The colour scheme was such as would naturally be dictated by the general mood of artificiality in an age when dreams were lived and the ruling classes obsessed by a passion for amusements, invented to divert the mind from actualities. This colour scheme was beautifully light in tone and harmoniously gay, whether in tapestries, draperies and upholstery of velvets, or flowered silks, frescoes or painted furniture. It had the appearance of being intended to act as a soporific upon society, whose aim it was to ignore those jarring contrasts which lay beneath the surface of every age.

CHAPTER XX

CHARTS SHOWING HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF FURNITURE

LOUIS XIV,
1643 to 1715
Key-note
The Grand
Audience Rooms		 Compressed regularity giving way in reaction to a ponderous ugliness. Straight, square, grooved and very squat cabriole legs.
THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV,
1715 to 1774
Key-note
The Boudoir		 The Reign of Woman. Cabriole legs of a perfect lightness and grace.
LOUIS XVI,
1774 to 1793
Key-note
The Salon Intime 		The transition style between the Bourbon Interior Decoration and that of the "Directorate"and "Empire," characterised by a return to the classic line which reflects a more serious turn of mindon part of the Nation in an age of great mental activity. Legs tapering straight, rounded and grooved. A few square-grooved legs and a fewgraceful, slender cabriole legs.
THE FIRST EMPIRE,
NAPOLEON I,
1804 to 1814		 Classic lines.
Classic decorations with subjects taken from Greek mythologies.
Winged figures, emblems of liberty; antique heads of helmeted warriors,made like medallions, wreaths, lyres, torches, rosettes, etc.
Besides the wonderful mounts of Ormoulu, designed by the great sculptorsand painters of the period, there was a great deal of fine brass inlaying.
Antique vases taken from ancient tombs were placed in recesses in the wallsof rooms after the style of the ancient "Columbaria."
Every effort was made to surround Napoleon I with the dignity and austeresumptuousness of a great Roman Emperor. As we have said, he had been in Rome and he had been in Egypt;the art of the French Empire was reminiscent of both. Napoleon would outstrip the other conquerors of the world.
Some Empire furniture shows the same fine turning which characterizesJacobean furniture of both oak and walnut periods. We refer to the round, not spiral, turning. See legs of Empiresofa on which Madame Récamier reclines in the well-known portrait by David (Louvre).
ENGLISH FURNITURE
THE OAK PERIOD
(including early
Jacobean)		 Gothic, through 14th Century.
Renaissance, 16th Century
Elizabethan, 16th Century.
Jacobean or Stuart, 17th Century; James I,
Charles I and II, and James II, 1603-1688.
THE WALNUT PERIOD Late Jacobean.
William and Mary, 1688.
Queen Anne, 1702.
"MAHOGANY" PERIOD
(and other imported woods),
or, CHIPPENDALE PERIOD.		 Chippendale.
HEPPELWHITE.
SHERATON
THE ADAM BROTHERS.		 18th Century.
GOTHIC PERIOD,
Through 14th Century.		 Almost no furniture exists of the 13th Century. We get the majority of our ideas from illustratedmanuscripts of that time. The furniture was carved oak or plain oak ornamented with iron scroll work, intendedboth for strength and decoration.
RENAISSANCE OR
ELIZABETHAN,
16th Century.		 The characteristic, heavy, wide mouldings and small panels, and heavyround carving.
JACOBEAN OR
STUART PERIOD,
17th Century.
WALNUT PERIOD,
late 17th Century.		 Panels large and mouldings very narrow and flat, or no mouldings at all, and flat carving.The classic influence shown during the period of the Commonwealth in designs, pilastars and pediments was theresult of a classic reaction, all elaboration being resented. The Restoration brought in elaborate carving. Dutchinfluence is exemplified in the fashion for inlaying imported from Holland, as well as the tulip design. Turned legs,stretchers, borders and spiral turnings, characterized Jacobean style.
In the GOTHIC PERIOD (extending through 14th Century), as the delightful irregularity in line and decoration shows, there was NO SET TYPE; each piece was an individual creation and showed the personality of maker.Tables, chests, presses (wardrobes), chairs and benches or settles.
During RENAISSANCE OR ELIZABETHAN PERIOD (16th Century) types begin to establish and repeat themselves.Table chests, presses, chairs, benches, settles, and small chests of drawers.
In the JACOBEAN (17th Century) there was already a set type, pieces made all alike, turned out by the hundreds. Inlaying in ebony, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and ebonised oblong bosses of the jewel type (last half of 17th Century). The tulip design introduced from Holland as decoration.
Turned and carved frames and stretchers; caned seats and backs to chairs, velvet cushions, velvet satin damask and needlework upholstery, the seats stuffed.

Henry VIII made England Protestant, it having been Roman Catholic for several hundred years before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons and for a thousand years after.