FURNITURE.
"Jane, I hate æsthetic carpets;
High-art curtains make me swear.
Pray cease hunting for the latest
Queen Anne chair.
I care nothing for improvements,
On the simple style of Snell,
Which will suit both you and me ex-
tremely well."
ROBERT CUST, "Parody of the Last Ode of the
First Book of Horace."
"First, as you know, my house within the city
Is richly furnish'd with plate and gold;
Basons and ewers, to lave her dainty hands;
My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry;
In ivory coffers I have stuff'd my crowns;
In cyprus chests my arras, counterpoints,
Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl,
Costly apparel, tents and canopies,
Valance of Venice gold, in needlework;
Pewter and brass, and all things that belong
To house, or housekeeping."
SHAKESPEARE, "Taming of the Shrew," Act II., Scene I.
The last chapter on hangings, their history and uses, and the
preceding account of tapestries, naturally lead to the consideration
of the furniture which may accompany them.
Homer's description of Penelope's bridal couch is very curious. The
central idea is the bedpost, fashioned out of the stem of an
olive-tree growing in the court, and inlaid by Ulysses himself with
gold, silver, and ivory, and bands of dyed purple ox-hide. The stone
walls and roof were built over to cover it in, as it stood yet rooted
in the ground.[461]
The illustration is a very quaint delineation of a Chaldean
four-roomed house, where the rooted tree with its stem and branches is
suggestive of the state of the domestic art of the architect and the
upholsterer in those Archaic days.[462]
[Illustration: Fig. 24.
Assyrian delineation of Chaldean House.]
Furniture has been the excuse and the vehicle for embroideries, from
the footstool and the cushion to the window curtain and the
bed-hangings.[463]
Such curtains are the most permanently important features in the
economy, or rather the luxury of the house. Let us begin with the
decorations of the state bedroom.
Now the shape of the bed must regulate the design. If there is only a
canopy--like that over a throne--one may have fine work for the head
of the bed inside the canopy, and a rich border round its valance;
this should contrast with the walls; and the curtains should marry the
two together, by the embroidered borders belonging to the fashion of
the bed, and accompanying the window curtains; while the plain surface
should match with the wall hangings. Another method is to have the bed
and curtains hung with plain materials, to contrast with embroidered
or tapestried hangings on the walls.
This style of bed canopy absolutely belongs to the decoration of the
wall to which it is attached. But when we have to deal with a large
four-post bed--"a room within a room," as poor Prince Lee Boo
said--the bed may, in its own decoration, be totally independent of
the wall hangings; and care must be taken that we do not injure the
effect of both by too much contrast or too much similarity. Every room
has its own individuality, and the first beginning of its decoration
must be the key-note to guide the rest of the furnishing and
adornment. I am anxious to point out that the bed and its belongings
are a most important element in the beauty and dignity of style of the
room and the house that contains it. It is a splendid opportunity for
displaying the embroideries of the women of the family, and for
exercising their taste. "The chamber of Dais," as it was called in old
times, was always carefully adorned for the welcome of the honoured
guest. The bed-hangings, and even the linen, were embroidered,[464]
and the greatest care and the most artistic work were lavished on the
coverlet in firm stitches and twisted threads, while on the curtains
the frailest materials and most delicate stitches were freely
bestowed, as they were safe from friction. We may employ floss-silk
and satin-stitch for such works with safety.
As a rule we should avoid too great a variety of design in the
decoration of a bedroom, and at the same time beware of its becoming
monotonous.
I should say that a change in the design, though not in the style, of
the different parts of the bed is admissible, and gives opportunities
for rich and graceful work. For instance, a parsemé pattern may be
varied judiciously on the curtains, the valance, and the heading;
provided there is a connecting link (say a cypher) found throughout.
If the back of the Baldachino is embroidered, it admits of totally
different treatment, and the valance must include a border according
to its outline.
The ingenuity and magnificence of the Elizabethan bedroom furnishings
are proved by the inventories to be found in old houses. Those
describing the property of the Earl of Leicester, in the Library at
Longleat, are so characteristic of a time when each room contained
artistic furniture, that I cannot help making here some extracts, and
pointing out that embroidery was usually employed to individualize
each decoration.
