The materials used in the best marquetry are lime, holly, box, maple, beech, poplar, for white; pear, laburnum, palm (cut across the grain), lignum vitæ, walnut, teak, partridge-wood, for brown; wood called in the trade fustic, satin-wood, for yellow; tulip, purple-wood, amboyna, mahogany, thuya, log-wood, cam-wood, and varieties of these woods, for red; ebony for black, or stained wood. Greens and blues are also stained with metallic dyes. The finest of the old work may be called studies in brown and white, and the red woods are used sparingly; the dyed woods still more so, nor can they be said ever to be really effective.
As an example of great mechanical skill in a modern piece of very difficult execution, I might call attention to Messrs. Jackson and Graham's elaborate cabinet of marquetry, in patterns of Oriental character, after designs by the late Mr. Owen Jones (sent to the Vienna Exhibition by Messrs. Jackson and Graham). It had an architectural front, with detached columns and groups of architectural mouldings, some of them put together with the lines of moulding in woods of contrasted hue, an element of ornamentation that took from the unity and completeness of cap or corona mouldings. The little columns of an inch and a half diameter were entirely covered with reticulated pattern in different woods. As the shafts were tapering, so the reticulated patterns had to be graduated in size from top to bottom. This was a feat of most difficult execution, nor was it the only difficulty in this portion of the design. The marquetry in the instance of these columns had to be wrapped round each circular shaft; and each edge, therefore, of every portion of pattern and groundwork had to be sawn out with bevelled edges, so that when rolled, the inner edges might meet and the outer edges remain in contact, which would not be so, were they not bevelled: the contrary would happen in that case, and the outer edges would start in sunder. These columns were two feet and some inches high, and the little reticulations of pattern recurred many dozens of times. The conditions of which I speak had to be carefully observed in the case of each. The pattern, too, was graduated, as above stated, so that they had to be sawn out by separate cuttings—a most laborious and costly operation.
We miss in the great English houses one of the most costly and beautiful elements in the adornment of furniture, and that is, the fine moulded and chiselled bronze work, always gilt, which enters so largely into the decoration of fine old French marquetry. The English furniture makers of a century ago were not so behindhand, and old carriages had door-handles, and furniture had mounts of gilt bronze. Probably the French were always superior to us in this kind of skill. They still produce good work of this class, cast and afterwards cleaned and tooled with the chisel, but it is not equal to the work of the same description by Gouthière, and the famousciseleursof Paris in the last century.
I must not pass over in silence a beautiful kind of furniture which was in fashion a century since, and has been revived by Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and other firms, viz. satin-wood furniture. In the time of Chippendale, Sheraton, Lock, and other great cabinet makers, contemporaries of the French artists Riesener, Gouthière, and David, satin-wood was imported from India. It was made up by veneering, and was decorated with medallions, some of marquetry, some of Wedgwood ware, after the model of the French inlaying of Sèvres porcelain plaques, and in some instances painted with miniature scenes like the Vernis Martin, called after a French decorator of the name of Martin. Old examples of satin-wood furniture, such as tables, bookcases, chests of drawers, &c., are not uncommon, decorated in one or more of these methods. Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann were employed amongst many others in painting cameo medallions, busts, Cupids and so forth for satin-wood furniture. Messrs. Wright and Mansfield have executed much of this work, and sent a cabinet of large size to the Paris Exhibition of 1867, decorated with medallions, swags, ribbons, &c., partly in marquetry of coloured woods, partly in plates of Wedgwood ware. The piece is further set off by carved and gilt portions, not, however, sufficiently attractive to add greatly to the effect of the whole cabinet, which is gay, cheerful, of beautiful hue, and excellent workmanship. It is in the South Kensington Museum.
Allusion has been made to the furniture of Boulle. It began to be made somewhere about 1660, and was perhaps the earliest start taken in the more modern manufacture of sumptuous furniture. I have already called it a great advance and improvement, rather than an absolutely new invention, for pieces are found of a date too early to have been the actual work of Boulle. When the tortoiseshell is dark and rich in hue, the brass of a good golden yellow, and the designs carefully drawn, Boulle work seems to equal in splendour, though not in preciousness, the gold and silver furniture of the ancients, and the inlaid work of agates, crystals, amethysts, &c., with mounts of ivory and silver made in Florence in the sixteenth century.
Boulle work is made occasionally by French and other foreign houses, and by Wertheimer of Bond street, but it is costly, and the rich relieved portions, such as the hinge and lock mounts, the salient medallions, masks, &c., set in central points of the composition, are either copies or imitations of old work. They lack the freshness, vigour, and spirit of the old French metallurgy.
