Venetian chair
The frames of pictures were bold and rich. Those of the previous century had been mostly imitative of small Gothic shrines, being generally for religious subjects and for use in churches or oratories. In the cinquecento period they were square panels, carved and richly gilt. There are in the Kensington museum remarkable examples of frames made for mirrors, either for the sitting-rooms or saloons of the lady of the house, or for her bedroom. Three of these are type pieces of such productions. No.7695 is a square frame carved in walnut, standing on a foot, and meant to be carried about. From the daisies in relief on the foot it may perhaps be ascribed to Marguerite of Valois, and have been used in the court of Provence. Nothing in the collection surpasses the elegance and perfection of the ornamental work on the mouldings. The mirror itself is of polished metal. Another is in a circular frame, no.7694, shaped like a shield, and meant to be hung up. It was probably made for a duchess ofFerrara. There are classical details of architectonic kind on the edges of the carving, which is highly finished. The mirror itself is of metal, and the back has figures on it in relief and is solidly gilt. The third of these, no.7226, is larger. In design it is like a monumental mural tablet, with a carved rich finish on the four sides, and the mirror furnished with a sliding cover in the form of a medallion, containing a female head of singular nobleness and beauty. In this case the material is walnut relieved by broad surfaces of inlaid wood. We may also mention the superb Soltykoff mirror, no.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.
Italian bellows
Some of the richest pieces of carved walnut furniture belonging to this period are the bellows. As these are characteristic of the Italian style of the period in furniture of various kinds, we give woodcuts of two examples in the South Kensington collection. They are generally of walnut touched with gilding; and in the form still familiar to ourselves, which is as old as the classic times.
Another example
Besides furniture carved in this way out of solid wood, there were other materials used and other methods of decorating household furniture. The tarsia or inlaid work has been alluded to. Thefirst methods were by geometrical arrangements of small dies; but magnificent figure designs had been executed in inlaid wood in the early period of the renaissance, and before it. Work of this kind was made in two or three woods, and much of it is in pine or cypress. The large grain is used to express lines of drapery and other movements by putting whole folds or portions of a dress or figure with the grain in one direction or another, as may be required. The picture is thus composed of pieces inclined together; a few bold lines incised and blackened give such outlines of the form as are not attainable by the other method, and slight burning with an iron is sometimes added to produce tone or shadow.
"'Tarsie' or 'Tarsiatura,'" says Mrs. Merrifield, "was a kind of mosaic in woods. This consisted in representing houses and perspective views of buildings, by inlaying pieces of wood of various colours and shades into panels of walnut wood. Vasari speaks rather slightingly of this art, and says that it was practised chiefly by those persons who possessed more patience than skill in design; that although he had seen some good representations in figures, fruits, and animals, yet the work soon becomes dark, and was always in danger of perishing from the worms and by fire. Tarsia work was frequently employed in decorating the choirs of churches as well as the backs of seats and the wainscoting. It was also used in the panels of doors."
Another method of ornamentation dependent on material that came into use in this century was the Pietra Dura or mosaic panelling of hard pebbles. The work is laborious and costly. Not only are the materials (agate, carnelian, amethyst and marbles of all colours) expensive, but each part must be ground laboriously to an exact shape and the whole mosaic fitted together, a kind of refinement of the old marble work called Alexandrinum. Besides being formed into marble panels for table tops and cabinet fronts, pietra dura was let into wood, and helped out with gay colours the more sombre walnut or ebony base of the furniture.
Vasari, speaking of particular pieces of furniture of his day, mentions a "splendid library table" made at the expense and by the order of Francesco de' Medici in Florence. This table was "constructed of ebony," that is, veneered with ebony, "divided into compartments by columns of heliotrope, oriental jasper, and lapis lazuli, which have the bases and capitals of chased silver. The work is furthermore enriched with jewels, beautiful ornaments of silver, and exquisite little figures, interspersed with miniatures and terminal figures of silver and gold, in full relief, united in pairs. There are, besides, other compartments formed of jasper, agates, heliotropes, sardonyxes, carnelians, and other precious stones." This piece was the work of Bernardo Buontalenti. Another piece of such work is described as a table "wholly formed of oriental alabaster, intermingled with great pieces of carnelian, jasper, heliotrope, lapis, and agate, with other stones and jewels, worth twenty thousand crowns." Another artist, Bernardino di Porfirio of Leccio, executed an "octangular table of ebony and ivory inlaid with jaspers." This precious manufacture has been patronised in the grand ducal factories down to recent times, and is continued in the royal establishments of the king of Italy.
