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

by Léon Arnoux; Frederick Settle Barff; John Hungerford Pollen

No such work as this can be pointed out in our London workshops, but patterns and arabesques, both of wood and ivory, are occasionally let into solid beds of wood so deeply, as to be actually mortised into the main body of the structure. This is done both by our own makers and by the French cabinet maker, Henri Fourdinois, a prize piece of whose make was bought for the South Kensington museum. It is not uncommon to insert pieces of lapis lazuli, bloodstone, and precious marbles into centres of carved woodwork, and I may call attention to the use of plates, medallions and cameos of Wedgwood, or Sèvres ware, which were frequently inlaid by Chippendale, and by the great French furniture makers, or ébénistes, of the last century. These are used in the modern satin-wood furniture of Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and I have lately seen a coarser material used, viz. bas-reliefs in stoneware, imitations of the gris de Flandres, by Messrs. Doulton. These last, however, may be said to be rather panels set in frames, than pieces let into cavities in wood.

Veneering and Marquetry.—An effective method of ornamenting woodwork by the application to the surface of other woods is what is known as veneering and marquetry. The surface is in both cases covered with a thin layer of other woods, fastened on with glue and by strong pressure. Some of the panelling, table tops, and other joiner's work already described, is clothed with a thin slice of more valuable wood. This is called veneering. Woods such as ebony, tuya, satin-wood, palm, hare-wood, and a number more, are only to be had in small scantlings, logs a few feet long, and six or seven inches wide. Other woods, of which the grain is most beautifully marked, are cut from roots, wens, and other excrescences of the trees, to which they belong, and are only found occasionally, and in lumps of no great size. The contortions of the grain, which make them so valuable and beautiful, are owing to peculiar conditions of growth. In all these cases an inch plank of wood has to be cut into very thin slices, twelve being cut with a saw, or from eighteen to twenty-two if it is cut with a knife, as in that case no material is wasted by the opening made by a saw. These slices are laid on the surface of well-seasoned wood, and in the workshops of our great manufacturers will be seen a metal table or bed, prepared expressly for the process of veneering.

Supposing the object to be veneered to be a large surface—a number of panels, or the top of a table of ebony, for instance—the substance of the table may be Honduras mahogany. The wood has been carefully seasoned, and the top grooved, tongued, and firmly glued up to the required form. The ebony surface is also carefully fitted together and glued on paper, the surface being left rough, so that the glue may have a firm hold on the fibre of the grain. A corresponding roughness is produced on the upper surface of the mahogany, which is then laid on the metal bed. Glue, perfectly fluid and hot, is now rapidly brushed over the entire surface, and the thin veneer top is laid upon it, and firmly pressed down by several workmen, who then carefully go over the whole with hammers having broad, flat heads; the object of this being to flatten any apparent thicknesses of glue or bubbles of air which would interfere with the perfect contact of the two surfaces of wood. The whole is then placed under a caul or frame that touches it all over, and a number of strong bars are screwed down till the greater part of the glue has been pressed out. The complete union of the surfaces of the woods is effected not so much by the quantity of glue as by the absolute exclusion of the air, and this can only be done by pressure. The whole metal bed or frame in which the veneering is performed is heated by steam, or by gas-burners, where steam cannot be applied. The wood is left for twenty-four or thirty hours, till the glue has been completely set and hardened. The caul or frame is then removed, the paper used to keep the thin veneer together before gluing is scraped off, and the work of finishing and French polishing takes place. French polish, or careful wax polish, has the effect of keeping out air and damp, which latter might soften the glue and disintegrate the surface veneer. It is to be observed, that such wood as the finest French or Italian walnut is often veneered on mahogany, for it lasts better in this condition than if it was solid; large surfaces and thicknesses of walnut being difficult to procure without faults. Walnut veneers are applied in greater thicknesses than ebony; and if the surfaces to which they are applied are curved, cauls, or shaped pieces of wood made to fit them, are screwed down and held by numerous wooden vices, as in the method already described.

