Italian and other Furniture of the Renaissance.
In the early part of the fifteenth century and during the whole of the century the furniture of Europe generally was designed more or less on Gothic lines, but gradually the new forms that were now rapidly developing in the architecture of the Renaissance, but in a slower measure, began to assert themselves in furniture designs. Consequently, we find in many articles, such as armoires or presses, and cabinets, a mixture of style in the design—as, for instance, the upper panels would be in the Mediæval, and the lower ones in the Renaissance style, or the general construction would be Gothic, and the details and decoration would be Italian.
This was more often the case in the furniture and other art in Germany, where the Renaissance was tardily welcomed.
Styles of design in furniture overlap each other so much, especially in the Renaissance period, that it becomes very difficult to assign a correct date to many pieces of important work. Gothic designs continued to be used during the sixteenth century, although the Renaissance had been developing for a hundred years earlier. The most authentic means of fixing the date is when certain work can be proved to have come from the hand of a particular artist, or when there is a record of its having been made for a king or some great person, for the style is not always a sure proof of the correct date.
In the “Quattrocento” period (1400-1500), or fifteenth century, Italian furniture made for churches, palaces, or private houses, was usually decorated with paintings, sometimes on a gilt ground, which was prepared in a gesso material before the gold was applied, some parts of which had relief ornamentation.
Reliquaries, altar-fronts, panels of cabinets, chests, and marriage coffers were decorated in this way.
Fig. 233.—Marriage Coffer of Carved Wood; Italian; Sixteenth Century. (J.)
The work known as “tarsia,” or certosina work, was made in great perfection about this time in Italy. It is inlaid work of a geometric character in design, or is composed of floral ornament, and sometimes consists of representations of landscapes and buildings. This kind of inlay was derived from Persian sources, was developed chiefly by the Venetians, and was used mostly by them in the decoration of choir stalls, tables, chairs, cabinets, &c. Ebony, ivory, and metals were also employed in the Italian inlays of this period.
The Italian Cassoni, or marriage-coffers, were the most ornate and most imposing articles of furniture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were placed in the long halls and corridors of the palaces and great houses, and were usually given as presents to newly married couples. They were generally used as the receptacle for the bride’s trousseau and other treasures. In the latter century they were carved in walnut with sculptural mythological subjects, and had endings or corners of half-figures and half-foliage, as caryatids, with feet designed from the claws of animals to raise them from the ground (Fig. 233). The carving was relieved by gilding in parts, and sometimes the whole of it was gilt.
Other examples of an earlier date were covered with a finely modelled decoration of gesso work, and gilded, and in other cases the large panels in the front were painted with figure subjects in brilliant colours and heightened with gold.
A less costly kind of marriage coffer was made in cypress-wood, and fitted up in the inside with drawers, having the decoration on the surface engraved or etched in brown lines, with the ground slightly recessed and punched or stamped with a fine ornamentation.
Fig. 234.—Italian Work; Sixteenth Century. (P.)
In the Kensington Museum there is an extensive collection of Italian cassoni embracing all the above varieties. Chairs carved and gilt of the same style and period as the coffers were usually placed between the rows of the latter in the halls of the Italian palaces (Fig. 235). These chairs had their backs and legs richly carved, each part being made out of a single slab of wood.
The pair of bellows (Fig. 234) is a further illustration of the design and excellence of workmanship as shown in the work of the wood carvers of Italy in the sixteenth century, or “Cinquecento” period.
Another fine specimen of wood carving is the Italian stool (Fig. 236) of the same date, which is remarkable for its delicacy of treatment.
Another form of chair of a rectangular character, with or without arms, having an embossed leather or velvet covering on the back and seat, with turned and carved legs and rails, was made in Italy about this time (Fig. 237); it was much used subsequently in Spain, France, and in England, and has continued to be in favour down to the present day.
Cabinets were made in Italy and in France in which slabs of beautifully coloured and veined marbles and rare stones were inserted as panels in various shapes, to which the name of “pietra-dura” work has been given. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries painted plaques of porcelain took the place of these marbles.
In England, France, Spain, and Germany, the great houses, both private and religious, and the king’s palaces were elaborately furnished, and kept in a state of great splendour.
Fig. 235.—Chair; Italian; Sixteenth Century. (P.)
Churches were also furnished with elaborate stalls, pulpits, and rich utensils, but in the latter the style of the designs was still Mediæval.
In the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. in England the style gradually altered to the Italian forms of the Renaissance, and many Italian architects and carvers found work in this country in making furniture for the royal palaces, and besides, great quantities of Italian, Flemish, and French furniture were largely imported. Jean de Mabuse and Torrigiano were employed as architects and sculptors by Henry VII., and Holbein and some Italian artists designed furniture and goldsmith’s work for Henry VIII.
In France, during the reigns of François I., Catherine de’ Medici, and Henri II., a great activity took place in architecture and in all the industrial arts, in which that country not only imitated, but sought to excel, the work of the Italian schools.
