 other of their vast households. 
 
 While this was so at Rome in chief, it must be remembered 
 that other capitals were flourishing in various countries, as 
 wealthy, as luxurious in .their qwn way and degree, only less in 
 extent and means, and lacking that peculiar seal of supremacy 
 that gives to the real capital a character that is never attained 
 in subordinate centres of civilisation. Antioch was such a 
 centre in the east ; Alexandria in the south. Both these great 
 cities contained wealthy, refined, and luxurious societies. Both 
 were known as universities and seats of learning. Antioch 
 was the most debauched and luxurious ; Alexandria the most 
 learned and refined. They did not exactly answer to the 
 distinct capitals of modern kingdoms and states, such as we 
 now see flourishing in Europe, to London, Paris, Vienna, 
 Berlin, or St. Petersburg, because no one supreme state or city 
 predominates over them ; and further still, no one draws the 
 pick and choice of the intellect and refinement of the whole of 
 Europe to absorb them into itself as Rome did in the old 
 world. But, in those days, Antioch and Alexandria, one at the 
 head of the wealth and splendour of Asia, the other represent- 
 ing Greek learning grafted on the ancient scientific and artistic 
 traditions of Egypt, must have contributed much to the general 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 fusion of “ ideas ” and notions on art and personal manners and 
 customs in the capital of the Roman empire. 
 
 The Roman house was of traditional plan, and consisted gene- 
 rally of two or more square enclosures surrounded by arcades, 
 open to the air in the centre, but which openings could be closed 
 in summer or winter by awnings when the courts were not large 
 enough to include a garden, as the inner enclosure usually did. 
 
 The house had in front a vestibulum , an open space covered by 
 a verandah-shaped roof, sometimes enclosed by lattices, some- 
 times open. An ostium or lobby inside the entrance-door, deep 
 enough to contain a small porter’s lodge on one side, led to an 
 inner door which opened on the atrium. This court had an 
 opening to the air, and a tank for rain water was sunk in the 
 middle. Fountains with jets or falls of water were not uncommon, 
 the ancients being well acquainted with the principle that water 
 if brought from an elevation in pipes will force its way up to its 
 natural level. 
 
 Inside the atriui?i was the 7iuptiale , the nuptial bed, and here 
 were kept in earliest times the penates, household or family divi- 
 nities, and the family hearth, though these sacred emblems were 
 banished in the imperial times to distant parts of the house, and 
 statues between the columns that supported the central roof sup- 
 plied their place. The atrium was the general reception-room, 
 like the hall in mediaeval houses, but not the dining-room. To 
 this succeeded an inner open court, with porticoes or corridors 
 running round, supported on columns, and with a fountain or 
 basin, shrubs and flowers in the centre, like the courts of the 
 Alhambra. This court provided four halls in the four corridors, 
 which could be screened off by tapestries and curtains. The 
 centre was shaded in summer by canvas or carpet awnings. In 
 winter a wooden roof could be pushed over the open space. 
 Between the two halls or courts was a chamber called the 
 triclinium , or dining-room. These rooms were roofed with timber 
 richly painted and gilt. The roofs either hung on beams pro- 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 *9 
 
 jecting from the walls, or were supported by pillars, or were 
 carried up to a high opening, sloping back to the walls so as to 
 admit more light to the rooms, alcoves, or screened portions 
 furthest removed from the opening. Occasionally they were 
 covered in wholly with a testudo-shaped roof, and in such cases 
 lighted, perhaps, by dormers, though it is not quite clear how 
 light was provided for in such constructions. Roman rooms were 
 not floored with boards but paved with marble in large pieces, or 
 in mosaic work made of small dies or squares. Coarse specimens 
 
 of such work manufactured in our own times are laid down in the 
 museum at Kensington, and fragments of the old work may be 
 seen there on the walls. Occasionally these mosaics represent 
 the house watch-dog chained, or the fable of Ganymede, or 
 hunting scenes, sometimes finished with the utmost nicety. The 
 triclinium took its name from the three couches or sofas, on each 
 of which three persons reclined during meals. Later, and in 
 sumptuous palaces, several dining-rooms were built out beyond 
 the inner courts. The engraving, a reconstruction, will give a 
 fair idea of the general character of a richly furnished Roman 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 house. First, is the atrium , into which smaller chambers open ; 
 next, the triclinium , to the left of which is a cabinet; and beyond 
 is the peristylium , with its lofty colonnades. This last apartment 
 was large and open ; often planted with shrubs and trees, or con- 
 taining statues, flowers in pots and vases, and surrounded by a 
 corridor. As these courts were of various sizes they were, no 
 doubt, in Rome on a scale out of all proportion to those found 
 at Pompeii ; were fewer or more in number, and rooms were 
 added as the proprietor could acquire ground for building, often 
 a difficulty in the older parts of the city. Something of this 
 ground plan survives in a few of the very ancient Roman churches, 
 as in that of S. Pudenziana, formerly the house of the senator 
 Pudens, with vestibules, open courts, &c. 
 
 Around the inner court, in the sumptuous Roman houses and 
 the country villas of the patricians, were built other rooms, dining- 
 halls, no longer called triclinium but triclinia in the plural, as 
 admitting more than the number of nine persons reclining on the 
 conventional three couches, to dine at once. In the city itself 
 room was probably wanting in private houses for such expansion, 
 the houses being in streets already laid out. In the villas there 
 was no such restriction. These halls were built to face different 
 quarters of the compass and to be used according to the season. 
 Verna and autumnalis looked to the east, hyberna to the west, 
 cestiva to the north. CEci were other rooms still larger ; and 
 glass windows were to be found in them. In a painting now in 
 the Kensington museum, n°- 653, given by the emperor Napoleon 
 the third, glazed windows can be distinguished, divided by 
 upright mullions and transoms of wood, such as were constructed 
 in English houses in the seventeenth century. The sleeping- 
 rooms, cubicula , were small closets rather than rooms, closed in 
 general by curtains or hangings, and disposed about the sides 
 of the rooms between the courts, or round the outer courts 
 themselves. 
 
 Besides the living and sleeping chambers, there were store- 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 2 I 
 
 rooms for various kinds of food. Wearing apparel was kept in 
 ves liana, wardrobe rooms, fitted especially to store them in. It 
 is doubtful whether the dresses were in chests : more probably in 
 presses, or hanging on pegs. 
 
 The ornamental woodwork in some of these rooms was rich in 
 the extreme. The outer vestibule was protected by an over- 
 hanging balcony or by the projecting rafters of the roof of the 
 first portion of the house, according as rooms were built over that 
 portion or not. It was in some instances enclosed by carved or 
 trellised woodwork. The doors were generally in two valves 
 and could be closed with locks, which in the age of the empire 
 were thoroughly understood, with latchets secured by a pin or 
 with a wooden bar. The term obserare was used when the secu- 
 rity of a bar was added. The hinge was a pin or peg at the top 
 and bottom which turned in a socket. Metal hinges strapped 
 over the wood frame were not unknown : and bronze hinges are 
 in the collection of the British museum. The decoration of the 
 door, which was of wood, consisted principally of bronze mounts. 
 The doorposts were ornamented with carving, sometimes inlaid 
 with tortoiseshell and other rich materials. The woodwork was 
 painted. Bedrooms were closed with doors ; oftener by curtains. 
 The windows were generally closed with shutters, hinged and in 
 pairs. They were some six feet six inches above the level of the 
 street, not beyond reach of the knocks and signals of friends out- 
 side. Wooden benches were usually provided in the vestibule. 
 
 Besides the inlaid door frames, the ceilings of all the Roman 
 rooms were very richly decorated. In more simple construc- 
 tions the wood joists of the floor above, or the structure of the 
 roof when no room surmounted it, were shown and painted ; but 
 in richer houses the timbers were covered with boards, and 
 formed into coffers and panels, painted, gilt, and inlaid with ivory. 
 This splendid system of decoration dates from the destruction of 
 Carthage. Curved bearers from the upper part of the walls were 
 added to form one kind of ceiling ( camara ), for which Vitruviu^ 
 
22 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 gives directions ; and glass mosaics, like those used in the pave- 
 ments, were inlaid on a plaster bed in the coffers. The cornices 
 were of carved wood, or of plaster carved or modelled ; the wood 
 was always covered with a preparation of gesso, and gilt and 
 painted like the walls. 
 
 An examination of the remains of Roman glass found at Pompeii 
 and elsewhere, and of which excellent examples may be studied in 
 the Kensington museum, seems to point to the use not only of 
 mosaics made of dies, but of mouldings, borders, and panels 
 moulded in coloured glass of magnificent hues, and with the 
 finest stamped ornaments. These were occasionally gilt, or were 
 made in relief, or with a coat of opaque white glass over the 
 translucent material, which could be cut and modelled in the 
 manner of cameos, and helped further to decorate the ceiling, 
 always one of the most splendid features of the room. 
 
 The walls, when not painted, were sometimes hung with 
 mirrors of glass blackened, or of silver, or of slabs of obsidian. 
 They were of various sizes, sometimes large enough to reflect 
 
 of sculpture. These were generally of bronze, and original pieces 
 obtained in various parts of Italy can be seen in the bronze room 
 
 persons at full length. In the case of 
 portable pictures, frames were added 
 round them. Borders were certainly 
 painted round frescoes. It is not to 
 be supposed that paintings which 
 could be exposed for sale, moved 
 about, and hung up, could be finished 
 round otherwise than by ornamental 
 mouldings, or framework sufficient to 
 protect and properly set them off. 
 
 Among the ornamental pieces of 
 furniture were tripods, three-legged 
 frames, forming the supports of tables, 
 of altars, of braziers, sometimes of pieces 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 2 3 
 
 of the British museum. Some of these much exceed the height 
 of high modern tables. They are light, and ornamented on 
 the upper ends with animal or other heads ; some with the begin- 
 ning of a hind leg about halfway down. They were, however, 
 frequently movable, and, like the piece in the cut on the preced- 
 ing page from an example in the British museum, were made to 
 contract by folding ; the stays which connect the legs internally 
 slipping up and down them by means of loops. Such pieces 
 might serve as table legs, or would hold altar pans or common 
 hre pans or support pots of flowers. 
 
 Besides tripods the reception rooms were ornamented with 
 candelabra on tall stands of most graceful form and proportions. 
 It will suffice to point to more than a dozen of examples in the 
 
 British museum ; and the woodcuts are from examples in other 
 collections. The stems are a fluted staff or a light tree stem, 
 commonly supported on three animal legs spread at the base, and 
 branching out on the tops into one, two, or more boughs or 
 hooks, with elegant modelled decorations or ending in flat stands. 
 
2 4 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 One has a slight rim round the dish or stand, on which a cande- 
 labrum or wax candlestick could be placed. In other cases the 
 lamps were hung by their suspensory chains to the branches 
 
 described. Other candelabra stands were of marble, six, eight, 
 ten, or more feet in height, hybrid compositions of column caps, 
 acanthus leaves and stems, on altar bases, &c., in great variety 
 of design, of which engravings may be studied in the work of 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 25 
 
 Piranesi. Casts, n os - 93, 94 (antiques), are in the South Kensing- 
 ton museum. 
 
 ' We do not know in what kind of repositories or pieces of furni- 
 ture the ancient Romans kept their specimens of painting or their 
 vases, some of which formed their most valued treasures. It is 
 generally supposed that they were set on shelves fastened to the 
 wall. On such shelves small images, boxes of alabaster or glass, 
 and ornamental vases of all kinds were kept. Craters, sculptured 
 vases on a large scale and made of bronze or marble, were also 
 mounted on pedestals and ranged as ornaments with the statues. 
 Bronzes and statues, pieces of sculpture that had fixed places, 
 stood either along the walls of the reception rooms or under the 
 eaves of the compluvium , whence light was obtained to set them 
 off to advantage, and where turf, flowers, and fountains were in 
 front of them. A vase oi^eraferp^rly eight feet high, is in the 
 hall of the British muse^m^br^agM from the villa of Hadrian at 
 Palestrina; and in the l^france-hali of Nero’s house there was a 
 colossus 120 feet high, anthlong^ arcades and a tank or basin 
 of water. But objects on this scale scarcely belong to the 
 descriptions of what might be found ordinarily in houses of the 
 great patricians. Sometimes a couch and a table of marble were 
 placed close to the fountains in these delightful portions of the 
 house. 
 
 Tables were of many varieties in Rome, and enormous ex- 
 penses were incurred in the purchase of choice pieces of such 
 furniture. They were made of marble, gold, silver, bronze ; were 
 engraved, damascened, plated, and otherwise enriched with the 
 precious metals ; were of ivory, and of wood, and wood deco- 
 rated with ivory ; and in many other methods. Engraved (p. 26) 
 is a very beautiful table found at Pompeii, and now at Naples. 
 Tripods, terminal and other figures, made of bronze or marble ; 
 winged sphinxes, or leopards’ and lions’ legs, columns and 
 other architectonic forms, were the supports on which these 
 tables were fastened. Some had one central support only, in 
 
26 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 a few instances finished with animal heads of ivory. Abaci were 
 small tables with raised rims to hold valuables. 
 
 Many tables were of cedar and on ivory feet. Horace speaks of 
 maple, so also does Pliny, as a favourite wood for tables : birds’ - 
 eye maple especially was much prized. The planks and disks 
 that could be cut from the roots and the boles of trees that 
 had been either pollarded or otherwise dwarfed in growth in 
 order to obtain wavy grain, knotted convolutions, &c., were in 
 
 request. Veneers of well- 
 mottled wood or of precious 
 wood, small in scantling, 
 were glued on pine, cedar, 
 &c., as a base. These pol- 
 lard heads, root pieces, &c., 
 were bought at high prices, 
 specially those of the citrus 
 or cedrus Atla?itica. 
 
 The point held to be de- 
 sirable (says Pliny) in the 
 grain of tables was to have 
 “ veins arranged in waving 
 lines or else forming spirals 
 like so many little whirlpools. 
 In the former arrangement 
 the lines run in an oblong 
 direction, for which reason 
 they are called tigrince , tiger 
 tables. In the latter case they are called fiantherince , or panther 
 tables. There are some with wavy, undulating marks, and which 
 are more particularly esteemed if these resemble the eyes of a 
 peacock.” 
 
 Next in esteem to these was the veined wood covered or dotted, 
 as it were, with dense masses of grain, for which reason such 
 tables received the name of apiatce , parsley wood. But the 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 27 
 
 colour of the wood is the quality that was held in the highest 
 esteem of all ; that of wine mixed with honey was the most 
 prized, the veins being peculiarly refulgent. The detect in that 
 kind of table was lignum (dull log colour), a name given to the 
 wood when common-looking, indistinct, with stains or flaws. 
 The barbarous tribes, according to Pliny, buried the citrus wood 
 in the ground while green, giving it first a coating of wax. When 
 it came into the workman’s hands it was put for a certain number 
 of days beneath a heap of corn. By this process the wood lost 
 weight. Sea-water was supposed to harden it, and to act as a 
 preservative. This wood was carefully polished by hand-iubbing. 
 As much as £ 9,000 (a million of sesterces) was paid for one 
 table by Cicero. Of two that had belonged to king Juba, sold 
 by auction, one fetched over ;£ 10,000. These were made of 
 citrus ( Thuya articulata or cedrus Atlantica). We hear of two 
 made for king Ptolemaeus of Mauritania, the property of Nomius, 
 a freed man of Tiberius, formed out of two slices or sections of 
 the cedrus Atlantica four feet stnd a half in diameter, the largest 
 known to Pliny ; and of the destruction of a table, the property ot 
 the family of the Cethegi, valued at 1,400,000 sesterces. 
 
 The Roman patricians and their ladies sat on chairs and re- 
 clined on couches when not at meals. In the atrium under the 
 broad roofed corridors, and in the halls not used for eating, were 
 
 couches, such as the couch of which we give a woodcut, of bronze 
 01 of precious woods ; the bronze damascened with ornaments ot 
 
28 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 the precious metals, or of metal amalgam ; the wood veneered 
 or inlaid with marquetry or tarsia work of ivory, ebony, box, 
 
 palm, birds’-eye maple, beech, and 
 other woods. 
 
 The chairs were of different kinds 
 and were used for various occasions. 
 The atrium contained double seats, 
 single seats, and benches to hold 
 more than one sitter ; chairs that 
 either folded or were made in the 
 form of folding chairs, such as could 
 be carried about and placed in the 
 chariot, curules. The woodcut shows 
 the general fashion of a state or 
 ceremonial chair; from the marble 
 example in the Louvre. 
 
 This woodcut is of the sella, a seat or couch, made of wood, 
 with turned legs ; it is intended, probably, for one person only, 
 
 and has no need of a footstool. It 
 has been covered with a cushion. 
 
 Scamnum was a bench or long 
 seat of wood, used in poorer houses 
 instead of the luxurious triclinium of 
 the men or arm-chairs of the women, 
 for sitting at meals or other occa- 
 sions. Seats were placed along the walls in the exedrce or 
 saloons ; marble benches in most cases, sometimes wooden seats ; 
 particularly also in the alcoves that were constructed in the 
 porticoes of baths and public buildings, where lectures of philo- 
 sophers were listened to. 
 
 The Romans had hearths in certain rooms. Numerous pas- 
 sages in ancient writers, to which it is needless to refer, concur in 
 showing that the hearth was a spot sacred to the lares of the 
 family, the altar of family life. It was occasionally made of 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 29 
 
 bricks or stone, and immovable, on which logs could be heaped. 
 It seems doubtful whether chimneys were used in the Roman 
 houses ; probably occasionally. Writers on Roman antiquities 
 speak of such rare constructions used, perhaps, as ventilators to 
 the kitchen. The usual method of warming was by means of a 
 brazier, of which an example found at Csere, in Etruria, is pre- 
 served in the British museum. It is a round dish on three animal 
 legs, with swing handles for removing it. Another, square in 
 form, is reproduced in a casting in the South Kensington 
 museum collection, n°* 70, standing on animal legs and dama- 
 scened round the sides with gold ornaments. The Romans had 
 also kitchen braziers with contrivances for heating pans, water, 
 wine, &c., by charcoal. N°- 71 at South Kensington is a casting 
 of such a piece, having a round metal receptacle, like a small 
 cask, on its end, and a raised horse-shoe frame, on which a pan 
 could be placed, with fire space in the middle. These braziers 
 were filled with charcoal heated thoroughly by the help of the 
 bellows, to get rid of the noxious gases. 
 
 It has been said that the dresses of the Romans were preserved, 
 as in mediaeval castles, in a separate room or wardrobe, and this 
 room must have been fitted with apparatus for hanging shelves 
 and lockers. They had besides for keeping valuables, and 
 usually placed in the sleeping-room of the master or mistress of 
 the house, cupboards and chests of beech ornamented with metal, 
 some large enough to contain a man. In these receptacles they 
 conveyed their property to and from country houses, and on 
 visits. Enormous numbers of slaves moved to and fro with the 
 family, and the chests were carried on men’s shoulders, or in 
 waggons of various shape and make. 
 
 The most important action of the luxurious Roman day was 
 the dinner. Couches were arranged for the guests, and the room 
 was further provided with stools or low benches, side tables, and 
 the movable table used for each course. These tables were put 
 down and removed from the supports on which they stood. The 
 
30 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 side tables were of marble or of wood, covered with silver plates 
 inlaid, veneered, and ornamented in various ways ; some were 
 used for serving the dishes, others for the display of plate. 
 
 Sculptured objects of plate, partly ornamental, were put on the 
 table and removed with the courses. Petronius describes an ass 
 of Corinthian bronze with silver paniers as the centre piece of 
 one course; sauces dropped from the paniers on luscious morsels 
 placed beneath. A hen of wood with eggs within and a figure of 
 Vertumnus are also named by the same author as centre pieces. 
 These were replaced on the sideboard or removed with the 
 course in trays. 
 
 Closely connected with the dining-room was, it need scarcely 
 be said, the kitchen ; and we give woodcuts of kitchen utensils, 
 from the originals preserved at Naples. 
 
 Mention should be made of tapestries and carpets before leav- 
 ing the subject of Roman house furniture. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 3i 
 
 Carpets, tapete, blankets, or other woollen coverlids for sofas or 
 beds, were made at Corinth, Miletus, and a number of seats of 
 fine wool manufacture. It is too large a question to go into in 
 detail, and woven fabrics belong to a different class of objects fully 
 described in another hand-book, upon textiles. These tapestries 
 played a great part in the actual divisions of the Roman rooms. 
 Bedrooms, it has been said, were often closed with curtains only, 
 and the corridors and smaller rooms were closed at the ends and 
 made comfortable by the same means. At the dinner detailed by 
 Petronius the hangings on the triclinia are changed between 
 pauses in the meal. The feelings consonant with the day or 
 occasion were symbolized or carried out in these external 
 decorations. Mention is made by Seneca of ceilings made so as 
 to be moved, and portions turned by machinery ; perhaps the 
 changed panels showed different colours and decorations accord- 
 ing to the day, and to theffiangings which were used. The same 
 author alludes to wood jG^ilings tljaf could be raised higher or 
 lower by machinery, “ pegmata per sel surgentia et tabulata tacite in 
 sublime cresce?itiaP making no noise in the operation. These con- 
 trivances were reserved for dining-rooms, where the diversions 
 were of the freest description and the guests prepared for any 
 exciting or sensational interludes. 
 
 The Romans required some of their furniture for out-door use. 
 Besides the curule chairs and lofty seats which were carried into 
 theatres or baths, and other places of public resort, they used 
 litters. The sofas or couches were sometimes carried on the 
 necks of six or more slaves, and served as litters. But special 
 contrivances like the Indian palanquins were made with or hung 
 under poles, with curtains or shutters. Stations of such convey- 
 ances for public use were established in Rome. 
 
 The subjects of the carving and ornamentation of Roman furni- 
 ture were the classic legends mainly derived from the Greek 
 mythology. Roman house walls were, however, in later years 
 profusely decorated with conventional representations of archi- 
 
32 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 tecture, and panels richly coloured on which were painted figures 
 of dancers, cupids, gods and heroes; sometimes commonplace 
 landscapes and domestic scenes. Their solid furniture was deco- 
 rated with masks, heads of heroes, legs and feet of animals, and 
 foliage, generally the leaves of the acanthus, of an architectonic 
 kind. 
 
 The great achievement of the Romans in woodwork of a con- 
 structive kind was the machinery contrived for public shows, such 
 as the cages shot up out of the sand of the arena of amphi- 
 theatres, of which the sides fell down, leaving at liberty the 
 beasts wanted for fights or for the execution of criminals. Of 
 such constructions probably nothing in the middle ages, when 
 timber abounded and the use of it was thoroughly understood, 
 exceeds the following ; a description by Pliny of a device of C. 
 Curio, in Africa, when celebrating the funeral games in honour of 
 his father : — 
 
 “ He caused to be erected close together two theatres of very 
 large dimensions and built of wood, each of them nicely poised, 
 and turning on a pivot. Before mid-day a spectacle of games was 
 exhibited in each, the theatres being turned back to back, in 
 order that the noise of neither of them might interfere with what 
 was going on in the other. Then, in the latter part of the day, all 
 on a sudden, the two theatres were swung round and, the corners 
 uniting, brought face to face; the outer frames too were removed 
 (i.e. the backs of each hemicycle) and thus an amphitheatre was 
 formed, in which combats of gladiators were presented to the 
 view ; men whose safety was almost less compromised than that 
 of the Roman people in allowing itself to be thus whirled round 
 from side to side.” 
 
