By permission of Messrs. Hampton & Sons
QUEEN ANNE OAK SETTLE.
Scrolled arms, panelled back and loose cushioned seat. Width 6 feet.

V
QUEEN ANNE STYLE

Anne. 1702-1714.1707. Act of Union between England and Scotland. First United Parliament of Great Britain met. 1713. The National Debt had risen to £38,000,000.

With the age of Queen Anne domestic furniture departed from the ornate characteristics which had marked previous epochs. The tendency in English furniture seems to have made towards comfort and homeliness. The English home may not have contained so many articles of luxury then as does the modern house with its artistic embellishments, and a popular taste rapidly ripening into a genuine love of the fine arts. "A modern shopkeeper's house," says Lord Macaulay, "is as well furnished as the house of a considerable merchant in Anne's reign." It is very doubtful whether this statement holds good with regard to the days of Elizabeth or the days of the early Stuarts, but there certainly seems to have been in the dawn of the walnut period a curtailment of luxurious effects that might well tempt a casual observer to generalise in the belief that the days of Anne spelt dulness in art.

The settle, the illustration of which is given (p. [149]), bearing the date 1705, the year after Blenheim, shows that Jacobean models of early days were not forgotten. The inlaid borders are very effective, and there is nothing vulgar or offensive in the carving. It is simple in style and the joinery is good. A walnut mirror, carved and gilded (illustrated p. [137]), exhibits the same solidity. There is nothing to show that the glorious age of Louis XIV. had produced the most sumptuous and richly decorated furniture the modern world had seen. The simplicity of this carved mirror frame is as though art had begun and ended in England, and probably it is this insularity of the furniture of this period, and the almost stubborn neglect of the important movements going on in France that makes the Queen Anne style of peculiar interest.

By permission of Messrs. Harold G. Lancaster & Co.
QUEEN ANNE MIRROR FRAME.
WALNUT, CARVED AND GILDED.

The oak desk illustrated (p. [139]), dated 1696, is similar to the one at Abbotsford, in which Sir Walter Scott mislaid his manuscript of "Waverley," where it lay among his fishing-tackle for eleven years.

Another piece of the same period is the cupboard with carved doors and drawers beneath (illustrated p. [140]).