A spurious kind of Boulle is made with a composition in place of the tortoiseshell.
Parquet floorsare made by Messrs. Howard as follows: Slices of oak, varied sometimes with mahogany, walnut, and imitation ebony, are laid out and put together on a board. If rings, circles or other figures are introduced, these portions, patterns, and cavities as well as angular pieces are cut in the machine. The thickness of these pieces is a quarter of an inch. They are then laid on three thicknesses of pine, the grain of each thickness being laid crosswise to the one below, so as to keep the wood above from warping and opening. These are glued together, and kept for twenty-four hours under an hydraulic press. It is, in fact, coarse marquetry, and the whole is laid down over a rough deal floor. Messrs. Howard also glue up their quarter inch hardwoods without a pine backing, and lay them down with glue and fine brads on old deal floors, a less expensive method, and which can be adopted without raising the level of an old floor.
It is remarkable that English cabinet makers should so rarely make these floors, or architects lay them down in rooms of modern houses. The French, Germans of all states, Swiss, Belgians, in short most continental nations have these floors, and Swiss and Belgian flooring is imported into England. That of the Belgian joiners is in large pieces four feet or so square, of seasoned wood, moderate in price, and easily laid down.
In this country, our costly modern houses are barely provided with a border of a foot or so round the edges of the reception rooms. Even that is but an exceptional practice. Yet oak flooring is not a costly addition to important rooms, while the habit of keeping floors always covered with Brussels carpet tacked down is not the cleanest imaginable.
Another application of veneered wood practised by Messrs. Howard is called by them "wood tapestry." Very thin slices are arranged geometrically in large patterns, and fastened with glue on staircase and passage walls, or made into dado panelling to the room, in this case capped by mouldings.
An ingenious method of inlaying thin veneers on flat surfaces of wood by machinery has been patented by the same firm. Veneers or slices of wood about the thickness of coarse brown paper are glued on a board, e.g. a table top. A design punched out in zinc, of a thickness somewhat greater than that of the veneer, is laid over it, and the board is then placed under a heavy roller. The zinc is forced into the surface of the board by the roller to about the thickness of the veneer. A plane cleans off the rest of the veneer, leaving the portion only that answers to the zinc pattern, thus forced into the surface of the board. If soaked, the grain of the wood would push up the thin veneer, no doubt, but this is no greater risk than that to which all marquetry is exposed.
Neither of these inventions have as yet been carried beyond the simplest disposition of arrangement. What can be done in either method remains to be shown.
All the woodwork passed under review thus far in joinery and cabinet-work, is ofhardwoods. Much, however, of our modern furniture is of a less valuable description, and is made of pine, American birch, Hungarian and other ash. Pitch-pine, an exceedingly hard wood, difficult to dry, and with a disagreeable propensity to crack if not very well seasoned, is also used, and a beautiful material it is. Some small quantity of bedroom furniture in beech, oak, and ash is made in the workshops that I have been describing. As a general rule, however, this manufacture of soft woods is a separate branch of the trade. To see soft wood, such as pine, made up into admirable bedroom furniture, and French polished till the grain of it shows much of the delicacy and agreeableness of satin-wood, we should pay a visit to the works of Messrs. Dyer and Watts, in Islington, and to other houses that occupy their time exclusively in work of this kind. It is clean, cheerful, and, by comparison, cheap; is ornamented (in the works of Messrs. Dyer and Watts) with neat lines of red, grey, and black, some of the lines imitative of inlaid wood. It is popular, and if we proceed from the workshops of Messrs. Graham, Holland, and others, to their showrooms and warehouses, we shall find this deal furniture for sale, though they do not profess to make any of it. Less costly pine-wood furniture is painted green, or white, or in imitation of other woods.
The surface of woodwork, if the woods are valuable, is finished byFrench polishing. A solution of shell-lac is put on a rolled woollen rubber, which is then covered with a linen rag, on which the polisher puts a drop of linseed oil. He rubs this solution evenly over the entire surface of the wood as it passes through the fibre of the linen, smooth action being secured by the oil. It is laid on in successive fine coats till a glossy surface is obtained which is air and water-proof. For fine work the surface should not be so glossy as to look like japan work. French polishing preserves woods liable to split, such as oak, from the too rapid action of the air.