Marquetry is the application of veneer made of different woods, ivory, &c., composed like a mosaic or painting executed in coloured woods. This kind of decoration is of ancient use, was much in vogue during the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was carried to a great pitch of perfection in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth. It is still practised, and the process may be seen in full activity in the workshops of our modern furniture makers. In cutting out the forms required for marquetry decoration, one, two, or more thicknesses of thin wood are gummed or pasted together, according to the pattern required. In many fine pieces of marquetry there are, as in the case of a cabinet or table, portions of the surface entirely occupied by quiet reticulated patterns. As in these cases the same pattern often recurs, several thicknesses of wood can be laid together, and are then firmly fixed in a vice, having pasted over them a piece of paper on which the pattern is drawn. A small hole is bored where it will not interfere with the design, and the end of a thin watch-spring saw is passed through, and then re-attached to the frame that strains it out in working order. With this in his hand, the workman carefully traces the outlines of his drawing, which the tenuity of the saw-blade allows the tool to follow into every curve and angle. The thicknesses are then separated with the blade of a knife, and the slices become alternately pattern and ground, so that a set of patterns and a set of matrices of each wood are ready for use, and can be applied either on different parts of the same, or on two separate pieces of furniture. If a flower or other ornament is required which will not be repeated, two thicknesses only will be cut together. It is necessary that the same action of the saw should cut out the pattern and the ground in the two woods required, so that they may fit exactly.

When all the portions of the design are cut out, they are pasted on paper, and can be fitted together like mosaic. A little sawdust from the woods used, and a very small quantity of glue, join the edges and fill up the fine openings made by the saw; and in this way the whole surface of the marquetry is laid down on paper. In the case of flowers, heads, architectural or other designs, some slight additions, either of lines to indicate stalks, leaf-fibre, or the features of the face, are made with a graver, and stained; or gradations of a brown colour are given, in the case of white or light-tinted wood, by partial burning. It was formerly the custom to burn with a hot iron, but a more delicate tint is given by using hot sand, and this is the best method of tinting beech, lime, holly, box, maple, or other woods which are nearly white. There remains nothing but to rough the surface of the furniture, and to lay down the marquetry on it, precisely as in the case of plain veneering. When the glue is dry and hard, the pressure is taken off, the paper which is on the outer surface is scraped away, and the whole rubbed down to a fine surface and French polished. The most beautiful work of this description was made in France by Riesener and David, during the reigns of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. Besides graceful and delicate design, which these artists (for such they were) thoroughly understood, the beauty of their work owes much to their charming feeling for colour. Both used light woods, such as maple, holly, box, lime, &c., and laid brown woods, such as laburnum and walnut, on this light ground. Sometimes architectural compositions in the manner of Pannini, a favourite Roman painter of the day, were designed over the doors or flaps of secrétaires and cabinets, or busts, medallions, baskets of roses, &c. The charm of the work is the grace and repose with which these simple decorations are laid on. Compare some of the work of Riesener and David, on the cabinet doors in the collection of Sir Richard Wallace, with the glaring contrasts, the gaudy, often discordant colouring, and the crowded compositions of modern marquetry, at least of most of it. There is a tenderness of treatment, a grace and harmony of colour and arrangement throughout the former, which is wholly wanting, and which no lapse of time will add to the latter. Though these criticisms are not meant to be applied to the products of the leading houses now under review, the reader who has taken an observant stroll amongst the furniture of Sir Richard Wallace, at Bethnal Green, will find abundant contrasts as he walks along the streets of London.

In order to illustrate my remarks on the processes of colouring woods by burning or etching, I may point to a large writing bureau, or secrétaire, belonging to Sir Richard Wallace, made by Riesener, in 1769 (and signed), for Stanislaus, king of Poland. It is decorated partly with reticulated pattern work, partly with the royal cipher in medallions, and with other medallions containing emblematic figures, such as a carrier pigeon, a cock, the emblem of vigilance, or the head of a girl placing her finger on her lips, an emblem of silence. All these medallion figures are broadly drawn, the very slightest and most delicate tint only being added to represent shading, while the drawing is a single line lightly pencilled.