Knife-case; 1564Knife case. Dated 1564.
Knife case. Dated 1564.
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, whethera box or chest, a door, a piece of panelling, or a chair, offer certain opportunities for mouldings or carvings; some are the thicker portions forming the frames, some the thin flat boards that fill up the spaces. To add a variety of mouldings, such as subdivide the roofs of temples or their peristyles, is, of course, to depart from the carpenter's province and work, and rather to take furniture out of its obvious forms for the express purpose of impressing on it the renaissance type.
The artists of that time did this with the object of designing "in character," and special models, such as the old triumphal arches, and sarcophagi, at Rome, were in view in these designs. On both arches and tombs sculptured bas-reliefs abounded. Figures reclined over the arches, and were arranged in square compositions in the panels, for which the upper stories of the arches made provision. The renaissance cabinets fell into modifications of this ideal. A century later they grewinto house fronts, and showed doors, arches, and balustrades inside, with imitative paved floors, looking-glasses set at angles of 45°, so as to make reflections of these various parts; and in this humorous fashion the inside of a walnut or ebony cabinet was turned into the model of an Italian villa.
Again, in place of the running foliated borders and mouldings having a continuous design, or of compositions of foliage, animals, &c., forming in each arch moulding or cornice line a homogeneous line or circle, the renaissance arabesques introduced an entirely new method of decoration. In arabesque ornament all sorts of natural objects are grafted on a central stalk, or, as in the best work, on something like the stem of a candelabrum. The resources of this method are limited only by the fancy and skill of the artist, who grafts here a mask, there a leaf on his stem, and so on. The temptation is the license and discordance that come in when no unity is needed in a piece of ornament, and no continuous effort of mind required to think out and execute one definite idea in designing it. The central stem leads to an exact balance or reversal of one half of each element in the ornament, so that one half only of a panel or border has to bedesigned. In the hands of great artists this kind of ornamentation has been used with consummate grace.
THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND, FLANDERS, FRANCE, GERMANY,AND SPAIN.
In the foregoing sketch of the furniture, designs, and manufactures of central Italy, we have described the history of contemporaneous furniture throughout Europe. Pope Leo the tenth gave every encouragement to the reviving arts in Rome, and left that capital the great nursery of art down to our day. To Italy the great princes of Europe sent the most promising artists of their dominions, or encouraged such resort. Most of these men were architects and sculptors.
Classical learning and splendid living were both encouraged by Henry the eighth. He is, probably, to be credited with the impulse given to the court and the country in the direction of the arts and accomplishments of Italy. If Jean de Mabuse had been patronised by Henry the seventh, his successor offered tempting terms to Primaticcio to exchange the service of his brother king, Francis, for his own. Other artists, contemporaries of Raphael and his scholars, found their way to England; to these we must add the great master of the German or Swiss school, Holbein. That the artists both of Holbein's and of the Italian schools designed furniture in this country we have proofs in the drawing for a panelled chimney-piece now in the British museum, and the woodwork of King's college chapel in Cambridge. Another piece of furniture of this date, showing the mixed character of Italian and Holbeinesque design, is the very fine "Tudor" cabinet at South Kensington.
Though the court of Henry and the palaces of his wives were furnished with splendour, and works of art, especially those of the gold and silversmith, and jewellery, found their way from foreign parts to such great houses, the general manners of the country changed less in these respects than was the case in France and the more wealthy states and courts of Germany. In the portrait pictures of Henry and his family we see furniture of a renaissance character, but in the great monuments of the woodwork of the day the old style prevailed throughout the reign. The roofs, magnificent specimens of wood construction, were still subdivided, and supported by king posts, queen posts, hammer beams, arches connecting these portions and tracery panels in the spandrels, as in the two previous centuries. All parts were carved and coloured. The architecture of country houses began to change from the old form of a castle or a fortress to that of the beautiful and characteristic style to which we give the name of Tudor. Moats were retained, but still the principal features of the building were the depressed arches and perpendicular window mullions that had been long familiar in England, and were suggested by the wooden houses so general in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The woodwork also and the panelling of halls and chambers retained the upright lines and mouldings forming the various "linen" patterns. Leafwork and heads, busts of the reigning princes, or of heroes such as the Cæsars, filled up the more ornamental sections, giving a certain classical element which was not fully developed till later: and most of the renaissance ornamentation of this reign has a Flemish rather than an Italian character. The woodcuts on the next page show a series of panels of different countries, many of which are to be found introduced with slight variations in English work of about the same period.
