The Henri IV. and Louis XIII. styles are very similar, an oval shield surrounded by an ornamental cartouche, either having angels or mermaids, or garlands of flowers, worked into the frame, both sides of which are alike, or only differ in small details of light and shade, etc. Of the two, the later style is the simpler and less decorative.
The style Louis XIV. is but a development of the above. It is grander, more pompous, more ornate. The cartouche projects further from the edge of the shield, it terminates at the top in a large shell, in which sometimes a female face is shown, or it may be a canopy is suspended above by festoons of flowers. The ornamentation is still symmetrical, and the foliations of the frame are precise and formal, every line having a definite purpose in the design.
In what is called the style Régence (some time after 1715) all this is changed, a light arabesque design is found, quite à la Watteau, graceful and frivolous. Little urns on little brackets, tiny heads springing up from nowhere, dainty festoons trailing round and about without any definite aim in life, and finials at top and bottom which finish nothing because nothing has been commenced.
Pretty, but short-lived, the style Régence gave way to what is known as the Louis XV. This has been stigmatized as Rococo, but little we heed the sneer; it has given us the loveliest of book-plates, and fortunately this was the period when libraries and book-plates were most in fashion in France. Curiously enough our artistic neighbours claim this style, with all its graceful convolutions and irregularities, its scorn for anything approaching regularity of form, as essentially French, whilst we, with equal certainty, assign its invention to Chippendale and name it after him. Without stopping to discuss the question of precedence, that name will suffice to indicate to any British collector the style Louis XV.: a pear-shaped shield in a framework ornamented with rockwork, flowers, branches, and ribbons, a coronet, probably very much on one side, not a straight line anywhere, and no two parts of the design similar, the supporters being shown with the same disregard for method or heraldic convention.
The reaction from this style to that of Louis XVI. is again clearly marked. Straight lines and formal outlines reappear with solid square bases to support the shields. Above the shields the coronets are clearly and neatly shown, and from them hang, in graceful curves, wreaths of flowers, festoons of roses, palm branches, or laurel leaves. On the bases, in some cases, the names of the owners appear, in others geometrical ornaments, Greek key patterns, or simple festoons. This style, somewhat formal and severe, yet essentially French, lasted until the Revolution.
Under the first Empire there was no style, or what was worse, a bad style, stiff, formal, semi-Greek, semi-Egyptian, and wholly false.
The Restoration brought little improvement—a Gothic revival, here borrowing, there stealing, from all the styles that had been in vogue, and spoiling all in turn.