Grainingis an imitation of oak or other woods. A light colour, chrome yellow, and white, is first laid on, and glazed over with brown. While still wet, the brown is combed with elastic square teethed combs to give the appearance of graining. Larger veins are wiped out by the thumb and a piece of rag. All sorts of woods are thus imitated, and the work when dry is varnished over. Independently of any skill or deceptiveness, this broken painted surface looks effective and lasts long.
Of the propriety of such a decoration there are many doubts, for the discussion of which there is not space here. Marble graining has long been represented in Italy, e.g. in the loggia of Raphael in the Vatican. But in that particular instance, the painting is arepresentation, not animitation. Wood graining is performed in all countries, and such imitations seem to have been practised by the ancients.
Mr. Norman Shaw is now exhibiting in Exhibition road examples of woods with fine grain stained green, red, and other colours, and French polished, the grain showing as if the woods were naturally of those hues.
For inexhaustible resource in tinting, polishing, and decorating wood surfaces, we shall have to learn from the Japanese, from whom probably the famous Vernis Martin was first borrowed in the last century. Much imitation lac-japanning was executed in this country during the latter years of the century. This work is still made in Birmingham. Pieces of mother-o'-pearl are glued on wood and the intervening surface, covered with lac varnish which is rubbed smooth, coat after coat, with pumice and water, till the surface of the inlaid pearl shell is reached, and the whole ground to a glassy polish.
London Factories.
The number of hands employed in large cabinet-making and furnishing establishments is very considerable. Not only are the workshops well provided with joiners, cabinet makers, and turners, but also with upholsterers, cutters-out and workwomen, stuffing, tacking on or sewing on the covers of chairs, sofas, &c. Indeed, it is no uncommon occurrence for the entire furniture of royal palaces and yachts to be ordered from one of these firms by the courts of foreign potentates in every corner of the world. Chairs, tables, sideboards, &c., were made lately at Messrs. Holland's for a steam yacht of the Emperor of Austria; while Messrs. Jackson and Graham have been furnishing the palace of the Khedive at Grand Cairo.
To execute, with certainty and promptitude, orders such as these, both premises, plant (such as wood and machinery), and the command of first-rate hands, must be abundant. Painters, gilders, carpenters, paperers, and a miscellaneous assistant staff are required to pioneer the way for the more costly work, or to make all good behind it. The firm of Jackson and Graham, for instance, employs from 600 to 1000 hands, according to the time of the year or the pressure of orders; and pays out close upon 2000l.per week as wages, when all these hands are in full work; and to highly skilled craftsmen (independently of designers), occupied on the production of the most costly kind of furniture, 60l.to 230l.per week. The Howards employ from 150 to 200 hands on cabinet making and joinery alone. It is the variety and comprehensiveness of these operations, that is so profitable as a speculation. Such a business requires, it need hardly be said, a large capital, and must be liable to fluctuations.
The Past and the Future.
A few words must be given to a retrospect of the state of this branch of the national industry, and to its prospects. If we look back twenty-five years to the furniture exhibited in London in 1851, the improvement of the present time seems incredible.
We may take that Exhibition, the first of these modern displays of all sorts of products of labour, as a point of departure for our review.
In 1851, the Commissioners directed that a complete report should be drawn up on the subject of the decorative treatment of manufactures of all kinds, including the particular class of objects under discussion. The author of this report calls attention to what should be the first consideration, in the construction of objects for daily and personal use. From the continual presence of these things, "defects overlooked at first, or disregarded for some showy excellence, grow into great grievances, when, having become an offence, the annoyance daily increases. Here at least utility should be the first object, and as simplicity rarely offends, that ornament which is the most simple in style will be the most likely to give lasting satisfaction."[7]Yet on examining the furniture on the English side, the reporter could not but notice, how rarely this very obvious consideration had been attended to. "The ornament of such works on the English side consists largely ofimitativecarving." Ornaments consisting of flowers, garlands of massive size and absolute relief, were applied indiscriminately to bedsteads, sideboards, bookcases, pier-glasses, &c., without any principle of selection or accommodation. "The laws of ornament were as completely set aside as those of use and convenience. Many of these works, instead of being useful, would requirea rail to keep off the household."
These strictures were far from being applicable to the entire British Exhibition of this class of work. One or two notable exceptions may be quoted, such as a bookcase carved in oak, exhibited by Mr. Crace, bought by the Commissioners and added to the Kensington collections. This and a few other works "are particularly to be commended for their sound constructive treatment, and for the very judicious manner in which ornament is made subservient to it. The metal-work is also excellent, and the brass fittings of the panels of the bookcase deserve to be studied, both for the manner in which they have been put together and for their graceful lines."