Flanders was in advance of this country in renaissance art. This remark extends to ornament of all kinds, whether of church woodwork, glass-painting, or domestic furniture. Still the Flemishwork of this renaissance, or (speaking of England) this early Tudor period retains a mixture of details of the pointed style that makes us sometimes doubtful how to characterise the style of individual pieces. We may point to sideboards and chests in illustration. Belgium abounds in examples of this transition period.
Carved panelEnglish, 15th century.Carved panelFlemish, 16th century.
Carved panelEnglish, 15th century.
English, 15th century.
Carved panelFlemish, 16th century.
Flemish, 16th century.
Carved panelFrench, 16th century.Carved panelGerman, 15th century.
Carved panelFrench, 16th century.
French, 16th century.
Carved panelGerman, 15th century.
German, 15th century.
Carved panelItalian, 16th century.
Italian, 16th century.
In France, the most advanced and most luxurious and cultivated of the transalpine courts, the renaissance art had advanced far beyond that of England. Not only had Francis the first and the Medici princesses invited famous artists out of Italy, but they aimed at imitating Florentine luxuries and refinements as completely as they could. Admirable schools of ornamental art, such as that of the Limoges enamellers and carvers in ivory, were and had been long established in France. Classic sculpture was produced of great merit in all materials. Primaticcio and Cellini founded new schools of architects, painters, and sculptors in France. They employed pupils, and the most promising found their way to Rome and Florence, associated themselves with the great masters then practising, and brought back all the instruction they could obtain.
French table; sixteenth century
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 similarfield. 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.
French panel; 1577SEMPER FESTINA LENTE1577A. REID. DEL.
SEMPER FESTINA LENTE1577A. REID. DEL.
The woodwork in the renaissance houses—the panelling and fittings of the rooms—was designed by the architect, and was full of quaint, sometimes extravagant imagery. For example, the architectural and decorative plates of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau will give some idea of the dependence of all these details on the architects of the day. This author published designs for marquetry or wood mosaics, as well as for all sorts of woodwork. A glance at the heavy cabinets of the later sixteenth century, of French origin, will show how completely great pieces of furniture fell into the same character of forms. Shelves are supported on grotesque figures, while in the mouldings, instead of simple running lines worked with the plane, as in fifteenth century woodwork, we see the egg and tongue, acanthus leaves, dentils and other members of classical architecture, constantly recurring. The ornaments of French woodworkers show a fondness for conventional bands or strapsinterspersed with figures and other ornaments. The panel, of which we give a woodcut, is French, and dated 1577. It contains armorial bearings and a monogram, said to be of the Aldine family. In 1577, however, Aldus Manutius the elder was dead, and his son did not live in France.
Germany and Spain took up the renaissance art in a still more Italian spirit than England or France. Parts of Italy as well as Spain were under the same ruler; they both, as far as regards art, felt the influence of powerful imperial patronage. We are only concerned with their art here as it refers to woodwork. German wood carvers were more quaint, minute, and redundant as to decoration. Something of the vigour, manliness, and inexhaustible sense of humour of the Germans characterises their woodwork, as it does other art, of which ornament forms the main feature. The well-known "Triumph of Maximilian," though a woodcut only, may be taken as a type of German treatment. The great cities of the empire are full of carved woodwork, house fronts, and gables. Timber was abundant. The imagery of the period, in wood as in stone, is intentionally quaint, contorted, humorous. It would be essentially ugly but for the inexhaustible fecundity of thought, allegory, and satire that pervades it. It should be added also that designers and architects had an immense sense of dignity, which we recognise immediately when we see their architectural compositions as a whole. Depths and hollows, points of light, prominences and relative retirement of parts in their arrangements of carved ornament, were matters thoroughly understood; and they succeed in imparting that general agreeableness which we call "effect" to the mind of the observers.