Fig. 236.—Stool of Carved Wood; Italian; Sixteenth Century. (J.)
As already mentioned, the French kings and Medicean princesses in the sixteenth century had invited from Italy Cellini, Primaticcio, Il Rosso, Serlio, and others, who succeeded in founding the style of the Renaissance in France, and about the same time many French artists journeyed to Italy to acquire the newer style which had been evolved from the study of the old classic remains of that country. Among the names of the principal French artists, sculptors, and carvers of this period are those of Jean Goujon, Nicholas Bachelier of Toulouse, Jean Cousin, Germain Pilon, Philibert de l’Orme, Du Cerceau, who published designs for all kinds of decorations and carvings, and Hugues Sambin of Dijon. Most of these men were architects and also designers of the heavy and rich furniture that was characteristic of the French Renaissance. Some of these artists and their works have been noticed in the chapters on Renaissance architecture and metal work. The cabinet (Fig. 238) is a good example of the architectonic style of French furniture of the sixteenth century. French wood carving is distinguished from the Italian of this period by the great use of the cartouche and strap-work (Fig. 239), which was so characteristic of the Henri-Deux style.
Fig. 237.—Chair Decorated with Gauffered Leather; Early Sixteenth Century; Italian Style. (J.)
Fig. 238.—French Cabinet; Sixteenth-Century Work. (P.)
Fig. 239.—Carved Wood Panel; French; Sixteenth Century. (P.)
When the Renaissance had taken a firm root in Germany, the designers and carvers of altar-pieces and of furniture generally proved themselves thorough masters of the style, and were especially skilful in the carving of wood, both on a gigantic and on a minute scale. Whole fronts of houses were elaborately carved in designs consisting of figure work, animals, ornament, and grotesques of a quaint and humorous description, while exceedingly minute works of figure subjects and animals were carved in box and other woods with a delicacy and quaintness often excelling the ivory carvings of the Japanese. Escritoires, buffets, cabinets, and other furniture, were made and exported from Germany into Spain and other countries.
Flemish and English furniture and carving were pretty much alike in the reigns of Elizabeth—the Tudor period of English art—and of James I., the Stuart or Jacobean. The pieces of carved furniture, both Flemish and English, were very solid and heavy both in the design and thickness of the material, which was generally of oak or chestnut. So much Flemish furniture was imported into England at this time, and the English-made work, being so close in resemblance to the former, that a great difficulty is experienced in classifying examples of this period. The table, Fig. 240, and the so-called “Great Bed of Ware,” are examples of the furniture of the Elizabethan period (Fig. 241.)
Fig. 240.—Elizabethan Table. (P.)
In Spain the Italian style in furniture was introduced in the first instance by the great importations from Italy and Germany, but under such excellent native carvers and designers as Felipe de Borgoña (sixteenth century), and Berruguete (1480-1561), the style of the Renaissance soon spread from Toledo to Seville and Valladolid, where great quantities of carved and inlaid work and elaborate altar-pieces were executed during the prosperous Spanish period of the sixteenth century.
Fig. 241.—The Great Bed of Ware; Elizabethan. (P.)
During the same century Venice and Florence were famed for their marquetry—inlaid work of ivory and metal—in cypress, walnut, and other woods, which art had been imported from Persia and India by the Venetians, and which spread rapidly through Europe until the furniture made with marquetry decoration by degrees supplanted the heavier classical architectural designs.
This was brought about chiefly in the West of Europe by the Dutch and French marquetry work, developed during the seventeenth century.
Before leaving the Italian sixteenth-century work we must notice the mirrors, with their elaborately carved frames of Venetian design and manufacture. In this century Venice was renowned for the making of glass, for which it is still famous, and certain privileges were granted by the State exclusively to Venetian manufacturers of looking-glasses. Two Murano glass makers named Andrea and Dominico, who were the inventors, were granted in the year 1507 the sole privilege of making “mirrors of crystal glass” for a term of twenty years. Previous to this time the mirrors were made of various polished metals. The frames of the Venetian mirrors were often elaborately carved (Fig. 242), some of them being made in designs that were strictly architectural in character, representing a door, or window frame, with pilasters, frieze, and cornice, and sill or plinth. These carved frames were often partly or wholly gilt, and were exported in considerable quantities. Pictures were framed in a similar way to the mirrors, and carved and gilt frames were soon used all over Europe as picture frames. Later on gilt furniture of all kinds was made in Venice and was in great favour in the other countries of the Continent.
Fig. 242.—Venetian Minor Frame; Sixteenth Century. (P.)
