Large mirrors, with gilt frames of this material, held the places of honor on the marble chimney piece, and on the console, or pier table, which was also of gilt stucco, with a marble slab. The chiffonier, with its shelves having scroll supports like an elaborate S, and a mirror at the back, with a scrolled frame, was a favourite article of furniture.
Carpets were badly designed, and loud and vulgar in coloring; chairs, on account of the shape and ornament in vogue, were unfitted for their purpose, on account of the wood being cut across the grain; the fire-screen, in a carved rosewood frame, contained the caricature, in needlework, of a spaniel, or a family group of the time, ugly enough to be in keeping with its surroundings.
The dining room was sombre and heavy. The pedestal sideboard, with a large mirror with a scrolled frame at the back, had come in; the chairs were massive and ugly survivals of the earlier reproductions of the Greek patterns, and though solid and substantial, the effect was neither cheering nor refining.
In the bedrooms were winged wardrobes and chests of drawers; dressing tables and washstands, with scrolled legs, nearly always in mahogany; the old four-poster had given way to the Arabian or French bedstead, and this was being gradually replaced by the iron or brass bedsteads, which came in after the "Exhibition of 1851" had shewn people the advantages of the lightness and cleanliness of these materials.
In a word, from the early part of the last century, until the impetus given to Art by this great Exhibition had had time to take effect, the general taste in furnishing houses of all but a very few persons was at about its worst.
In other countries the rococo taste had also taken hold. France maintained a higher standard than England, and such figure work as was introduced into her furniture, was better executed, though her joinery was inferior. In Italy, old models of the Renaissance still served as examples for reproduction, but the ornament was more carelessly carved and the decoration less considered. Ivory inlaying was largely practised in Milan and Venice; mosaics of marble were specialités of Rome and of Florence, and were much used in the decoration of cabinets; Venice was busy manufacturing carved walnutwood furniture, in buffets, cabinets, negro page boys elaborately painted and gilt; and carved mirror frames, the chief ornaments of which were cupids and foliage.
Italian carving has always been free and spirited, the figures have never been wanting in grace, and though by comparison with the best time of the Renaissance there is a great falling off, still, the work executed in Italy during the nineteenth century has been of considerable merit as regards ornament, though this has been overdone. In construction, and joinery, however, the Italian work was and still is, for the most part, very inferior. Cabinets of great pretension and elaborate ornament, inlaid perhaps with ivory, lapislazuli, or marbles, are so imperfectly made that one would think ornament, and certainly not durability, had been the object of the producer.
In Antwerp, Brussels, Liege, and other Flemish Art centres, the School of Wood Carving, which came in with the Renaissance, appears to have been maintained with more or less excellence. With the increased quality of the carved woodwork manufactured, there was a proportion of ill-finished and over-ornamented work produced; and although, as has been before observed, the manufacture of cheap marqueterie in Amsterdam, and other Dutch cities was bringing the name of Dutch furniture into ill-repute—still, so far as the writer's observations have gone, the Flemish wood-carver appears to have been, at the time now under consideration, ahead of his fellow craftsmen in Europe; and when, in the ensuing chapter, we shall notice some of the representative exhibits in the great International Competition of 1851, it will be seen that the Antwerp designer and carver was certainly in the foremost rank.
In Austria, too, some good cabinet work was being carried out, M. Leistler, of Vienna, having at the time a high reputation.