 The following woods were in use amongst the Romans : — 
 
 For carpentry and joiner’s work, cedar was the wood most in 
 demand. Pine of different kinds was used for doors, panels, 
 carriage building, and all work requiring to be joined up with 
 glue, of which that wood is particularly retentive. Elm was 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 33 
 
 employed for the framework of doors, lintels and sills, in which 
 sockets were formed for the pins or hinges on which the doors 
 turned. The hinge jambs were occasionally made of olive. Ash 
 was employed for many purposes ; that grown in Gaul was used 
 in the construction of carriages on account of its extreme supple- 
 ness and pliancy. Axles and portions which we,re much morticed 
 together were made of Ilex ( Holm oak). Beech also was in fre- 
 quent use. Acer {Maple) was much prized, as has been already 
 stated, for tables, on account of the beauty of the wood and of 
 the finish which it admits. Osiers were in use for chairs as in 
 our own times. Veneering was universal in wood furniture of a 
 costly kind. The slices of wood were laid down with glue as in 
 modern work, and they used tarsia or picture work of all kinds. 
 Figwood, willow , plane , elm, ash , mulberry , cherry , cork wood , were 
 amongst the materials for the bed or substance on which to lay 
 such work. Wild and cultivated olive , box , ebony (Corsican espe- 
 cially), ilex , beech , were adapted for veneering boxes, desks, and 
 small work. Besides these, the Romans used the Syrian terebinth , 
 maple , palm (cut across), holly , root of elder , poplar ; horn, ivory 
 plain and stained ; tortoiseshell ; and wood grained in imitation 
 of various woods for veneering couches and other large pieces 
 of furniture, as well as door frames, &c., so that this imitation of 
 grains is not entirely a modern invention. Woods were soaked in 
 water or buried under heaps of grain to season them ; or steeped 
 in oil of cedar to keep off the worms. The cedars of Crete, Africa, 
 and Syria were the best of that class of timber. The best fir 
 timber was obtained from the Jura range, from Corsica, Bithynia, 
 Pontus, and Macedonia. 
 
 The Romans had admirable glue, and used planes, chisels, &c. 
 Their saws, set in frames, had the teeth turned in opposite direc- 
 tions to open the seam in working. 
 
 There are some curious historical records of the endurance of 
 particular wood structures. The cedar roof of the temple of 
 Diana of Ephesus was intact at the end of four centuries in 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 Pliny’s time. Her statue was black, supposed to be of ebony, 
 but according to other authorities of vine, and had outlasted 
 various rebuildings of the temple. The roof beams of the temple 
 of Apollo at Utica were of cedar and had been laid 348 years 
 before the foundation of Rome ; nearly 1,200 years old in the time 
 of Pliny, and still sound. 
 
 The emperor Philip celebrated the secular games (recurring 
 every 100 years), with great pomp, for the fifth time in the 
 year 248. We may consider this event, for our present purpose, 
 as a convenient finish of the classic period of antique art, and of 
 the reflections of it in the woodwork and furniture and the sur- 
 roundings of private life. 
 
 Ten centuries had elapsed since Romulus had fortified the 
 hills on the banks of the Tiber. “ During the first four ages ” 
 (says Gibbon) “ the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, 
 had acquired the virtues of war and government ; by the vigorous 
 exertion of these virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they 
 had obtained in the course of the three succeeding centuries an 
 absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa. The last three centuries had been consumed in apparent 
 prosperity and internal decline.” 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BYZANTINE ART. 
 
 We may take as the next period for illustration the centuries that 
 witnessed the break up of the old Roman constitution and the 
 gradual formation of a new order of society down to the end of 
 the first ten centuries of our era. Seven hundred and fifty years 
 out of those ten hundred belong in great part to mediaeval history. 
 The misfortunes of Italy, and 
 the incessant state of war, inva- 
 sion, and struggle in that pen- 
 insula were too destructive of 
 personal wealth and the means 
 of showing it in costly furni- 
 ture to leave us any materials 
 from thence for our present 
 subject. The history of furni- 
 ture and woodwork, as applied 
 to civil and social uses, now 
 belongs to such civilisation as 
 took its origin and its form 
 from Constantinople. Art of these centuries is called Byzantine. 
 
 The woodcut is from the chair of St. Peter in Rome, the oldest 
 and most interesting relic of antique furniture in existence ; that 
 is, of furniture made of wood and kept in use from the days of 
 ancient Rome. But it has had repairs and additions, and a 
 description of it shall be referred to in another section. 
 
 D 2 
 
3 6 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 Byzantine art is a debased form of the classic, but with a large 
 mixture of Greek ; not of the old classic Greek type which had 
 long been exhausted, but of that Asiatic Greek which derived so 
 much of its splendour from the rich but unimaginative decorations 
 of Persia. The objects actually executed at Constantinople or by 
 Byzantine artists now remaining can scarcely be included in a 
 treatise on furniture. They are mostly caskets and other small 
 pieces executed in metal or in ivory. Accounts of many interest- 
 ing pieces of Byzantine sculpture will be found in the “ Descrip- 
 tion of the ivories in the South Kensington museum.” Amongst 
 them the diptychs of the consuls are not only the most important, 
 but the most interesting to a treatise on furniture, as we see in 
 them consular seats and thrones of many varieties. 
 
 We may select amongst other examples the following, which 
 can be studied in the museum or referred to in that work. For 
 instance, n°- 368 (fully described in Mr, Maskell’s “ Ivories ”) 
 is one leaf of a consular diptych of Anastasius Paulus Probus 
 Sabinianus Pompeius. The consul is represented seated on a 
 chair of very ornate character. It is like the old folding curule 
 chairs of Rome, but with elements both of Greek and Egyptian 
 ornamentation, such as belong to the massive marble seats, sup- 
 ported by lions or leopards, with the heads sculptured above the 
 upper joint of the hind legs. In the mouths of these lions’ heads 
 are rings for the purpose of carrying the chair, and the top frame is 
 ornamented with little panels and medallions containing winged 
 masks and portrait heads of the consul and his family or of mem- 
 bers of the imperial family. On each side of the seat are small 
 winged figures of Victory standing on globes and holding circular 
 tablets over their heads. These probably represent the front of the 
 arms, and are supposed to have a bar stretching from the heads 
 or the circular tablets to the back of the seat. This feature too is 
 a continuation of types that are to be found on Greek vases and 
 in the chairs of both Nineveh and Egypt. A low footstool with 
 an embroidered cushion on it is under the feet of the consul, and 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 37 
 
 another cushion, also embroidered, covers the seat. This repre- 
 sents a chair of the sixth century. 
 
 A seat still more like the curule chair, but with a high back, is 
 represented in another ivory, n°- 270, in the South Kensington 
 collection. This piece is a plaque or tablet with a bas-relief of 
 two apostles seated. The chairs are formed of two curved and 
 recurved pieces each side, which are jointed together at the point 
 of intersection. One pair of these pieces is prolonged and con- 
 nected by straight cross-bars, and forms a back. Two dolphins, 
 with the heads touching the low front pieces and the tails sloping 
 up and connected with the back, form the arms; This belongs to 
 the ninth century. The lyre back, a form not unknown in old 
 Greek and thence adopted among Roman fashions, is also to be 
 seen in chairs on ivories and in manuscripts. Round cushions 
 were hung on the back, others^eovered the seat. These are seen 
 also figured in the mosaics ,of _Yemc^L and later of Monreale in 
 Sicily which retained m|cf^W'The ^Byzantine spirit. The art of 
 Sicily continued longer §&fej^ct^‘'Constantinople than that of 
 most of its Italian provinces, and Venice preserved her old 
 traditions far into the period of the European revival of art. 
 
 The beds, as represented in manuscript illuminations, belong 
 chiefly to religious compositions such as the Nativity, or visions 
 appearing to saints in their sleep. They are couches in the old 
 Roman form, or are supported on turned legs, from the frames of 
 which valances hang down to the ground. Sometimes a curtain 
 acts as a screen at the head or on one side, but testers are 
 wanting. 
 
 Chariots and carriages of all sorts remained more or less Roman 
 in type. There were a greater number of waggons or carriages for 
 the conveyance of women and families than had been in use in 
 ancient times. Christianity had materially altered the social 
 position of women, and they appeared in public or moved about 
 with their families without the restraints which in the old Roman 
 society forbad their appearance in chariots and open carriages. 
 
38 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 and made the covered couch or closed litter the usual conveyance 
 for ladies of rank in Rome. Several forms of chariots or carriages 
 of this larger kind can be seen in the sculptures of the column of 
 Theodosius in Constantinople. 
 
 The art and the domestic manners and customs that had been 
 in fashion in Rome maintained themselves with some modifica- 
 tions in Constantinople. The life there was more showy and 
 pompous, but it was free from the cruelties and the corruption of 
 the elder society. It was founded on the profession of Chris- 
 tianity, and the numbers and magnificence of the religious 
 hierarchy formed an important feature in the splendid social 
 aspect of the Greek capital. The games of the circus, without 
 the cruelties of gladiatorial combats, were maintained. Chariots 
 were in constant use, much wealth was spent on their construc- 
 tion, and chariot races were kept up. Furniture, such as chairs, 
 couches, chests, caskets, mirrors and articles of the toilet, was 
 exceedingly rich. Gold and silver were probably more abundant 
 in the great houses of Constantinople than they had been in 
 Rome. As the barbarous races of the east and north encroached 
 on the flourishing provinces of the Roman empire, constant 
 immigration took place to Constantinople and the provinces still 
 under its sway. Families brought with them such property as 
 could be easily moved, gold of course and jewels ; and, naturally, 
 these precious materials were afterwards used for the decoration of 
 their furniture and dress. 
 
 The ancient custom of reclining at meals had ceased. The 
 guests sat on benches or chairs. At the same time the “ triclinia 
 aurea,” or golden dining room, was still the title of the great hall 
 of audience in the palace at Constantinople. The term only 
 served to illustrate the jealous retention of the old forms and 
 names by the emperors and patricians. The last branch of the 
 ancient empire did little for the arts of painting and sculpture, ’ 
 though it long preserved the old traditions of art, gradually 
 becoming more and more debased with every succeeding genera- 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 39 
 
 tion, whilst outward splendour was increased because of the 
 greater quantity of the precious metals that had accumulated or 
 been inherited during so many centuries. 
 
 The decay of art and skill in the old world was, however, counter- 
 balanced by the rise of new societies, which were gradually being 
 formed in various parts of the empire. These consisted partly of 
 the races of Huns, Goths, Saxons, and others, who had invaded 
 Italy and settled themselves in it, partly of the old municipal 
 corporations, 'who defended their property and maintained their 
 privileges in the great walled towns of Italy. The cities profited 
 to a great extent by this infusion of new blood ; and became the 
 parents of the future provinces of Italy, so rich in genius and 
 industry, so wealthy and powerful in peace and war. The most 
 important of them was Venice, and it is in Venice that, in the 
 later middle ages, we find the birthplace of most of the art with 
 which the furniture and utensils of home and warlike use were 
 so profusely decorated. 
 
 We point to Constantinople as the last stronghold of the old 
 arts of the Roman period, but it is because it was from the Greeks 
 that the new states borrowed their first notions of art. Nearly 
 all the early art we meet with throughout the west in manuscripts 
 and ivories bears a Byzantine character. 
 
 A remarkable piece of monumental furniture has survived from 
 these early centuries of the Christian era, half Byzantine and half 
 western in character, the chair of St. Maximian of Ravenna, pre- 
 served in the treasury at Ravenna, and engraved and described in 
 the “ Arts Somptuaires ” of M. Du Sommerard. Ravenna was the 
 portion of the empire that most intimately connected the east 
 with the west. The domed churches of San Vitale, San Giovanni 
 in Fonte, the tomb of Galla Placidia, the round church of Santa 
 Maria, built by Theodoric, together with the great basilica of 
 Saint Apollinare in Chiasse, and others of the Latin form, unite 
 the characteristics of the eastern and western architecture. What 
 is true of architecture can also be pronounced as to painting, 
 
40 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 sculpture, textile fabrics, and all decoration applied to objects, 
 sacred or domestic, that were in daily use. 
 
 But events occurred in the declining state of the empire that 
 went far to transfer what remained of art to northern Europe. 
 The sect of the iconoclasts, or image-breakers, rose into power 
 and authority under the emperor Leo the Isaurian, who published 
 an edict in 726 condemnatory of the veneration and use of reli- 
 gious images and paintings. During a century this principle was 
 at work, and it caused the destruction not only of innumerable 
 antique statues, such as those defaced in the Parthenon of 
 Athens, but the loss of vast quantities of ivory and wood sculpture 
 and precious objects of all kinds. Many artists took refuge in 
 western Europe, and were welcomed in the Rhenish provinces of 
 the empire by Charlemagne. 
 
 How much ancient and domestic art in the form of bronze or 
 other metal furniture, such as chairs, thrones, tripods, &c., whole 
 or in fragments, survived the taking of Constantinople by 
 Mahomet II. we cannot conjecture. Perhaps the royal palaces, 
 or still more possibly the mosques which have been the banks 
 and depositories of family treasures under Mahometan rule, may 
 contain valuable bronzes, ivories, and carved wood, relics of the 
 luxurious life of the latter days of the Greek empire, and such 
 evidences may some day come to light. No doubt, however, 
 much antique art and much that belonged to the first eight 
 centuries of our era survived the ordinary shocks of time and war, 
 only to be destroyed by the quiet semi-judicial action of a furious 
 sect protected by imperial decrees, after the manner in which 
 mediaeval art suffered under the searching powers of fanatical 
 government commissioners in our own country, in the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 It is to the impulse which the Lombard and Frankish monarchs 
 gave to art in western and northern Europe by the protection of 
 Greek refugee sculptors and artists that we should trace the 
 beginnings of the northern school called Rhenish- Byzantine. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 We cannot easily determine on a date at which we can assign a 
 beginning to mediaeval art. It differs from the art that succeeded 
 it in the sixteenth century in many respects, and from the late 
 classic art that preceded it still more widely. That peculiar 
 character which we call romantic enters into the art of mediaeval 
 times, as it does into the literature and manners of the same ages. 
 It took a living form in .fhj^half religious institution of chivalry. 
 The northern nations grew up under the leadership of monks 
 quite as much as under that of kings. They lived in territories 
 only partially cleared from forests, pushed their way forward to 
 power pioneered by the great religious orders, and their world 
 was one surrounded by opportunities of endless adventures. But 
 this romantic standard, though it took its rise from the times in 
 which the Christians carried their lives in their hands, under the 
 persecuting emperors, did not pervade Europe for many centuries. 
 Classic art, in its decay, still furnished both forms and symbols, 
 such, e.g ., as that of Orpheus, to the new societies, and the names 
 of Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn, have survived as the titles of 
 days of the week. The two art traditions overlapped each other 
 for a while. Medievalism grew very gradually. 
 
 We have just said that Charlemagne welcomed Byzantine artists 
 to the Rhine. It must be remembered, however, that the Roman 
 empire had been firmly planted beyond the Alps, and that Gaul 
 produced good Roman art in the second and third centuries. 
 
4 2 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 Architecture, sculpture, bronze casting, and the numberless 
 appliances of daily life were completely Roman in many parts of 
 France and Britain. The theatres and amphitheatres of Arles 
 and Orange and the collections in various museums are enough 
 to show how extended this character was. It was not till the 
 old traditions had been much developed or modified by oriental 
 influences that a thorough mediaeval character of art was estab- 
 lished in Italy, France, Germany, and England. To the last it 
 remained semi-classic in Rome itself. 
 
 We can give reference to few specimens of household furniture 
 or to woodwork of any kind before the eleventh century, with a 
 great exception to be noticed presently. Ivories, in any form, 
 belonging to these ages are rare. The best objects are Byzantine. 
 Anglo-saxon ivories, though not unknown, are all but unique 
 examples. Ivory was probably rarely employed for any objects 
 of secular use, unless on mirror cases, combs, or the thrones of 
 kings ; on horns, caskets, sword hilts, and the like. 
 
 Metallurgy in the precious metals and in bronze, including the 
 gilding of bronze, was probably the one art that survived the de- 
 parture, if it had not even preceded the invasion, of the Romans 
 in Britain. It is scarcely probable that tin and copper ores 
 would have been sought for from Britain if manufactured orna- 
 ments of metal had not found their way in the first instance 
 from this country to the south. Be that, however, as it may, the 
 art of metallurgy survived the downfall of such architectural and 
 sculpturesque skill as had been attained in England under Roman 
 traditions ; and that metal thrones, chairs, and other utensils were 
 made here as in Gaul can hardly be doubted. 
 
 There is an interesting collection, lately bequeathed by Mr. 
 Gibbs, of Saxon ornaments in gold, bronze, and bronze ornamented 
 with gilding and enamel, in the South Kensington museum. These 
 objects were dug up chiefly at Faversham, a village in Kent. Most 
 of these antiquities are fibula, brooches, and buckles, or portions 
 of horse trappings, bosses, &c., and not recognisable as parts of 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 43 
 
 bronze furniture, such as the chair of Dagobert. But it is difficult 
 to examine these personal ornaments and not believe that during 
 the Saxon occupation bronze thrones, tripods, mirrors, and other 
 objects of household use were also made. 
 
 The earliest example of mediaeval furniture in the Kensington 
 museum is a cast of the chair known as that of Dagobert, in the 
 Louvre. A full description 
 found in the large catalogue, 
 n°* 68 : and we here give a 
 woodcut of it. This work (it 
 is said) was executed by a 
 monk. 
 
 When we consider the 
 rapacity of the barbarian in- 
 roads into Italy and Rome, 
 and the amount of spoil 
 carried bodijy’^awiy^^ 
 
 Constantinople Rpm^ x ahd 
 the great municipal cej^res 
 of Italy, it is remarkable that 
 so little precious furniture 
 should have survived in 
 other parts of Europe. The Goths under Adolphus in the fifth 
 century carried an immense plunder into Gaul and Spain. “ When 
 the treasuries, after the conquest of Spain/’ says Gibbon, “ were 
 plundered by the Arabs, they admired, and they have celebrated, 
 a table of considerable size, of one single piece of solid emerald 
 [that is, glass], encircled with three rows of fine pearls, supported 
 by three hundred and sixty-five feet of gems and massy gold, esti- 
 mated at the price of five hundred thousand pieces of gold,” — 
 probably the most expensive table on record. It is the value of 
 the materials that has prevented the preservation of many such 
 objects, while the chair of Dagobert is of gilt bronze only. 
 
 Early mediaeval art, included under the general name of Gothic, 
 
 and history of this chair is to be 
 
44 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 continued down to the twelfth century full of Romanesque forms 
 and details. Figures were clothed in classic draperies, but stiff 
 and severe with upright lines and childish attempts to indicate the 
 limbs or joints beneath. Nevertheless, the work of these cen- 
 turies, rude and archaic as it is, is full of dignity and force. The 
 subjects were often sacred, sometimes of war or incidents of the 
 chase. These last were commonly mixed with animals, lions and 
 dogs, or eagles and hawks, or leaves of the acanthus and other 
 foliage. Throughout these ages the foliated sculpture, the paint- 
 ings of books and carving of ivory, and no doubt of wood also, 
 was, moreover, composed in endless convolutions, such as may be 
 seen on sculptured stones in Ireland and on the Norwegian doors 
 of the twelfth century. Whether the different convolutions are 
 formed by figures or dragons, or by stalks of foliage twined and 
 knotted together in bold curved lines, symmetrically arranged, 
 each portion is generally carefully designed and traceable through 
 many windings as having a distinct intention and purpose. Orna- 
 mental work was thus apparently conventional, but made up 
 of individual parts separately carried out, and in some degree, 
 though not altogether, realistic: a character gradually lost after 
 the early thirteenth century till the new revival in the sixteenth. 
 
 The tenth century was not favourable to the development of 
 the requirements or comfort of personal life. Towards the year 
 one thousand a superstition prevailed over many parts of Europe 
 that the world would come to an end when the century was com- 
 pleted ; and many fields were left uncultivated in the year 999. 
 The eleventh century made a great advance in architecture and 
 other arts, but down to the Norman invasion our own country 
 was far behind the continental nations in the fine arts ; metal- 
 lurgy only excepted. The Anglo-saxons perhaps advanced but 
 very slowly, as the century wore on to the period of the Norman 
 conquest ; and manners remained exceedingly simple. 
 
 Early illuminations, though conventional, give us some details 
 of Anglo-saxon houses. They were of one story, and contained 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 45 
 
 generally only one room. The addition of a second was rare before 
 the Norman conquest. The furniture of the room consisted of a 
 heavy table, sometimes fixed ; on which the inhabitants of the 
 house and the guests slept. A bedstead was occasionally reserved 
 for the mistress of the house. Bedsteads when used by the 
 women or the lord of the house were enclosed in a shed under 
 the wall of enclosure and had a separate roof, as may be seen in 
 many manuscripts. In the Bayeux tapestry a bed roof is tiled, 
 and the framework shut in with curtains. In many instances 
 such a design represents only a tester with posts. Otherwise 
 beds of straw stuffed into a bag or case were spread on the table, 
 and soldiers laid their arms by their heads ready for use in case 
 of alarm. Benches, some with lion or other heads at the corners, 
 like elongated chairs or settles (with backs, for the lord and lady 
 of the house), were the usual seats. Thrones, something like 
 that of Dagobert, were the property of kings. King Edward the 
 Confessor is seated on such a chair (metal, and in the Roman 
 shape) in the Bayeux tapestry, and folding chairs of various forms, 
 more or less following classical types, were used by great person- 
 ages. Benches were also used as beds ; so were the lids or tops 
 of chests, the sack or bag being sometimes kept in it and filled 
 with straw when required. The tables were covered with cloths 
 at dinner. Stained cloths and tapestries, commonly worked with 
 pictorial designs, were used to hang the walls of the house or hall. 
 They were called wah-hrsegel, wall coverings. Personal clothing 
 was kept in chests of rude construction. Silver candlesticks were 
 used in churches. Candles were stuck anywhere in houses, on 
 beams or ledges. 
 
 With regard to carriages during the Saxon and Anglo-norman 
 period, carts on two wheels were common for agricultural use, 
 and served to transport the royal property, Four-wheeled cars 
 drawn by hand labour are used for carrying warlike stores 
 in the Bayeux tapestry. In the battle of the Standard the 
 standard of the English host was carried on a wheeled car or 
 
46 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 platform, and remained as the head-quarters or rallying point 
 during action. 
 
 The Norman invasion of England caused a new advance in the 
 luxury and refinement, such as it was, of daily life. The houses 
 began to grow — upper rooms or rooms at the side of the great 
 hall were added, called solars (solaria), the sunny or light rooms. 
 These seem to have been appropriated to the ladies. In due 
 time they added a parloir or talking room, a name derived from 
 the rooms in which conversation was allowed in monasteries 
 where silence was the general rule. In the upper rooms fire- 
 places were made occasionally, but not always chimneys. In the 
 halls, when the upper room did not cover the whole under room 
 or when an upper room was not constructed, fire was made in the 
 centre of the floor. Stairs were of wood. Glass was all but un- 
 known in the windows of houses, and wooden shutters kept out 
 the weather. 
 
 The houses of landowners in England were called manoir or 
 manor. The furniture was simple and consisted of few objects. 
 The table was on trestles ; the seats were benches. Armaria , 
 armoires, cupboards or presses, either stood in recesses in the 
 wall or were complete wooden enclosures. These had doors 
 
 opening horizontally. The 
 frames were not panelled. 
 The doors were ledge doors 
 of boards, nailed to stout 
 cross-bars behind, and de- 
 corated with iron hinges and 
 clamps beaten out into scrolls 
 and other ornaments. 
 
 Bedrooms were furnished 
 with ornamental bed testers, 
 and benches at the bed foot. Beds were furnished with quilts and 
 pillows, and with spotted or striped linen sheets ; over all was laid 
 a covering of green say, badgers’ furs, the skins of beavers or of 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 47 
 
 martin cats, and a cushion. A perch for falcons to sit on was 
 fixed in the wall. A chair at the bed head, and a perch or pro- 
 jecting pole on which clothes could be hung, completed the furni- 
 ture of the Anglo-norman bedroom. In the foregoing wood- 
 cut from Willemin there is no tester, but carving on the posts, and 
 the coverings are of the richest description. 
 
 Woodwork was decorated with painted ornament or with fanci- 
 ful work on the hinges ; and nails and clamps were applied to 
 hold it together, rather than with sculpture, down to the fourteenth 
 century ; and in England, France, and Germany, oak was the 
 wood employed for furniture. Both in England and in the 
 countries which had retained old artistic traditions on the con- 
 tinent, such as Italy, France, and Spain (which profited by the 
 skill of the Moors in painted decoration), colour was used not less 
 on walls and wood than on metal and pottery. Tapestry was an 
 important portion of the ifubnifure of all houses of the richer 
 classes. . 
 
