British Manufacturing Industries: Pottery, Glass and Silicates, Furniture and Woodwork.

by Léon Arnoux; Frederick Settle Barff; John Hungerford Pollen

By J. H. Pollen, M.A., South Kensington Museum.

I propose in the following pages to give some account of the materials used in making furniture, and of the arts applied to its decoration. From the earliest ages of society, when men moved about in tribes, they had in their tents of camels' hair simple necessaries, such as their wants required. Before people were gathered into distinct nations, or cities built with walls and gates, there were still certain human wants that must needs be supplied; and the objects that were needed to enable mankind to live with convenience and decency were found in their furniture. To this very day we may see Arab tribes wandering over sunny deserts, seeking pasturage, sowing here and there an acre of wheat or barley, or gathering dates. Their camels and dromedaries are their waggons, their horses are their friends, their families and those of others that make up their tribe are their only nationality. Yet they furnish in some sort the temporary homes which they shift from one spring of water to another, as the patches of grass or grain grow up and ripen. Their chief wants are, a cloth strained over three staves to make a house, mats or carpets to lie on, a few bowls to cook in, saddles of wood, and a few baskets or chests, made of light sticks fastened together.

In later periods of history and in more conventional states of society, we shall find this primitive type of furnishing carried out with growing splendour. In the West and in the East, in ancient and mediæval times, great rulers, though constantly in the saddle, have been followed by enormous trains of camp followers, by whom costly furniture, hangings, vessels of plate, and other luxuries, have been carried for the convenience of the leaders and warriors of moving hosts; and of course this splendour was the measure of the state and magnificence kept at home. The wealth or feudal state, shown in the furniture of old castles and palaces, extended not only to halls and rooms, but to dresses, and armour, weapons, the furniture of horses, tents, and other objects that could be carried on distant expeditions.

Ancient nations have been as well, and more splendidly, if less conveniently, provided with furniture for their houses than modern ones. It happens that there are distinct records of many kinds, showing what wealth and elaborate decoration some of the oldest races, such as the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks, bestowed on their thrones, beds, chairs, and chariots. Beds of silver and gold are mentioned in Esther i., and the curtains of the bed of Holofernes were covered with a canopy of purple and gold, with emeralds and precious stones (Judith x. 19; Esther i.). Modern princes in India continue to devote their jewels and gold to similar uses. It must be borne in mind also, that this kind of splendour is an investment of property in times and countries in which banks, insurance offices, government funds, and other organized means of investing money are unknown.

Silver, if not gold, has been used occasionally, not only in the East, but in Europe, for seats, tables, even the frames of pictures and mirrors. The royal apartments in Whitehall were completely mounted with hammered and filagree silver furniture in the seventeenth century. Carlyle records of Frederick the Great, that silver ornaments were kept in his palace, and turned to account under the exigencies of war. But of furniture generally, wood is the readiest and most proper material. It is handy, easily worked, light to carry about, and may be manufactured with or without decorations of carved work, or of any other kind. Hence, in giving an account, whether historical or mechanical, of furniture, I class it under the more general head of woodwork. Any other materials, either for the framing or ornamentation of furniture, are exceptional. The remarks now to be submitted to the reader will refer to wood that is manufactured, though I shall not enter on the interesting subject of wood structure, which has been applied to such noble and elaborate uses, and of which such splendid monuments of many periods still remain for us to study.

