We may know what furniture was considered necessary for a room by the following information from inventories between 1675 and 1700: One set of furniture consisted of a bed, four fauteuils, twenty-eight folding-stools, a screen and a table-carpet of embroidery on a gold background depicting the history of Moses.
Another set consisted of a bed, three fauteuils, eight folding-stools, two table-carpets, two cushions, a screen, a daïs and wall-hangings. The material for these decorations was velvet branches of bright amaranth on a silver background, combined with another material of cloth-of-silver with little flowers of amaranth. The bed, which was 6½ feet long and 7½ feet high, comprised three valances, four curtains, four cantonnières[[12]] and three lower valances, all of the velvet; while the three outside valances, the sheaths for the two bed-posts, and the couverture de parade, and the linings of the curtains, were of the cloth of silver with amaranth flowers. The whole bed was trimmed with gold and silver braid, and on the top of the canopy were four pommes with bunches of mixed feathers, probably white and amaranth.
Another set of furniture was of red satin and white taffeta in squares, and ornamented with gold braid and gold fringe. The pieces comprised a bed, three fauteuils, twelve folding-stools, a table-carpet, a screen and a square cushion. The bed was 7 feet high and 6 feet wide; its three valances, four cantonnières and three lower valances were of the red and white taffeta embroidered with gold, while its four curtains, head-board, interior hangings and two posts were covered with gold brocade.
We also learn of a set comprising a bed, three fauteuils, six chairs with backs, twelve folding-stools, a daïs and a chaise de commodité of blue velvet, ornamented with gold and silver braid and fringe.
Another set was of white damask trimmed with fringes of gold, silver and green silk; another was of white damask and gold; and another set consisting of a bed, eleven folding-seats and four fauteuils, was of Spanish leather, cut out, embroidered and edged with black, and laid on blue damask. The carpet for the table and the two square cushions were of the same.
In many rooms of the day, the alcove occurs. It was introduced from Spain, and took its name from the Spanish alcoba and the Arabic Al Koba, the tent, or the place where one sleeps, or rests. It was made fashionable by its appearance in the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and, of course, the home of every Précieuse had to have one. Fouquet had rooms with alcoves at his Château de Vaux and when “La grande Mademoiselle” took refuge at her Château de Saint-Fargeau, during the troubles of La Fronde, she at once conformed to the taste of the day. “On the very day” (of her arrival) she writes: “I wished to change the chimney-pieces and doors and to make an alcove.”
The alcove became so fashionable that it soon supplanted the ruelle; and the “coureurs de ruelles” were known thenceforward as “coquets d’alcôvistes.”
But what they called alcove in the Seventeenth was not what they called alcove in the Eighteenth Century. At first, it was a part of the room set apart from the rest by a railing or some columns of architectural pretensions. In 1684, in the État du mobilier de la couronne there is mentioned an alcove balustrade of chiselled silver of fabulous price.
The alcove was in reality a little room within a large room and here the bed and chairs for guests were placed.
Typical and luxurious alcoves are shown in the designs by Marot and Lepautre.