 During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries mediaeval art 
 in Europe reached its greatest perfection. The classic traditions 
 were at last forgotten everywhere except in Rome itself, where 
 a chain lingered almost continuous between the old ideas and 
 those which succeeded in the sixteenth century. Elsewhere the 
 feeling in sculpture, whether of wood or other materials, was in 
 unison with the pointed architecture and reigned unchallenged. 
 All sorts of enrichments were used in the decoration of furniture. 
 A chest of the time of John is preserved in the castle of Rocking- 
 ham. It is of oak richly decorated with hammered iron plates, 
 hinges, &c. The jewel chest of Richard of Cornwall was long 
 preserved in the state treasury of Aix-la-Chapelle, and is now at 
 Vienna. It belongs to the first half of the century, and was left 
 at Aix when Richard was crowned king of the Romans. The 
 body is of oak decorated with wrought-iron hinges, lock, and 
 clamps, and with bosses of metal on which are enamelled heraldic 
 shields. 
 
4 S 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 The construction of woodwork gradually became more careful 
 and scientific. Panelled framework came into use, though seldom 
 for doors of rooms. With this method of construction the chests 
 were put together that formed the chief article of furniture during 
 two centuries in the mediaeval sleeping, sitting, or private room. 
 
 In the middle of the thirteenth century Eleanor of Provence 
 was escorted on her journey to England by an army of ladies, 
 knights, nobles and troubadours, from Provence to the shores of 
 the channel. Kings were continually making progress in this 
 manner through their dominions, like the Indian governors of our 
 own days, and carried their furniture and property in chests, 
 called standards, on the backs of mules or sumpter horses. 
 Portable furniture and hangings were the principal objects of 
 household use on such occasions, A precept in the twentieth 
 year of the reign of Henry the third directed that “ the king’s 
 great chamber at Westminster be painted a green colour like a 
 curtain, that in the great gable 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.” The queen’s chamber was decorated with historical 
 paintings. Remains of similar wall decoration are in tolerable 
 preservation still in one of the vaulted rooms of Dover castle. 
 
 Till the fourteenth century candles were generally placed on a 
 beam in the hall, whether in the castle of a king or baron. 
 Frames of wood with prickets were also suspended for the light- 
 ing of rooms, or were fixed to the sides of the fire-place when that 
 was made in the wall and had a chimney constructed for it. 
 More generally, as regards halls, the hearth was in the middle 
 of the room and a lantern just above it in the roof acted as a 
 chimney. Iron chandeliers, or branches, were ordered to be 
 fixed to the piers of the king’s halls at Oxford, Winchester, and 
 other places. Though the royal table might be lighted with 
 valuable candesticks of metal, they were not in general use till a 
 century later. Besides the numerous rows of tallow candles pieces 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 49 
 
 of pine wood were lighted and stuck into iron hasps in the wall, 
 or round the woodwork at the back of the dais to give more 
 abundant light. 
 
 The wardrobe was a special room fitted with hanging closets, 
 and in these clothes, hangings, linen, as well as spices and stores, 
 were preserved. This arrangement was common in all large 
 castles during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. 
 Great preparations were made in the bedrooms of queens of 
 England to which they retired before the birth of children. 
 Henry the third directed that his queen’s bedroom should be 
 freshly wainscoted and lined, and that a list or border should be 
 made, well painted with images of our Lord and angels, with 
 incense pots scattered over it ; that the four evangelists should be 
 painted in the chamber, and a crystal vase be made to keep his 
 collection of relics. 
 
 Room panelling was introduced into England during the same 
 reign. Henry ordered a chamber 
 at Windsor castle to be panelled 
 with Norway pines specially im- 
 ported ; the men worked day and 
 night. The boards were radiated 
 and coloured, and two clear days 
 only were allowed for the fixing 
 and completion. 
 
 Edward the first married a 
 Spanish queen, and household 
 furniture was further developed 
 under his reign in many parti- 
 culars. Pottery for the table was 
 imported from Spain, and oriental 
 carpets were introduced ; a luxury 
 naturally borrowed from the ex- 
 tensive use of them by the Moors in that country. Italian 
 artists had already been invited to England. Master William, the 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 Florentine, was master of the works at Guildford castle. John 
 of St. Omer was another foreign artist employed by Henry the 
 third. To the former of these we probably owe the introduction 
 into this country of the method of gilding and tooled gold work, 
 with which wood was decorated. Specimens of the work are 
 still discernible on the famous coronation chair (of which we give a 
 woodcut, p. 49) ^Westminster abbey; made about the year 1300. 
 
 The decoration and comfort of furnished houses during Henry’s 
 reign was further promoted by the general use of tapestry. Queen 
 Eleanor is traditionally and incorrectly said to have first brought 
 this kind of furniture into houses ; it was certainly adopted for 
 churches at earlier periods, and hangings of various materials, 
 stained or embroidered, were employed as far back as the Anglo- 
 saxon times. Tapestries and cypress chests to carry them 
 probably became more general in Eleanor’s reign. 
 
 Amongst the particulars collected in the history of the city 
 companies and by the record commission are lists of the royal 
 plate, showing that objects of personal use besides table plate 
 were made in silver and gold. We find mention of pitchers of 
 gold and silver, plates and dishes of silver, gold salts, alms bowls, 
 silver hannapers or baskets, a pair of knives with enamelled silver 
 sheaths, a fork of crystal, and a silver fork with handle of ebony 
 and ivory, combs and looking-glasses of silver. Edward had six 
 silver forks and one of gold. Ozier mats were laid over the 
 benches on which he and his queen sat at meals. These were 
 also put under the feet, especially in churches where the pavement 
 was of stone or tiles. 
 
 In the furniture of bedrooms linen chests and settles, cupboards 
 and the beds themselves were of panelled wood. The next wood- 
 cut shows the interior of a well-furnished bedroom, from a manu- 
 script life of St. Edmund written about the year 1400. Chests 
 served as tables, and are often represented with chess-boards on 
 them in old illuminations, and husband and wife sitting on the 
 chest and using it for the game, which had become familiar to most 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 5i 
 
 European nations. Chests of later date than the time of Edward, 
 of Italian make, still show the same use of the lids of coffers. 
 As the tops of the coffers served for tables and for seats they 
 began in the thirteenth century to be furnished with a panelled 
 back and arm-pieces at either end. This development of the 
 
 chest was equally common in France. It does not seem to have 
 been placed on legs or to have grown into a cabinet till a later 
 period. The raised dorsal or back of the seats in large rooms 
 was a protection from the cold, and in the rude form of a settle 
 is still the comfort of old farm and inn kitchens in this country ; 
 it became the general type of seats of state in the great halls, and 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 was there further enlarged by a canopy projecting forwards to 
 protect the heads of the sitters, panelled also in oak. In the 
 fifteenth century in many instances this hood or canopy was 
 attached to the panelling of the upper end of the hall, and 
 covered the whole of that side of the dais. The backing and 
 canopy were sometimes replaced by temporary arrangements of 
 hangings, as in modern royal throne rooms, the cloth being called 
 cloth of estate and generally embroidered with heraldic devices. 
 Panelled closets called dressoirs or cupboards, to lock up food, 
 were general in properly furnished rooms ; a cloth was laid on 
 the top at meals, with lights, and narrow shelves rose in steps at 
 the back for the display of plate, the steps varying in number 
 according to the rank of the persons served. 
 
 Tables used at meals were generally frames of boards, either in 
 one piece or folding in the middle. These were laid on trestles, 
 as in the woodcut from an early manuscript in the Bodleian 
 
 library, and could be removed as soon as the dinner was over, so 
 that the company might dance and divert themselves. Somewhat 
 later, about the year 1450, the tables although still on trestles 
 were made more solidly, even for the use of people of the middle 
 class. 
 
 All houses, however, even of kings could not be completely or 
 even comfortably furnished in such a manner, far less those of 
 feudal lords, not princes or sovereigns. The kings moved inces- 
 santly to their various strongholds and manors in time of peace to 
 collect dues and revenues, much of which was paid in kind and 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 53 
 
 could only be profitably turned to account by carrying the Court 
 
 to different estates arid living on their produce as long as it lasted. 
 
 Orders were continually sent to sheriffs to provide food, linen 
 
54 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 and other requisites, while hangings and furniture were carried by 
 the train in its progress. Much of the household belongings of 
 persons of wealth was, therefore, of a movable kind. We engrave 
 (p. 53) a very curious table standing on a pedestal shaped like a 
 chalice, from a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth century. 
 The ladies are playing at cards. 
 
 A most oppressive privilege was exercised in France, which 
 went beyond the legal right of the lord or owner to the rents of 
 his estates whether paid in money, agricultural produce, or manu- 
 factures carried on in his towns or villages. This was the droit 
 de prisage , a privilege of seizing furniture of all kinds by the hands 
 of stewards and others for the use of the king. Chairs, tables, 
 and beds particularly were included in these requisitions. The 
 droit de prisage was modified at various times in consequence of 
 the remonstrance of the commons at so oppressive an exaction ; 
 but as late as the year 1365 Charles the fifth seized beds. In 
 1313 Philippe le Bel entertained the English king and his queen 
 at Pontoise with no other furniture than such as had been seized 
 in this manner. A fire broke out in the night during their stay, 
 the furniture was consumed, and the royal personages escaped in 
 their shirts. It was not till 1407 that this privilege was finally 
 abandoned. 
 
 Though the usual conveyance during the thirteenth century 
 was a horse litter for women of rank, and men rode on horseback, 
 yet covered and open carriages or waggons were not unknown in 
 that and in the following century. A charette containing a 
 number of maids of honour in attendance on Anne of Bohemia at 
 her public reception in London in 1392, was upset on London 
 bridge from the rush of the crowd to get a sight of the queen, and 
 her ladies were not without difficulty replaced. These charettes, 
 cars, or waggons were covered carts on four wheels, like country 
 waggons of our days, panelled at the sides, and the tilt covered 
 with leather, sometimes with lead, and painted. 
 
 We must not pass without a very brief notice the large construe- 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 55 
 
 lions of roofs of wood begun as early as the twelfth, and continued 
 and improved through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the 
 period during which the finest 
 efforts of mediaeval Gothic art 
 were embodied all over the north 
 and over parts of the south of 
 Europe. The older part of 
 Westminster hall dates from the 
 reign of Rufus, and the walls 
 of the present building belong 
 to that period, though faced at 
 a later time. How the roof of 
 the' enormous space, sixty-five 
 feet diameter, was at first con- 
 structed there is no -^videiiceTo 
 show. It had, pei^aps, ^. row or, 
 arches down the^niiddle, like 
 the great hall of the^p^fede of 
 Blois, said to be of the thirteenth 
 century, or huge kingposts sup- 
 porting the ties between rafters, 
 which in that case may have 
 been as long as those of the later 
 roof. The present roof, work 
 of the fourteenth century, marks 
 the beginning of a change in the 
 style of architecture that accom- 
 panied and caused great changes 
 in furniture and household 
 woodwork. The ties are supported by curved braces that descend 
 like arches on the stone corbels made in the wall to receive them. 
 These braces take two flights, being tied back where they meet 
 by hammer beams into a lower part of the rafter. The lower 
 brace upholds another upright or collar post which supports the 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 56 
 
 junction of these beams with the rafter, at its weakest part. A 
 rich subdivision of upright mullions with cusped arch heads 
 fills up the spandrels between these braces and the beams 
 they support, and adds stiffness as well as decoration to the 
 whole. 
 
 Such constructions were not only more scientific than those of 
 older date, but they are more pompous and complicated, and 
 have a greater apparent affinity with the architecture of the day. 
 This architectural character, from the date of the change to the 
 third period of pointed architecture, began to show itself in 
 furniture and wood structure of every kind. Until then a certain 
 originality and inventiveness were preserved in the decoration 
 both of architective woodwork and furniture, notwithstanding 
 the strictest observance of the rules and unities of architectural 
 law in buildings, ecclesiastical and civil. Small sculpture, such as 
 that on ivories and utensils made of metal, or that which deco- 
 rated woodwork as well as stone, and the general forms of 
 furniture, were designed without immediate imitation of archi- 
 tectonic detail. Figure sculpture of great dignity remains in 
 ivories of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, illus- 
 trative of the general character given to things of daily use 
 which were not, probably, nearly so numerous as in a later age, 
 and were each carefully elaborated for the person for whom they 
 were made. We need go no further than some of the objects in 
 the Kensington museum, such as the statuettes and caskets of 
 ivory, English and French work of that time. 
 
 We can point to few large pieces of furniture, except the 
 coronation chair, illustrating the fashions of this early period. 
 Examples of wooden movable furniture are extremely rare in 
 this country. There are large semicircular cope chests in the 
 cathedrals of Wells, York, and other cities. These are merely 
 chests or boxes in which the copes are spread out full size, one 
 over the other, and the only decoration consists in the floriated 
 ironwork attached to the hinges. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 57 
 
 We must not omit to remark that some examples of very 
 beautiful oriental panelling of this period are to be seen in 
 
 various collections. The woodcuts represent the fittings of a 
 
 series of such panels from a mosque at Cairo, now at South 
 Kensington, n° - 1,051 ; and a single piece to show the detail. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 53 
 
 The delicacy of the carving and the apparent intricacy of the 
 geometrical arrangement are very remarkable. 
 
 A royal dinner table, from a manuscript of the fourteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 In discussing the great wood structures such as screens, house 
 fronts, roofs, and other large pieces of mechanism, which deve- 
 loped in boldness and variety in the fifteenth century, we must 
 not forget that the abundance of oak timber in the north of 
 Europe both suggested much of this timber art and admitted of 
 bold features of construction from the size of the logs and the 
 tenacity of the material. A large portion of England and per- 
 haps an equal proportion of Ireland were covered with dense 
 forests of oak. The eastern frontier of France, great portions 
 of Burgundy, and many other districts in France, Germany, 
 Flanders, and other northern countries, were still forests, and 
 timber was to be had at low prices and in any quantity. Spanish 
 chestnut had been introduced probably by the Romans into 
 England. 
 
 Though churches, castles, and manors were built of stone or 
 brick, or both, yet whole cities seem to have been mainly con- 
 structed out of timber. The London of the fifteenth century, 
 like a hundred other cities, though abounding in noble churches 
 and in great fortified palaces, yet presented the aspect of a timber 
 city. The houses were framed together, as a few still are in 
 some English towns and villages, of vast posts sixteen to twenty- 
 four inches square in section, arching outwards and meeting the 
 projecting floor timbers, and so with upper stories, till the streets 
 were darkened by the projections. The surfaces of these posts 
 
6o 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 were covered with delicate tracery, niches and images. In the 
 streets at Chester an open gallery or passage is left on the first 
 floor within the timbers of the house fronts. In the court of 
 St. Mary’s guild in Coventry, whole chambers and galleries are 
 supported on vast arches of timber like bridges. Oriels jutted 
 out under these overhanging stories, and the spaces between the 
 framing posts were filled in, sometimes with bricks, sometimes 
 with laths and mortar, or parts (as the century wore on) more 
 frequently with glass* 
 
 In London and Rouen, in Blois and in Coventry, these angle 
 posts were filled with niches and statuettes or fifteenth century 
 window tracery sunk into the surfaces. The dark wooden houses 
 were externally a mass of imagery. In the great roofs of these 
 centuries, such as the one spoken of at Westminster, the hammer 
 beams were generally carved into figures of angels gracefully 
 
 sustaining the timber behind them with 
 outstretched wings ; and these figures 
 were painted and gilt. A magnificent 
 example remains intact in the church 
 of Knapton in Norfolk. 
 
 The number of excellent workmen 
 and the size and architectural character 
 of so much of the woodwork of the day 
 contributed to give all panelled work, 
 no matter of what description, an archi- 
 tectural type ; and furniture shared in 
 this change. Coffers and chests, as well 
 as standards or stall-ends in churches, 
 and bench-ends in large rooms and 
 halls, were designed after the pattern 
 of window tracery. The panel in the above woodcut from 
 a French chest of this date, is a very delicate and beautiful 
 example. Little buttresses and pinnacles were often placed on 
 the angles or the divisions between the panels. At South Ken- 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 6 1 
 
 sington, the buffet, n°* 8,439 an d the chest, no. 2,789, with 
 other pieces are of this kind; also a grand cabinet of German 
 make in the same collection. This last, n°- 497, is of the rudest 
 construction, but a few roughly cut lines of moulding and some 
 effective ironwork give it richness and dignity that are wanting 
 in many pieces more scientifically made and more decoratively 
 treated. 
 
 The quantity of tapestry employed in these centuries in fitting 
 up houses and the tents used either during a campaign or in pro- 
 gresses from one estate to another was prodigious, and kept 
 increasing.. Lancaster entertained the king of Portugal in his 
 tent between Mou^al and Malga^o, fitted up with hangings of 
 arras “as if he had been at Hertford, Leicester, or any of his 
 manors.” As early as 1313, when Isabel of Bavaria made her 
 entry into Paris, the whole street of St. Denis, Froissart tells us, 
 “ was covered with a canopy of rich camlet and silk cloths, as 
 if they had the cloths for nothing, or were at Alexandria or 
 Damascus. I (the writer of this account) was present, and was 
 astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments 
 could have come, for all the houses on each side of the street of 
 St. Denis, as far as the Chatelet, or indeed to the great bridge, 
 were hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histo- 
 ries, to the delight of all beholders.” The expense incurred in 
 timber work on these occasions may be estimated from the long 
 lists of pageants, and the scale on which each was prepared on 
 this and like occasions. 
 
 Of the early Italian furniture of the mediaeval period there is at 
 South Kensington one fine specimen, a coffer of cypress, covered 
 with flat surface imagery filled in with coloured wax composition. 
 It dates from the fourteenth century. The better known Italian 
 furniture of the quattrocento or “ fourteen hundred period,” i.e. 
 the fifteenth century, is gilt and painted. The richness of this 
 old work is owing to the careful preparation of the ground or bed 
 on which the gold is laid and the way in which the preparation 
 
62 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 was modelled with the tool. The old gold is, besides, both 
 thicker and purer, more malleable, and less liable to suffer from 
 the action of the atmosphere than the gold we now use for this 
 purpose. The paintings executed on such pieces of furniture as 
 offered suitable surfaces to the artist, boxes and coffers (and, 
 for church uses, reliquaries), are equal to the finest works of 
 that kind and of the same period. 
 
 Many artists worked in this way. Dello Delli was the best 
 known in regard to such productions. His work became so 
 entirely the fashion that, according to Vasari, no house was com- 
 plete without a specimen of it. Andrea di Cosimo was another. 
 It need not be said that such men and their contemporaries had 
 a number of pupils similarly employed. Every piece of painted 
 furniture attributed to Dello Delli cannot be warranted. There 
 are, however, specimens which we believe to be from his hand in 
 the Kensington collection, and numbers of fronts and panels and 
 fragments of great merit which illustrate his style. 
 
 Besides this kind of decoration, the Venetians had derived from 
 Persia and India another beautiful system of surface ornament ; 
 marquetry, a fine inlay of ivory, metal, and woods, stained to vary 
 the colour. The work is in geometric patterns only. It is found 
 on the ivory boxes and other objects sculptured in that material, 
 and attributed to Italian as well as to Byzantine sources. In the 
 fifteenth century Florence also came prominently to the front in 
 the manufacture of these and other rich materials ; as well as 
 of ivory inlaid into solid cypress wood and walnut, known as 
 Certosina work. The style is Indian in character, and consists 
 in geometric arrangements of stars made of diamond-shaped 
 pieces : varied with conventional flowers in pots, &c. The name 
 Certosina is derived from the great Certosa, charterhouse, or 
 Carthusian monastery between Milan and Pavia : where this kind 
 of decoration is employed in the choir fittings of the splendid 
 church of that monastery. 
 
 We are inclined to the belief (as already said) that the manu- 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 63 
 
 facture of geometrical work of this kind was originally imported 
 from Persia by the Venetians. There are in the Kensington 
 museum some very interesting old chairs made for the castle of 
 Urbino, and part of the furniture of Guidobaldo II., whose court, 
 like that of Rene, king of Provence, was the resort of troubadours, 
 poets, and philosophers. These chairs are covered with geo- 
 metric marquetry of white and stained ivory, &c., the very 
 counterpart of the Bombay work now brought to this country. 
 That manufacture, in the opinion of Dr. Birdwood, was also of 
 Persian origin and thence found its way to Bombay. The 
 Persians continued long into the last century the inlaying of ivory 
 in walnut wood, and their geometric marquetry is still made. 
 
 The forms of chairs in use in Italy early in the fifteenth century 
 were revivals of the old Roman folding chair. The pairs of cross- 
 pieces are sometimes on the sides, sometimes set back and front, 
 and in that case arm and back__pigces are added. Generally we 
 may say that the fine Italian furniture of that day owed its beauty 
 to inlaying, surface gilding, hfclmg and fainting. Gilt chests and 
 marriage trays, inlaid tabW, and chairs are also to be seen at 
 South Kensington. 
 
 As in Italy, so in England, France, Germany, and later in 
 Spain, the splendour hitherto devoted to the glory of ecclesiastical 
 furniture, utensils, or architectural decoration was gradually 
 adopted in the royal and other castles and houses. State rooms, 
 halls of justice, sets of rooms for the use of the king or his 
 barons were furnished and maintained. The large religious esta- 
 blishments also demanded the skill of artists and workmen, and 
 to a greater extent north than south of the Alps. Many monastic 
 houses in the north of Europe were seats of feudal jurisdiction. 
 These communities executed great works in wood, stall-work, 
 presses, coffers, &c., as large and continuous societies alone are 
 able to carry through tasks that want much time for completion. 
 All this helped to encourage the manufacture of woodwork of the 
 finest kind. Hence the mediaeval semi-ecclesiastical character 
 
6 4 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 maintained sway in every art connected with architecture and 
 furniture longer in northern countries than in Italy, where both old 
 traditions and monumental remains recalled rather the glories of 
 antique art, and where the revival of classic learning had begun. 
 
 As regards English art it is certain that, partly from the 
 influence of foreign queens, partly from foreign wars, and partly 
 from the incessant intercourse with the rest of Europe kept up 
 by religious houses, many of the accomplishments of other 
 countries were known and practised here by foreign or native 
 artists* 
 
 It is true that the wars of the Roses, more bloody and ruinous 
 than any experienced in this country, delayed that growth of 
 domestic luxury which might have been expected from the then 
 wealth of England. But when Henry the seventh established a 
 settled government, and from his time downwards, the decorations 
 and the accumulation of furniture in houses, libraries, and collec- 
 tions of works of art rapidly increased. Many of the books in the 
 “ King’s library,” and many pictures and movables still in pos- 
 session of the crown, may be traced to that day. 
 
 It is difficult, indeed, to imagine the England which Leland 
 saw in his travels. It must have been full of splendid objects, 
 and during the reign of Henry the feudal mansions, as well as 
 the numerous royal palaces of Windsor, Richmond, Havering, 
 and others, were filled with magnificent furniture. Mabuse and 
 Torrigiano were employed by the king, and this example found 
 many imitations ; artists, both foreign and English, made secular 
 furniture, as rich and beautiful as that of the churches and 
 religious houses which covered the country. 
 
 Taste in furniture, as in architecture, both in continental 
 Europe and in these islands had nevertheless passed the fine 
 period of mediaeval design. The “ Gothic ” or pointed forms 
 and details had become uninventive and commonplace. The 
 whole system awaited a change. The figure sculpture, however, 
 of the latter years of this century, though life-sized statues had lost 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 65 
 
 much of the dignity and simplicity of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries, was approaching the realization of natural form, which 
 it attained in such excellence in the succeeding century. The 
 ingenuity and raciness of the smaller figure carving both in stall- 
 work of churches and on the tops and fronts of boxes and caskets, 
 in panel-work of cabinets or doors, &c., during the last half of 
 the fifteenth century are scarcely surpassed by the more academic 
 and classical figure design of the sixteenth. Carvers on all kinds 
 of wood furniture and decoration of houses delighted in doubling 
 their figures up into quaint and ingenious attitudes, and if the 
 architecture was latterly tame, though showy and costly, imagery 
 continued to be full of individuality and inventiveness. 
 