"At Killingworth (Kenilworth) Lord Leicester's Bedsteads." "A fayre,
rich, standing Square Bedstead of carved walnut-tree wood: painted
with silver hearts, ragged staves and roses. The furniture and teste
crimson velvet embroidered with silver roses, and lined throughout
with Buckram." There was apparently a second set of curtains inside
of striped white satin, trimmed and fringed with silver, and the
velvet curtains were also fringed with silver with long "buttons and
loops."
Another bedstead is described, with the pillars painted red, and
varnished. The teste and curtains of red silk edged with gold and
silver bone lace, and embroidered "in a border of hops, roses, and
pomegranates."
Another "Bedstead painted red and gold, and varnished; with crimson
velvet, gold and silver in breadths, embroidered over with red, gold,
and silver,--lined with Milion (Milan) fustian," &c., &c. The
catalogue of the tapestries and embroidered hangings include fifteen
suites at Kenilworth only; and three other houses are equally well
provided. The ground of one of these suites of five pieces of
embroidery, of animals and flowers, is described as being "Stannel
cloth lined with cannevois" (canvas). Each room has chairs, cushions,
carpets (which appear to have covered the floor and the tables), and
"Cabinutts" (cabinets) covered with embroideries.
In a Florentine Palace (the Alessandri), there is a state
apartment,[465] where the bed, the walls, the curtains, and the
furniture are entirely decorated with the same splendid materials,
i.e. gold brocaded with crimson velvet. The eye longs for some repose
amidst the gorgeous reiterated forms and colours. If the bed and
curtains had been either plain crimson velvet or embroidery, it would
have been much more beautiful. This sort of example is a lesson and a
warning, which is valuable even under less splendid conditions.
Amongst our fine Indian embroideries, those of Lucknow, Gulbargah,
Aurungabad, and Hyderabad are well fitted for beds and furniture.
These we can study in the Indian Museum, and it seems a pity not to
profit by, and encourage the resources of our own Empire.
Carpets and rugs were sometimes embroidered as well as woven in
patterns. They were anciently spread on thrones, couches and sofas, at
entertainments;[466] and used for covering the catafalques at funeral
ceremonies, or for laying over tombs, as is still the custom in the
East. We who restrict their use to domestic purposes, are beginning to
understand that these decorations look best when the patterns are
geometrical, and that natural objects, such as rabbits and roses, even
when conventionalized, are unpleasant to tread upon.
The sofa and chairs are so often the vehicles for embroidery that we
must give them a separate share of our attention. The square shapes of
the chair-backs repeated several times give us an opportunity for
balancing colours and introducing forms of decoration which may be
made to contrast with everything else in the room, and so enhance the
general effect. Say that the carpet is red, and the furniture and
hangings are of tender broken tints, it will be a pleasure to the eye
if the cushions on the sofa and the chairs and seats are panelled with
a deeper or lighter colour than the carpet, but always reposing the
eye by contrasting plain surfaces with richness of design. Then the
footstool or cushion should break away entirely from the carpet on
which it lies, that the poor thing may be spared the kick it
invariably receives, when the master of the house has tripped over its
invisible presence.
For furniture, the cushion stitches, i.e. canvas and cross stitches,
are certainly the best. They are the most enduring, as they bear
friction without fraying; and are therefore, in this case, preferable
to satin stitches, which are liable to be spoilt by contact, and give
the lady of the house, who is probably the artist, a pang each time an
honoured guest occupies the comfortable chair embroidered in floss
silk, unaware that it is an æsthetic investment, and that a percentage
of its beauty is disappearing every time it is brought into collision
with broadcloth.[467] This brings us to the subject of the covers
called "housses" by French upholsterers, and which may come under the
head of small decorations, or rather, of petty disfigurements. The
things which went by the horrid name of "antimacassars" have, however,
given way to "chair-backs," and crochet has been displaced by linen
veils worked in crewels. This is a step in the right direction. No
well-regulated eye could do otherwise than suffer from the glaring
white patterns of crochet-work, mounted aggressively on the back of
every chair in the room, as a buffer between it and the human head and
shoulders. The suggestion was disagreeable, and the present chair-back
still recalls it. To reconcile us to its use, it must be sparingly
used, and artistically disposed. The "antimacassar" is a remaining
sign of the overlap of dress and manners. Our great-grandmothers
embroidered the chairs, and valued them exceedingly, and never would
have contemplated that they should be soiled by a male or female head
lying back upon them. True, they wore powder and pomatum then--but
they never leant back; such a solace, and solecism in manners, was
reserved for the privacy of the bedroom and the arm-chair covered with
cotton piqué or washing chintz. Under the new manners, and since the
introduction of the graceful lounge, the antimacassar doubtless has
saved many ancestral works, but nowadays we wear neither powder nor
pomatum. On the contrary, we dye, dry, and frizzle our hair till it
might serve as a brush to remove any dust it encountered, and it
spoils nothing.