As regards Spanish art we cannot do better than adopt the statements of Señor J. F. Riaño, who says that "the brilliant epoch of sculpture in wood belongs to the sixteenth century, and was due to the great impulse it received from the works of Berruguete and Felipe de Borgoña. He was the chief promoterof the Italian style, and the choir of the cathedral of Toledo, where he worked so much, is the finest specimen of the kind in Spain. Toledo, Seville, and Valladolid were at that time great productive and artistic centres. As a specimen of wood carving of the Italian renaissance period, applied to an object of furniture, the magnificent wardrobe by Gregorio Pardo (1549) outside the chapter house at Toledo may be mentioned as one of the most beautiful things of its kind. These various styles of ornamentation were applied to the cabinets 'Bufetes' of such varied form and materials which were so much the fashion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most characteristic of Spain are such as are called 'Vargueños.' These cabinets are decorated outside with fine ironwork, and inside with columns of bone painted and gilt. The other cabinets or escritoires belonging to that period, which are so frequently met with in Spain, were to a large extent imported from Germany and Italy,while others were made in Spain in imitation of these" (the italics are ours), "and as the copies were very similar it is difficult to classify them. It may be asserted, however, that cabinets of inlaid wood were made in great perfection in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century, for in a memorial written by a maker of tapestry, Pedro Gretierez, who worked for queen Isabella, he says, 'The escritoires and cabinets brought from Germany are worth 500, 600, and 700 reales each, and those of the same kind made in Spain by Spaniards are to be had for 250 and 300 reales.' Besides these inlaid cabinets others must have been made in the sixteenth century inlaid with silver. An edict was issued in 1594 prohibiting, with the utmost rigour, the making and selling of this kind of merchandise, in order not to increase the scarcity of silver. The edict says that 'no cabinets, desks, coffers, brasiers, shoes, tables, or other articles decorated with stamped, raised, carved, or plain silver, should be manufactured.'"
TUDOR AND STUART STYLES.
The list of reigns supplies more convenient dates than the beginning or the end of a century for marking changes of national tastes in such matters as furniture. The names of kings or queens are justly given to denote styles, whether of architecture, dress, or personal ornaments, and utensils of the household. Society in most countries adopts those habits that are first taken up by the sovereign. In England, the reign of Elizabeth was pre-eminently a period during which the tastes, even the fancies, of the queen were followed enthusiastically by her people. Elizabethan is the name of the style of architecture gradually developed during her reign. Italian taste, though not perhaps so pure as it had been a few years earlier, had become far more general; classical details, however, were mixed even more in England than in other countries (Flanders excepted) with relics of older styles, the love of which was still strong in this country. The fireplaces and the panelling of our old houses, Crewe hall, Speke in Lancashire, Haddon hall in Derbyshire, Kenilworth castle, Raglan castle, and many other old buildings, are thoroughly characteristic of this mixed classical revival. The fashion is quaint and grotesque, the figure sculpture being good enough to look well in the form of caryatid monsters, half men, half terminal posts or acanthus foliations, but not sufficiently correct or graceful to stand altogether alone. Specimens, however, of very good work can be pointed out, and we give here some of the details of a panelledroom brought lately from Exeter, and now in the South Kensington collection.
We may say that the character of the woodwork throughout this period consists in actual architectural façades or portions of façades, showy arrangements wherever they are possible of the "five orders" of architecture, or of pedimental fronts. Doorways and chimney fronts are the principal opportunities in interiors for the exercise of this composing skill. Panelling remained in use in the great halls and most of the chambers of the house, but the linen pattern, so graceful and effective, went out of fashion. The angles of the rooms, the cornices, and spaces above the doors were fitted with groups of architectural cornice mouldings, consisting of dentil, egg and tongue, and running moulds, and sometimes room walls were divided into panels by regular columns.
English panel; about 1590
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 aswell as furniture; bed heads and testers, chest fronts, cabinets, &c., were inlaid, but scarcely with delicacy, during the early Elizabethan period. The art was developed during the reign of James, when, in point of fact, the larger number of the Tudor houses were erected.
When the Tudor period was succeeded by that of the Stuarts the same general characteristics remained, but all the forms of carving grew heavier and the execution coarser. The table legs, baluster newels, and cabinet supports, had enormous acorn-shaped masses in the middle. The objects themselves, such as the great hall tables, instead of being moveable on trestles, became of unwieldy size and weight.
The general character of Flemish work was much of the same kind and form. It is not easy to distinguish the nationality of pieces of Flemish and English oak furniture of this period. The Flemings, however, retained a higher school of figure carvers, and their church-stall work and some of their best things are of a higher stamp and better designed; and where figure sculpture was employed this superiority is always apparent. A good example of Flemish panelling can be studied in the doorway at South Kensington, no.4329. Their furniture is represented by an excellent specimen, amongst others, of this mixed period in the cabinet, no.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.