 F 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 
 
 There are few matters regarding art more worthy of considera- 
 tion than the narrowness of the limits that bound human inven- 
 tion : or, to speak more exactly, we should say the simplicity of 
 the laws and principles in obedience to which the imaginations 
 of men are exercised. The return of the painters, sculptors, and 
 architects to the old types of classical art after the reign of the 
 Gothic seems at first sight as if in the arts there could be nothing 
 new under the sun : as if the imagination, so fertile in creation 
 during many centuries since the establishment of Christianity, 
 had been utterly worked out and come to an end, and that there 
 was nothing left but to repeat and copy what had been done ages 
 before. 
 
 There is, however, in reality more connection between classic 
 and mediaeval art than appears on the surface, and although all 
 the great masters of the revival studied eagerly such remains ol 
 antique art as were discovered in Italy during the early years of 
 the renaissance, they only came into direct contact with or abso- 
 lute imitation of those models occasionally; and the works of 
 that age have a grace that is peculiarly their own, and an inven- 
 tiveness in painting and sculpture, if not in architecture, that 
 seems, when we look at such cities as Venice and Florence, 
 inexhaustible. The renaissance began in Italy many years before 
 the year 1500. Most changes, indeed, of manners or arts which 
 are designated by any century are perhaps more correctly dated 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 67 
 
 twenty years before or after its beginning, and in the notices which 
 we are here putting together we are compelled to make divisions 
 of time occasionally overlap each other. 
 
 The revival of learning in Italy was accompanied by other cir- 
 cumstances which had a powerful influence on the arts, and par- 
 ticularly on the sumptuary arts of the century. It has been 
 already remarked that while the nations of Europe were more or 
 less convulsed with war it was not easy or possible for the in- 
 habitants, even the wealthy, to do much in furnishing dwelling- 
 houses with any kind of comfort. Rich furniture consisted in a 
 few costly objects and in hangings such as could be carried about 
 on sumpter horses or in waggons, and, with the addition of rough 
 benches, tables, and bedsteads, could make bare walls look gay 
 and comfortable, and offer sufficient accommodation in the empty 
 halls of granges and manors seldom lived in, for the occasions of 
 a visit or a temporary occupation. Churches indeed were in those 
 ages respected by both sides in the furious contests that raged 
 throughout Europe. The violation of holy places was a crime 
 held in abhorrence by all combatants, and the treasuries and 
 sacristies, therefore, of churches were full of examples of every 
 kind of accomplishment possessed by the artists of the day. 
 They contained objects collected there during many generations, 
 as was the case of shrines like that of the Virgin del Pillar in 
 Spain, of which the offerings so long preserved have been very 
 lately sold and dispersed, and represented the art of many suc- 
 cessive ages. But in private houses it was scarcely possible to 
 have any corresponding richness, though in the instance of kings 
 and potentates there was often much splendour. 
 
 As in England the fifteenth century saw the close of a series 
 of great wars and the establishment of one powerful government, 
 so during its conclusion and the beginning of the next century a 
 similar disorder gradually gave place to tranquillity in Italy. 
 
 The practices of painting gilt furniture of all kinds, and of 
 modelling terra-cotta work on the wood, were not altogether new 
 
 f 2 
 
68 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 accomplishments or confined to the artists of one city. When, 
 therefore, the French having been driven out of Italy, the popes 
 were in security in Rome and the accomplished Medici family 
 reigned in Florence, those states as well as Urbino, Ferrara, and 
 other independent cities were free from the perpetual attitude of 
 defence against foreign invasion ; they could indulge their enthu- 
 siasm for classic art, and the impulse given to the study of it 
 found a ready response, as great noblemen while building palaces 
 and digging gardens came upon statues, frescoes, vases, bronzes, 
 and many glorious remnants of antiquity. In the various Italian 
 states were artists well skilled and carefully trained, and there was 
 no difficulty in finding distinguished names with whole schools of 
 enthusiastic admirers behind them who, with these precious objects 
 in their view, formed their style on the old classic models. We 
 are to consider such acquirements here only so far as they came 
 to be applied to secular woodwork (of which this cornice from 
 
 Venice is an example) and the objects of daily use; to coffers, 
 chests, caskets, mirrors, or cabinets, sideboards of various kinds, 
 seats, tables, carriages and furniture of every description. 
 
 The best artists of the day did not hesitate to give their minds 
 to the making of woodwork and furniture in various materials and 
 employed every kind of accomplishment in beautifying them. 
 Of this fine renaissance period there are so many examples in the 
 South Kensington collection, and some of them of such excel- 
 lence, that* the student need scarcely have occasion to travel 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 6g 
 
 beyond the limits of that museum to illustrate the quattrocento 
 and cinquecento furniture and woodwork. 
 
 Many materials were employed by the renaissance artists. 
 Wood first and principally in making furniture, but decorated 
 with gilding and paintings ; inlaid with agate, carnelian, lapis 
 lazuli and marbles of various tints ; with ivory, tortoiseshell, 
 mother-of-pearl ; and with other woods. They also made many 
 smaller objects, such as mirror cases in iron, damascened or in- 
 laid with gold and silver. For many years, however, mirrors 
 continued to be of polished metal, the enrichment being devoted 
 to the outer case. Glass mirrors were not common till a some- 
 what later period. 
 
 As the general material of furniture in the sixteenth century 
 continued to be wood, its chief decoration 
 was sculpture. The nurnb^i^of remark- 
 able pieces of carved wood furniture be- 
 longing to this perlodVin feeunbseum is 
 considerable. The W | strik^ p- are the 
 chests, cassoni, large coffers for containing 
 clothes or ornamental hangings and stuffs 
 that were kept in them when not in use. 
 
 Rooms, however large, of which the walls, 
 floors, and ceilings are decorated, do not 
 require many substantial objects in addi- 
 tion ; and these chests, with a table and 
 chairs placed against the wall, nearly com- 
 plete the requirements of great Italian 
 halls and corridors. 
 
 The general form of the carved chests 
 is that of a sarcophagus. They are sup- 
 ported on claw feet, and have masks, 
 brackets, or caryatid figures worked into the construction as in the 
 accompanying woodcut, leaving panels, borders, or other spaces 
 for historic sculpture. The subjects are sometimes from Scripture, 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 70 
 
 often from the poems of Ovid. They are carved in walnut wood, 
 which is free in grain and very tenacious : and the work, like most 
 of the old furniture carving, is helped out with gilding. Some- 
 times the ground, at others the relieved carvings are touched or 
 completely covered with gilding. Most of these fine chests are in 
 pairs, and probably formed parts of still larger sets, fours or sixes, 
 according as they were intended for the wall spaces of larger or 
 smaller rooms or portions of wall between two doors. 
 
 Carved chests commonly in use, and given to brides as part of 
 their dowry or as presents to married couples, or simply provided 
 as the most convenient objects both for receptacles and occa- 
 sionally for seats, were often made at less cost in cypress wood. 
 They are generally decorated with surface designs etched with a 
 pen on the absorbent grain of that wood, the ground being 
 slightly cut out and worked over with punches shaped like nail 
 heads, stars, &c. Cypress chests were especially used for keeping 
 dresses or tapestries ; the aromatic properties of that timber being 
 considered as a specific against moth. This kind of chest, when 
 intended to hold a bridal trousseau, was occasionally made with 
 small drawers and receptacles inside for fans, lace, combs, or other 
 feminine ornaments. Allusions to cypress chests in England are 
 numerous in the wardrobe and privy purse accounts of Edward 
 the fourth and his successors. 
 
 The tables of this period are sometimes solid (as n°- 162, which 
 is covered with spirited designs of mythological subjects). Dinner 
 tables were “boards” fastened on trestles, according to the old 
 usage already alluded to, and could be removed when the meal 
 was over; or several could be laid together, as in our modern 
 dining-room tables, to meet the demands of the noble hospi- 
 tality exercised in those days. 
 
 The Italian chairs of the quattrocento period have been spoken 
 of above. We have, however, another very rich and effective 
 form of chairs usual in the sixteenth century, and which were in 
 general use in Venice. In these the seat is fastened into two 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 7 1 
 
 planks, one before and one behind, as in the woodcut. The 
 planks are richly carved, and a third plank is let in to form a 
 back. The several portions, par- 
 ticularly the back, were some- 
 times sufficiently thick to admit 
 of carving in massive relief. The 
 flanks of the back piece are usu- 
 ally grotesque monsters, and the 
 arms of the owner carved on a 
 scutcheon in the centre. They 
 seem to have been generally 
 richly gilt. They also formed the 
 decoration of a great corridor 
 or hall, and were used without 
 cushions. 
 
 The frames of pictures were 
 bold and rich. Those of the 
 previous century had been 
 mostly imitative of small Gothic 
 shrines, being generally for reli- 
 gious subjects and for use in 
 
 churches or oratories. In the cinquecento period they were 
 square panels, carved and richly gilt. There are in the Kensing- 
 ton museum remarkable examples of frames made for mirrors, 
 either for the sitting-rooms or saloons of the lady of the house, or 
 for her bedroom. Three of these are type pieces of such produc- 
 tions. N°- 7695 is a square frame carved in walnut, standing on 
 a foot, and meant to be carried about. From the daisies in relief 
 on the foot it may perhaps be ascribed to Marguerite of V alois, 
 and have been used in the court of Provence. Nothing in the 
 collection surpasses the elegance and perfection of the ornamental 
 work on the mouldings. The mirror itself is of polished metal. 
 Another is in a circular frame, n°- 7694, shaped like a shield, and 
 meant to be hung up. It was probably made for a duchess of 
 
 
7 2 
 
 FURNITURE , 
 
 Ferrara. There are clas- 
 sical details of architec- 
 tonic kind on the edges 
 of the carving, which 
 is highly finished. The 
 mirror itself is of metal, 
 and the back has figures 
 on it in relief and is 
 solidly gilt. The third 
 of these, n°* 7226, is 
 larger. In design it is 
 like a monumental mu- 
 ral tablet, with a carved 
 rich finish on the four 
 sides, and the mirror 
 furnished with a sliding 
 cover in the form of a 
 medallion, containing a 
 female head of singular 
 nobleness and beauty. 
 In this case the material 
 is walnut relieved by 
 broad surfaces of inlaid 
 wood. We may also 
 mention the superb Sol- 
 tykoff mirror, n°- 7648. 
 This is an example of 
 metal work throughout, 
 the case, stand, and 
 sliding cover being of 
 iron damascened with 
 gold and silver in every 
 variety of that costly 
 process. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 73 
 
 Some of the 
 richest pieces of 
 carved walnut fur- 
 niture belonging 
 to this period are 
 the bellows. As 
 these are charac- 
 teristic of the Ita- 
 lian style of the 
 period in furniture 
 of various kinds, 
 we give woodcuts 
 of two examples 
 in the South Ken- 
 sington collection. 
 They are generally 
 of walnut touched 
 with gilding ; and 
 in the form still fa- 
 miliar to ourselves, 
 which is as old as 
 the classic times. 
 
 Besides furni- 
 ture carved in this 
 way out of solid 
 wood, there were 
 other materials 
 used and other 
 methods of deco- 
 rating household 
 furniture. The 
 tarsia or inlaid 
 work has been 
 alluded to. The 
 
74 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 first methods were by geometrical arrangements of small dies ; 
 but magnificent figure designs had been executed in inlaid wood 
 in the early period of the renaissance, and before it. Work of 
 this kind was made in two or three woods, and much of it is in 
 pine or cypress. The large grain is used to express lines of 
 drapery and other movements by putting whole folds or portions 
 of a dress or figure with the grain in one direction or another, as 
 may be required. The picture is thus composed of pieces inclined 
 together ; a few bold lines incised and blackened give such out- 
 lines of the form as are not attainable by the other method, and 
 slight burning with an iron is sometimes added to produce tone or 
 shadow. 
 
 “ ‘ Tarsie’ or ‘ Tarsiatura/ ” says Mrs. Merrifield, “was a kind 
 of mosaic in woods. This consisted in representing houses and 
 perspective views of buildings, by inlaying pieces of wood of 
 various colours and shades into panels of walnut wood. Vasari 
 speaks rather slightingly of this art, and says that it was practised 
 chiefly by those persons who possessed more patience than skill 
 in design ; that although he had seen some good representations 
 in figures, fruits, and animals, yet the work soon becomes dark, 
 and was always in danger of perishing from the worms and by fire. 
 Tarsia work was frequently employed in decorating the choirs of 
 churches as well as the backs of seats and the wainscoting. It 
 was also used in the panels of doors.” 
 
 Another method of ornamentation dependent on material that 
 came into use in this century was the Pietra Dura or mosaic 
 panelling of hard pebbles. The work is laborious and costly. 
 Not only are the materials (agate, carnelian, amethyst and marbles 
 of all colours) expensive, but each part must be ground laboriously 
 to an exact shape and the whole mosaic fitted together, a kind of 
 refinement of the old marble work called Alexandrinum. Besides 
 being formed into marble panels for table tops and cabinet fronts, 
 pietra dura was let into wood, and helped out with gay colours the 
 more sombre walnut or ebony base of the furniture. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 75 
 
 Vasari, speaking of particular pieces of furniture of his day, 
 mentions a “ splendid library table ” made at the expense and by 
 the order of Francesco de’ Medici in Florence. This table was 
 “ constructed of ebony,” that is, veneered with ebony, “ divided 
 into compartments by columns of heliotrope, oriental jasper, and 
 lapis lazuli, which have the bases and capitals of chased silver. 
 The work is furthermore enriched with jewels,* beautiful orna- 
 ments ot silver, and exquisite little figures, interspersed with 
 miniatures and terminal figures of silver and gold, in full relief, 
 united in pairs. There are, besides, other compartments formed 
 of jasper, agates, heliotropes, sardonyxes, carnelians, and other 
 precious stones.” This piece was the work of Bernardo Buonta- 
 lenti. Another piece of such work is described as a table “ wholly 
 formed of oriental alabaster, intermingled with great pieces of 
 carnelian, jasper, heliotrope, lapis, and agate, with other stones 
 and jewels, worth twenty thousand crowns.” Another artist, 
 Bernardino di Porfirio of Leccio, executed an “ octangular table of 
 ebony and ivory inlaid with jaspers.” This precious manufacture has 
 been patronised in the grand ducal factories down to recent times, 
 and is continued in the i;oyal establishments of the king of Italy. 
 
 A feature which was strongly developed in the sixteenth century 
 furniture is the architectural character of the outlines. It has 
 already been observed that in the fifteenth century, chests, 
 screens, stall fronts, doors and panelling followed or fell into the 
 prevailing arrangements of architectural design in stonework, such 
 as window tracery, or wall tracery. But in the cinquecento 
 furniture an architectural character, not proper to woodwork for 
 any constructive reasons, was imparted to cabinets, chests, &c. 
 They were artificially provided with parts that imitated the lines, 
 brackets, and all the details of classic entablatures which have 
 constructive reasons in architecture, but which, reduced to the 
 proportions of furniture, have not the same propriety. These 
 subdivisions brought into use the art of “joinery.” The parts 
 obviously necessary for the purpose of framing up wood, whether 
 
6 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 box or chest, a door, a piece 
 
 fell into modifications of this ideal. 
 
 ot panelling, or a chair, offer 
 certain opportunities for 
 mouldings or carvings ; some 
 are the thicker portions 
 forming the frames, some 
 the thin flat boards that 
 fill up the spaces. To add 
 a variety of mouldings, such 
 as subdivide the roofs of 
 temples or their peristyles, 
 is, of course, to depart from 
 the carpenter’s province 
 and work, and rather to 
 take furniture out of its 
 obvious forms for the ex- 
 press purpose of impressing 
 on it the renaissance type. 
 
 The artists of that time 
 did this with the object of 
 designing “ in character,” 
 and special models, such as 
 the old triumphal arches, 
 and sarcophagi, at Rome, 
 were in view in these de- 
 signs. On both arches and 
 tombs sculptured bas-reliefs 
 abounded. Figures reclined 
 over the arches, and were 
 arranged in square com- 
 positions in the panels, for 
 which the upper stories of 
 the arches made provision. 
 The renaissance cabinets 
 A century later they grew 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 77 
 
 into house fronts, and showed doors, arches, and balustrades 
 inside, with imitative paved floors, looking-glasses set at angles of 
 45 0 , so as to make reflections of these various parts ; and in this 
 humorous fashion the inside of a walnut or ebony cabinet was 
 turned into the model of an Italian villa. 
 
 Again, in place of the running foliated borders and mouldings 
 having a continuous design, or of compositions of foliage, 
 animals, &c., forming in each arch moulding or cornice line a 
 homogeneous line or circle, the renaissance arabesques introduced 
 an entirely new method of decoration. In arabesque ornament 
 all sorts of natural objects are grafted on a central stalk, or, as in 
 the best work, on something like the stem of a candelabrum. 
 The resources of this method are limited only by the fancy and 
 skill of the artist, who grafts here a mask, there a leaf on his 
 stem, and so on. The temptation is the license and discordance 
 that come in when no unity is needed in a piece of ornament, 
 and no continuous effort of mind required to think out and 
 execute one definite idea in designing it. The central stem leads 
 to an exact balance or reversal of one half of each element in 
 the ornament, so that one half only of a panel or border has to 
 be designed. In the hands of great artists this kind of orna- 
 mentation has been used with consummate grace. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND, FLANDERS, FRANCE, GERMANY, 
 
 AND SPAIN. 
 
 In the foregoing sketch of the furniture, designs, and manu- 
 factures of central Italy, we have described the history of con- 
 temporaneous furniture throughout Europe. Pope Leo the tenth 
 gave every encouragement to the reviving arts in Rome, and left 
 that capital the great nursery of art down to our day. To Italy 
 the great princes of Europe sent the most promising artists of 
 their dominions, or encouraged such resort. Most of these men 
 were architects and sculptors. 
 
 Classical learning and splendid living were both encouraged by 
 Henry the eighth. He is, probably, to be credited with the 
 impulse given to the court and the country in the direction of the 
 arts and accomplishments of Italy. If Jean de Mabuse had been 
 patronised by Henry the seventh, his successor offered tempting 
 terms to Primaticcio to exchange the service of his brother king, 
 Francis, for his own. Other artists, contemporaries of Raphael 
 and his scholars, found their way to England ; to these we must 
 add the great master of the German or Swiss school, Holbein. 
 That the artists both of Holbein’s and of the Italian schools 
 designed furniture in this country we have proofs in the drawing 
 for a panelled chimney-piece now in the British museum, and the 
 woodwork of King’s college chapel in Cambridge. Another 
 piece of furniture of this date, showing the mixed character of 
 Italian and Holbeinesque* design, is the very fine “ Tudor” 
 cabinet at South Kensington. 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 79 
 
 Though the court of Henry and the palaces of his wives were 
 furnished with splendour, and works of art, especially those of 
 the gold and silversmith, and jewellery, found their way from 
 foreign parts to such great houses, the general manners of the 
 country changed less in these respects than was the case in 
 France and the more wealthy states and courts of Germany. In 
 the portrait pictures of Henry and his family we see furniture of 
 a renaissance character, but in the great monuments of the wood- 
 work of the day the old style prevailed throughout the reign. 
 The roofs, magnificent specimens of wood construction, were still 
 subdivided, and supported by king posts, queen posts, hammer 
 beams, arches connecting these portions and tracery panels in the 
 spandrels, as in the two previous centuries. All parts were 
 carved and coloured. The architecture ot country houses began 
 to change from the old form of a castle or a fortress to that of the 
 beautiful and characteristip styfe td'^vyhich we give the name of 
 Tudor. Moats were retained, jbut /Still the principal features of 
 the building were the depressed archqs and perpendicular window 
 mullions that had been long^familiar in England, and were sug- 
 gested by the wooden houses so general in the thirteenth, four- 
 teenth, and fifteenth centuries. The woodwork also and the 
 panelling of halls and chambers retained the upright lines and 
 mouldings forming the various “ linen ” patterns. Leafwork and 
 heads, busts of the reigning princes, or of heroes such as the 
 Caesars, filled up the more ornamental sections, giving a certain 
 classical element which was not fully developed till later : and 
 most of the renaissance ornamentation of this reign has a Flemish 
 rather than an Italian character. The woodcuts on the next page 
 show a series of panels of different countries, many of which are 
 to be found introduced with slight variations in English work of 
 about the same period. 
 
 Flanders was in .advance of this country in renaissance art. 
 This remark extends to ornament of all kinds, whether of church 
 woodwork, glass-painting, or domestic furniture. Still the Flemish 
 
8o 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 work of this renaissance, or (speaking of England) this early 
 Tudor period retains a mixture of details of the pointed style that 
 
 English, 15th century. 
 
 Flemish, 16th century. 
 
 Italian, 16th century. 
 
 makes us sometimes doubtful how to characterise the style of 
 individual pieces. We may point to sideboards and chests in illus- 
 tration. Belgium abounds in examples of this transition period. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 8 1 
 
 In France, the most advanced and most luxurious and culti- 
 vated of the transalpine courts, the renaissance art had advanced 
 far beyond that of England. Not only had Francis the first and 
 the Medici princesses invited famous artists out of Italy, but they 
 aimed at imitating Florentine luxuries and refinements as com- 
 pletely as they could. Admirable schools of ornamental art, 
 such as that of the Limoges enamellers and carvers in ivory, were 
 and had been long established in France. Classic sculpture was 
 produced of great merit in all materials. Primaticcio and Cellini 
 founded new schools of architects, painters, and sculptors in 
 
 France. They employed pupU^ahdT'tbe N most promising found 
 their way to Rome and Florence^ associ^tecl themselves with the 
 great masters then practising] ^nd brought pack all the instruc- 
 tion they could obtain. 
 
 Jean Goujon stands at the head of these French masters. 
 Besides being a sculptor and architect, there is little doubt of his 
 having designed and even sculptured wood furniture. Probably 
 the carved woodwork of the king’s bedroom and adjoining rooms 
 in the old Louvre are by his hand. Bachelier, of Toulouse, did the 
 same, and pieces are attributed to him now in the Kensington 
 museum. Philibert de L’Orme was another artist in a similar 
 
 G 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 field. Both Goujon and Bachelier showed the influence of the 
 great Italian masters in their work. The table engraved (p. 81) 
 is a very elegant example of French sixteenth century furniture. 
 
 The woodwork in the renaissance houses — the panelling and 
 
 fittings of the rooms — 
 was designed by the 
 architect, and was full of 
 quaint, sometimes extra- 
 vagant imagery. For ex- 
 ample, the architectural 
 and decorative plates 
 of Jacques Androuet du 
 Cerceau will give some 
 idea of the dependence 
 of all these details on the 
 architects of the day. 
 This author published 
 designs for marquetry or 
 wood mosaics, as well as 
 for all sorts of woodwork. 
 A glance at the heavy 
 cabinets of the later six- 
 teenth century, of French 
 origin, will show how 
 completely great pieces 
 of furniture fell into the 
 same character of forms. 
 Shelves are supported on 
 grotesque figures, while 
 in the mouldings, instead of simple running lines worked with 
 the plane, as in fifteenth century woodwork, we see the egg and 
 tongue, acanthus leaves, dentils and other members of classical 
 architecture, constantly recurring. The ornaments of French 
 woodworkers show a fondness for conventional bands or straps 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 83 
 
 interspersed with figures and other ornaments. The panel, of 
 which we give a woodcut, is French, and dated 1577. It 
 contains armorial bearings and a monogram, said to be of the 
 Aldine family. In 1577, however, Aldus Manutius the elder was 
 dead, and his son did not live in France. 
 