The table-cover is a source of endless variety;[468] on the whole I
should recommend here plain surfaces and deep borders. The articles
thrown on the table are best set off by plain grounds. The colour of
the table-cover may be a test of artistic taste, and may make or mar
the whole effect of the furnishings of the room, especially if it is
newly acquired, in order to enliven the fading glories of ancestral
taste.
The Screen.--This evidently began its existence as a curtain hung on a
movable frame for the purpose of dividing large chambers for separate
uses.[469] The Chinese seem to have been the first to stretch the
curtain tight over the frame, making it a fixture, and often an actual
partition, painted with pictures by brush or needle.
To our modern home, the screen in a large room, gives a sense of
snugness, and is an actual necessity for keeping off the draughts
drifting in through ill-fitting window-frames and doors; and at the
same time serving æsthetically as a background to high chairs and
tables heaped with objects of art, and tall vases of flowers. The
high screen groups and unites the pictures of active and still life
around it; and meanwhile the little fire-screens are performing the
merciful service of saving the complexions of our daughters from being
sacrificed to Moloch in front of our scorching coal fires. I need not
recommend these as fit surfaces for embroidery--they offer themselves
to it; and the School of Art Needlework is a living witness to how
much they are appreciated and how largely employed. On the screen,
decorative ambition is permitted to rise to pictorial art. Nothing in
furniture is prettier than the screen covered with refined needle
painting, either arabesqued or naturalistic. You may vary the designs
to any extent, either as large pictures covering many folds, or in
small pictures repeated or varied on each. Here design to
individualize the living-room comes into play, and is most conspicuous
for good or for evil effect.
Amongst the occasional furnishings of the home, we would instance
embroidered curtains to veil pictures, which are perhaps too sacred to
expose to the general eye. We know how often in churches and
sacristies on the Continent, one, or even two veils have to be
withdrawn before the holy and precious picture is displayed. We have
seen these little curtains beautifully worked so as to form by their
design a picture in the space they cover. Crimson silk is perhaps
worked in gold and colours for a gilt frame, and white and silver
within ebony or walnut settings. I would recommend this style of work
to the consideration of our decorators. It is interesting to find in
an old catalogue at Hampton Court, how pictures of sacred subjects
were thus decently veiled, in the profaner moments of court
gaieties.[470]
Embroidered book coverings were often very beautiful, either as
simply clothing the boards, or when finished with metal-work corners,
backs, and clasps.
I quote the following lines, said to have been written by Tasso on a
case for a book, embroidered for him by Leonora d'Este:--
"Questo prezioso dono,
Ch' ornar coll' ago ad Eleanora piacque,
Lo vidde Aracne, e tacque.
Or se la mano, che la piaga fè al core,
Si bello fè d' amore il dolce laberinto,
Come uscirne potro, se non estinto?"
In the catalogue of Charles V.'s library, the materials used for
bindings are thus named: Soie veluyau, satin damas, taffetas, camelot,
cendal, and drap d'or; and many were embroidered.
Tact, discretion, and knowledge are required when we undertake to
adorn the home to be lived in; and while employing the art of
embroidery to embellish it, we must never forget that harmony, and the
absence of anything startling, tends to the grandiose as well as the
comfortable. Bright bits of colouring should be reserved for pictorial
art, or for small objects, such as cushions and stools. If for the
general tint blue be chosen, let it be either pure pale colour, like
the æther, or a soft one, pale or dark, such as indigo; but the
startling aniline blues should be avoided as being offensive to the
nerves of the eye. If red be the foundation colour, let it be Venetian
red, part scarlet, part crimson; or pure crimson (Tyrian purple), or
pure scarlet (cochineal). Never employ scarlet with a yellow tinge; it
may not affect yourself, but it is blinding to many eyes. Avoid
brickdust, which is simply a dirty mixture of earthy colours. Of green
there are few shades that are not beautiful, soothing, and more or
less fitted for a background to needlework. Olive-green, sea-green,
pea-green, emerald-green, and sage-green,--Nature teaches us how
these harmonize together and with all other colours. Only arsenical
green is impracticable and repulsive. Yellow, pale as a primrose,
glowing as gold, or tender as butter, is always beautiful; but one
tint we would exclude from our list, called "buff," which never can
assimilate with any other colour, and is often the refuge of the
weak-minded man that cannot face the responsibility of choosing an
atmosphere in which he will have to spend many hours of his existence,
when the walls, the ceiling, and the hangings will inevitably obtain a
subtle, but real influence on his nerves; which, in the case of buff,
will be that of a yellow fog, while pale primrose will have the effect
of early sunrise, and pure gold that of sunset.