French cabinet; sixteenth century
Our own later Jacobean or Stuart style borrowed this from the Flemish. The Flemings and the Dutch had long imported woodwork into England, and it is to that commerce that we may trace the greater likeness between the late Flemish renaissance carving and corresponding English woodwork, than between the English and the French. Dutch designs in furniture, though allied to the Flemish, were swelled out into enormous proportions. The huge wardrobe cabinets made by the Dutch of walnut wood with ebony inlaid work and waved ebony mouldings are still to be met with. The panels of the fronts are broken up into numerous angles and points.
In France the fine architectural wood construction of the style of Philibert de l'Orme and so many great masters maintained itself, and a number of fine cabinets and sideboards in various collections attest the excellence of the work. The cabinet on the opposite page (no.2573 in the Kensington museum) is of late French sixteenth century work, and combines the characteristics of the heavy furniture made in the north of Europe with a propriety of treatment in the ornamentation of mouldings and cornices peculiar to French architects, who continued to design such structures for the houses they built and fitted up. The descendants of Catherine de' Medicis and their generation were trained by Italian artists and altogether in Italian tastes, and no great change occurred in France in woodwork or furniture till the sixteenth century had closed.
In German and in Italian furniture the principal changes were in the direction of veneered and marquetry work. The same vigorous quaintness continued to distinguish German decorative detail as has been already noticed.
The Italians carved wood during the later sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries with extraordinary grace and vigour. The next woodcut, a pedestal in oak, shows their power in hard material: and smaller objects, such as the frames of pictures, were cut out in great sweeping leaves, perhaps of theacanthus, showing an ease and certainty in the artist that look as if he were employed upon some substance more yielding than the softest wood. Chairs were cut in the same rich style, and this luxurious carving was not unfrequently applied to the decoration of state carriages. Venice maintained a pre-eminence in this perhaps in a greater degree than Florence, though in the valley of the Arno the willow, lime, sycamore, and other soft white woods were to be had in abundance, and invited great freedom in carving.
Italian oak pedestal
Venetian mirror-frame
We may now treat of an important epoch in the history of modern furniture. Venice was the seat of the manufacture of glass. In the sixteenth century workmen had received state protection for the manufacture of mirrors, which till that time had been mere hand mirrors and made of mixed metals highly polished. Gilt wood frames were extensively manufactured for these Venetian looking-glasses, which found their way all overEurope. 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, no.1605, at South Kensington.
Another remarkable class of gilt woodwork, for which Florence and other cities had found trained carvers, was the framework of carriages. In England, France, Germany, and Italy carriages during the seventeenth century were stately, and certainly wonderful pieces of furniture. Examples of these showy carriages exist still. There is a collection belonging to the royal family of Portugal, now preserved at Lisbon, one or two in the museum of the hôtel de Cluny at Paris, dating from the time of Martin and painted by him, and there are a few carriages of old date at Vienna and probably in some private houses. The state-coach of the Speaker is an English example of the seventeenth century.
Germany differed less from Italy even than France in wood carving, interior room fittings, and the frequent pedimental compositions containing grotesques, or heraldic achievements on a scale of sumptuous display. The German princes were many of them skilful and intelligent patrons of art, and made collections in their residences. A well-known piece belonging to the early seventeenth century is preserved in the royal museum at Berlin. This is known as the Pomeranian art cabinet. It is 4 ft. 10 in. high, 3 ft. 4 in. wide by 2 ft. 10 in. deep, made of ebony with drawers of sandal wood lined with red morocco leather, and is mounted with silver and pietra dura work, and fitted inside with utensils of various kinds. The chair, of which we give a woodcut, is German of about the same date.
German arm-chair; seventeenth century
In the west of Europe, during the seventeenth century, marquetry was extensively used, and became the leading feature of furniture decoration. Inlaying had long been in use; but the new marquetry was a picturesque composition, a more complete attempt at pictorial representation. It comes before us in old furniture under various forms, and many examples of it may bestudied in different collections. In this country we may consider it mainly as an imported art of the reign of William and Mary, when Dutch marquetry furniture became the fashion in the form of bandy-legged chairs, upright clock fronts, secrétaires or bureaux, or writing cabinets which were closed in the upper and middle parts with doors, and other pieces that offered surfaces availablefor such decoration. The older designs on work of this kind represent tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds, &c., all in gay colours, generally the self colours of the woods used. Sometimes the eyes and other salient points are in ivory or mother-of-pearl. In France, in the earlier marquetry designs, picturesque landscapes, broken architecture, and figures are represented. Colours are occasionally stained on the wood. Ivory and ebony were favourite materials; as also in Germany and in Italy.