The manufacture of marquetry furniture by the Dutch in the seventeenth century has been mentioned as having helped in a great measure to change the style of furniture design from its former architectural character to a greater simplicity of construction. Large panel surfaces were used for the purpose of showing to greater advantage the rich and bright colours of different kinds of hard woods used in the marquetry. Both natural and stained varieties of various wood were arranged in the designs in juxtaposition, and a free and picturesque kind of ornamental foliage was employed mixed with large tulips, roses, and birds in the Dutch marquetry decoration. Other materials, such as ivory, ebony, and mother-of-pearl, were also used as inlays. In France a similar kind of marquetry was developed, but the design consisted more of figure subjects and imitations of ruins in landscapes. A complete change in the design of the furniture in the latter country was also effected by the same desire to get large surfaces on which the inlaid work could be seen to great advantage, and the spaces were not divided by architectural mouldings, or pilasters, as they had been in the preceding earlier work.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, and during the earlier half of the seventeenth, the sumptuous furniture, the beds, and general furnishing of the better class of houses and palaces in France and other European countries, were characterized by the use of costly silk brocades, tissues, and embroidered coverings and hangings.
By thus seeking to give the furniture an appearance of the richest possible kind, such articles as chairs, couches, and beds lost in a corresponding degree their elegance and former constructive beauty. Under their gorgeous Italian and Oriental velvet coverings, their framed construction ceased to be visible. The above pieces of furniture still retained their sumptuous upholstery during the reign of Louis XIV., but the tables, armoires, cabinets, book-cases, pedestals, clock-stands and cases, came under the influence of the architecture of the period, when the king’s chief minister, Colbert, selected the best architects and cabinet-makers of the day to design the furniture for the palaces of the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Fontainebleau.
The greatest name connected with the design and manufacture of the magnificent furniture of the Louis-Quatorze period is that of André-Charles Boulle, whose work is known under his name as “Boulle.” This celebrated furniture[furniture] is an elaborate kind of marquetry of which the materials are rare woods, ebony, tortoiseshell, brass, mother-of-pearl, and white metal or tin. The mountings, mouldings, and other salient points are made in brass beautifully chased and finished, some of the mountings being in the forms of masks, foliage, cartouches, and animals’ heads and feet as termination.
André-Charles Boulle was born in Paris in the year 1642. His father, Pierre Boulle, was also a distinguished ébéniste, or cabinet-maker, but his more eminent son possessed the artistic gift in a much higher degree. In addition to making his special marquetry from his own designs Boulle also executed a good deal of his best works from the designs of Jean Berain (1636-1711), his chief collaborateur. Berain’s designs were more Italian in style, more symmetrical in the composition of the ornament, and more correct from an architectural point of view, than those attributed to Boulle himself, whose designs had much of the looseness and freedom of the prevalent Louis Quatorze.
At the death of Jean Macé, the king’s ébéniste, in 1672, who had formerly lived in the royal galleries of the Louvre, the logement and office of ébéniste to the king had become vacant, and Boulle on the recommendation of Colbert, minister to Louis XIV., was appointed as the successor of Macé, and was installed in his rooms in the Louvre in the year 1673. He had previously executed some important work for the king, and was known as the ablest ébéniste at that time in Paris.
The origin of the Boulle marquetry can be traced to the Indian, Persian, and Damascus encrusted inlays in ivory, ebony, nacre, and metal, that found their way to Venice, Portugal, Spain, and France in the Middle Ages. These works consisted chiefly of caskets, coffers, and small pieces of furniture. In the inventories of Charles V. of France (1380) mention is made of lecterns and coffers of inlaid ivory or bone, in ebony, and similar works are mentioned in the inventories of Charles VI. (1418), and of Anne of Brittany (1498). These are the earliest notices of marquetry furniture that was made in France, and was probably an imitation of Oriental work.
In the Renaissance period François I. bought some magnificent furniture of Indian workmanship, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, from Portuguese merchants, and mention is made of chairs, tables, coffers, cabinets, and mirror-frames that belonged to Queen Marie de’ Médicis (1600), the Cardinal d’Amboise (1550), and other great persons of the French Court, all of which works were made in marquetry.
In France before the sixteenth century, tortoiseshell, brass, tin, and exotic woods were used as inlays, in addition to the ivory, ebony, and nacre of the East. From this it will be seen that Boulle did not invent the celebrated marquetry that bears his name. He, however, brought this sumptuous form of cabinet work to great perfection, and under the patronage of Louis XIV. he had every opportunity to develop his artistic abilities to the utmost.
The method of procedure in the making of the Boulle marquetry was, first, to prepare the veneers of wood, shell, tin, and brass of the same thickness, each having perfectly plain surfaces; these veneers were then glued together in pairs of opposite materials, according to the nature of the effect required in the finished work, and were held together firmly in a vice. The design was then traced on the surface of the upper leaf, and the veneers were then cut through the lines of the pattern with a burin, a sharp strong knife, or a fine saw; thus four pieces of marquetry were made at one cutting. When the plaque forming the design was composed of tin or brass, which was afterwards engraved or chased, it was technically called “boulle”; and when the design was formed by the shell or ebony it was called “counter”; the two effects are together known as “boulle and counter,” or première et contre-partie.
A later kind of Boulle work, known as the Second Style, has the shell veneers laid on a clouded vermilion or on a gilt ground.