Four years later, in 1855, in the Paris Exhibition, our furniture and woodwork had made a stride forward, which was still more marked in the London Exhibition of 1862. By that time, our leading houses had appreciated the necessity of obtaining talented designers and foremen, and in many instances they had employed the first architects of the day to give them drawings. The result was a great progress. While the French, indeed, continued to produce very fine pieces, some on the best models, or rather after the principles of the best periods of the Renaissance, our own cabinet makers had run far on in the same direction and in many others, for the mediæval feeling had still a strong hold on the taste of English architects and their patrons.
The greatest change, however, was that which the Paris exhibition of 1867 brought to light. Fifteen full years had passed, since public attention had been called to any careful comparison between the state of our furniture and the decorations of the interiors of our houses, with those of other countries, and the advance was incalculably greater on the part of this country than on that of the other competing nations.
It is worth remarking, that in three great comparative Exhibitions, and particularly in that of 1867, national tastes and peculiarities seemed to have been so completely pared away, that it became difficult to keep the productions of the North and West of Europe from those of the South or the East, distinct in one's mind. Each nation followed the fashion of the works that had obtained the best prizes at former Exhibitions.
For the present, French Renaissance designs in woodwork, and the produce of the looms of Lyons in hangings, serve to give the key to the school of domestic and industrial art in this country. If we look at the richest and most costly productions that have been exhibited, and carried off prizes at the International Exhibitions of late years (and we have no other standard of easy comparison), it will be found that French cabinets, tables, and chairs have served as models to the successful competitors. Indeed, the most successful of such pieces of furniture are actually designed by French artists in some of our leading firms. There is a decided English type in the satin-wood furniture of Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and there is some invention, though not always happy, about our designers of mediæval furniture. These productions are, however, too apt to be heavy and ecclesiastical, to follow rather the types of stone constructions, and the teachings of the admirable plates of Viollet-le-duc, than the lighter work, inaugurated, not without power and success, by Pugin. There is a company of artists, Morris and Co., who have combined painting and woodwork, and produced excellent results; but they have had few followers, or rather few successful followers. I cannot but mention with honourable commendation the Royal School of Art needlework, as a subsidiary branch of furniture art.
So far as to the past. With regard to the future some few remarks may not be out of place: on the excellence of workmanship, the propriety of design, and the beauty of decoration.
The altered conditions of a trade such as that of the cabinet maker, which combines the useful with the agreeable, comely, and beautiful, in its productions, have been alluded to already. This change must seriously affect the accomplishments of the workman. Instead of working under and with his master, he is become one of a regiment of officials. He cannot identify himself with the entire work of which he only executes members interchangeable with other members, all mechanically alike. Again, mortises, tenons, dovetails, and joinery of all sorts, no longer demand from hand-work the accuracy, neatness, and perfection of former days. These operations are done for him. Occasionally he supplements the work of the engine. Like a player who only plays music occasionally, we cannot expect him to retain all the fineness of his hand in perfection.
Is the modern workman, then, the equal of those of sixty years since, whose productions stand so well to this day, because of this perfection of manual dexterity? It will be difficult to maintain that he is, but it would be most unjust to deny either that the best workmanship can be turned out, or that it is turned out, of our great establishments. This is the work of the most choice and accomplished hands. In smaller London houses, and in the furniture which we find in the trade generally, the workmanship is inferior, relatively, to that of the former period.
The introduction of machinery, however, is a fact, and its effects on manual skill must be accepted as a necessity. Nor must we pass over the further fact, that if the modern joiner is not the equal of the journeymen of Chippendale, he cando more. He has powers at command, and can carry into execution quantities, beyond the reach of half-a-dozen, perhaps a score of his predecessors. The consumer ought to reap advantages from this latter fact which he has failed hitherto to get, as shall be explained presently.
This brings me to the consideration of the proprieties of design, and the beauty of decoration of our present furniture. If workmanship is affected by altered conditions of the manufacture, so also is design, that union of effective and suitable decoration with the required convenience of each piece of furniture, which may be calledstyle.
