Thro’ India shops, to Motteux’s, or the Change,
Where the tall jar erects its stately pride,
With antique shapes in China’s azure dyed;
There careless lies a rich brocade unrolled,
Here shines a cabinet with burnished gold.
But then, alas! I must be forced to pay,
And bring no penn’orths, not a fan away!”
Hampton Court was remodelled under Mary’s direction. It almost entirely lost its Tudor character, and became characteristically Dutch in appearance. Sir Christopher Wren’s talents were called into requisition to design the shelves, cornices and tiered corner chimney-pieces that are still to be seen there. Verrio was employed to adorn the staircases and ceilings with his gaudy frescoes. Grinling Gibbons, a Dutchman, whom Evelyn had discovered, was responsible for the carvings that even to-day are the admiration and despair of the woodworker. The fish-ponds and gardens were laid out in the formal Dutch taste, with fountains, clipped trees, hedges, avenues, geometrical beds, an orangery and an aviary of tropical birds. The furniture was due to Marot and Wren.
The comparatively small amount of furniture now to be seen in the show-rooms of Hampton Court belongs mainly to this period. It consists principally of chairs, stools (tabourets), beds, card-tables, mirrors and chandeliers.
Many of these specimens are extremely interesting, showing the Marot taste. Of the latter, there are stools, chairs and tables with the heavy scroll foot and stretchers, the latter joining in the centre and supporting there a carved ornament; other tables have four scroll supports and stand on bulb feet. Some of the stools and tabourets have gilded woodwork. Among the later style we may note a chair in William III’s Presence Chamber, with tall back, jar-shaped splat, cabriole leg, hoof feet and straining-rails, the front one higher than the other; and also two card-tables in the King’s Drawing-room, with slender legs ending in the hoof foot, and the tops supplied with wells for the counters and slight depressions for the candles.