Boulle was an artist of great excellence as a sculptor and chaser of metals; his mountings of foliage and masks which decorated his works are spirited in design and are skilfully chased and finished (Fig. 243). He executed a great number of costly pieces of his famous marquetry for Louis XIV. and the Dauphin of France, many of which found their way to England a century later. Examples of Boulle work fetch great prices when, as on rare occasions, they make their appearance in a sale. For instance, two armoires, or large cabinets, were sold at the sale of the Duke of Hamilton’s Collection in 1882 for the sum of £12,075. The armoire (Fig. 244) now in the Jones Collection at South Kensington, is perhaps the finest piece of Boulle furniture in England. It is much finer and better designed than the Hamilton cabinets, and would probably, if now sold, fetch the above sum, or more, that was paid for these cabinets. It appears likely, from the style of the ornament, that it was designed by Berain.
After the death of Boulle his four sons carried on the making of this celebrated marquetry, but in a coarser and feebler style of design and of inferior workmanship. Other ébénistes tried to imitate Boulle work, but their efforts were not very successful, and were only inferior imitations.
In Germany in the seventeenth century, the most prominent names as designers and makers of furniture are Philip Heinhofer, Baumgartner, and Hans Schwanhard. The former was the maker of the celebrated Pomeranian Cabinet (1611-1617) which is now in the Royal Museum at Berlin.
Fig. 243.—Boulle Cabinet. (S.K.M.)
In this century, in Italy, Andrea Brustolone (1670-1732) was noted as a carver, gilder, and cabinet-maker who worked in the extravagant style of the Louis Quinze (Louis XV.), and in the first half of the eighteenth century (1700-77) Pifetti, a Piedmontese cabinet-maker, was honoured by the Italian Court, for which he executed many works in ivory carving and marquetry work in the style of Boulle. Many other cabinet-makers and carvers were employed to make furniture and to decorate the queen’s palace at Turin, among whom may be mentioned the names of Galleti, the successor of Pifetti, and Maggiolino of Milan, who chiefly made a kind of marquetry in light woods. We are indebted to Mr. J. H. Pollen’s handbook on furniture for some of these names, and a list of many others will be found at the end of his useful book.
Fig. 244.—Boulle Cabinet or Armoire. (S.K.M.)
The French architect, Le Pantre (1617-82), designed furniture and decoration in the heavy classical style of the Roman antique, mixed with shell-work, grotesques, and little Cupids or “putti,” and also engraved and published a book of studies of Roman ornament from sketches that his master, Adam Phillipon, had made in Italy. He worked with Le Brun, the painter and director of the decoration at Versailles. Le Brun’s own work was heavy and dull, although he aimed at grandeur and gorgeousness of effect. He was director of the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, and his style of work was in harmony with the pompous ideas of Louis the “Grand Monarch.” Madame de Maintenon says in one of her letters to a friend, that Louis was so fond of symmetry and stateliness in his architecture, as in other things, that he would have you “perish in his symmetry,” for he caused his doors and windows to be constructed in pairs opposite to one another, which gave to everybody who lived in his palaces their death of cold by draughts of air.
Much of the more artistic kind of furniture was imported from the Continent into England during the seventeenth century, and a feature of this period was the highly decorative silver furniture already noticed in the chapter on metal work.
Fig. 245.—Carved Bracket; English; Eighteenth Century. (P.)
In this century and early in the following one, the art of wood carving was greatly developed in England, chiefly owing to the genius of Grinling Gibbons and to the influence of Sir Christopher Wren, the style developed being a more or less realistic or baroque form of the Renaissance (Figs. 245, 246). Gibbons carried out some of his carvings to an astonishing degree of realism: bouquets of flowers, festoons of fruit and flowers, birds, figures, and drapery were executed by him in the highest possible relief, which looked detached from the ground, and yet they usually formed a part of the solid wood with the background. Ornament was carved with a singular crispness, and apparently without any hesitation on the part of the carver. Though we may condemn the florid looseness of the style of Gibbons, we must admire the dexterity of workmanship and general technical excellence imparted to everything he touched. Some of his best work may still be seen at Chatsworth, Petworth House in Sussex, Lyme Hall in Cheshire, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Trinity College Chapel at Oxford. Many of the old English halls and manor houses also contain examples of carving done either by Gibbons or his pupils and immediate successors, namely, Watson, Drevot, and Laurens.
Fig. 246.—Mirror Frame; Seventeenth Century. (P.)
Under the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans in France (1715-1723) decoration and ornament assumed a light and fanciful character, very naturalistic, but still having some classic details; of this style Claude Gillot is the chief exponent. Watteau, his pupil, made a great name as a painter of pastoral scenes, fêtes galantes, and all kinds of light and daintily-treated subjects of a theatrical and artificial kind of composition. His colour was silvery and harmonious, and sometimes he decorated furniture with pastoral scenes.
Fig. 247.—Holy Water Vessel; English; Seventeenth Century. (P.)
