Fig. 248.—Commode, with Lac Panels, and Mounts by Caffieri. Louis-Quinze Style.
It was quite a common practice to cover or to panel furniture with plaques of Japanese lacquer, and to mount them in chased metal or ormoulu decorations. A unique commode is illustrated at Fig. 248, made from panels of very old Japanese lacquer and highly decorated with ormoulu mounts by Caffieri, a skilled chaser of the Louis-Quinze period.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century an improvement in the design of furniture and of ornament generally crept in, owing to the study of the ornamentation and design of the classic objects that had been found in the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These cities had been discovered in 1713, and about forty or fifty years later books were published illustrating the buried remains, which helped to change the public taste, and by degrees a demand arose for designs of a more severe and classic kind.
The prevailing taste was then apparently gratified by the mixture or grafting of a certain quantity of classic forms with the former frivolous style of the Louis Quinze.
The style in furniture and in ornament now developed into what is known as the “Louis Seize” (Louis XVI.), and consisted in its ornament of a composition of thin scrolls, garlands, bows and quivers of arrows, ribbons and knots, medallions with classic cameo-cut subjects. Mouldings were fine and delicately ornamented, and of straight-lined variety; in fact, the straight line now reasserted itself in architecture and furniture design (see Figs. 249, 250), in refreshing and healthy contrast to the tottering and riotous curves of Louis XV. and the Du Barry period.
Some of the most beautiful furniture expressive of the utmost elegance was made by Riesner and David, and was decorated with ormoulu mounts by Gouthière for the Queen Marie Antoinette. Riesner and Gouthière were the ablest men of their time, who generally worked together in the making and decorating of the finest furniture of this period. We are fortunate in possessing in the Jones Collection at South Kensington some of the very finest examples of this furniture, much of which was made for Marie Antoinette (Figs. 251, 252).
Fig. 249.—Louis-Seize Writing Table.
Riesner usually worked in light and richly-coloured woods, such as tulip-wood, holly, maple, laburnum, purple-wood, and rosewood, for his marquetry work, and used oak for the linings and foundations.