It is to be noted that as the vigour of the great sixteenth century movement died out, the mania for making furniture in the form of architectural models died out also; nor do we find it becoming a fashion again till quite modern times, under the Gothic and other revivals at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century. The architectural idea was in itself full of grandeur, and it was productive of very beautiful examples in the sarcophagus-shaped chests or cassoni, and in cabinet work, though the façades of temples and the vaults and columns of triumphal arches in Rome do not bear to be too completely reduced to such small proportions. With the introduction of marquetry into more general use we recognise not only a new or renewed method of decoration, but a changed ideal of construction. Boxes, chests, tables, cabinets, &c., were conceived as such. They were made more convenient for use, and were no longer subdivided by architectural mouldings and columns, all so much extra work added to the sides and fronts.
About the middle of the seventeenth century a kind of work altogether new in the manufactory of modern furniture made its appearance under the reign of Louis the fourteenth of France. That king rose to a position in Europe that no monarch of modern times had occupied before, and the great ministers of his reign had the wisdom to take special measures for the establishment of the various arts and manufactures in which either the Italians or Flemings excelled the French as well as other nations. Colbert, his minister of finance, amongst his commercial reformsof learned societies and schools of art, founded in 1664 an "Academie royale de peinture d'architecture et de sculpture." It was into this that the designers of architecture, woodwork, ornament or furniture, were admitted. He established also the famous factory of the "Gobelins" for making pictorial tapestry. The place took its name from the brothers Gobelin, Flemings, who had a dyeing-house in the Rue Mouffetard. Lebrun, the painter, was the first head of it. Another important name is that of Jean Lepautre. He has left numerous designs of ornament behind him for panelling, mirror frames, carriages, &c. Lepautre was a pupil of Adam Philippon. This artist, whose chief calling was that of a joiner and cabinet maker, has also left designs.
To Colbert is due the credit of pushing forward the renewal or completion of the royal palaces; especially the château of Versailles. For the furniture of this palace we find the new material employed, namely, boule marquetry, which owes its name to the maker. The orthography of proper names was still often unsettled at that time, and we find the name variously spelt. The correct way seems to have been Boulle; but we shall retain the more usual mode, both for the artist and for his work. André Charles Boule was born in 1642, and made the peculiar kind of veneered work composed of tortoiseshell and thin brass, to which are sometimes added ivory and enamelled metal; brass and shell, however, are the general materials. Boule was made head of the royal furniture department and was lodged in the Louvre. A very interesting early specimen of this work is now at Windsor castle, and other early pieces belong to Sir Richard Wallace. The date attributed to the first makes it doubtful whether Boule may not have seen the same sort of work practised in other workshops. This kind of marquetry has, however, been assigned by general consent to Boule.
In the earlier work of Boule the inlay was produced at great cost, owing to the waste of valuable material in cutting; and the shell is left of its natural colour; in later work the manufacturewas more economical. Two or three thicknesses of the different material were glued or stuck together and sawn through at one operation. An equal number of figures and of matrices or hollow pieces exactly corresponding were thus produced, and by counter-charging two or more designs were obtained by the same sawing. These are technically known as "boule and counter," the brass forming the groundwork and the pattern alternately. In the later or "new boule," the shell is laid on a gilt ground or on vermilion. The brass is elaborately chased with a graver.
Besides these plates of brass for marquetry ornaments, Boule, who was a sculptor of no mean pretensions, founded and chased up feet, edgings, bracket supports, &c., to his work in relief, or in the round, also in brass. The original use of these parts was to protect the edges and angles, and bind the thin inlaid work together where it was interrupted by angles in the structure. Afterwards brass mounts, more or less relieved, were added to enrich the flat designs of the surfaces. Classical altars, engraved or chased as mere surface decoration, would receive the addition of claw feet actually relieved. Figures standing on such altars, pedestals, &c., were made in relief more or less bold. In this way Boule's later work is not only a brilliant and rich piece of surface decoration, but its metallic parts are repoussé or embossed with thicknesses of metal ornament. In boule work all parts of the marquetry are held down by glue to the bed, usually of oak. The metal is occasionally fastened down by small brass pins or nails, which are hammered flat and chased over so as to be imperceptible.