 Germany and Spain took up the renaissance art in a still more 
 Italian spirit than England or France. Parts of Italy as well as 
 Spain were under the same ruler; they both, as far as regards art, 
 felt the influence of powerful imperial patronage. We are only 
 concerned with their art here as it refers to woodwork. German 
 wood carvers were more quaint, minute, and redundant as to 
 decoration. Something of the vigour, manliness, and inex- 
 haustible sense of humour of the Germans characterises their 
 woodwork, as it does other art, of which ornament forms the 
 main feature. The well-known “ Triumph of Maximilian,” 
 though a woodcut only, may be taken as a type of German 
 treatment. The great cities of the empire are full of carved 
 woodwork, house fronts, and gables. Timber was abundant. 
 The imagery of the period, in wood as in stone, is intentionally 
 quaint, contorted, humorous. It would be essentially ugly but 
 for the inexhaustible fecundity of thought, allegory, and satire that 
 pervades it. It should be added also that designers and archi- 
 tects had an immense sense of dignity, which we recognise imme^ 
 diately when we see their architectural compositions as a whole. 
 Depths and hollows, points of light, prominences and relative 
 retirement of parts in their arrangements of carved ornament, 
 were matters thoroughly understood ; and they succeed in im- 
 parting that general agreeableness which we call effect ” to the 
 mind of the observers. 
 
 As regards Spanish art we cannot do better than adopt the 
 statements of Senor J. F. Riano, who says that “ the brilliant 
 epoch of sculpture in wood belongs to the sixteenth century, and 
 was due to the great impulse it received from the works of 
 Berruguete and Felipe de Borgona. He was the chief promoter 
 
 g 2 
 
8 4 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 of the Italian style, and the choir of the cathedral of Toledo, 
 where he worked so much, is the finest specimen of the kind in 
 Spain. Toledo, Seville, and Valladolid were at that time great 
 productive and artistic centres. As a specimen of wood carving 
 of the Italian renaissance period, applied to an object of furni- 
 ture, the magnificent wardrobe by Gregorio Pardo (1549) outside 
 the chapter house at Toledo may be mentioned as one of the 
 most beautiful things of its kind. These various styles of orna- 
 mentation were applied to the cabinets ‘ Bufetes ’ of such varied 
 form and materials which were so much the fashion in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most characteristic of 
 Spain are such as are called 4 Varguenos.’ These cabinets are 
 decorated outside with fine ironwork, and inside with columns of 
 bone painted and gilt. The other cabinets or escritoires belong- 
 ing to that period, which are so frequently met with in Spain, were 
 to a large extent imported from Germany and Italy, while others 
 were made in Spain in imitation of these ” (the italics are ours), “ and 
 as the copies were very similar it is difficult to classify them. It 
 may be asserted, however, that cabinets of inlaid wood were made 
 in great perfection in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century, 
 for in a memorial written by a maker of tapestry, Pedro Gretierez, 
 who worked for queen Isabella, he says r 4 The escritoires and 
 cabinets brought from Germany are worth 500, 600, and 700 
 reales each,, and those of the same kind made in Spain by 
 Spaniards are to be had for 250 and 300 reales.’ Besides these 
 inlaid cabinets others must have been made in the sixteenth 
 century inlaid with silver. An edict was issued in 1594 prohibit- 
 ing, with the utmost rigour, the making and selling of this kind ot 
 merchandise, in order not to increase the scarcity of silver. The 
 edict says that ‘ no cabinets, desks, coffers, brasiers, shoes, tables, 
 or other articles decorated with stamped, raised, carved, or plain 
 silver, should be manufactured.’ ” 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TUDOR AND STUART STYLES. 
 
 The list of reigns supplies more convenient dates than the begin- 
 ning or the end of a century for marking changes of national 
 tastes in such matters as furniture. The names of kings or queens 
 are justly given to denote styles, whether of architecture, dress, or 
 personal ornaments, and utensils of the household. Society in 
 most countries adopts those habits that are first taken up by the 
 sovereign. In England, the reign of Elizabeth was pre-eminently 
 a period during which the tastes, even the fancies, of the queen 
 were followed enthusiastically by her people. Elizabethan is the 
 name of the style of architecture gradually developed during her 
 reign. Italian taste, though not perhaps so pure as it had been a 
 few years earlier, had become far more general ; classical details, 
 however, were mixed even more in England than in other 
 countries (Flanders excepted) with relics of older styles, the love 
 of which was still strong in this country. The fireplaces and the 
 panelling of our old houses^ Crewe hall, Speke in Lancashire, 
 Haddon hall in Derbyshire^ Kenilworth castle, Raglan castle, and 
 many other old buildings, are thoroughly characteristic of this 
 mixed classical revival. The fashion is quaint and grotesque, the 
 figure sculpture being good enough to look well in the form of 
 caryatid monsters, half men, half terminal posts or acanthus 
 foliations, but not sufficiently correct or graceful to stand 
 altogether alone. Specimens, however, of very good work can be 
 pointed out, and we give here some of the details of a panelled 
 
86 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 room brought lately from Exeter, and now in the South Kensing- 
 ton collection. 
 
 We may say that the character of the woodwork throughout 
 this period consists in actual architectural fagades or portions of 
 fagades, showy arrangements wherever they are possible of the 
 “ five orders” of architecture, or of pedimental fronts. Doorways 
 and chimney fronts are the principal opportunities in interiors for 
 the exercise of this composing skill. Panelling remained in use in 
 the great halls and most of the chambers of the house, but the 
 linen pattern, so graceful and effective, went out of fashion. The 
 angles of the rooms, the cornices, and spaces above the doors 
 were fitted with groups of architectural cornice mouldings, con- 
 sisting of dentil, egg and tongue, and running moulds, and 
 sometimes room walls were divided into panels by regular 
 columns. 
 
 Heraldry, with rich carved mantlings and quaint forms of 
 scutcheons (the edges notched and rolled about as if made of the 
 notched edges of a scroll of parchment), was a frequent ornament. 
 Grotesque terminal figures, human -headed, supported the front of 
 the dresser — the chief furniture of the dining-room and of the 
 cabinet. Table supports and newels of stair rails grew into heavy 
 acorn-shaped balusters. In the case of stair balusters, these were 
 often ornamented with well-cut sculpture of fanciful and heraldic 
 figures. Inlaid work also began to be used in room-panelling as 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 8 ? 
 
 well as furniture; bed heads and testers, chest fronts, cabinets, &c., 
 were inlaid, but scarcely with delicacy, during the early Eliza- 
 bethan period. The art was developed during the reign of James, 
 when, in point of fact, the larger number of the Tudor houses 
 were erected. 
 
 When the Tudor period was succeeded by that of the Stuarts 
 the same general characteristics remained, but all the forms of 
 carving grew heavier and the execution coarser. The table legs, 
 baluster newels, and cabinet supports, had enormous acorn-shaped 
 masses in the middle. The objects themselves, such as the great 
 hall tables, instead of being moveable on trestles, became of 
 unwieldy size and weight. 
 
 The general character of Flemish work was much of the same 
 kind and form. It is not easy to distinguish the nationality 
 of pieces of Flemish and English oak furniture of this period. 
 The Flemings, however, retained a higher school of figure carvers, 
 and their church-stall work and some of their best things are of a 
 higher stamp and better designed ; and where figure sculpture 
 was employed this superiority is always apparent. A good 
 example of Flemish panelling can be studied in the doorway at 
 South Kensington, n°- 4329. Their furniture is represented by 
 an excellent specimen, amongst others, of this mixed period in 
 the cabinet, n°- 156. Though large and heavy, and divided into 
 massive parts, the treatment of ornament is well understood on 
 such pieces. The scroll-work is bold but light, and the general 
 surface of important mouldings or dividing members is not cut up 
 by the ornamentation. The panels are very generally carved with 
 graceful figure subjects, commonly biblical. As the years advanced 
 into the seventeenth century Flemish work became bigger and 
 less refined. Diamond-shaped panels were superimposed on the 
 square, turned work was split and laid on, drop ornaments were 
 added below tables and from the centres of the arches of arched 
 panels ; all these unnecessary ornaments were mere additions and 
 encumbrances to the general structure. 
 
C.MATEAUX.JC 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 89 
 
 Our own later Jacobean or Stuart style borrowed this from the 
 Flemish. The Flemings and the Dutch had long imported wood- 
 work into England, and it is to that commerce that we may trace 
 the greater likeness between the late Flemish renaissance carving 
 and corresponding English woodwork, than between the English 
 and the French. Dutch designs in furniture, though allied to the 
 Flemish, were swelled out into enormous proportions. The huge 
 wardrobe cabinets made by the Dutch of walnut wood with ebony 
 inlaid work and waved ebony mouldings are still to be met with. 
 The panels of the fronts are broken up into numerous angles and 
 points. 
 
 In France the fine architectural wood construction of the style 
 of Philibert de l’Orme and so many great masters maintained 
 itself, and a number of fine cabinets and sideboards in various 
 collections attest the excellence of the work. The cabinet on the 
 opposite page (n°- 2573 in the Kensington museum) is of late 
 French sixteenth century work, and confines the characteristics 
 of the heavy furniture madfc ifiT-hemorth of Europe with a propriety 
 of treatment in the ornamentation of mouldings and cornices 
 peculiar to French architects, who continued to design such 
 structures for the houses they built and fitted up. The descen- 
 dants of Catherine de’ Medicis and their generation were trained 
 by Italian artists and altogether in Italian tastes, and no great 
 change occurred in France in woodwork or furniture till the six- 
 teenth century had closed. 
 
 In German and in Italian furniture the principal changes were 
 in the direction of veneered and marquetry work. The same 
 vigorous quaintness continued to distinguish German decorative 
 detail as has been already noticed. 
 
 The Italians carved wood during the later sixteenth and the 
 whole of the seventeenth centuries with extraordinary grace and 
 vigour. The next woodcut, a pedestal in oak, shows their power 
 in hard material : and smaller objects, such as the frames of pic- 
 tures, were cut out in great sweeping leaves, perhaps of the 
 
go 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 acanthus, showing an ease and certainty in the artist that look as 
 it he were employed upon some substance more yielding than the 
 softest wood. Chairs were cut in the same rich style, and this 
 luxurious carving was not unfrequently applied to the decoration 
 
 r.. SWALLOW 
 
 of state carriages. Venice maintained a pre-eminence in this 
 perhaps in a greater degree than Florence, though in the valley of 
 the Arno the willow, lime, sycamore, and other soft white woods 
 were to be had in abundance, and invited great freedom in 
 carving. 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 91 
 
 We may now treat of an important epoch in the history of 
 modern furniture. Venice was the seat of the manufacture of 
 glass. In the sixteenth century workmen had received state pro- 
 
 tection for the manufacture of mirrors, which till that time had 
 been mere hand mirrors and made of mixed metals highly 
 polished. Gilt wood frames were extensively manufactured for 
 these Venetian looking-glasses, which found their way all over 
 
Q2 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 Europe. Besides gilt frames, gilt chairs, carved consoles, and 
 other highly ornate furniture were introduced as the century went 
 on, and most of this took its origin from Venice. The woodcut 
 represents a small frame, n°- 1605, at South Kensington. 
 
 Another remarkable class of gilt woodwork, for which Florence 
 and other cities had found trained carvers, was the framework of 
 carriages. In England, France, Germany, and Italy carriages 
 during the seventeenth century were stately, and certainly won- 
 derful pieces of furniture. Examples of these showy carriages 
 exist still. There is a collection belonging to the royal family of 
 Portugal, now preserved at Lisbon, one or two in the museum of 
 the hotel de Cluny at Paris, dating from the time of Martin and 
 painted by him, and there are a few carriages of old date at 
 Vienna and probably in some private houses. The state-coach of 
 the Speaker is an English example of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Germany differed less from Italy even than France in wood 
 carving, interior room fittings, and the frequent pedimental com- 
 positions containing grotesques, or heraldic achievements on a 
 scale of sumptuous display. The German princes were many of 
 them skilful and intelligent patrons of art, and made collections in 
 their residences. A well-known piece belonging to the early 
 seventeenth century is preserved in the royal museum at Berlin. 
 This is known as the Pomeranian art cabinet. It is 4 ft. 10 in. 
 high, 3 ft. 4 in. wide by 2 ft. 10 in. deep, made of ebony with 
 drawers of sandal wood lined with red morocco leather, and is 
 mounted with silver and pietra dura work, and fitted inside with 
 utensils of various kinds. The chair, of which we give a woodcut, 
 is German of about the same date. 
 
 In the west of Europe, during the seventeenth century, mar- 
 quetry was extensively used, and became the leading feature of 
 furniture decoration. Inlaying had long been in use ; but the 
 new marquetry was a picturesque composition, a more complete 
 attempt at pictorial representation. It comes before us in old 
 furniture under various forms, and many examples of it may be 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 93 
 
 studied in different collections. In this country we may consider 
 it mainly as an imported art of the reign of William and Mary, 
 when Dutch marquetry furniture became the fashion in the form 
 
 of bandy-legged chairs, upright clock fronts, secretaires or bureaux, 
 or writing cabinets which were closed in the upper and middle 
 parts with doors, and other pieces that offered surfaces available 
 
94 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 for such decoration. The older designs on work of this kind 
 represent tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds, &c., all in gay 
 colours, generally the self colours of the woods used. Sometimes 
 the eyes and other salient points are in ivory or mother-of-pearl. 
 In France, in the earlier marquetry designs, picturesque land- 
 scapes, broken architecture, and figures are represented. Colours 
 are occasionally stained on the wood. Ivory and ebony were 
 favourite materials ; as also in Germany and in Italy. 
 
 It is to be noted that as the vigour of the great sixteenth century 
 movement died out, the mania for making furniture in the form of 
 architectural models died out also ; nor do we find it becoming 
 a fashion again till quite modern times, under the Gothic and 
 other revivals at the end of the last and the beginning of the 
 present century. The architectural idea was in itself full of 
 grandeur, and it was productive of very beautiful examples in 
 the sarcophagus-shaped chests or cassoni, and in cabinet work, 
 though the facades of temples and the vaults and columns of 
 triumphal arches in Rome do not bear to be too completely 
 reduced to such small proportions. With the introduction of 
 marquetry into more general use we recognise not only a new 
 or renewed method of decoration, but a changed ideal of con- 
 struction. Boxes, chests, tables, cabinets, &c., were conceived as 
 such. They were made more convenient for use, and were no 
 longer subdivided by architectural mouldings and columns, all 
 so much extra work added to the sides and fronts. 
 
 About the middle of the seventeenth century a kind of work 
 altogether new in the manufactory of modern furniture made its 
 appearance under the reign of Louis the fourteenth of France. 
 That king rose to a position in Europe that no monarch of 
 modern times had occupied before, and the great ministers of 
 his reign had the wisdom to take special measures for the estab- 
 lishment of the various arts and manufactures in which either the 
 Italians or Flemings excelled the French as well as other nations. 
 Colbert, his minister of finance, amongst his commercial reforms 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 95 
 
 of learned societies and schools of art, founded in 1664 an 
 “ Academie royale de peinture d’architecture et de sculpture.” 
 It was into this that the designers of architecture, woodwork, 
 ornament or furniture, were admitted. He established also the 
 famous factory of the “ Gobelins ” for making pictorial tapestry. 
 The place took its name from the brothers Gobelin, Flemings, 
 who had a dyeing-house in the Rue Mouffetard. Lebrun, the 
 painter, was the first head of it. Another important name is that 
 of Jean Lepautre. He has left numerous designs of ornament 
 behind him for panelling, mirror frames, carriages, &c. Lepautre 
 was a pupil of Adam Philippon. This artist, whose chief calling 
 was that of a joiner and cabinet maker, has also left designs. 
 
 To Colbert is due the credit of pushing forward the renewal 
 or completion of the royal palaces ; especially the chateau of 
 Versailles. For the furniture of this palace we find the new 
 material employed, namely, boule marquetry, which owes its 
 name to the maker. The orthography of proper names was 
 still often unsettled at that time, and we find the name variously 
 spelt. The correct way seems to have been Boulle ; but we shall 
 retain the more usual mode, both for the artist and for his work. 
 Andre Charles Boule was born in 164?, and made the peculiar 
 kind of veneered work composed of tortoiseshell and thin brass, 
 to which are sometimes added ivory and enamelled metal ; brass 
 and shell, however, are the general materials. Boule was made 
 head of the royal furniture department and was lodged in the 
 Louvre. A very interesting early specimen of this work is now 
 at Windsor castle, and other early pieces belong to Sir Richard 
 Wallace. The date attributed to the first makes it doubtful 
 whether Boule may not have seen the same sort of work practised 
 in other workshops. This kind of marquetry has, however, been 
 assigned by general consent to Boule. 
 
 In the earlier work of Boule the inlay was produced at great 
 cost, owing to the waste of valuable material in cutting ; and the 
 shell is left of its natural colour ; in later work the manufacture 
 
96 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 was more economical. Two or three thicknesses of the different 
 material were glued or stuck together and sawn through at one 
 operation. An equal number of figures and of matrices or hollow 
 pieces exactly corresponding were thus produced, and by counter- 
 charging two or more designs were obtained by the same sawing. 
 These are technically known as “ boule and counter,” the brass 
 forming the groundwork and the pattern alternately. In the later 
 or “ new boule,” the shell is laid on a gilt ground or on vermilion. 
 The brass is elaborately chased with a graver. 
 
 Besides these plates of brass for marquetry ornaments, Boule, 
 who was a sculptor of no mean pretensions, founded and chased 
 up feet, edgings, bracket supports, &c., to his work in relief, or in 
 the round, also in brass. The original use of these parts was to 
 protect the edges and angles, and bind the thin inlaid work 
 together where it was interrupted by angles in the structure. 
 Afterwards brass mounts, more or less relieved, were added to 
 enrich the flat designs of the surfaces. Classical altars, engraved 
 or chased as mere surface decoration, would receive the addition 
 of claw feet actually relieved. Figures standing on such altars, 
 pedestals, &c., were made in relief more or less bold. In this 
 way Boule’s later work is not only a brilliant and rich piece of 
 surface decoration, but its metallic parts are repousse or embossed 
 with thicknesses of metal ornament. In boule work all parts of 
 the marquetry are held down by glue to the bed, usually of oak. 
 The metal is occasionally fastened down by small brass pins or 
 nails, which are hammered flat and chased over so as to be im- 
 perceptible. 
 
 In England, during the reign of Charles the second and of 
 James, French furniture was imported ; the old Tudor oak lingered 
 in country houses. Boule hardly found its way till the following 
 century to England. Splendid silver furniture consisting of 
 plates embossed and repousse, heightened with the graver and 
 of admirable design, was occasionally made for Ihe Court and for 
 great families. Wood carving, in the manner of the school ot 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 97 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren, as in the bracket here shown, was 
 long continued in connexion with architecture and furniture. 
 
 Another style was carried to the highest pitch of technical execu- 
 tion and finish, as well as of truth of natural forms in the carving 
 of Grinling Gibbons. This artist was English, but partially of 
 Dutch descent. He carved foliage, birds, flowers, busts and 
 figures, pieces of drapery, &c., with astonishing dexterity. We 
 find his work principally on mirror frames, wall panels, chimney 
 pieces, &c. Specimens may be seen over the communion table of 
 St. James’s church, Westminster, and in the choir of St. Paul’s 
 cathedral. The finest examples known are probably the carved 
 work at Petworth house in Sussex, and at Chatsworth. His 
 material is generally lime and other white woods. The flowers 
 and foliage of his groups or garlands sweep round in bold and 
 harmonious curves, making an agreeable whole, though for archi- 
 tectural decorative carving no work was ever so free from con- 
 ventional arrangements. His animals or his flowers appear to be 
 
 H 
 
so many separate creations from 
 nature, laid or tied together separ- 
 ately, though in reality formed 
 out of a block, and remaining 
 still portions of a group cut in 
 the solid wood. 
 
 Gibbons died in 1721. Wal- 
 pole mentions Watson as having 
 been his pupil and assistant at 
 Chatsworth. Drevot of Brussels 
 and Laurens of Mechlin were 
 other pupils : the former did not 
 survive him. His school had 
 many followers, for we find the 
 acanthus carvings on mouldings, 
 round doorways and chimney 
 pieces, down to the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, executed 
 in England with a masterly hand. 
 Specimens of such work have 
 been recently acquired in the 
 Kensington museum, the fruits of 
 the demolition of old London, 
 continually in progress. The 
 border of this page represents 
 one of these admirable pieces ; a 
 door and frame from a house in 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 99 
 
 Lincoln’s-inn . Nothing can surpass the perfect mastery of execu- 
 tion. All the work is cut clean and sharp out of wood which 
 admits of no tentative cuts, and requires no rubbing down with 
 sand paper, and in which errors are not to be repaired. Lengths 
 of these mouldings were worked off by hand, evidently without 
 hesitation and without mishap. Country houses abound with 
 this fine though unpretending work, and give ample evidence 
 of the existence of a school of fine workmen, carvers at the com- 
 mand of the architects of the day. 
 
 We may here revert to an important addition to room fur- 
 niture, which became European during this century. Mirrors 
 had been made from the earliest times in polished metal, but 
 were first made of glass at Venice. In 1507 Andrea and 
 Dominico, two glass workers of Murano, declared before the 
 Council of ten that they had found a method of making “ good 
 and perfect mirrors of crystal gl^ssdLA monopoly of the right 
 of manufacture was granted^ to the twa inventors for twenty 
 years. In 1564, the mirrof ^&Jk©FS ’ became a distinct guild of 
 glass workers. The plates wterg^ not ^Isrfge : from four to five feet 
 are the largest dimensions met with till late in the eighteenth 
 century. They were commonly bevilled on the edges. The 
 frames in soft wood (as in the woodcut, p. 100) are specimens of 
 free carving during the seventeenth century. Both in Venice and 
 in Florence soft woods, such as willow or lime, were used. The 
 mirror-plates were, at first, square or oblong. Towards the end 
 of the century we find them shaped at the top. In the eighteenth 
 century they were generally shaped at the top and bottom. 
 Figures were sunk in the style of intaglio or gem cutting on the 
 back of the glass and left with a dead surface, the silver surface 
 of the mercury showing through as the mirror is seen from the 
 front. 
 
 The looking-glasses made in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries by colonies of Venetian workmen in England and 
 France had the plates finished by an edge gently bevilled of an 
 
 h 2 
 
100 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 inch in width, following the form of the frame, whether square or 
 shaped in curves. This gives preciousness and prismatic light to 
 the whole glass. * It is of great difficulty in execution, the plate 
 being held by the workman over his head and the edge cut by 
 grinding. The feats of skill of this kind in the form of interrupted 
 
 curves and short lines and angles are rarely accomplished by 
 modern workmen, and the angle of the bevil itself is generally too 
 acute, whereby the prismatic light produced by this portion of the 
 mirror is in violent and too showy contrast to the remainder. 
 
 In England, looking-glasses came into general use soon after the 
 Restoration. “ Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room at Vauxhall 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 ioi 
 
 in 1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains, very 
 pleasant to behold. It stands in the middle of the garden 
 covered with Cornish slate, on the point whereof he placed a 
 Punchinello.” At about the same period the house of Nell 
 Gwynne, “ the first good one as we enter St. James’ Square from 
 
 Pall Mall, had the back room on the ground floor entirely lined 
 with looking-glass within memory,” writes Pennant, “ as was said 
 to have been the ceiling.” “ La rue St. Andre-des-arts,” says 
 Savarin, speaking of Paris in the seventeenth century, “ eut le 
 premier cafe orne de glaces et de tables de marbre it peu pres 
 comme on les voit de nos jours.” 
 
102 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 During the seventeenth century, tapestry, the material in 
 use for hanging and decorating the walls of splendid rooms in 
 France, was made also in this country. Factories were set up 
 at Mortlake, where several copies were made of the Raphael 
 tapestries, the cartoons of which were in this country ; and in 
 Soho fields. Sometimes tapestry was hung on bare walls ; occa- 
 sionally it was strained over the older panelled work of the 
 days of the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns, the fruitful period 
 of country house architecture in England. 
 
 With a woodcut (on preceding page) of a bedroom holy-water 
 vessel we finish the account of this period. 
 
 An English table and chairs of the year 1633, from a woodcut of that date. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 FURNITURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 As the eighteenth century draws on, we arrive at furniture of 
 which examples are more readily to be met with, and we are 
 reminded of houses and rooms more or less unaltered which have 
 come under general observation. 
 