Most of the methods used for decorating woodwork made up into furniture are still in regular use, and the processes of putting it together are the same as they have always been. The reader may satisfy himself on this point any day by a walk in the Egyptian rooms and in the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum. In both these sections of that wonderful collection, there are remains of woodwork and of furniture, made of wood three or four thousand years old, such as stools, chairs, tables, head-rests or pillows, workmen's benches of Egyptian manufacture, fragments less complete of Nineveh make that have been portions of various utensils, and precious articles of sculptured and inlaid ivory that have been inserted into thrones and chariots. These pieces of furniture have been mortised together, or joined by dowels, dovetailed at the angles, glued, nailed, or, in short, made up by the use of several of these methods of junction at the same time. And no great changes have been introduced in the various ways of ornamenting furniture. The Egyptian woodwork was painted in tempera, and carefully varnished with resinous gums. It was inlaid with ebony and other woods, carved, gilt and, perhaps, sparingly decorated with metal ornaments. The Greeks inlaid chests and tables with carved ivory and gold, sometimes relieved with colour. The Romans, who made much furniture of bronze, cast, inlaid, damascened and gilt, made much more in wood, which they stained, polished, carved, and inlaid. Mediæval furniture was put together with mortises, tenons and glue, and was gilt and painted; the painting and gilding being laid on a ground prepared with the utmost care, and tooled and ornamented in the same way that bookbinders ornament leather. At a later period, a beautiful manufacture was carried on in various parts of Italy; a sort of mosaic in very hard stone, such as agate, lapis lazuli, and other precious materials. The Italians also used these beautiful stones inlaid in ebony. But the furniture most valued in modern times has been that which owes its name to Boulle, a French artist of the seventeenth century; and the marquetry, or wood mosaic surface decoration, which reached so high a standard of excellence during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century in France.

The former of these two classes of manufacture made, if not originated, by Boulle (and I am inclined to think that he was not the first maker), was a marquetry, or surface decoration, not composed of various woods, but of tortoiseshell and brass, with the occasional introduction of other metal, and with metal enamelled in blue and other colours. The materials principally in use, however, in Boulle marquetry are tortoiseshell and brass. In the older work, viz. that of the seventeenth century, the tortoiseshell is dark, and left in its natural hue. In later Boulle, called new Boulle, the tortoiseshell is reddened by colour, or by gilding laid under it. There is much grace and variety in the delicate arabesque designs in which one material is inlaid in the other. Parts of the surfaces are sometimes diapered, as a contrast to the free lines and curves of other parts. The inlaid surface of Boulle work is framed in by borders, cornices, or handles of brass or gilt bronze, giving a massive architectural character to the whole.

Thus if we look back to the history of furniture, not only will every kind of splendid material be found devoted to the manufacture or decoration of it, but the best art too of many different periods that money could command. It is in the late times of antiquity, and since the period of the Renaissance in modern times, that works of art have been kept on shelves or gathered into galleries. Many works of great masters, such as the chest of Cypselus, and the chairs of the great statues of ivory and gold, were prepared for celebrated shrines and temples in the cities of Greece. It was but the excessive wealth of great patricians in Rome and Constantinople that led to their becoming collectors, whether of sculpture, painting, or sumptuous silver plate. The chief object of rich and accomplished men in most ages of luxury and refinement has been, to make the house, its walls, ceilings, floors, and necessary or useful furniture, costly and beautiful. It was the same in the days of Donatello, Raphael, Cellini, and Holbein. Chests and trays were painted, together with gems, dies, brooches; table plate was modelled and chiselled; while chairs of wrought steel, or tables, cabinets, and other pieces of rich furniture, were either designed or carried into execution by these masters with their pupils and followers. In some instances, as, e.g., in that of the famous Pomeranian cabinet, in the Kunst Kammer in Berlin, a long list has been preserved of artists and craftsmen of note in their day, who combined to produce monumental examples of actual room furniture.

It cannot be denied that though great pains are taken and much expense is incurred in modern furnishing, the habits of the day lead rather to the search for comfort than for grace or beauty; and convenience rather than intrinsic value or artistic excellence. Nevertheless, a certain amount of decency and splendour is indispensable in both receiving and sleeping rooms; and though a house really well, that is beautifully, furnished is of rare occurrence, this is not for want of serious efforts, nor altogether to be laid to the account of unwillingness to spend money for such a purpose. Whether the "art of furnishing" or the desire to have what people require for use in their houses more becoming and beautiful, be a rising influence or not, it is certain that the "fancy" or ornamental furniture trade is of large and increasing importance, corresponding to the increased size and cost of modern London and country houses, compared with those built during the reigns of William III. and George IV. Every tradesman who has the pretension to repair chimney-pots, to whitewash, or paint house-fronts, ceilings, or offices, writes up the word "decorator," on his shop-front.

The Qualities required in Furniture.