English bracket; about 1660
In England, during the reign of Charles the second and of James, French furniture was imported; the old Tudor oak lingered in country houses. Boule hardly found its way till the following century to England. Splendid silver furniture consisting of plates embossed and repoussé, heightened with the graver and of admirable design, was occasionally made for the Court and for great families. Wood carving, in the manner of the school ofSir Christopher Wren, as in the bracket here shown, was long continued in connexion with architecture and furniture. Another style was carried to the highest pitch of technical execution and finish, as well as of truth of natural forms in the carving of Grinling Gibbons. This artist was English, but partially of Dutch descent. He carved foliage, birds, flowers, busts and figures, pieces of drapery, &c., with astonishing dexterity. We find his work principally on mirror frames, wall panels, chimney pieces, &c. Specimens may be seen over the communion table of St. James's church, Westminster, and in the choir of St. Paul's cathedral. The finest examples known are probably the carved work at Petworth house in Sussex, and at Chatsworth. His material is generally lime and other white woods. The flowers and foliage of his groups or garlands sweep round in bold and harmonious curves, making an agreeable whole, though for architectural decorative carving no work was ever so free from conventional arrangements. His animals or his flowers appear to beso many separate creations from nature, laid or tied together separately, though in reality formed out of a block, and remaining still portions of a group cut in the solid wood.
English doorway; about 1690A. REID PEARSON, S.C.
A. REID PEARSON, S.C.
Gibbons died in 1721. Walpole mentions Watson as having been his pupil and assistant at Chatsworth. Drevot of Brussels and Laurens of Mechlin were other pupils: the former did not survive him. His school had many followers, for we find the acanthus carvings on mouldings, round doorways and chimney pieces, down to the middle of the eighteenth century, executed in England with a masterly hand. Specimens of such work have been recently acquired in the Kensington museum, the fruits of the demolition of old London, continually in progress. The border of this page represents one of these admirable pieces; a door and frame from a house inLincoln's-inn. Nothing can surpass the perfect mastery of execution. All the work is cut clean and sharp out of wood which admits of no tentative cuts, and requires no rubbing down with sand paper, and in which errors are not to be repaired. Lengths of these mouldings were worked off by hand, evidently without hesitation and without mishap. Country houses abound with this fine though unpretending work, and give ample evidence of the existence of a school of fine workmen, carvers at the command of the architects of the day.
We may here revert to an important addition to room furniture, which became European during this century. Mirrors had been made from the earliest times in polished metal, but were first made of glass at Venice. In 1507 Andrea and Dominico, two glass workers of Murano, declared before the Council of ten that they had found a method of making "good and perfect mirrors of crystal glass." A monopoly of the right of manufacture was granted to the two inventors for twenty years. In 1564, the mirror makers became a distinct guild of glass workers. The plates were not large: from four to five feet are the largest dimensions met with till late in the eighteenth century. They were commonly bevilled on the edges. The frames in soft wood (as in the woodcut, p. 100) are specimens of free carving during the seventeenth century. Both in Venice and in Florence soft woods, such as willow or lime, were used. The mirror-plates were, at first, square or oblong. Towards the end of the century we find them shaped at the top. In the eighteenth century they were generally shaped at the top and bottom. Figures were sunk in the style of intaglio or gem cutting on the back of the glass and left with a dead surface, the silver surface of the mercury showing through as the mirror is seen from the front.
The looking-glasses made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by colonies of Venetian workmen in England and France had the plates finished by an edge gently bevilled of aninch 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.
Venetian looking-glass
In England, looking-glasses came into general use soon after the Restoration. "Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room at Vauxhallin 1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains, very pleasant to behold. It stands in the middle of the garden covered with Cornish slate, on the point whereof he placed a Punchinello." At about the same period the house of Nell Gwynne, "the first good one as we enter St. James' Square from Pall Mall, had the back room on the ground floor entirely lined with looking-glass within memory," writes Pennant, "as was said to have been the ceiling." "La rue St. André-des-arts," says Savarin, speaking of Paris in the seventeenth century, "eut le premier caféorne de glaceset de tables de marbre à peu près comme on les voit de nos jours."