Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork

by John Hungerford Pollen

Another remarkable class of gilt woodwork, for which Florence and other cities had found trained carvers, was the framework of carriages. In England, France, Germany, and Italy carriages during the seventeenth century were stately, and certainly wonderful pieces of furniture. Examples of these showy carriages exist still. There is a collection belonging to the royal family of Portugal, now preserved at Lisbon, one or two in the museum of the hôtel de Cluny at Paris, dating from the time of Martin and painted by him, and there are a few carriages of old date at Vienna and probably in some private houses. The state-coach of the Speaker is an English example of the seventeenth century.

Germany differed less from Italy even than France in wood carving, interior room fittings, and the frequent pedimental compositions containing grotesques, or heraldic achievements on a scale of sumptuous display. The German princes were many of them skilful and intelligent patrons of art, and made collections in their residences. A well-known piece belonging to the early seventeenth century is preserved in the royal museum at Berlin. This is known as the Pomeranian art cabinet. It is 4 ft. 10 in. high, 3 ft. 4 in. wide by 2 ft. 10 in. deep, made of ebony with drawers of sandal wood lined with red morocco leather, and is mounted with silver and pietra dura work, and fitted inside with utensils of various kinds. The chair, of which we give a woodcut, is German of about the same date.

In the west of Europe, during the seventeenth century, marquetry was extensively used, and became the leading feature of furniture decoration. Inlaying had long been in use; but the new marquetry was a picturesque composition, a more complete attempt at pictorial representation. It comes before us in old furniture under various forms, and many examples of it may be studied in different collections. In this country we may consider it mainly as an imported art of the reign of William and Mary, when Dutch marquetry furniture became the fashion in the form of bandy-legged chairs, upright clock fronts, secrétaires or bureaux, or writing cabinets which were closed in the upper and middle parts with doors, and other pieces that offered surfaces available for such decoration. The older designs on work of this kind represent tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds, &c., all in gay colours, generally the self colours of the woods used. Sometimes the eyes and other salient points are in ivory or mother-of-pearl. In France, in the earlier marquetry designs, picturesque landscapes, broken architecture, and figures are represented. Colours are occasionally stained on the wood. Ivory and ebony were favourite materials; as also in Germany and in Italy.

It is to be noted that as the vigour of the great sixteenth century movement died out, the mania for making furniture in the form of architectural models died out also; nor do we find it becoming a fashion again till quite modern times, under the Gothic and other revivals at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century. The architectural idea was in itself full of grandeur, and it was productive of very beautiful examples in the sarcophagus-shaped chests or cassoni, and in cabinet work, though the façades of temples and the vaults and columns of triumphal arches in Rome do not bear to be too completely reduced to such small proportions. With the introduction of marquetry into more general use we recognise not only a new or renewed method of decoration, but a changed ideal of construction. Boxes, chests, tables, cabinets, &c., were conceived as such. They were made more convenient for use, and were no longer subdivided by architectural mouldings and columns, all so much extra work added to the sides and fronts.

About the middle of the seventeenth century a kind of work altogether new in the manufactory of modern furniture made its appearance under the reign of Louis the fourteenth of France. That king rose to a position in Europe that no monarch of modern times had occupied before, and the great ministers of his reign had the wisdom to take special measures for the establishment of the various arts and manufactures in which either the Italians or Flemings excelled the French as well as other nations. Colbert, his minister of finance, amongst his commercial reforms of learned societies and schools of art, founded in 1664 an "Academie royale de peinture d'architecture et de sculpture." It was into this that the designers of architecture, woodwork, ornament or furniture, were admitted. He established also the famous factory of the "Gobelins" for making pictorial tapestry. The place took its name from the brothers Gobelin, Flemings, who had a dyeing-house in the Rue Mouffetard. Lebrun, the painter, was the first head of it. Another important name is that of Jean Lepautre. He has left numerous designs of ornament behind him for panelling, mirror frames, carriages, &c. Lepautre was a pupil of Adam Philippon. This artist, whose chief calling was that of a joiner and cabinet maker, has also left designs.

To Colbert is due the credit of pushing forward the renewal or completion of the royal palaces; especially the château of Versailles. For the furniture of this palace we find the new material employed, namely, boule marquetry, which owes its name to the maker. The orthography of proper names was still often unsettled at that time, and we find the name variously spelt. The correct way seems to have been Boulle; but we shall retain the more usual mode, both for the artist and for his work. André Charles Boule was born in 1642, and made the peculiar kind of veneered work composed of tortoiseshell and thin brass, to which are sometimes added ivory and enamelled metal; brass and shell, however, are the general materials. Boule was made head of the royal furniture department and was lodged in the Louvre. A very interesting early specimen of this work is now at Windsor castle, and other early pieces belong to Sir Richard Wallace. The date attributed to the first makes it doubtful whether Boule may not have seen the same sort of work practised in other workshops. This kind of marquetry has, however, been assigned by general consent to Boule.

In the earlier work of Boule the inlay was produced at great cost, owing to the waste of valuable material in cutting; and the shell is left of its natural colour; in later work the manufacture was more economical. Two or three thicknesses of the different material were glued or stuck together and sawn through at one operation. An equal number of figures and of matrices or hollow pieces exactly corresponding were thus produced, and by counter-charging two or more designs were obtained by the same sawing. These are technically known as "boule and counter," the brass forming the groundwork and the pattern alternately. In the later or "new boule," the shell is laid on a gilt ground or on vermilion. The brass is elaborately chased with a graver.

Besides these plates of brass for marquetry ornaments, Boule, who was a sculptor of no mean pretensions, founded and chased up feet, edgings, bracket supports, &c., to his work in relief, or in the round, also in brass. The original use of these parts was to protect the edges and angles, and bind the thin inlaid work together where it was interrupted by angles in the structure. Afterwards brass mounts, more or less relieved, were added to enrich the flat designs of the surfaces. Classical altars, engraved or chased as mere surface decoration, would receive the addition of claw feet actually relieved. Figures standing on such altars, pedestals, &c., were made in relief more or less bold. In this way Boule's later work is not only a brilliant and rich piece of surface decoration, but its metallic parts are repoussé or embossed with thicknesses of metal ornament. In boule work all parts of the marquetry are held down by glue to the bed, usually of oak. The metal is occasionally fastened down by small brass pins or nails, which are hammered flat and chased over so as to be imperceptible.