The Rococo style had begun under the Regency, if not earlier, and such men as Oppenort, the De Cottes, father and son, François de Cuvilliés, the Italians Bernini and Borromini, and lastly the great apostle of the Rococo, Meissonier, were all designers of furniture or architects who belonged to the period of Louis XV., and who executed works that reflected the loose and unrestrained character of the times (1723-1774). Chinese and naturalistic elements were grafted on, or mixed with, the former Louis Quatorze, with an addition of still life that did duty for architectural form in objects of pottery and metal work, and a combination of shell work; all these elements made up the style known under the different names of rococo, rocaille, baroque, or Louis Quinze.
Furniture was made with curved and swelling panels to show to more advantage the marquetry, or paintings on gold grounds: these kinds of panels and friezes were known as “bombé.”
It is said that the Italian architects, Bernini and Borromini, were the first to introduce the rococo style into France, but no designer went so far in the wildness of its vagaries as the French Meissonier. His ornament furnishes a perfect example of the want of balance and symmetry. He designed for furniture, woodwork, silver-smithery, and modelled decoration, all of which work illustrated the broken shell-shaped panels with frilled and scalloped edgings and curved mouldings.
Rooms were lined with looking-glasses having these rocaille mouldings, which were well adapted to show to the best advantage the glitter of the gold leaf that was used inordinately on the furniture and decoration of the Louis-Quinze period.
Pierre Germain, Jean Restout, and Jean Pillement are well-known names of other designers of the rocaille style.
Painted panels of pastoral scenes and flower groups were the usual colour decorations of ceilings, furniture, carriages, and a host of minor articles such as fans, étuis, snuff-boxes, &c. The latter smaller articles, as well as the state carriages, were decorated with paintings in what was known as the Vernis-Martin style. Martin was a decorator of carriages and an heraldic painter, who invented the particular hard varnish or lacquer which bears his name. It was quite likely that this was as near as possible a successful imitation of the Japanese gold lacquer that decorated the articles which were at this period imported from Japan by the Dutch and Portuguese traders into Europe. Carriages, tables, cabinets, and especially smaller articles like snuff-boxes and needle-cases, were painted and decorated in “Vernis-Martin.” Some of the smaller objects were beautifully mounted in chased gold.
Fig. 248.—Commode, with Lac Panels, and Mounts by Caffieri. Louis-Quinze Style.
It was quite a common practice to cover or to panel furniture with plaques of Japanese lacquer, and to mount them in chased metal or ormoulu decorations. A unique commode is illustrated at Fig. 248, made from panels of very old Japanese lacquer and highly decorated with ormoulu mounts by Caffieri, a skilled chaser of the Louis-Quinze period.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century an improvement in the design of furniture and of ornament generally crept in, owing to the study of the ornamentation and design of the classic objects that had been found in the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These cities had been discovered in 1713, and about forty or fifty years later books were published illustrating the buried remains, which helped to change the public taste, and by degrees a demand arose for designs of a more severe and classic kind.
The prevailing taste was then apparently gratified by the mixture or grafting of a certain quantity of classic forms with the former frivolous style of the Louis Quinze.
The style in furniture and in ornament now developed into what is known as the “Louis Seize” (Louis XVI.), and consisted in its ornament of a composition of thin scrolls, garlands, bows and quivers of arrows, ribbons and knots, medallions with classic cameo-cut subjects. Mouldings were fine and delicately ornamented, and of straight-lined variety; in fact, the straight line now reasserted itself in architecture and furniture design (see Figs. 249, 250), in refreshing and healthy contrast to the tottering and riotous curves of Louis XV. and the Du Barry period.
Some of the most beautiful furniture expressive of the utmost elegance was made by Riesner and David, and was decorated with ormoulu mounts by Gouthière for the Queen Marie Antoinette. Riesner and Gouthière were the ablest men of their time, who generally worked together in the making and decorating of the finest furniture of this period. We are fortunate in possessing in the Jones Collection at South Kensington some of the very finest examples of this furniture, much of which was made for Marie Antoinette (Figs. 251, 252).
Fig. 249.—Louis-Seize Writing Table.
Riesner usually worked in light and richly-coloured woods, such as tulip-wood, holly, maple, laburnum, purple-wood, and rosewood, for his marquetry work, and used oak for the linings and foundations.
Fig. 250.—Mahogany Cabinet with Sèvres Plaques. Louis Seize.
The best pieces of David and Riesner were usually mounted in ormoulu or bronze-gilt metal by Gouthière, who has never been equalled as a founder and chaser of this class of work. Prieur was also a good chaser of the Louis Seize period. Delafosse was an architect and designer of furniture and decoration of the period, whose designs were of a more heavy and classical kind. Cauvet was a German who worked in Paris, and designed graceful arabesques and figure work, and who published a book of designs. Lalonde designed work that might be classed in the same category as that of Cauvet, and Salembier was a prolific designer of a light and free kind of arabesque. Many of his designs for silk may be seen in the fabric at the Silk Museum in the Bourse at Lyons. Le Nôtre designed for furniture, carving, and was also famed with La Quintinie as a designer of the state and public gardens.