 The fashions were led in France. Boule work grew into bigger 
 and more imposing structures as the manufacture passed into the 
 hands of a greater number of workmen. Commodes or large 
 presses were made with edgings and mounts, in the form of “ egg 
 and tongue ” and other classic or renaissance mouldings. The 
 tops were formed into one or three pedestals, to hold clocks and 
 candelabra. Other changes were introduced to carry out the 
 taste for gilding which then prevailed, and the broken shell- 
 shaped woodwork, popularly known as Louis quinze work, began 
 to be adopted for the frames of large glasses and the mouldings of 
 room panels. The panels grew tall, were arched or shaped at the 
 top, and occupied the wall space from the dado to the moulded 
 and painted ceilings, in narrow panels. The fantastic forms of 
 curve, emblems of the affected manners of the day, called Rococo 
 from the words rocaille coquille , rock and shell curves, were well 
 calculated to show off the lustre of gilding. The gold was 
 admirably laid on, thick and very pure, and both in bronze 
 gilding and in the woodwork maintains its lustre to the present 
 time. The severe classical grandeur of the old roll mouldings of 
 fireplace jambs, wall and door panels, of the former reign gave 
 way everywhere to this lighter work. 
 
104 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 Much early eighteenth century furniture was bombe, or rolled 
 about in curious curves or undulations of surface, partly to display 
 the skill of the cabinet-makers, and partly to show off the 
 marquetry, which formed its only decoration. Another step was 
 the introduction of mechanical applications and contrivances. 
 The tops of tables lift off, and the action causes other portions to 
 rise, to open, and so on. It is to be remembered that bedrooms 
 were often used as boudoirs or studies, and that furniture which 
 could shut private papers up without requiring that they should be 
 put away into drawers was convenient in such rooms. As the 
 century advanced, it became customary to form a sort of alcove 
 at the end of bedrooms in France. The centre portion contained 
 the bed, hidden by curtains, the spaces between it and the two 
 walls were shut in with doors, and formed dressing closets, which 
 could be used while the rest of the room was shut off. The bed- 
 room then became a reception room and was thrown open with 
 other receiving rooms of the house. Bureaux or mechanically 
 shutting tables, writing desks, and the like, under this arrange- 
 ment were a necessity for small rooms. 
 
 A school of painters arose in the reign of Louis the fifteenth 
 who devoted themselves to the decoration of room woodwork and 
 ceilings ; Charles Delafosse, Antoine Coypel, Jean Restout, and 
 many pupils. We must associate the names of these artists with 
 those of the Le Pautre family. Jean died before the end of the 
 seventeenth century, but Pierre took part in the later works of the 
 Louvre and of Versailles under Jules Hardouin Mansard, “ surin- 
 tendant des bastiments.” Juste Aurele Meissonnier did still 
 more to make this showy work popular. He designed all sorts of 
 room furniture and woodwork. It is amongst the published 
 works of these artists that we must seek the eighteenth century 
 designs of French fashion. Painted panels were inserted into the 
 wood ceilings, over the tops of looking-glasses, and dessus-fiortes or 
 the short panels between the tops of doors and the line of 
 cornice. These are generally in chiaro scuro, or light and shade 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 I0 5 
 
 only, and represent families of cupids. Nymphs and fauns, 
 shepherdesses, and the supposed inhabitants of a fanciful Arcadia, 
 formed the general subjects of room decorations. 
 
 A process belonging to the same reign should be noticed, 
 called after the inventor, Vernis-Martin, a carriage painter, born 
 about the year 1706. By carriage painter we must understand a 
 painter of heraldic ornaments, flower borders, &c. His varnish is 
 a fine transparent lac polish, probably derived from Japan through 
 missionaries, who had resided there before the occurrence of the 
 great massacres which closed Japan to all but the Dutch traders. 
 The work which we commonly associate with his name is generally 
 found on furniture such as tables or book cases, as well as on 
 needle cases, snuff boxes, fans, and etuis, on a gold ground. The 
 gold is waved or striated by some of those ingenious processes 
 still in use amongst the Japanese, by which the paste or prepara- 
 tion on which their gold is laid is worked over while still soft. 
 One or two carriages beautifully painted in,, vernis-martin are kept 
 in the hotel de Cluny at Paris. Although it is popularly held that 
 Martin declared his secret should die with him, and that he kept 
 his word, yet it is certain that he left imitators and pupils who 
 painted and enamelled in his manner furniture of various kinds. 
 In Sir R. Wallace’s collection there are two pieces, coloured 
 green and varnished, one a table and the other a cabinet or book- 
 case, of vernis-martin work. There is on these no ornament 
 excepting the varnish and the gold mounts that are added at the 
 edges. The most beautiful objects that bear his name are the 
 small wares, such as fans, needle books, or snuff boxes. 
 
 Later in the century we meet with other French names, 
 Riesener, David, and Gouthiere, who gained great reputation, the 
 two first as makers of marquetry, and the latter as a founder and 
 chaser of metal furniture mounts, such as edgings and lock 
 scutcheons. 
 
 The history of French furniture is in general the history of that 
 of other nations. The art of wood carving was still maintained in 
 
io6 
 
 FURNITURE . 
 
 Italy and applied, as in the instance of this distaff, to utensils of 
 all kinds. In England we had, about the middle of the century, 
 a school of carvers, gilders, and ornamenters following 
 the extravagant style of the French. The most promi- 
 nent name is that of Thomas Chippendale, who worked 
 from the middle till towards the end of the century. 
 He was descended from a family of carvers, and in- 
 herited the skill which had been general in his craft 
 since the days of Gibbons. We find much rococo 
 carving on bed testers, round fireplaces, over doors, &c., 
 in our English houses built during the reign of Anne 
 and the two first Georges. Other pieces of furniture, 
 suth as carved tables, wardrobe cabinets, chair backs or 
 dinner trays, go by Chippendale’s name. They are in 
 mahogany, and follow the architectural moulding lines 
 often seen in the works of Sir William Chambers and 
 the brothers Adam. 
 
 Among the room decorations of the century we may 
 notice the shelves for holding Chinese porcelain and 
 imitations of Chinese designs in delft pottery, a taste 
 imported by William the third and the members of his 
 court who had lived in Holland. The chimney pieces 
 at Hampton court and elsewhere are provided with 
 woodwork to hold these ornaments. Hogarth paints 
 them in his interiors, and the rage for purchasing such 
 objects at sales became a popular subject of ridicule. 
 
 To the early eighteenth century belongs a class of furniture of 
 which the decorations consisted of panels of old Chinese and 
 Japanese lac work ; fitted, as the marquetry of the day was, with 
 rich gilt metal mounts. In England it was the fashion to imitate 
 the Japan work, and such old furniture is occasionally met with : 
 black, with raised figure decorations of Chinese character done in 
 gold dust. 
 
 A great change is observable in the French furniture, panel 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 °7 
 
 carving and such decorations from the period of Louis the six- 
 teenth. Several causes at the time combined to give art of this 
 kind a new as well as a healthier direction. Amongst these we 
 may mention the discoveries made at Herculaneum and Pompeii. 
 It is needless to say that the peculiar cause of the destruction of 
 both those towns had preserved in them perfect memorials, in 
 many forms, of the social life of antiquity. Decorations, utensils 
 and furniture of all kinds that were made of metal, and had 
 resisted the action of damp and time, were recovered in fair 
 condition. One result, both in France and England, was a 
 return to a better feeling for classical style. 
 
 Room decorations and furniture soon reached the highest 
 point of elegance which French renaissance art of a sumptuous 
 kind has touched since the sixteenth century. The panelling of 
 rooms, usually in oak and painted white, was designed in severe 
 lines with straight mouldings and pilasters. The pilasters were 
 decorated with well-designed carved work, small, close, and 
 splendidly gilt. The quills that fill the fluted columns still seen 
 round so many interiors were cut into beads or other subdivi- 
 sions with much care. Fine arabesque work in the style of the 
 “ loggie ” of Raphael was partly carved in relief, partly drawn and 
 painted, or gilt, with gold of a yellow or of a green hue; the 
 green being largely alloyed with silver. An example of the best 
 work of this kind may be referred to in the beautiful room brought 
 from Paris and now preserved, reconstructed, at South Kensington. 
 The houses built for members of the brilliant court of queen 
 Marie Antoinette were filled with admirable work in this manner, 
 or in the severer but still delicate carved panelling in wood 
 plainly painted. The royal factories of the Gobelins and of 
 Sevres turned out also their most beautiful productions to decorate 
 rooms, furniture, and table service. In the former of these, tapes- 
 tries were made for wall hangings, for chair backs, seats, and 
 sofas. Rich silks from the looms of Lyons, and from those of 
 Lucca, Genoa, and Venice were also employed for this kind of 
 
io8 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 furniture both in France and Flanders, Germany, Italy, and 
 Spain, as well as in our own country. In all these matters 
 France led the fashions. 
 
 During this brilliant period, from 1774 to 1790, we meet with 
 the names of several artists employed for painting the panelling of 
 rooms, the lunettes over chimney fronts, and the panels of ceil- 
 ings. Fragonard, Natoire, Boucher (the director of the Academy) 
 are among the foremost of these. Their history perhaps belongs 
 rather to that of painters than of our present subject 3 but they 
 are too much mixed up with eighteenth century furniture not to 
 find mention even in a sketch like the present. 
 
 Other artists such as Delafosse, Lalonde, Cauvet and Salem- 
 bier designed arabesques, decorative woodwork, and furniture. 
 The designs of many of them are still extant : and Cauvet dedi- 
 cated a book of them to Monsieur, the king’s brother. Four 
 tables with silver-gilt mounts of his design were made for the 
 queen’s house of the Trianon, and afterwards removed to the 
 favourite residence of the emperor Napoleon at St. Cloud. 
 Robert and Barthelemy were sculptors and bronze workers who 
 made mounts for furniture, and engravers. Meissonnier, Oppenord, 
 Queverdo worked in the same way. Hubert Robert, a painter, 
 helped Micque in all the decorations of the Trianon. 
 
 Two or three cabinet-makers have transmitted a great name, 
 though little seems to be known of their history. Of these 
 Riesener and David Roentgen were ebenistes , or workers in fine 
 cabinet making. The designation is taken from the ebony and 
 other exotic woods, which had come into more general use in 
 Europe from the end of the seventeenth century subsequently to 
 1695, when the Dutch settled in Ceylon. The French obtained 
 ebony from Madagascar, but in very small quantities. After the 
 settlements at Ceylon we find it introduced into Europe on a 
 larger scale. There are green and yellow varieties but the black 
 wood is the most valuable, and Ceylon is the country in which 
 the greatest quantities are produced. We still find in English 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 109 
 
 houses much old carved ebony furniture, mainly chairs and 
 cabinets, dating generally from the early years of the Dutch 
 occupation. 
 
 Riesener used tulip ( Liriodendron tulip if era), rosewood, holly 
 ( ilex aquifolium ), maple ( acer campestre ), laburnum ( cytisus 
 Alpinus ), purple wood ( copaifera pub flora), &c. Wreaths and 
 bunches of flowers, exquisitely worked and boldly designed, form 
 centres of his marquetry panels which are often plain surfaces of 
 one wood. On the sides, in borders and compartments, we find 
 diaper patterns in three or four quiet colours. These conven- 
 tional sides or corners of diaper work help to give point to the 
 graceful compositions that form the principal feature in his 
 marquetry. Chests of drawers and cabinets are sometimes met 
 with in snake wood and other varieties of brown wood, of which 
 the grain is waved or curled without marquetry. The name of 
 Riesener is to be found stamped sometimes on the panel itself, 
 sometimes on the oak liniqep df the pieces of furniture made by 
 him. . 
 
 A number of exceptional examples of Riesener’ s cabinets are 
 described in the appendix to the detailed catalogue of furniture 
 in the South Kensington museum. The best pieces are from 
 the collection now belonging to Sir Richard Wallace. The most 
 imposing of these is the rounded bureau or secretaire, made for 
 Stanislaus, king of Poland. It is beautifully inlaid on the top, 
 ends, and back with designs emblematic of the sciences, &c., and 
 with bust heads. The letters S. R. are put upon a broad band of 
 decoration that runs round the lower portion of the bureau. A 
 similar piece of furniture with gilt bronze candle branches by 
 Gouthiere, on the sides, is now in the Louvre. Both are signed. 
 
 David Roentgen was born at Niewid near Luneville, in which 
 latter city he worked as a contemporary of Riesener, but younger 
 by some years in age. He also made marquetry in lighter woods 
 and of rather a gayer tone than those of Riesener. Both of them 
 often worked in plain mahogany, and in such cases trusted for the 
 
10 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 effectiveness of their pieces to the excellence of the mounts of 
 chased and gilt metal by their contemporary, Gouthiere. In his 
 light marquetry David used various white woods. Pear, lime, and 
 light-coloured woods were occasionally tinted with various shades 
 by burning. This process, originally effected by hot irons, is 
 better and more delicately managed by hot sand. Only browns 
 and dark ochrous yellows are obtained by this means, and the 
 more delicately toned marquetry is without hues of green or blue. 
 Those tints, however, can be obtained by steeping the wood in 
 various chemical solutions. 
 
 As a maker of gilt bronze furniture mounts Gouthiere had a 
 wide reputation. He belongs to the period of Louis the sixteenth. 
 With him Riesener and David worked in concert ; all their best 
 pieces are finished with the mounts of Gouthiere. Among 
 examples in this country is the cabinet in the royal collection at 
 Windsor. No signature has been discovered on this piece, but 
 the exquisite modelling of the flower borders, the metal mould- 
 ings and mounts, and the crown supported by figures of cupids 
 that surmounts the whole, leave us in no hesitation as to its 
 authorship. 
 
 Gouthiere modelled and chased up similar work for carriages, 
 and mounts for marble chimney pieces, such as that in the 
 boudoir just above referred to. The gilding on these mounts is 
 so good and has been laid on so massively that the metal has in 
 general suffered no substantial injury down to our own times, and 
 can be restored to its original lustre by soap and water. Indeed, 
 the fine old work dating from the two previous reigns by Andre 
 Boule and other artists, after the designs of Berain, has suffered 
 little. The boule clocks, with arched glass panels in front and 
 spreading supports and figure compositions on the top, have in 
 most cases come down to us clothed in their original water gild- 
 ing, easily to be cleaned though looking black when they have 
 been long left to neglect. 
 
 Contemporaneous with Riesener in France was the Italian 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 maker of marquetry, Maggiolino. In Florence, Venice, Milan, 
 and Genoa, cabinets and commodes of marquetry were produced. 
 German cabinet-makers manufactured the same work through the 
 earlier part of the century. Bombe or curved furniture was also 
 made by the Germans with great, we may almost say with extra- 
 vagant, skill. To maintain mouldings on the angles of these 
 curved and waving surfaces is a feat in workmanship of difficult 
 attainment, and German cabinet-makers seem to have taken 
 delight in exhibiting such skill. The quaint work of the minute 
 carvings in box and other hard woods, admirably carried out 
 during the times of the immediate pupils of Diirer and the school 
 of well-trained artists who succeeded him, was no longer to 
 be found. The desolating wars that swept over this part of 
 Europe during the days of Louis the fourteenth and Frederick 
 the great seem to have exhausted the country, and worn out the 
 ancient industry of the cities. Guilds died away, the men who 
 composed them being required for the exigencies of war, and the 
 wealth of the inhabitants was so reduced that the leisure to enjoy 
 and even the means to buy fine productions of art existed no 
 longer. 
 
 Few collectors have done greater service to the study of English 
 art than Horace Walpole ; and few have had the opportunities he 
 enjoyed a century ago, when he was able to fill Strawberry Hill 
 with a collection of mediaeval, renaissance, and later works of art 
 of every description. A lively passage, alluding to the contract 
 for the roof and the glazing of King’s college chapel, Cambridge, 
 commemorates his value for these art traditions. “As much,” 
 he says, “ as we imagine ourselves arrived at higher perfection in 
 the arts, it would not be easy for a master of a college to go into 
 St. Margaret’s parish, Southwark, to bespeak such a roof as that of 
 King’s college, and a .dozen or two of windows so admirably 
 drawn, and order them to be sent home by such a day, as if they 
 were bespeaking a chequered pavement.” 
 
 A certain sort of revival of Gothic design took place in England 
 
I 12 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 about this period : and later in the century feeble attempts at 
 Gothic woodwork were made here and there ; but there was little 
 national taste in furniture apart from a close imitation of French 
 fashions. A still greater change was produced by Sir William 
 Chambers, the architect of modern Somerset house, who wrote a 
 book on civil architecture and room decorations. Another name 
 connected with furniture has been already mentioned, that of 
 Thomas Chippendale. He published his book of designs in 1764, 
 containing complete sides of rooms, looking-glass frames, chimney 
 fronts, &c. He and his contemporaries designed tables, cabinets 
 and moveable furniture of every description, including carriages, 
 on which, indeed, furniture designers of all periods were employed. 
 Chippendale and his sons or assistants produced frames and 
 cornices for gilding so different from his well-made wardrobes, 
 &c., that there must have been more than one of the family 
 engaged in superintending these dissimilar kinds of objects. He 
 is a representative maker. The son has been sometimes credited 
 with the mahogany woodwork of which delicacy and exactness 
 are the characteristics. Satin wood came into fashion in England 
 during the last half of the century. Both Cipriani and Angelica 
 Kauffmann painted medallions, cameo ornaments and borders on 
 table tops and fronts, harpsichord cases, &c., made of satin wood 
 or coloured in the manner of the vernis-martin work. The former 
 decorated Carlton house. 
 
 Mathias Lock, with whom was associated a cabinet maker 
 named Copeland, also published designs of furniture of every 
 kind. A semi-classic Pompeian or Roman arabesque feeling 
 runs through the ornamentation of these pieces of furniture. 
 They are light in make, often elegant, and more or less follow the 
 taste prevailing in France and Italy. Gillow, the founder of a 
 respectable existing firm, belongs to this period; but, as yet, 
 nothing has come to light regarding his early history or apprentice- 
 ship. Another name connected both with furniture and decora- 
 tive arts of all kinds was that of Robert Adam ; he was of 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 ii3 
 
 Scotch extraction and had travelled in Italy ; and his brother 
 John built many private houses; for example, the Adelphi and 
 Portland place. Furniture, carriages, sedan chairs,, and plate 
 were amongst the objects for which Robert, perhaps both the 
 brothers, gave designs. Classical capitals,* mouldings and niches, 
 circles and lunettes, with shell flutings and light garlands, were 
 favourite features in their fagade ornaments. The sideboards, 
 bust terms (or pedestals), urn-shaped knife boxes; the chairs, 
 commodes, & c., were all designed to accord with the architec- 
 tural decorations. Polished steel fire-grates belong to this period, 
 and we believe to the authorship of the brothers Adam. 
 
 A cabinet maker named A. Heppelwhite published in 1789 a 
 large set of designs for every sort of reception room and bed- 
 room furniture. We see in these the mahogany chairs with 
 pierced strapwork backs, library and pedestal tables, mechanical 
 desks and bureaux, which continued in fashion during the early 
 years of this century. Fanciful sashed glass doors closed in the 
 bookcases ; interrupted pediments and pedestals provided space 
 for busts round the tops of these cases. Fluted legs, and occa- 
 sionally lion-headed supports, uphold the tables and chairs. 
 Knife cases to set on the sideboard, and urn stools for the break- 
 fast table, are among these designs. Tea chests and tea caddies 
 indicate that tea was then coming into general use. Thomas 
 Sheraton, another cabinet-maker, published towards the end of 
 the century an extensive “ Dictionary ” of his trade. His designs, 
 like those just mentioned, embrace beds, sofas, & c. Mechanical 
 dressing and washing tables, very ingeniously contrived, were 
 among his productions.- We meet with these still ; of Spanish 
 mahogany, and admirable workmanship. The structure of all 
 these pieces was light and strong. Time has had little effect on 
 wood so well seasoned and on pieces put together in so work- 
 manlike a manner. 
 
 The French revolution put a complete stop to the old arts of 
 domestic life in France. As in the sixteenth century, so in the 
 
 1 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 1 14 
 
 eighteenth the new ideas rushed extravagantly in the direction of 
 republican antiquity and Roman taste and sentiment. It was 
 under the empire, after the Italian wars and the Egyptian expedi- 
 tion, that the means and taste for expenditure upon civil furniture 
 and decorations revived, with an assumption of classicalism. The 
 art of the time however, inspired by the hard paintings of David, 
 is but a dry and affected attempt at a fresh renaissance. In furni- 
 ture mounts, chairs, &c., of supposed classical designs, it is known 
 as the art of the “ empire.” This country copied the fashion as 
 soon as the return of peace opened the continent to English 
 travellers. Furniture and room decorations were designed after 
 classical ideals, and we see chairs and tables imitating bas-reliefs 
 and the drawings on antique vases. It is probable that collectors, 
 such as Sir William Hamilton and the members of the Dilettanti 
 society, sensibly influenced the prevailing style. 
 
 James Wyatt the architect, about the end of the last century, 
 rebuilt or cleared out many of our mediaeval churches and houses, 
 and took to designing what he called Gothic for room decoration 
 and furniture. Sir Jeffrey Wyatt or Sir Jeffrey Wyattville (as he 
 became) made great changes at Windsor castle, under George the 
 fourth. Pugin designed some flimsy Gothic furniture for the 
 same palace. At a later period of his life, however, he did 
 much, both as a designer and a writer upon art, to turn attention 
 to the principles on which mediaeval designs of all kinds were 
 based. 
 
 We are now, perhaps, returning to renaissance art in furniture, 
 and it is certain that collections such as those lately exhibited by 
 Sir Richard Wallace ; the Exposition Retrospective in Paris in 
 1865 ; the loan exhibitions of 1862 in London, and that of Gore 
 house at an earlier period ; and above all the great permanent 
 collection at South Kensington, must contribute to form the 
 public taste. 
 
 In the review which we have made of what may be called the 
 household art of so many ages, it would be difficult to assign an 
 
FURNITURE . 
 
 1 1 5 
 
 absolute superiority to the artists of any one generation, consider- 
 ing what countless beautiful objects have been made for the 
 personal use and enjoyment of men. The sculptured thrones of 
 ivory and gold, the seats and couches of bronze overlaid with 
 gold and damascened with the precious metals, the inlaid chariots, 
 tables, chests, and jewelled caskets of antiquity; the imagery, 
 the shrines, the stalls, and roofs of the middle ages ; the wood 
 sculpture, tarsia, pietra dura, damascening and the endless variety 
 of objects produced during the days of Leonardo, Michel Angelo, 
 and Raphael, down to the carving of Gibbons, and the splendid 
 work of Boule, Riesener and Gouthiere, are all in various ways 
 excellent. 
 
 We must not venture to call one class of productions finer than 
 another where the differences are so great and such high perfec- 
 tion has been attained in each. Every style and fashion when at 
 its best has resulted from the utmost application of mind and time 
 on the part of trained artists ; and the highest art can never be 
 cheap, neither can any machinery or any help from mechanical 
 assistance become substitutes for art. Beauty which is created 
 by the hand of man is not the clever application of mechanical 
 forces or of scientific inventions, but is brought to light, whether 
 it be a cabinet front or the Venus of Milo, often with pain, 
 always by the entire devotion of the labour, the intellect, the 
 experience, the imagination and the affection, of the artist and 
 the workman. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHANGES OF TASTE AND STYLE. 
 
 It is interesting to trace the changes that the more common and 
 necessary pieces of furniture have undergone during successive 
 historic ages. The social life of ancient times, even of the middle 
 ages which come so much nearer to us in point of years, differs 
 from that of our own in its whole aspect. Yet though personal 
 habits have so greatly altered the general wants of men remain 
 much the same. Hence such objects as beds, chairs, tables, 
 chests, dressers, wardrobes or cabinets, carriages or litters, have 
 been always used and maintained a certain identity. With a 
 summary of the changes of form and methods of decoration of a 
 few of the principal objects of personal use we shall conclude. 
 
 Bedsteads and Couches. 
 
 Beds served often in antiquity and in the middle ages* and 
 have served at all times, almost as much for sitting or reclining by 
 day as for sleeping on at night. 
 
