Tea-drinking was a social function and mainly a domestic operation, and to its popularity we owe the number of small light tables of this period.
Snuff, or the fan supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
The price of tea fluctuated very much—some years it was much cheaper than others, varying from 10s. to 30s. per lb., although it is said that in the cheaper sorts old infused leaves were dried and mixed with new ones.
As regards pottery and porcelain, the Chinese was in great request, following, no doubt, on the fashion set by Queen Mary. The English factories—Worcester, Derby, Chelsea, Bow, Wedgwood, and Minton—only started in the last half of the eighteenth century. Mr. Ashton, in his interesting book on "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," quotes the following advertisement, which points to the continued popularity of decorative china:
"Whereas the New East India Company did lately sell all their China Ware, These are to advertise that a very large parcel thereof (as Broken and Damaged) is now to be sold by wholesale and Retail, extremely cheap at a Warehouse in Dyer's Yard. Note.—It is very fit to furnish Escrutores, Cabinets, Corner Cupboards or Spriggs, where it usually stands for ornament only."
This fashion first brought into use the various forms of cabinets used for the display of china. The earliest pieces would therefore date from the end of the seventeenth, or the beginning of the eighteenth century.
In the first volume of this series we referred to a characteristic of Elizabethan woodwork, viz. inlaying—the laying-in of small pieces of one or several kinds of wood in places cut out of the surface of another kind. In the period under review two further practices are deserving of special notice. The first is veneering, which consists of wholly covering one sort of wood (frequently a common wood, such as deal or pine, but also oak) with a thin layer of choice wood—walnut, mahogany, &c. The object of veneering was not for purposes of deception, as it was not intended to produce the effect that the whole substance was of the finer sort of wood; but by means of applying these thin overlays a greater choice of wood was possible, and a more beautiful effect was produced by the juxtaposition of the various grains.
Although at the present time the term veneer is frequently used as one of approbrium, the principle it stands for is a perfectly honest one. It is very much the same as the application of the thin strips of marble to the pillars and walls of St. Mark's at Venice, which is called incrustation, and of which Ruskin writes in the "Stones of Venice." The basis of St. Mark's is brick, which is covered by an incrustation or veneer of costly and beautiful marbles, by which rich and varied colour effects are produced which would have been impossible in solid marble. The same principle applies to veneers of wood, in which there is likewise no intention to deceive but rather a desire to make the most of the materials on hand. It would have been impossible to construct a great many cabinets of solid walnut-wood, nor would the effect have been so satisfactory, because, as already pointed out, the fact of veneers being laid in thin strips immensely increases the choice of woods and facilitates the composition of pleasing effects. There is, moreover, often a greater nicety of workmanship in the making of veneered furniture than in the solid article, and it is indeed often a complaint that the doing up of old veneered furniture is so expensive and troublesome. In old days veneers were cut by hand—sometimes one-eighth of an inch thick—but the modern veneer is, of course, cut by machinery, and is often a mere shaving.