PAGE
[Egyptian chair][4]
[Assyrian chairs][7]
[Greek chair][10]
[Greek chairs][11]
[Greek couches][13]
[Greek mirror][14]
[Greek chariot][15]
[Pompeian interior][19]
[Roman tripod][22]
[Roman candelabra][23]
[Roman candelabra][24]
[Roman table][26]
[Roman couch][27]
[Roman ceremonial chair][28]
[Roman sella][28]
[Roman kitchen utensils][30]
[St. Peter's chair][35]
[The chair of king Dagobert][43]
[Anglo-norman bedstead][46]
[The Coronation chair][49]
[Interior of English mediæval bedroom][51]
[Anglo-saxon dinner-table][52]
[Dinner-table of middle-class, fifteenth century][53]
[Table of fifteenth century][53]
[Travelling carriage of fifteenth century; "Tullia driving over the body of her father"][55]
[Oriental panels][57]
[A royal dinner-table of the fourteenth century][58]
[French panel; fifteenth century][60]
[Venetian cornice][68]
[Portion of carved Italian chest][69]
[Venetian chair][71]
[Italian bellows][72]
[Another example][73]
[Knife-case; 1564][76]
[Carved panels][80]
[French table; sixteenth century][81]
[French panel; 1577][82]
[English panel; about 1590][86]
[French cabinet; sixteenth century][88]
[Italian oak pedestal][90]
[Venetian mirror-frame][91]
[German arm-chair; seventeenth century][93]
[English bracket; about 1660][97]
[English doorway; about 1690][98]
[Venetian looking-glass][100]
[Holy-water stoup][101]
[English dinner-table; 1633][102]
[Italian distaff][106]
[Roman triclinium][117]
[Bedstead; fifteenth century][118]
[The great bed of Ware][119]
[Bedstead at Hampton Court][120]
[Mediæval room][120]
[Cradle; fifteenth century][121]
[Folding chair; fifteenth century][122]
[Italian chair; sixteenth century][123]
[Antique Roman tables][125]
[Folding table; English, 1620(?)][126]
[Mediæval chest][127]
[Roman carriages][130]
[English carriage; fourteenth century][131]
[State carriages][132]

FURNITURE,

ANCIENT AND MODERN.

CHAPTER I.

The study of a collection of old furniture has an interest beyond the mere appreciation of the beauty it displays. The carving or the ornaments that decorate the various pieces and the skill and ingenuity with which they are put together are well worthy of our attention. A careful examination of them carries us back to the days in which they were made and to the taste and manners, the habits and the requirements, of bygone ages. The Kensington museum, for example, contains chests, caskets, cabinets, chairs, carriages, and utensils of all sorts and of various countries. Some of these have held the bridal dresses, fans, and trinkets of French and Italian beauties, whose sons and daughters for many generations have long gone to the dust; there are inlaid folding chairs used at the court of Guido Ubaldo, in the palace of Urbino, and of other Italian princes of the fifteenth century; buffets and sideboards that figured at mediæval feasts; boxes in which were kept the jesses and bells of hawks; love-tokens of many kinds, christening-spoons, draught and chess men, card boxes, belonging to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; carriages of the London of Cromwell and Hogarth, and of the Dublin of Burke; panelling of the date of Raleigh; a complete room made for a lady of honour to Marie Antoinette.

Besides these memorials of periods comparatively well known to us, we shall find reproductions of the furniture of ages the habits of which we know imperfectly, such as the chair of Dagobert, and various relics illustrating the old classic manners and civilisation, as they have come down to us from Roman and Greek artists, and brought to light by the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii.

The field through which a collection of old furniture stretches is too wide to be filled with anything like completeness; but the South Kensington collection is already rich in some very rare examples, such as carved chests and cabinets, decorated with the most finished wood carving of Flanders, France, and Italy, as well as of our own country.