Fig. 251.—Escritoire of Marie Antoinette. (Jones Collection.)
In Italy the prevailing ornament in furniture and decoration was more classical than in France. Piranesi, Albertolli, Pergolese, and Bartolozzi are names of the principal designers of this country in the eighteenth century, most of whom published extensive works on ornament. The latter two were brought to England by the brothers John and Robert Adam (1728-1792), who had travelled in Italy, bringing also with them classical ideas, which they developed in England, and which influenced to a great extent the style of architecture and furniture design in this country. The Adelphi building and the houses in Portland Place were built from designs by the Adams. All kinds of furniture, sedan chairs, carriages, plate, &c., were made from their designs. Fine mouldings, medallions, rosettes, light garlands, capitals in classic form, fluted pilasters and columns, were all designed by them with the utmost restraint in style—even to coldness.
Fig. 252.—Table of Marie Antoinette, inlaid with Sèvres Plaques.
(Jones Collection.)
Thomas Chippendale was a famous cabinet-maker of the eighteenth century. His furniture, or even any good imitation of it, fetches a good price at the present time. He published a book on furniture design and interior decoration in the year 1764. His sons are supposed to have made nearly all the best of the mahogany furniture known as “Chippendale.”
Fig. 253.—Parlour Chairs, by Chippendale. (L.)
The parlour chairs (Fig. 253) are good examples of Chippendale furniture, and the chairs made in the so-called “Chinese style” (Fig. 254) are attributed to the elder Chippendale.
Fig. 254.—Chair in the Chinese Style, by Thomas Chippendale. (L.)
Sherraton and Heppelwhite are names of two other well-known cabinet-makers, who made excellent mahogany furniture in the last century, both of whom published works on the subject at the latter end of the century.
Fig. 255.—Stool and Chair, Carved and Gilt Mountings; Empire Style. (L.)
The names of Gillow, Lichfield, Lock, and Copeland are those of eminent English cabinet-makers and decorators of this period, the two former firms being still in existence in London.
Fig. 256.—Cabinet of Red Chased Lacquer (Japanese) and Porcelain Dish. (J.)
In France, after the Revolution (1792), a more decided phase of the dry and heavy classicisms was apparent in the furniture design and decoration of the period (1801). This return to classic heaviness has been attributed to the influence of the academic painter David, but is more likely to have been a pandering to the national worship of Napoleon and the French Empire. It seemed to have been the universal desire to make everything echo or reflect in some measure the glory of the Emperor Napoleon I. The meanest thing had some symbol or allusion by the way of decoration that should remind everybody of the greatness of the new monarch and of the French Empire, and consequently the heavy and ponderous style of that period was known as the “Empire Style.” The furniture of the Empire was usually made in mahogany, decorated with mountings in brass or bronze, of sphinxes, griffins, Roman emblems, and antique scrollery (Fig. 255).
Fig. 257—Lacquered Boxes; Sindh. (B.)
Percier and Fontaine are names of French cabinet-makers and designers who worked in the Empire style, and who published a book of their designs.
Fig. 258.—Lacquered Leg of Bedpost; Sindh. (B.)
In England the style was copied, and we find that endless imitations of the French fashion in tables, sofas, chairs, cabinets, and clocks were designed after the same antique ideals.
In this country, during the earlier half of the present century, the mediæval Gothic style was partly revived in architecture and in furniture, mainly owing to the efforts of Augustus W. Pugin, the architect. He designed many pieces of furniture, and published a work consisting of Gothic designs in the year 1835. Notwithstanding the efforts of Pugin and some other eminent architects and “purists,” no particular lasting impression was made in this direction.
If we except a few of the best cabinet-makers’ shops, where in the present day some furniture of good design is made, the majority of such work is now made by machinery, or is often too much the work of the upholsterer, and is consequently less artistic and more mechanical both in design and construction.
Some of the most beautiful furniture of Japanese and Chinese manufacture is made in carved wood and lacquered in black or red. Cabinets with drawers and quaintly contrived cupboards and recesses (Fig. 256) are made by the Japanese, finished in lacquers, and inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. The Chinese are especially skilled in carving red lac-work. Some vases of great dimensions and of exquisite workmanship in this material may be seen in the Kensington Museum.
Lac-work is also executed with great skilfulness by the natives of India. Bracelets, armlets, or golias, are made of lac in various colours, the golden decorations of which are made from tinfoil and varnished with a yellow varnish made of myrrh, copal, and sweet oil boiled together. Boxes, bed-posts, and other furniture, made in wood or papier-mâché, are lacquered and decorated with flat renderings of flowers and conventional shapes of animals and birds (Figs. 257, 258). All kinds of toys, weights and measures, cooking utensils, circular playing-cards, turnery, &c., are objects in small wares made in the choicest lac-work of India.
CHAPTER VI.
TEXTILE FABRICS.