 To what has been already said on the subject of antique beds 
 little need be added. The Egyptian bed and the pillow or 
 crutch, of wood or more valuable materials, have been described. 
 Examples of the crutch are numerous in tlie British museum and 
 in the Louvre. “ The Egyptians had couches,” says Sir G. 
 Wilkinson, “ but they do not appear to have reclined upon them 
 more frequently than modern Europeans, in whose houses they are 
 equally common. The ottomans were simple square sofas with- 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 1 *7 
 
 out backs, raised from the ground nearly to the same level as the 
 chair. The upper part was of leather, or of cotton stuff, richly 
 coloured, like the cushions of the fauteuils, and the box was of 
 wood painted with various devices and ornamented with the 
 figures of captives, who were supposed to be degraded by holding 
 so humiliating a position. And the same idea gave them a place 
 on the footstools of a royal throne.” 
 
 The bed, Ae^o?, of the Greeks was covered with skins, over the 
 skins with woollen blankets ; sometimes a linen cloth or sheet was 
 added. The finest coverlids were from Miletus, Carthage, and 
 Corinth. These varied in the softness of their woollen texture 
 and the delicate disposition of the colours. Later Greek beds had 
 girths of leather or string ; a mattress ; and a pillow. 
 
 The Roman bed had the side by which it was entered open, 
 the other was protected by a shelf. The mattresses were stuffed 
 with herbs, in later times with wool Or feathers. Precious counter- 
 panes embroidered with'gold were occasionally used. Canopies 
 or frames for curtains, In- one form or another, have always been 
 necessary adjuncts to beds. Testers were placed on cradles, with 
 gauze curtains to keep off flies. Beds on wheels were in use for 
 the sick in classical and mediaeval times : as also a low and port- 
 able bed, grabatum , with mats for bedding. This is the word used 
 in St. John’s gospel, translated “ take up thy bed and walk.” 
 Besides beds, couches, and stools, used in antiquity, as in our 
 own times, we find amongst the ancients the habit, unknown since, 
 of reclining on the left elbow at meals. 
 
 The Romans called the conventional 
 arrangement the triclinium. The ac- 
 companying woodcut represents the 
 plan of a triclinium , the guest reclining 
 on the left elbow and the faces of each 
 directed from i to 3, 4 to 6, and so on. 
 
 These numbers and positions indicated a sort of superiority, or 
 a highest, middle, and lowest to every table. A passage from 
 
 6 5 4 
 
 7 3 
 
 8 2 
 
 9 1 
 
1 1 8 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 Horace, often quoted, enumerates the guests in this order. 
 Fundanius, who was at the top, giving an account of a dinner 
 to his friends, says : “ I sat at the top, Viscus Thurinus next to 
 me ; Yarius, if my memory serves me, below him ; Vibidius 
 along with Servilius Balatro, whom Maecenas brought as humble 
 companions. Nomentanus was above, and Porcius below the 
 host himself.” 
 
 The beds of the early middle ages in England had testers with 
 curtains, often of valuable material. These slid on rings on an 
 iron rod. Sometimes the rod, with a frame to sustain it, was on 
 one or on three sides of the bed, and the tester wanting. Some- 
 times the beds were slung on uprights, as cots are at sea. No 
 great expense was incurred in the framework till the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries. The splendour of state beds, or those of 
 
 great people, consisted in the 
 curtains, which were occasion- 
 ally taken down, and hung up 
 in churches on festivals. In 
 the illuminations of manu- 
 scripts and in pictures repre- 
 senting scenes in which there 
 is a bed, we find the tester 
 strained by cords to the sides 
 of the room or to the ceiling, 
 as in the accompanying wood- 
 cut. The curtains ran round 
 this frame, as in our modern four-posters; but we see them 
 hoisted out of the way during the daytime, not round a post, 
 only raised beyond reach. 
 
 The finest examples of bedsteads that can be called mediaeval 
 are French, and only met with in fragments, or more or less 
 complete. This is unfortunately the case also as regards early 
 English bedsteads. We may refer the reader to the “ Mobilier 
 Frangais ” of Viollet le Due, for an idea of the sumptuous carved 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 1 1 9 
 
 oak bedstead of the great palaces and hotels of France. It was 
 a frame panelled down to the ground, often containing chests, 
 drawers, presses, or other safe places under the sleeper. The 
 back resembled more or less the reredos of an altar, or the great 
 panelled presses that filled the sides of sacristies. Four posts 
 supported the canopy. A bedstead of the fifteenth century was 
 long preserved at Leicester, and said to have been slept on by 
 Richard the third. The under part of it formed his military 
 chest, and the discovery of the treasure a century afterwards 
 occasioned a barbarous murder. None of the coin found was of 
 a later mint than his reign. It is also said by Pennant that a 
 stump bedstead still in Berkeley castle is the same on which the 
 murder of Edward the second was committed. Fine examples of 
 Tudor bedsteads are preserved there. In the town of Ware in 
 Hertfordshire is, and has 
 long been, an inn under 
 the sign of the Saracen’s 
 head. “ In this,” says 
 Clutterbuck, “ there is a 
 bed of enormous propor- 
 tions, twelve feet square. 
 
 The head is panelled in 
 the Elizabethan style of 
 arched panels, and a date 
 is painted on it — 1460. 
 
 [This, however, is not 
 authentic.] It is of carved 
 oak. The top is covered by a panelled tester, supported on 
 baluster columns at the feet. The bases of these rest on a cluster 
 of four arches or supports to each column.” Nothing is known 
 of the original history of the bedstead. Shakespeare alludes to it 
 in Twelfth Night. 
 
 To the Tudor and Jacobean period of heavy oak furniture suc- 
 ceeded the custom of supplying the place of oak-panelled testers 
 
120 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 and headboards with rich hangings either of tapestry, cut Genoa, 
 or Venice velvets and other costly materials, with ostrich feathers 
 
 or other ornaments on the angles. 
 The royal beds at Hampton court 
 admirably illustrate this stately 
 fashion, as in the accompanying 
 woodcut. More modern changes it 
 is unnecessary to trace. 
 
 Couches for reclining or sitting 
 upon were, in the middle ages, 
 rather benches with cushions on 
 them. The king conversing with a 
 lady in her chamber is from a manu- 
 script of about 1390 (the “Romance 
 of Meliadus) in the British museum. 
 In the seventeenth century we find 
 the same ornaments that were used 
 in chair backs extended to large frames so as to form them into 
 
 couches, and the same plaited cane panels. In the last century, 
 sofas were sometimes made in the form of several chair backs, 
 with arms at each end, the backs being pierced work or framing 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 I 2 I 
 
 made of bars in fancy shapes. This work was in mahogany or 
 satin wood, or was painted after the fashion of vernis-martin 
 work. In all cases such pieces were made to accord with suites 
 of chairs, tables, &c. 
 
 Cradles have been made in many shapes. The most approved 
 in antiquity was that of a boat, (n<d<f>os , or a shield ; in either case 
 they could be rocked. In the fourteenth century the men of 
 Ghent destroyed the house of the earl of Flanders, according to 
 Froissart, and all his furniture including the cradle in which he 
 was nursed, which was of silver. The cradle of Henry the fifth 
 is still preserved. It is in the form of a chest, much like the 
 cradle in the Kensington museum, n°- 1769 ; and swings on posts, 
 one at each end, standing on cross-bars to keep them steady : 
 but there is no higher portion, as in the example in the musuem, 
 to support a tester. A hundred years later the shape seems to 
 have become heavier. 
 
 In the ancient Egyptian paintings at Thebes, and elsewhere, 
 chairs are minutely represented like the throne or arm chair of 
 the Greeks, each containing one person. Occasionally they used 
 stools and low seats raised a little above the ground. Some sat 
 cross-legged on the ground, though this is more rare, or kneeling 
 on one knee. The men and women generally were apart, but in 
 
r 2 2 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 the same room ; while conversing they sat, and did not recline. 
 Wilkinson gives a full description of the old Egyptian chairs and 
 stools. 
 
 The classical curule chairs were made of ivory ; sometimes of 
 solid and entire elephants’ teeth, which seems to have been the 
 typical idea of the ivory chair ; sometimes the ivory was veneered 
 on a wooden base. The foot or point of the tusk was carved 
 into a head or beak. It is from this curved chair of state that 
 the later chairs were derived, of which the form remained popular 
 in Italy through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The mediae- 
 val name was faldistorium , rendered “ faldstool,” a stool or seat to 
 support the arms when kneeling, or to act as a chair when sitting. 
 
 The earliest type of the architectural 'thrones or chairs of the 
 middle ages is the ancient chair of St. Peter, at Rome, of which 
 a woodcut has been given in p. 35. A full description and 
 plates of it will be found in the “ Vetusta monumenta ” of the 
 Society of antiquaries for 1870. Another famous chair, that of 
 St. Mark, is preserved at Venice, in the treasury of St. Mark’s. 
 
 Anciently this chair, like that of 
 St. Peter in Rome, was covered 
 with plates of ivory, carved panels 
 probably fitted into frame pieces 
 of wood as a covering to the 
 stone. As it is now seen, how- 
 ever, the work is of oriental 
 marble. It is a rudely shaped 
 arm chair, with high back sloping 
 upwards in the form of a pedi- 
 ment, truncated and surmounted 
 by a stone, cut into an imperfect 
 circle or oval, and having an 
 arm or volute like the reversed 
 angle-volute of a column projecting from the lower part of each 
 side. The chair of St. Maximian at Ravenna dates from the 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 123 
 
 sixth century ; this is described in Mr. Maskell’s “ Ivories.” A 
 magnificent fourteenth century architectural chair of silver is pre- 
 served at Barcelona. The supports represent window tracery. 
 One large arch supplies the front support, being cusped, and these 
 cusps are again subdivided. The two sides form each a pair of 
 windows of two lights or divisions, with a circle above, the 
 whole cusped and having trefoil leaves on the cusps. The back 
 is open tracery work, representing three narrow windows, with two 
 lights or openings each. They finish in three lofty gables, 
 crocketed outside and divided into tracery within. 
 
 Chairs in England dur- 
 ing the mediaeval period 
 were sometimes made of 
 turned wood. Sometimes 
 they were cleverly arranged 
 to fold up, as in our own 
 days : the engraving (p. 122) 
 is from a beautiful manu- 
 script of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. The chair known 
 as that of Glastonbury is 
 a square board on two 
 pairs of cross-trestles, with 
 a square board for a back, 
 held to the seat by slop- 
 ing arm pieces, shaped 
 out to receive the arms of 
 a sitter. On the edges of 
 the seat and back tenons 
 protrude, long enough to 
 pass through mortices in 
 the leg and arm pieces, 
 which are pegged to keep them firm. Like the sixteenth century 
 curule chairs these can easily be taken to pieces for travelling. 
 
124 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, high-backed chairs, 
 richly cut and pierced, with wooden, afterwards with cane, seats 
 were used and remained in use simplified and lightened during 
 more than a century. The woodcut (p. 123) represents the 
 fashion of chair common in Italy about the year 1620: and 
 from thence introduced into England. 
 
 The use of marquetry was not confined to tables and cabinets. 
 Rich chairs were made in this material (rarely in boule) during 
 the eighteenth century in France, Italy, and Holland, from whence 
 they came to this country. Light and very elegant yellow satin- 
 wood marquetry chairs were also then in fashion. The use of 
 mahogany for chairs, often delicately carved and admirably con- 
 structed, was general during the last century in England. The 
 French carved chairs of the time of Louis the sixteenth covered 
 with silk all but the legs and framework, and painted white or 
 gilt, were made to accord with the sofas and carved woodwork 
 of the rooms. This example was followed in England, with 
 certain national differences. 
 
 Tables. 
 
 The ancient Egyptian tables were round, square, or oblong ; 
 the former were generally used during their repasts, and consisted 
 of a circular flat summit, supported, like the monopodium of the 
 Romans, on a single shaft or leg in the centre or by the figure of 
 a man intended to represent a captive. Large tables had usually 
 three or four legs, but some were made with solid sides; and 
 though generally of wood many were of metal or stone ; and they 
 varied in size according to the different purposes for which they 
 were intended. Often they were three-legged, the legs in a 
 concave shape. 
 
 An antique marble table of Graeco-Roman work is preserved 
 at Naples, supported by a centaur in full relief at one end, and a 
 sea monster, Scylla it is supposed, involving a shipwrecked 
 .mariner in the folds of her tail, with indications of waves, &c., 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 125 
 
 round her body. Other Roman tables of larger dimensions had 
 three, four, or five supports of sphinxes, lions, and the like. We 
 give representations of three kinds of tables from paintings on 
 vases ; and another, on three marble legs, found at Pompeii. 
 
 In the middle ages, as has been before said, tables were 
 generally folding boards laid on trestles and moveable. The 
 general disposition of the dining table was taken from those of 
 abbeys and convents, and may be seen continued in some of our 
 own colleges to this day. The principal table was on a raised 
 platform or floor at the upper end of the hall, and thence called 
 the “High” table. The guests sat on one side only, as in the 
 traditional representations of the Last Supper, and the place of 
 honour was the centre, the opposite side being left for the service. 
 The principal person sat under a canopy or cloth of estate, either 
 made for the occasion, or under a panelled canopy curving out- 
 ward and permanent. Occasionally mediaeval tables in England 
 were of stone or marble. Of the former material a table is pre- 
 served belonging to the strangers’ hall at Winchester ; and a 
 wooden one in the chapter-house at Salisbury. The tops of some 
 
26 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 old English tables are made with two thicknesses, the lower 
 pulling out on either side to rest on supports drawn from the bed. 
 A table of this description is kept at Hill hall, Essex ; and the 
 
 woodcut represents 
 a folding table of the 
 time of Elizabeth, 
 long preserved at 
 Flaxton Hall, in 
 Suffolk. During the 
 last century maho- 
 gany tables with de- 
 licate pierced galle- 
 ries round the edge, 
 and similar work to 
 ornament the bed or 
 frame, were made 
 by Chippendale and 
 his contemporaries. 
 Many of them are 
 light and graceful 
 pieces of construction. Others were massively made with goat- 
 footed legs that bulge well beyond the lines of the table top, 
 which in these cases is often a slab of marble. The workman- 
 ship is admirable. Mahogany had then supplanted the use of 
 oak for large tables. 
 
 Chests , Cabinets , and Sideboards. 
 
 The wardrobe, both in the Roman house and the mediaeval 
 castle, was a small room suitably fitted up and provided with 
 receptacles. Chests, coffers, and caskets were also in use, and 
 implied moveability. In later days the renaissance chests were 
 either mounted on stands or gave place to mixed structures ; and 
 cabinets of various forms that could be kept permanently in the 
 hall or chamber became the fashion. They were large, important 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 I2 7 
 
 objects, were never moved or carried abroad, descended from 
 father to son, and were the monumental objects, as the panelled 
 superstructure of the fireplace was, of halls and reception rooms. 
 These pieces have various forms. In dining halls or rooms 
 occasionally so used, they were cupboards, dressers, or places 
 with a small receptacle to hold food, and a flat top with perhaps 
 a step or shelf above it to carry plate, candlesticks, &c. When 
 placed in receiving rooms or to hold dresses they were cabinets 
 or wardrobes ; for the convenle-neos^of writing they are bureaux, 
 secretaires, or escritoires./^ ; \ 
 
 We have early noticek oir L thb use of cypress chests, perhaps 
 cabinets as some of them -^vith drawers, in this country. 
 
 John of Gaunt in his will, 1397, specifies “a little box of cypress 
 wood probably something like the chest engraved from a manu- 
 script of that date : out of which the servant is taking a robe 
 evidently richly embroidered with armorial bearings. In the 
 memoirs of the antiquities of Great Britain, relating to the 
 reformation, we find an account of church plate, money, gold 
 
128 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 and silver images, &c., delivered to Henry the eighth : “ Paid 
 William Grene, the king’s coffer-maker , for making of a coffer 
 covered with fustyan of Naples, and being full of drawers and 
 boxes lined with red and grene sarcynet to put in stones of 
 divers sorts, vi .If. xviij.r. ij. d .,” by which we may gather some- 
 thing of its costly construction, “ and to Cornelys the locke smythe 
 for making all the iron worke, that is to say, the locke, gymours, 
 handels, ryngs to every drawer box, the price xxxvi. s. iv. dl 
 
 The marquetry invented or brought to perfection by Boule was 
 displayed in greater magnificence on cabinets of various shapes 
 than on any other pieces of furniture. The same may be said of 
 the marquetry cabinets in wood executed during the eighteenth 
 century in France by Riesener and David, with the help of the 
 metal mounts of Gouthiere and his contemporaries. In these fine 
 pieces the interior is generally simple and the conceits of the 
 previous century are omitted. Japan cabinets obtained through 
 the Dutch were frequently imported into England. The hinges 
 and mounts were of silver or gilt metal, richly chased. The 
 bureau, escritoire, or office desk, called in Germany Kaunitz after 
 a princely inventor, was a knee-hole table. These tall bureaux 
 were of general, almost universal, use in England during the last 
 century. 
 
 Sideboards. 
 
 There are several old sideboards in the Kensington museum, 
 described under the names of d?'essoir or dressoir de salle a 
 manger in the large catalogue. They are small cupboards and 
 would be called cabinets but for the drawers half-way down, 
 and the rows of the shelves on the top; and are of the six- 
 teenth century date. According to Willemin, the old etiquette 
 of France, certainly that of Burgundy, prescribed five steps or 
 shelves to these dressers for use during meals for queens ; four 
 for duchesses or princesses ; three for their children and for 
 countesses and grandes dames ; two for other noble ladies. In 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 129 
 
 the middle ages cupboards or dressers were mere covered boards 
 or shelves against a wall on which plate was set out, and were 
 made of three or four or more stages according to the splendour of 
 the occasion. The cupboard dresser of more modest pretensions 
 was considered as a piece of dining-room furniture. It was 
 ordinarily covered with a piece of embroidery. 
 
 Robert Frevyll bequeaths, 1521, to his “son John a stone 
 cobard in the hall.” A manuscript inventory of Henry the eighth 
 names, “ Item, one large cuppbord carpet of grene cloth of gold 
 with workes lyned with bockeram, conteyning in length three 
 yards, iii. q’ters, and three bredthes.” In the herald’s account of 
 the feast at Westminster, on the occasion of the marriage of prince 
 Arthur, we find “ There was also a stage of dyvers greas and 
 hannes (degrees and enhancings of height) for the cuppbord that 
 the plate shulde stande inn, the which plate for the moost part 
 was clene (pure) goold, and the residue all gilte and non silver, 
 and was in length from the closet doore to the chimney.” And 
 when in the next reign Henry entertained Francis at Calais, a 
 cupboard of seven stages was provided and furnished with gold 
 and silver gilt plate. 
 
 Before concluding these remarks on dining-room furniture 
 something may be said on painted roundels or wooden platters. 
 Though they have long ceased to be used for their original pur- 
 pose, several sets still complete remain in country houses and col- 
 lections of different kinds ; and three sets are in the Kensington 
 museum. They are usually twelve in number : and all seem to 
 be of the date of the late Tudor princes. They were kept in 
 boxes turned out of a block, and decorated with painting and 
 gilding. Their size does not differ materially, all the sets varying 
 from 5f to 5! inches. There are, however, smaller sets to be 
 seen which range from 2f to 5 inches in diameter. The top 
 surface is in all instances plain and the under surface painted 
 with a border of flowers, generally alternating with knots more or 
 less artistically drawn in vermilion : “ posyes ” or a couple of 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 verses are generally added. These platters were used in the 
 sixteenth century as dessert plates, the plain side being at the top. 
 Leland speaks of the “confettes” at the end of a dinner, “ sugar 
 plate fertes, with other subtilties with ippocrass” (a sweet wine). 
 Earthenware plates though not unknown were still very uncommon 
 in England before the reign of Elizabeth. The dinner was served 
 on plate in royal or very great houses, on pewter and wooden 
 trenchers in more humble and unpretending households. Speci- 
 mens of the latter may still be seen in our old collegiate esta- 
 blishments. Probably the earliest instance of the use of earthen- 
 ware may be found in the time of Edward the first, when some 
 dishes and plates of that material were bought from a Spanish 
 ship. Pitchers, jugs and the like had been for centuries com- 
 monly made. “ Porselyn” is mentioned in 1587 : where we read 
 of “ five dishes of earth painted, such as are brought from Venice” 
 being presented to the queen on one of her progresses. 
 
 Carriages. 
 
 The shape and decoration of carriages have changed con- 
 tinually, but these changes have not always been in the direction 
 of convenience and handiness for rapid motion. Our space 
 will not allow us to enter here upon a history of the chariots 
 
 of ancient nations ; Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans. A detailed 
 account of them will be found in the introduction to the 
 large catalogue of furniture at South Kensington. The woodcut 
 represents the Roman “ biga,” the original of which (in marble) is 
 
FURNITURE. 
 
 1 3 1 
 
 in the Vatican ; and the “ pilentum,” or covered carriage, from 
 the column of Theodosius. 
 
 We know but little of the period succeeding the destruction ol 
 Rome and the extinction of classic customs. In the middle ages 
 we find carts, like those now in use for agricultural purposes in 
 France ; a long frame with spreading rails balanced on one pair 
 
 of wheels of large dimensions, drawn by a string of horses. The 
 woodcut of a family carriage is from the well-known Luttrell 
 psalter, an illuminated manuscript of the early fourteenth century. 
 Such vehicles seem to have been clumsy enough and had no 
 springs : nevertheless they were much ornamented with various 
 decorations. They had roofs as a protection from the weather, 
 with silk or leather curtains ; and the interior was fitted with 
 cushions. In the “ Squire of low degree” the father of the 
 princess of Hungary promises, 
 
 To-morrow ye shall on hunting fare, 
 
 And ride my daughter in a chare, 
 
 It shall be covered with velvet red, 
 
 And cloths of fine gold all about your head, 
 
 With damask white and azure blue, 
 
 Well diapered with lilies new, 
 
 Your pomelles (knobs) shall be ended with gold, 
 
 Your chains enamelled many a fold. 
 
 The oldest kind of wheel-carriages known in England were 
 called whirlecotes , and one of these belonged to the mother of 
 
I 3 2 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 Richard the second. Whirlecotes were used also at the marriage 
 of Katherine of Arragon. Coaches were probably first intro- 
 duced from Hungary. They seem to have been square, not 
 differing greatly in outline from the state coaches of which 
 numerous engraved plates can be seen ; and were considered as 
 too effeminate a conveyance for men in the days of Elizabeth. 
 The coach of Henry the fourth of France may be studied in the 
 plate by Van Luyken that represents his murder by Ravaillac, 
 1610. It is four-wheeled, square, with a flat awning on four 
 corner pillars or supports, and curtains. The centre descends 
 into a kind of boot with leather sides. The accompanying 
 
 woodcut represents the carriage of the English ambassador at 
 Rome in 1 688 : and we add also an engraving of a state carriage 
 of about fifty years later, still in the possession of Lord Darnley. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NAMES OF DESIGNERS OF WOODWORK AND MAKERS 
 OF FURNITURE. 
 
 Only very meagre notices are to be found of the artists to whom we 
 owe the designs of modern furniture. For a hundred and fifty years 
 after the renaissance, furniture partook so generally, and the wood- 
 work of rooms so entirely, of the character and followed so con- 
 tinually the details of architecture that the history of furniture- 
 designers is that of the architects of the day. These found in the 
 members of guilds of carvers, carpenters, or image sculptors admir- 
 able hands to carry out the ornamental details of their woodwork, 
 such as chimney-pieces, &c., and who made sideboards, cabinets, 
 chairs, and tables to suit the woodwork. We have space here only 
 for the names ; in the large catalogue a brief notice of almost every 
 one of them is also given. 
 
 • Names of Artists. 
 
 | 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Date. 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 Adam, J. (and R.) 
 
 England . . . 
 
 1728-1792. 
 
 Agnolo, B. da . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1460-1563. 
 
 Agnolo, D. da 
 
 99 * 
 
 16th century. 
 
 Agnola, J. da ...... 
 
 99 .... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Ambrogio, G 
 
 99 .... 
 
 17th 
 
 Ards, W . 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 15th 
 
 Asinelis, A 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th ,, 
 
 B 
 
 
 
 Bachelier, — 
 
 France 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 Baerze, J. de 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 14th ,, 
 
 Baker, — 
 
 England . 
 
 1 8th , , 
 
 Barili, A. 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 Barili, G 
 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Barili, S 
 
 „ . . . . 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 * 34 - 
 
 Names of Artists. 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Baumgartner, U 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 17th century. 
 
