Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork

These Handbooks are reprints of the dissertations prefixed to the large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the Museum at South Kensington; arranged and so far abridged as to bring each into a portable shape. The Lords of the Committee of Council on Education having determined on the publication of them, the editor trusts that they will meet the purpose intended; namely, to be useful, not alone for the collections at South Kensington but for other collections, by enabling the public at a trifling cost to understand something of the history and character of the subjects treated of. The authorities referred to in each book are given in the large catalogues; where will also be found detailed descriptions of the very numerous examples in the South Kensington Museum. W. M. August, 1875.
WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS
Published for the Committee of Council on Education BY CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY
LONDON. DALZIEL BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CAMDEN PRESS, N.W.

ANCIENT AND MODERN.
The study of a collection of old furniture has an interest beyond the mere appreciation of the beauty it displays. The carving or the ornaments that decorate the various pieces and the skill and ingenuity with which they are put together are well worthy of our attention. A careful examination of them carries us back to the days in which they were made and to the taste and manners, the habits and the requirements, of bygone ages. The Kensington museum, for example, contains chests, caskets, cabinets, chairs, carriages, and utensils of all sorts and of various countries. Some of these have held the bridal dresses, fans, and trinkets of French and Italian beauties, whose sons and daughters for many generations have long gone to the dust; there are inlaid folding chairs used at the court of Guido Ubaldo, in the palace of Urbino, and of other Italian princes of the fifteenth century; buffets and sideboards that figured at mediæval feasts; boxes in which were kept the jesses and bells of hawks; love-tokens of many kinds, christening-spoons, draught and chess men, card boxes, belonging to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; carriages of the London of Cromwell and Hogarth, and of the Dublin of Burke; panelling of the date of Raleigh; a complete room made for a lady of honour to Marie Antoinette.