The artist, as regards his productions or style, is fashioned partly by what he thinks and loves, partly by his materials and his tools. With some materials he can do little, for want of tools and appliances. As regards material, wood remains what it always has been, but the steam-engine supplies an absolutely new set of tools. What has been done with them? The impressed marquetry has been mentioned, but as yet nothing really new has been done by the use of machinery. Thin veneers which might be cut out with scissors, as if one were cutting paper in inexhaustible fulness and variety, are restricted, in this impressed marquetry, to such as can be copied in the coarse material, zinc, which has to be punched or sawn out for the manufacture. Then again we have the carving or copying machine. At present nothing more is done with it than to copy, and to copy somewhat clumsily, in duplicate or in large numbers, that which has first been carved or modelled by hand. It would be premature to decide, that with so powerful a tool in his hand, an accomplished artist trained to use it, could not produce real and rapid sculpture. But no such artist has yet stepped on the stage, and it can only be an artist who can put the matter to a proof.
In following the style and ornamentation of former periods, our new machinery is in no sense a help to us. The man who cuts out his material for a Sheraton chairfeltwhat he was going to carve upon, chose his pieces, arranged the grain, and the spare material just as he would require it, with careful reference to the use of his carving tools from first to last.The pace, too, required in executing orders was then more deliberate; costly and elaborate plant and machinery not being required, provincial workmen of admirable skill were to be found in many towns. There is no royal process by which we can put a log of wood into one end of an engine, and find a chair, a table, or a cabinet at the other. What steam machinery does for us is to perform with certainty, and with immense rapidity, the simple operations of sawing, planing, boring, and turning. It is by turnery that ornamentation is done in the engine. Any length of moulded edges can be soon turned out, any amount of the parts of panelling, of turned rails, and of ornaments turned on flat surfaces pressed on the cutting tool, together with the piercing of fretwork and curved and shaped edges to boards. The saw being a fixture in this instance, is an advantage, but machine turnery is not rich in resources. The tool itself is filed laboriously to the mould required, and the wood merely pressed against it. When the wood revolves (as in the old lathe), the turner, with the simple edge of his chisel or his gouge, was the master of an endless variety of ornament limited only by his fancy or skill of hand.
It is nevertheless in the turnery and the fret-cutting machinery, that a furniture artist must find the elements of a style. The man of genius, the poet and maker, who can throw himself into these elements, will do wonders with them. The lathe is as old as history. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, turned wood furniture was made in considerable quantities in this country, in Italy, and in the Indian possessions of the Portuguese. All the furniture of Arabs, Moors, and Turks springs from the lathe and the moulding plane; the tables and stools, the ingenious reticulation of Cairene geometrical panelling, the screens of woodwork so effective in the queen of Arab cities and in Damascus are derived from these humble sources.
To surface ornament of marquetry, occasional carved insertions can be added. But light, neat, and elegant woodwork, panelling, bookcases, cabinets, dressers, chairs, and tables, can be turned out without these additions, and the variety might be endless.
Carved acanthus foliage, bulging legs and surfaces, artistic carving and marquetry, and chiselled metal-mountings must be the work of trained sculptors. The engine gives them no real help. To design, that is invent (not to copy), carving and marquetry that will bear comparison with the products of Riesener, and of the school of Gibbons, is not to be done by command of appliances or skilful workmanshiponly. The artist who is thoroughly at home in designs of this kind, is the pupil or descendant of masters whose traditions are well established:
"Fortes creantur fortibus."
But neat furniture, unornamented by hand-work, ought to be turned out of the engine-room, the perfection of lightness, convenience, and strength. And here the buyer will look for the advantage ofcheapness. We do not find that our large makers supply well-made machine furniturecheap. As a broad rule, prices seem to be calculated onwhat a man would do, and work done in the machine is priced, as if a man had made it by hand. In point of fact, five or six men's work is done in the same time, and the cost of wages charged on articles so made, will leave a disproportioned profit, notwithstanding the expense of setting up and maintaining the steam plant.
Decorative furniture can never be had at a cheap rate.
A word, in conclusion, as to the arts which are necessarily pressed into the service of furniture, and their prospects of the future.
These "sumptuary" arts have been spoken of in these pages as a revival in furniture andstyle, as dead. The disorders that culminated in the French revolution cut off our present European thoughts, or at least our manners and customs, from the past.
We are now trying to revivify past traditions. The furniture makers have made extraordinary exertions in this direction. How will it be in the coming years?