 Beaugreant, G. de 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 Beck, S 
 
 Germany . 
 
 99 9 9 
 
 Belli, A. A. ....... 
 
 Italy .... 
 France . . . 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Belli, G 
 
 9 9 99 
 
 Berain, J. ....... . 
 
 1636-1711. 
 
 Bergamo, D. da 
 
 Italy . . . 
 
 H 90 ~ l 55 o- 
 
 Bergamo, S. da ..... . 
 
 99 • 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 Bernardo, — 
 
 „ .... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Berruguete, — 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 1480-1561. 
 
 Bertolina, B. J. 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th century . 
 
 Beydert, J. 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 15th 
 
 Blondeel, L 
 
 ,,.... 
 
 1495 - 1560 . 
 
 Bolgie, G. ....... . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 8th century.. 
 
 Bonzanigo, G. M 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 1 6th ,, 
 
 Borello, F. ....... . 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 Borgona, F. de ...... 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 99 99 
 
 Botto, B. ........ 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 
 Botto, G. B. . 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Botto, P. 
 
 If .... 
 
 ” 
 
 Botto, S. A. ....... 
 
 99 .... 
 
 
 Boulle, A. C 
 
 France . . . 
 
 1642-1732. 
 
 Boulle, P 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 17th century. 
 
 Brescia, R. da . . . . . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th ,, 
 
 Bross, — de 
 
 France 
 
 17 th 
 
 Bruggemann, H. . 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 15 th 
 
 Bruhl, A 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 1 6th and 17th 
 centuries. 
 
 Brunelleschi, F. ..... 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 I 377 - I 44 6 - 
 
 Brustolone, A. ...... . 
 
 99 * 
 
 1670-1732. 
 
 Buontalenti, B. T. ..... 
 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 C 
 
 
 
 Caffieri, Ph 
 
 France . . . 
 
 17th and 1 8th 
 centuries. 
 
 Cano, A. ........ 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 17th century. 
 
 Canova, J. de ...... . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 16th 
 
 Canozii, C. ....... 
 
 
 Canozii, G. M. ...... 
 
 9 9 • 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Canozii, L 
 
 
 
 Capitsoldi, — ....... 
 
 England . . . 
 
 1 8th ” 
 
 Capo di Ferro, Brothers . . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th 
 
 Carlone, J 
 
 9 9 
 
 1 8th 
 
 Carnicero, A 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 i 693 ~ i 756 - 
 
 Castelli, Q 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th century 
 
 Cauner, — ........ 
 
 France . . . 
 
 1 8th 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 *35 
 
 Names of Artists. 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Cauvet, G. P 
 
 France . . . 
 
 1731-1788. 
 
 Ceracci, G. 
 
 England . . . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Cervelliera, B. del 
 
 Italy . . . 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 1726-1796. 
 
 Chambers, Sir W 
 
 England . . . 
 
 Chippendale, T 
 
 9 9 • • • 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Cipriani, G. B. 
 
 ,, ... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Coit, — ■ 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Collet, A 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Copeland, — 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Cotte, J. de 
 
 France . . . 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Cotte, R. de 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 1656-1735- 
 
 Cotton, C 
 
 England . . . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Cressent, — 
 
 France . . . 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 D 
 
 
 
 Davy, R. . 
 
 England . . . 
 
 1750-1794. 
 
 Dello Delli 
 
 -Italy .... 
 
 14th and 15th 
 
 
 
 centuries. 
 
 Dolen, — van . 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Donatello, — - 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1380-1466. 
 
 Dorsient, A. C. ; C. Oc. . > . 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 16th century. 
 
 Ducerceau, A . 
 
 France . . . 
 
 1515-1585. 
 
 Dugar, E ; . . . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 Du Quesnoy, F. H. and J. . . . 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 17th 
 
 F 
 
 
 
 Faydherbe, L 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 1627-1694. 
 
 Filippo, D. di 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 Florein, J 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 15th 
 
 Flotner, P. . . 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 G 
 
 
 
 Gabler, M 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 17th century. 
 
 Galletti, G 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 18th ,, 
 
 Gamier, P 
 
 France 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Genser, M 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 17th 
 
 Gervasius 
 
 England . . . 
 
 
 Gettich, P 
 
 Germany . 
 
 I 7 th „ 
 
 Geuser, M 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 Gheel, F. van 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 18th ,, 
 
 Gibbons, G 
 
 England . . . 
 
 17th 
 
 Giovanni, Fra 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 Glosencamp, H 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 ,, y y 
 
 Goujon, T 
 
 1 France . . . 
 
 1 9 9 9 9 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 136 
 
 Names of Artists. 
 
 H 
 
 Habermann, — . . . . 
 Haeghen, — van der . . 
 
 Heckinger, J 
 
 Heinhofer, Ph 
 
 Helmont, — van .... 
 
 Heppelwhite, A 
 
 Hernandez, G 
 
 Hool, T. B. van . . . . 
 
 Huet, — 
 
 Hyman, F 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Date. 
 
 France . . . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 17th ,, 
 
 1 6th and 17th 
 centuries. 
 
 yy ... 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 1586-1646. 
 
 England . . . 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 y y > ? 
 
 France . . . 
 
 England . . . 
 
 yy yy 
 
 J 
 
 John of St. Omer . 
 Johnson, T. . . 
 
 Juni, J. D. . . 
 
 K 
 
 Kauffmann, A. 
 Kiskner, U. . . 
 
 Kuenlin, J. . . . 
 
 England . 
 Spain . . 
 
 England . 
 Germany . 
 
 13th century. 
 
 1 8th ,, 
 
 1 6th and 17th 
 centuries. 
 
 1 8th century. 
 17th ,, 
 
 y y yy 
 
 L 
 
 Ladetto, F. . . . 
 
 Lalonde, — . . 
 
 Lawreans, — . 
 Lecreux, N. A. J. 
 Le Moyne, J. . 
 Leopardi, A. . 
 
 Le Pautre, J. . . 
 
 Le Roux, J. B. 
 Linnell, J. . . . 
 
 Lock, M. . . . 
 
 Loir, A. . . . . 
 
 L’Orme, Ph. de. . 
 Lunigia, A. da 
 
 M 
 
 Mace, J. . . . 
 
 Maffeis, P. di . 
 Maggiolino, — 
 Magister, O. . 
 Majano, B. da 
 
 Italy . 
 
 France 
 
 England 
 
 Flanders 
 
 France 
 
 Italy . 
 
 France 
 
 England 
 
 y y 
 
 France 
 Italy . 
 
 France 
 Italy . 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 y y yy 
 
 17th 
 
 1757-1836. 
 
 1645-1718. 
 
 1450-1525- 
 
 1617-1682. 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 yy yy 
 
 1630-1713. 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 1 8th century. 
 15th ,, 
 r8th 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 ! 15th 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 i37 
 
 Names of Artists. 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Majano, G. da 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 I432-I490. 
 
 Margaritone, — 
 
 )) .... 
 
 1236-1313. 
 
 Marot, I). ....... . 
 
 France . . . 
 
 1650-17OO ? 
 
 Marot, G. ....... 
 
 , , 
 
 17th century. 
 
 Marot, J. 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 1625-1679. 
 
 Martin, R 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 1706-1765. 
 
 Martincourt, — 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Meissonnier, J. A 
 
 , , . 
 
 i 6 9 3 - i 75 °. 
 
 Mendeler, G 
 
 Germany . 
 
 17th century. 
 
 Meulen, R. van der 
 
 Flanders . 
 
 1645-1717. 
 
 Minore, G 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 15th century. 
 
 Modena, P. da 
 
 ,, ,, 
 
 Moenart, M 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 1 7th , , 
 
 Montepulciano, G. da . . . . 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th „ 
 
 Moser, L 
 
 Germany . 
 
 15th 
 
 Muller, D 
 
 17th ,, 
 
 9 9 99 
 
 Miilier, J 
 
 ” * ‘ • 
 
 N 
 
 
 
 Newrone, G. C 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 Nilson, — 
 
 France 
 
 1 8th 
 
 Nys, L. de 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 y' } y 
 
 Nys, P. de 
 
 „ ... 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 0 
 
 
 
 Oost, P. van 
 
 Flanders . 
 
 14th century. 
 
 Oppenord, — 
 
 France 
 
 1 8th ,, 
 
 P 
 
 
 
 Pacher, M. . 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 15th century. 
 
 Padova, Z. da 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th , , 
 
 Panturmo, J. di 
 
 
 Pardo, G 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 Pareta, G. di | 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 ,, ,, 
 
 Passe, C. de 
 
 France . . . 
 
 17th 
 
 Passe, C. de, the younger . . . 
 
 , , 
 
 ,, ,, 
 
 Pergolese, — 
 
 England . 
 
 1 8th 
 
 Perreal, J 
 
 France . . 
 
 15 th 
 
 Philippon, A 
 
 ,, .... 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 Picau, — 
 
 99 .... 
 
 Flanders . . 
 
 1 8th , , 
 
 Picq, J 
 
 17th 
 
 Pigalle, — 
 
 England . 
 
 1 8th ,, 
 
 Piffetti, A. P 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1700-1777. 
 
 Plumier, P. D 
 
 Flanders . 
 
 1688-1721. 
 
 Porfirio, B. di 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
38 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Names of Artists. 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Q 
 
 
 Quellin, A 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 Quellin, A., the younger . . . 
 
 99 ... 
 
 Quellin, E 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 R 
 
 
 Raephorst, B. van 
 
 Flanders . 
 
 Ramello, F 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 Ranson, — 
 
 France . . . 
 
 Rasch, A 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 Riesener, — 
 
 France . . . 
 
 Roentgen, D 
 
 99 • • * • 
 
 Rohan, J. de 
 
 9 9 
 
 Rohan, J. de 
 
 99 • * * * 
 
 Rosch, J 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 Rossi, P. de 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 Rovezzano, B. da 
 
 England . . . 
 
 S 
 
 
 Salembier, — 
 
 France . . . 
 
 Sangher, J. de 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 Schelden, P. van der .... 
 
 ,, ... 
 
 Schwanhard, H 
 
 Germany . 
 
 Serlius, S 
 
 France 
 
 Servellino, G. del 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 Sheraton, Th 
 
 England . 
 
 Smet, R. de 
 
 Flanders . 
 
 Stoss, V 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 Syrlin, J 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 Syrlin, J., the younger .... 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 T 
 
 
 Taillebert, U 
 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 Tasso, D 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 Tasso, G 
 
 
 Tasso, G. B 
 
 99 .... 
 
 Tasso, M. D 
 
 99 .... 
 
 Tatham, C. H 
 
 England . . . 
 
 Taurini, R 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 Thomire, P. Ph 
 
 France . . . 
 
 Tolfo, G 
 
 ! Italy .... 
 
 Date. 
 
 1609-1668. 
 1625-1700. 
 17th century. 
 
 15th century. 
 
 1 6th „ 
 
 1 8th 
 
 15th ,, 
 
 18th ,, 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 15th 
 
 15 th and 1 6th 
 centuries. 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 1 8th and 19th 
 centuries. 
 17th century. 
 16th ,, 
 
 17th 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 15th 
 
 18th ,, 
 
 16th ,, 
 
 1438-1533- 
 
 15th century. 
 15th and 1 6th 
 centuries. 
 
 1 6th century. 
 15th and 1 6th 
 centuries. 
 
 15th century. 
 1 8th „ 
 16th ,, 
 1751-1843. 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 i39 
 
 Names of Artists. 
 
 Toro, — 
 
 Torrigiano, — . 
 
 Toto, — 
 
 Trevigi, G. da 
 
 U 
 
 Uccello, P 
 
 Ugliengo, C 
 
 V 
 
 Venasca, G. P 
 
 Verbruggen, P 
 
 Verbruggen, P., the younger . . 
 
 Verhaegen, Th 
 
 Voyers, — • 
 
 Vriesse, V. de 
 
 W 
 
 Walker, H 
 
 Weinkopf, W 
 
 Willemsens, L. ...... 
 
 William the Florentine .... 
 
 Wilton, j 
 
 Z 
 
 Zabello, F 
 
 Zorn, G 
 
 Country in which 
 they worked. 
 
 Date. 
 
 France . . . 
 
 England . . . 
 
 9 9 • • • 
 
 9 9 • 
 
 1 8th century. 
 1472-1522. 
 I33I-I35I- 
 I 3°4~ I 344- 
 
 Italy .... 
 
 9 9 • 
 
 1396-1479- 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 Italy .... 
 Flanders . . . 
 
 9 9 * 
 
 9 9 ... 
 
 England . . . 
 
 France 
 
 1 8th century. 
 17th 
 
 1660-1724. 
 
 1 8th century. 
 
 17 th 
 
 England . 
 Germany . 
 Flanders . 
 England . 
 
 1 6th century. 
 
 9 9 9 9 
 
 1635-1702. 
 13th century. 
 1 8th ,, 
 
 Italy .... 
 Germany . . . 
 
 1 6th century. 
 17th 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adam, Robert and John, 112 
 Alexandria, ancient centre of civilisa- 
 tion, 17 
 
 Anglo-saxon houses, 44 
 Antioch, ancient centre of civilisa- 
 tion, 17 
 
 Architectural style in furniture, 94 
 Art, classic, ends in third century, 34 
 ,, Byzantine, 35 
 ,, mediaeval, its growth, 41 
 ,, ,, its perfection, 47 
 
 ,, Romanesque, long continuance, 
 42 
 
 ,, renaissance, 66 
 
 ,, classic, revived in eighteenth 
 
 century, 107 
 
 ,, „ early nineteenth century, 
 
 114 
 
 Atrium, 18 
 
 Attalus introduces tapestry, 17 
 
 Bedrooms, English, fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 50 
 
 ,, French, eighteenth cen- 
 tury, 104 
 
 Beds, Byzantine period, 37 
 ,, Norman, 46 
 ,, Egyptian, Greek, &c., 116 
 ,, Mediaeval, 118, 119 
 ,, at Hampton Court, 120 
 Bellows, renaissance, 72 
 Bombe furniture, 104, hi 
 B oucher, 108 
 Boule, 95 
 
 Bureaux in marquetry, 93, 104 
 ,, or knee-hole, 128 
 Byzantine period, 3 c 
 ,, wealth, 38 
 
 „ artists welcomed by Char- 
 
 lemagne, 41 
 
 Cabinet, French, sixteenth century, 89 
 ,, Japan, 128 
 Cafass, Egyptian wood, 4 
 Candelabra, 23, 24 
 Candles, Anglo-saxon, &c., 45, 48 
 Carriage, Anglo-saxon, 45 
 
 ,, fourteenth century, 54, 13 1 
 ,, seventeenth century, 92 
 „ the Speaker’s, 132 
 ,, Lord Darnley’s, 132 
 Caskets, Byzantine, 37 
 Ceilings in Roman houses, 21, 31 
 Chair, Egyptian, 4, 12 1 
 „ Nineveh, 7 
 „ Greek, 10, 1 1, 14 
 ,, Roman, 28, 122 
 ,, of St. Peter, 35 
 ,, Byzantine, 37 
 ,, at Ravenna, 39, 122 
 ,, in Bayeux tapestry, 45 
 ,, coronation, 49 
 ,, of Guidobaldo, 63 
 ,, Italian, fifteenth century, 63 
 ,, folding mediaeval, 122 
 ,, of silver, at Barcelona, 123 
 ,, the Glastonbury, 123 
 ,, Italian, seventeenth century, 
 124 
 
 ,, marquetry, 124 
 Chambers, Sir William, 106 
 Chariots, Hebrew, 9 
 „ Greek, 15 
 „ Roman, 130 
 ,, Byzantine, 37 
 Chest, Greek, 11 
 ,, Roman, 29 
 ,, of king John, 47 
 ,, fourteenth century, 51 
 ,, for copes, 56 
 ,, fifteenth century, 60 
 
INDEX. 
 
 r 4 1 
 
 Chest, Italian, 61 
 
 ,, renaissance, 69, 71 
 Chiraneypieces, eighteenth century, 
 106 
 
 Chippendale, 106 
 Cipriani, 112 
 
 Cluny hotel, carriages there, 2 
 Colbert, his patronage of art, 94 
 Couches, Egyptian, 5 
 ,, Roman, 13 
 ,, mediaeval, 120 
 Coypel, Antoine, 104 
 Cradle, mediaeval, 12 1 
 Cubicula, 20 
 Cypress chests, 70, 127 
 
 Dagobert’s chair, 43 
 David, 105 
 Delafosse, 104, 108 
 Dilettanti society, influence, 1 1 5 
 Dining-room, Byzantine, 38 
 Diptych of Anastasius, 36 
 Distaff, 106 
 
 Doorway, English, seventeenth cen- 
 tury, 98 
 
 “Droit de prisage,” 54 
 
 Ebenistes, fine cabinet makers, 108 
 Ebony used seventeenth century, 108 
 Egyptian furniture, 5 
 Elizabethan style, 85 
 
 Flemish furniture, seventeenth cen- 
 tury, 87 
 
 Fragonard, 108 
 
 French style prevalent in eighteenth 
 century, 103, 105 
 Furniture, use of a collection, 1 
 
 ,, Byzantine, still perhaps in 
 
 mosques and treasuries, 40 
 
 ,, sixteenth century, archi- 
 
 tectural, 75 
 
 ,, eighteenth century, 103 
 
 ,, bombe, explained, 104 
 
 German artists in England, sixteenth 
 century, 78 
 
 ,, work, eighteenth century, 1 1 1 
 Gillow, 1 13 
 
 Glass windows in Roman houses, 20 
 ,, mosaics, & c., 22 
 ,, Venetian, 99 
 Glue used by the Romans, 33 
 Gouthiere, 105, no 
 Greek manners, simple, 12 
 ,, houses, 14 
 
 Grinling Gibbons, 97 
 
 „ best examples of 
 
 his work, 97 
 
 Halls in Roman villas, 20 
 Hebrew furniture, 8 
 Heppelwhite, 113 
 
 Hogarth, paintings of chiraneypieces, 
 106 
 
 Holbein, his influence, 78 
 Holy-water stoup, 102 
 House, Roman, 18 
 „ Greek, 14 
 
 „ how warmed in Rome, 29 
 ,, Anglo-saxon and Norman, 
 44, 46 
 
 ,, of timber, fifteenth century, 58 
 
 Iconoclasts, destruction by, 40 
 Italian coffer at South Kensington, 61 
 „ artists, sixteenth century, 68 
 ,, ,, in France and Eng- 
 
 land, 78, 89 
 
 „ carved woodwork, sixteenth 
 century, 89 
 „ distaff, 106 
 
 Japanese lac- work, 106 
 
 Kauffmann (Angelica), 112 
 Kaunitz, a kind of bureau, 128 
 Kitchen utensils, Roman, 30 
 Knife case, sixteenth century, 76 
 
 Lac-work, Chinese and Japanese, 106 
 Lalonde, 108 
 Lares, 28 
 
 Lebrun, first head of the “ Gobelins,” 
 95 
 
 Le Pautre family, 104 
 Litters, Roman, 31 
 Lock (Matthias), 112 
 Locks in Roman houses, 2 1 
 Louvre, Egyptian boxes, 6 
 
 Maggiolino, ill 
 Mansard, 104 
 Marquetry, Venetian, 62 
 
 ,, seventeenth century, 92,93 
 
 „ Boule, 95 
 
 leissonnier, 104, 108 
 fetallurgy, British, 42 
 Micque, 108 
 Mirror, Greek, 13 
 
 ,, renaissance, 69 
 
142 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Mirror frames, sixteenth century, 71 
 „ „ Venetian, 91, 99 
 
 „ made in England, seven- 
 teenth century, 99, 100 
 Mosaic, Roman, pavements and on 
 walls, 19 
 
 ,, or pietra dura, 74 
 Natoire, 108 
 
 Nero, colossus in his house, 25 
 Nineveh furniture, 6 
 Nuptiale, 18 
 
 (Eci, 20 
 Oppenord, 108 
 Ostium, 18 
 
 Paintings and pictures in Roman 
 houses, 22 
 
 „ in thirteenth century, of 
 rooms, 48, 49 
 Panelling for rooms, 49 
 ,, oriental, 57 
 
 „ of a chest, 60 
 
 ,, English, sixteenth century, 
 
 79, 80 
 
 ,, French, sixteenth century, 
 
 84 
 
 „ English, 8'6 
 
 Pedestal, 90 
 Penates, 18 
 Peristylium, 20 
 Persian furniture, 8 
 ,, marquetry, 63 
 Picture-frames, renaissance, 71 
 Pomeranian cabinet at Berlin, 92 
 Pompeii, value of discoveries, 16 
 Porcelain given to Queen Elizabeth, 
 130 
 
 Pottery, time of Edward I., 49 
 Pudens, ancient house of, 20 
 Pugin, 1 14 
 
 Queverdo, 108 
 
 Religious houses, their woodwork, 63 
 „ ,, safe generally from 
 
 spoliation, 67 
 Renaissance in Italy, 66 
 
 ,, materials employed, 69 
 
 „ in England, France, & c.* 
 
 78 
 
 Restout, Jean, 104 
 Riesener, 105, 108, 109 
 Robert, 108 
 
 Rococo furniture, 103 
 Roentgen, 108, 109 
 Roman habits, at first simple, 16 
 ,, house, 18 
 
 ,, couches in dining-rooms, 19, 
 27 
 
 „ locks and hinges, 21 
 
 „ tables, 25 
 
 ,, chairs, 28 
 
 „ kitchen utensils, 30 
 
 Roof of Westminster Hall, 55 
 Room decorations, French, eighteenth 
 century, 107 
 
 Room of’ Marie Antoinette’s time at 
 South Kensington, 107 
 Roundels, 129 
 
 Salembier, 108 
 Scamnum, 28 
 
 Sculpture, architectural, See., four- 
 teenth century, 56 
 ,, renaissance, 69 
 Settle or seat, fourteenth century, 51 
 Sheraton, Thomas, 113 
 Sideboards, 128 
 
 Silks for furniture, eighteenth century, 
 107 
 
 Stuart style of woodwork and furni- 
 ture, 85, 96 
 
 Table, Egyptian, 124 
 ,, Nineveh, 8 
 „ Roman, 25, 125 
 ,, ,, veneered, 27 
 
 ,, ,, great value, 27 
 
 ,, Norman, 46 
 
 ,, furniture of, fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 50 
 
 „ fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 tury, S 3 , 58, 125 
 „ sixteenth century, 71 
 ,, of Francesco de’ Medici, 75 
 ,, French, sixteenth century, 80, 
 81 
 
 „ English, seventeenth century, 
 102 
 
 ,, long kept at Flaxton Hall, 126 
 Tapestry first brought to Rome, 17 
 „ in Roman houses, 30 
 ,, in England, fourteenth cen- 
 tury, See., 50, 61 
 „ Gobelin, 95 
 Tarsia, 62, 73, 74 
 Temple of Diana, 33 
 Theatre of C. Curio, 32 
 Tigrinse tables, 26 
 
INDEX. 
 
 43 
 
 Triclinium, 18, 117 
 Tripods, 22 
 
 Tudor cabinet at South Kensington, 78 
 „ style, 85 
 
 t 
 
 Vase from Hadrian’s villa, 25 
 Venetian mirror-frame, 91 
 Vernis-Martin, 105 
 Vestiaria, 20 
 
 Walpole (Horace), opinion on medi- 
 aeval art, in 
 
 Wardrobe, old English, 49 
 ,, Roman, 126 
 Wars of the Roses, evil consequences, 
 64 
 
 Wood used in Nineveh, 8 
 „ ,, Greece, 15 
 
 „ „ Rome, for tables, &c., 
 
 26, 32 
 
 ,, ,, by Riesener, 109 
 
 Woodwork, English, in thirteenth cen- 
 tury, 48 
 
 ,, sixteenth cen- 
 tury, 79 
 
 ,, Germany, in sixteenth 
 
 century, 83 
 
 ,, Spanish, in sixteenth cen- 
 
 tury, 84 
 
 ,, Tudor and Stuart, 86 
 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 97 
 Wyattville, 114 
 
 M. F. A.) 
 
 THE END. 
 
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