Weaving is an art that has been practised from prehistoric times. Grasses, shreds of bark, rushes, bast, &c., were at first woven, and used as articles of dress and coverings such as we see in use to-day among the uncivilised tribes of the world. The loom is also a very ancient invention, and must have been used much earlier than we have any record of it.
One of the oldest varieties of fabrics made in the loom is that of linen, the threads of which are prepared from the fibrous parts of the flax plant stalk. We have not only Biblical evidence of the weaving of linen by the ancient Egyptians, but the actual material itself, which has been proved by the strictest scientific analysis to be the product of the flax plant.
The oldest kind of Egyptian linen was that used for the swathing bands of the mummies, and was formerly known under the erroneous name of byssus, the latter being a material woven from the filaments or beard of the pinna marina, or sea-caterpillar.
The various methods and processes used in the manufacture of linen are well illustrated in the Egyptian paintings and bas-reliefs, such as the beating of the flax, combing, spinning, and weaving in the loom. Some of the Egyptian linen was exceedingly fine in texture and perfect in workmanship: a piece of linen found at Memphis had 540 threads to the inch in the warp.
Linen yarn and the raw flax were exported from Egypt by the Phœnicians and Carthaginians to Greece, Italy, Germany, Spain, and probably to the British Isles. The Greek women wove linen for their garments, as the women of most European countries have done in the ancient and Middle Ages. Germany, Holland, and Belgium have from early times been the chief countries for linen manufacture in Europe. Perhaps at the present day the city of Belfast in Ireland is the most important seat of linen industry in the world, and Dundee in Scotland might claim the second place. For the last two hundred years the linen trade of Ulster has been in a flourishing condition. The English Parliament from the days of William III. to the present time have encouraged and promoted the trade, but the initial success of this industry was owing in a great measure to the skill and energy of Louis Crommelin and the Huguenot colony, who came to the North of Ireland from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and in the year 1699 finally settled at Lisburn, near Belfast. A similar colony of French Protestants, who were weavers by trade, settled in Scotland in 1727 under their leader, Nicholas d’Assaville.
A great epoch in the history of weaving dates from the time of the invention of the Jacquard machine, which caused a revolution in nearly all branches of weaving. Jean-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), the inventor of this machine, was a native of Lyons and a silk weaver by trade. The Jacquard machine is attached to any ordinary loom, and its work consists in mechanically selecting and raising the warp threads, when the shuttle passes across the loom, the action being regulated by means of cards with pierced holes through which the lifting cords or needles pass, the holes in the cards being arranged or cut in accordance with the preconceived pattern that ultimately figures in the woven cloth.
The first Jacquard machine used in England was set up in Coventry in the year 1820.
Silk and its manufacture by the Chinese was known and understood from a period anterior to the date of 2700 years before the Christian Era.
Perhaps the first knowledge of silk products in Europe was due to the conquest of Persia and portion of India by Alexander the Great, who came in contact with the Chinese, or some people who lived beyond India, and who had probably worn silken garments. To these people the Greeks gave the general name of the Seres. This name was not only given to the people beyond India by the Romans, but to the silkworm itself. Aristotle, Virgil, Dionysius the Geographer, and later Pausanias, mention the seer or spinning-worm, from which the rich and valuable Oriental garments were made. Pliny says that the Assyrians made silk from the bombyx and taught the art to the inhabitants of the island of Cos. Pamphile, the daughter of Plates, made the finest woven silk in the island of Cos. It is supposed that in the first instance the raw material found its way from China, through India, Persia, and Arabia, to the Grecian Isles, and eventually to Italy and Western Europe. In European countries silk at first was mixed with wool or linen, and garments of this material were worn by the Romans.
The thin gauze-like silken garments of Cos were of a pure quality and were imported to Rome in the second century and were reckoned worth their weight in gold. About this time great quantities of the raw silk were brought from the East by the overland route and by sea, and in the end of the fourth century silk had become so cheap as to be within the reach of the common people (Marcellinus, A.D. 380). Tyre and Berytus were the chief seats of silk manufacture from which the Roman markets were supplied.
In the year 552 an event is recorded that revolutionised the manufacture of silk in Europe. The story is related that two monks, either Greeks or Persians, were sent as ambassadors to China, and there learnt the arts and methods of silk production from the natives. They succeeded in secretly conveying in their hollow cane walking-sticks a quantity of silkworms’ eggs which they brought to Constantinople, where they were hatched in warm manure, and the grubs were fed on the leaves of the mulberry-tree. Very soon after this a royal factory was set up in the palace at Constantinople. Women weavers were pressed into the Emperor’s service, and a state monopoly was set up for the manufacture of silk fabrics.
The introduction of the silkworm did not cheapen the price of silk; on the contrary, the production of the royal looms were sold at excessive prices, and far beyond those paid for the material before the silkworm rearing period in Europe.
The court of the Eastern Empire did not hold the silk-weaving monopoly long, for very soon after the secret of the rearing of the worms spread to the Peloponnesus and the isles of Greece, where, from the sixth to the middle of the twelfth centuries, Europe was supplied with nearly all the silk it required.