The materials used in the best marquetry are lime, holly, box, maple, beech, poplar, for white; pear, laburnum, palm (cut across the grain), lignum vitæ, walnut, teak, partridge-wood, for brown; wood called in the trade fustic, satin-wood, for yellow; tulip, purple-wood, amboyna, mahogany, thuya, log-wood, cam-wood, and varieties of these woods, for red; ebony for black, or stained wood. Greens and blues are also stained with metallic dyes. The finest of the old work may be called studies in brown and white, and the red woods are used sparingly; the dyed woods still more so, nor can they be said ever to be really effective.

As an example of great mechanical skill in a modern piece of very difficult execution, I might call attention to Messrs. Jackson and Graham's elaborate cabinet of marquetry, in patterns of Oriental character, after designs by the late Mr. Owen Jones (sent to the Vienna Exhibition by Messrs. Jackson and Graham). It had an architectural front, with detached columns and groups of architectural mouldings, some of them put together with the lines of moulding in woods of contrasted hue, an element of ornamentation that took from the unity and completeness of cap or corona mouldings. The little columns of an inch and a half diameter were entirely covered with reticulated pattern in different woods. As the shafts were tapering, so the reticulated patterns had to be graduated in size from top to bottom. This was a feat of most difficult execution, nor was it the only difficulty in this portion of the design. The marquetry in the instance of these columns had to be wrapped round each circular shaft; and each edge, therefore, of every portion of pattern and groundwork had to be sawn out with bevelled edges, so that when rolled, the inner edges might meet and the outer edges remain in contact, which would not be so, were they not bevelled: the contrary would happen in that case, and the outer edges would start in sunder. These columns were two feet and some inches high, and the little reticulations of pattern recurred many dozens of times. The conditions of which I speak had to be carefully observed in the case of each. The pattern, too, was graduated, as above stated, so that they had to be sawn out by separate cuttings—a most laborious and costly operation.

We miss in the great English houses one of the most costly and beautiful elements in the adornment of furniture, and that is, the fine moulded and chiselled bronze work, always gilt, which enters so largely into the decoration of fine old French marquetry. The English furniture makers of a century ago were not so behindhand, and old carriages had door-handles, and furniture had mounts of gilt bronze. Probably the French were always superior to us in this kind of skill. They still produce good work of this class, cast and afterwards cleaned and tooled with the chisel, but it is not equal to the work of the same description by Gouthière, and the famous ciseleurs of Paris in the last century.

I must not pass over in silence a beautiful kind of furniture which was in fashion a century since, and has been revived by Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and other firms, viz. satin-wood furniture. In the time of Chippendale, Sheraton, Lock, and other great cabinet makers, contemporaries of the French artists Riesener, Gouthière, and David, satin-wood was imported from India. It was made up by veneering, and was decorated with medallions, some of marquetry, some of Wedgwood ware, after the model of the French inlaying of Sèvres porcelain plaques, and in some instances painted with miniature scenes like the Vernis Martin, called after a French decorator of the name of Martin. Old examples of satin-wood furniture, such as tables, bookcases, chests of drawers, &c., are not uncommon, decorated in one or more of these methods. Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann were employed amongst many others in painting cameo medallions, busts, Cupids and so forth for satin-wood furniture. Messrs. Wright and Mansfield have executed much of this work, and sent a cabinet of large size to the Paris Exhibition of 1867, decorated with medallions, swags, ribbons, &c., partly in marquetry of coloured woods, partly in plates of Wedgwood ware. The piece is further set off by carved and gilt portions, not, however, sufficiently attractive to add greatly to the effect of the whole cabinet, which is gay, cheerful, of beautiful hue, and excellent workmanship. It is in the South Kensington Museum.