Some critics are of opinion that "art manufacture" is a delusion, and that, if our academicians were equal to the ancient Greeks, we should not find that rich buyers would care about the shapes of their chairs (if comfortable), the colours of their walls, and so forth—a singular delusion. If Phidias, Michael Angelo, and Raphael exhibited at Burlington House, their pupils and followers would overflow with good work in various degrees of elaboration. We should find it in our churches, houses, seats, carriages, and the rest. This is whatdidhappen when the great artists were flourishing. Ugliness and vulgarity were not endurable anywhere. Mentor expressed himself in drinking cups, Cellini in brooches, Holbein in daggers, Michael Angelo in a candlestick, Raphael culminated in a church banner. The art that finds its utterances on knobs, or handles, or drawer fronts, is restricted certainly, because the object is of awkward shape or surface, is to be handled and used, and is only a part of something larger. Nevertheless the street of tripods in Athens, the front of thebigain the Vatican, were "occasions" on which good sculptors did the best that those occasions allowed of. Four fine silver images, representing four great provincial capitals, in the Blacas Collection (now to be seen in the British Museum), were perhaps the ends of the poles of a Sedan chair.
Objects of this kind, though fragmentary, or slightly worked out, or combined in some grotesque but graceful fashion, with a piece of leaf or stalk, are the easy results of long years of mental and manual training.
The workman artist, therefore, though his productions may not be thought suitable for the Academy walls, is a child of the same school, as that which brings forth such portents as Phidias, Praxiteles, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo, not to speak of our Royal Academicians.
Artists who are "specialists," like Giovanni da Udine, will continue to do special things only, but those admirably. Where the arts flourish, there will be a large school that includes half a nation, artists of all ranges of education, refinement, and knowledge. Some will sculpture figures for the temple, others will be of the rank of workmen. Vasari has given full details of the sumptuous furniture which was executed by the sixteenth century Academicians of Florence.
How are we to procure such teachings? This was the question which Colbert put to himself in the reign of Louis XIV. He resolved it, by getting masters and teachers of every kind of sumptuary art from Italy. The result has been to give the French nation a lead in this kind of industry, that holds good even amidst the ruin of old traditions, at this day.
The Kensington schools, and those on the same pattern throughout the country, are efforts made by the Government to meet the wants of our manufacturers. They are inelastic, and it is too soon to judge of the work they are likely to do hereafter. The only great error in such education would be to train scholars to be "ornamentalists," i.e.to teach them conventional art.
Art is conventional in connection with architecture and furniture, because in most instances this is all that would be proper or look well. A good modeller, draughtsman, or carver, would become conventional just as occasion required, but with no abstract desire for ugliness or the grotesque. That artists should be generally well educated and good scholars, and that the profession should possess knowledge and refinement, is of more importance than most people suppose. This kind of refinement lay at the root of the universality of accomplishments of the sixteenth century artists.
Lastly, it is not enough that the profession only should be educated, so as to supply the manufacturer with designs. It is the rich that must be taught as well. We are neither Italians nor Frenchmen, and, indeed, speaking generally, we have not so much sense of beauty and propriety in art as those races have, even with such degeneracy as prevails but too widely over the Channel.
It is enough to look at modern London, to listen to the disputes of committees of management or selection for a public monument, a street, or a gallery, and to take a glance at their choice, to see what we are in these respects. But Englishmen are not wanting in genius, and in the matter of which these pages treat, they have played their part well in the past.
When buyers know what is ugly, they will not tolerate it about their houses; the eagerness to possess something new or original will give place to a just judgment of what is good, whether new or old. Most periods of good sumptuary art owe their designs to a few old types constantly reproduced under new and agreeable varieties, that are not radical changes. To know good from bad in these matters, is the result not of a natural instinct altogether, but of such a sense instructed by study, experience, and reflection. Nor, on the other hand, does such an instinct accompany great intellectual acquirements naturally, and as a matter of right. A man may possess a vast amount of learning, statesmanship, or professional knowledge, and be no judge of painting, sculpture, marquetry furniture, or blue porcelain. Nor, though he knows something of the history of these objects, will he necessarily admire and like the best or most beautiful examples. It is this sense of what is becoming, that has to be learned, though it is occasionally a natural gift. When whole nations have become used to good domestic art, public opinion will be sound, and will perpetuate itself as regards this subject matter, till some great national convulsion reduces sumptuous living, and refined social manners and habits, to ruin.
LONDON: PRINTED BY EDWARD STANFORD, 55, CHARING CROSS, S.W.
Footnotes
[1]These numbers are approximate translations of the numbers given in the communication: no object could be gained in giving complex fractions.
[2]1 ounce avoirdupois weighs 28·349 grammes.
[3]1 mètre equals 39·37 English inches.
[4]1 kilogramme = 2·2 lbs. avoirdupois.
[5]Cat. Brit. Section Exhibition, 1867, Introduction, p. 61.
[6]See also Q. de Quincy, Le Jupiter Olympien.
[7]Supplementary Report, chap. xxx.