In the year 1130 Roger I., the Norman King of Sicily, brought a colony of silk weavers from Athens and induced them to settle in Palermo, where an extensive silk industry was already developed under the former Saracenic rulers, who were vassals of the independent Fātimy Khalifs of Egypt, during the ninth and tenth centuries.
After the introduction of the Greek weavers into the Palermo workshops we find the Siculo-Arabian designs altering from the older circular panels of Saracenic ornament, which consisted of the designs of birds and animals placed back to back, or vis-à-vis, of Mesopotamian origin, to bands of birds, animals, and fishes, grotesque and otherwise, mixed with foliage and scrolls containing mock Arabic inscriptions.
To trace the analysis of patterns in silk fabrics is to trace the historical development of the fabrics themselves, for pattern and manufacture, historically considered, have developed side by side.
When we consider the varieties indicated by the names of Byzantine, Saracenic, or Arabian in its various forms, Italian and French, we shall find that in the order mentioned the chronological development of material and pattern run concurrently.
Silk, in its raw state, during the first few centuries of our era arrived in the principal towns of Asia Minor, in Alexandria in Egypt, and in Byzantium (Constantinople), from China, by the way of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and overland by caravans.
The Persians and the Byzantine Greeks, from the first to the eighth centuries, monopolised the Western silk manufacture, as they already possessed the looms on which they had made linen, woollen cloth, and carpet tapestry. It required very little adaptation to convert them into silk looms, and towards the early part of the seventh century the new material had firmly established itself in Persia, Syria, and Constantinople.
The patterns for the most part were symbolic and large in character, and nearly all of them had their origin in the “Homa,” or sacred “Tree of Life” (Figs. 259, 260), with the worshippers on either side consisting of kings or other personages in the act of adoration, such as we find as a common theme engraved on the Assyrian cylinders, wall decorations, and bronze platters, which had its origin in the older Egyptian forms. Where the Sacred Tree, with animals instead of human forms, was made a feature of in the silk fabrics, the stuff had a Persian development derived from Babylonian sources, but the Greeks or Byzantines used this pattern for the sake of expediency, and not in a symbolic sense.
There is a piece of very old Byzantine silk in the Kensington Collection, and also a piece of the same material in the Silk Museum at Lyons, which consists of a design of winged personages wrestling with lions; the pattern is woven in strips, and the colour is a red ground with white, gold-coloured, blue and green figuring. The style of the design and peculiarity of the weaving prove it to be of a date anterior to the eighth century. This particular Byzantine tissue has the red weft of the ground executed in five different shades of the red colour thrown crosswise (lancé croisé), each shade alternating in three threads by three; the warp is thick, and the shuttle passes right across the width, all the material being pure silk—these are the marks by which Byzantine fabrics are known.
Fig. 259.—Assyrian Homa or Sacred Tree.
Fig. 260.—Tree of Life, Assyrian.
It is only in genuine examples of Byzantine Greek fabrics where we find the human figure is used in the design, or animals of a free and natural type, as the Byzantine silk designs were invariably taken from Greek mythological sources and scriptural subjects. Genuine examples of Byzantine fabrics are very scarce, and the one described is a genuine example of great value.
When the Arabs under Mohammed had conquered the countries of Persia, Syria, and the countries south of the Persian Sea, they found already in these places the manufacture of silk in a flourishing state. From this time—the ninth century—until the fourteenth, we find that from the borders of China and India in the east to Africa and Spain in the south and west—which embraces the countries conquered by the Saracens—the silk industry was carefully fostered under the Mohammedan rule. Next to precious stones in importance and value the chiefest treasures of the Khalifs of Bagdad, Cairo, Fez, and Cordova were silken goods. The bazaars of the chief towns were filled with the precious material, and silk fairs or markets were held periodically, chiefly at Antioch, Rey, Erzeroum, Ispahan, Jerusalem, and Mecca. The Mussulman laws forbade the faithful to negotiate with the (Christian) infidels, but there was a saving clause that helped them out of this difficulty, which allowed them to bargain with the Jews, and these middlemen did not scruple to do business with either the Christian infidel or Mussulman.
The Jews were then, as they are now, the bankers, merchants, and dealers in silk and precious stones, and even before this date they were the purveyors of all kinds of articles of luxury to the wealthy Romans of the south, the Gallo-Romans of the west, and the Goths of Northern Europe.
Notwithstanding the laws of excommunication then in force, Italian Christian merchants, as well as Jews, traded with the Mohammedan world, and both Jews and Italians travelled over Asia Minor, North Africa, throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain, France, and England, distributing the products of Saracenic looms, and establishing silk manufactories in Christian countries, notably in Sicily and Italy. Shawls, dress goods, and hangings were then the principal articles of silk manufacture.
Persia was the original place from whence came the best patterns and materials; it was really the fountain-head of textile designs, and from thence they spread over Arabia into North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, the patterns being modified according to the popular taste of the different countries and by the introduction of various symbolic features.