Fig. 257—Lacquered Boxes; Sindh. (B.)
Percier and Fontaine are names of French cabinet-makers and designers who worked in the Empire style, and who published a book of their designs.
Fig. 258.—Lacquered Leg of Bedpost; Sindh. (B.)
In England the style was copied, and we find that endless imitations of the French fashion in tables, sofas, chairs, cabinets, and clocks were designed after the same antique ideals.
In this country, during the earlier half of the present century, the mediæval Gothic style was partly revived in architecture and in furniture, mainly owing to the efforts of Augustus W. Pugin, the architect. He designed many pieces of furniture, and published a work consisting of Gothic designs in the year 1835. Notwithstanding the efforts of Pugin and some other eminent architects and “purists,” no particular lasting impression was made in this direction.
If we except a few of the best cabinet-makers’ shops, where in the present day some furniture of good design is made, the majority of such work is now made by machinery, or is often too much the work of the upholsterer, and is consequently less artistic and more mechanical both in design and construction.
Some of the most beautiful furniture of Japanese and Chinese manufacture is made in carved wood and lacquered in black or red. Cabinets with drawers and quaintly contrived cupboards and recesses (Fig. 256) are made by the Japanese, finished in lacquers, and inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. The Chinese are especially skilled in carving red lac-work. Some vases of great dimensions and of exquisite workmanship in this material may be seen in the Kensington Museum.
Lac-work is also executed with great skilfulness by the natives of India. Bracelets, armlets, or golias, are made of lac in various colours, the golden decorations of which are made from tinfoil and varnished with a yellow varnish made of myrrh, copal, and sweet oil boiled together. Boxes, bed-posts, and other furniture, made in wood or papier-mâché, are lacquered and decorated with flat renderings of flowers and conventional shapes of animals and birds (Figs. 257, 258). All kinds of toys, weights and measures, cooking utensils, circular playing-cards, turnery, &c., are objects in small wares made in the choicest lac-work of India.