A rule to be respected is that decoration should be reposing instead
of exciting. The unexpected, which is an element in the enjoyment of
what is new, should be such as to become the more agreeable the longer
we are accustomed to it. Mr. Morris's golden rule is this: "Have
nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to
be beautiful."[471] In decorative art, and therefore in embroidery,
the first object to consider is beauty--beauty in conception,
proportion, drawing, and colour. I would not have it thought that I am
placing our secondary art too high, and giving it too much importance,
when I apply to it the first essential rules of art; but one of these
furnishes my excuse. It is that "the simplest and smallest creation
should be as faultless as the greatest and grandest." Now beauty
cannot be obtained, even in little works, without proportion in size,
harmony and balance in colour, and correctness in form, and these
require the careful study of first principles.
Proportion in size is most important, both as regards ourselves and
our surroundings--objectively and subjectively. When our masters, the
Greeks, wished to express force and majesty, they sculptured their
gods of unearthly size, larger than their heroes, who yet exceeded in
stature their human models. The statue of the god placed in the temple
was the largest object seen, and the delicacy and refinement of the
details in dress, throne, and base only enhanced the effect of
majestic proportion.
In the temple men were to be reminded of their own nothingness. In the
gymnasium, and on the racecourse, and at the public games, the
surrounding pictures and statues were all intended to excite ambition
by showing men the heroic size to be attained by the awards of fame.
But at home, in the house, man is already supreme, and needs no
incentive to assert himself, and no tall standard by which he may be
measured. The Lares and Penates themselves were very small objects to
look at, whatever may have been the thoughts they suggested. Nothing
is so alarming or unpleasant as gigantic figures worked in tapestry or
embroidery.
And if even the guardian gods of the house were kept in due subjection
as to size, why not all decorations, and especially those representing
the flowers of the field? Certainly in worked decorations flowers
should be no larger than in nature--perhaps on the whole they are best
rather smaller. Botanical monstrosities on the wall dwarf the flowers
in a bow-pot near them, and nature has her own lovely proportions,
which should be studied and respected. These remarks, of course, apply
exclusively to domestic decoration, which is the special object of our
art, and for the guidance of which the suggestions contained in this
chapter are intended.
I would strongly advocate the return to the old system for the
production of large embroideries. If ladies would design, or have
designed for them, curtains or tapestries, and let the work-frame be
the permanent occupier of the morning sitting-room, they might at
least commence works that members of the family or friends might
continue and complete at their leisure; and should they at any time
hang fire, a needlewoman or clever professional worker might be called
in to help to finish it. Thus ladies might assist the art of
needlework by their own original ideas, and give individual beauty to
their homes, and an impetus to the occupation which helps to support
so many of our struggling sisters. The frame or métier is always a
pretty object in the drawing-room or boudoir. The French understand
this well; and make it one of their most useful "properties" in their
scenic representations of refined home life.
I will conclude this chapter with two quotations. The first is part of
Sir Digby Wyatt's advice in a Cambridge Lecture. "You can never hope
(he says) to have the means of supplying yourself with what is
beautiful unless you take pains to add to the production of that
beauty. The colour which the decorative painter" (and the embroiderer
also) "may cast around you is neither more nor less than an atmosphere
in which your eye will be either strengthened or debilitated. If you
accustom your eye only or mainly to contemplate what is satisfactory
in colour and form to the highest tastes, it will gradually become
allured to such delicacy of organization as to reject unintentionally
all that is repugnant to perfect taste."
Mr. Morris, in a lecture to the "Birmingham Society of Arts and School
of Design," says of ugly furnishings: "Herein the rich people have
defrauded themselves as well as the poor. You will see a refined and
highly educated man nowadays, who has been to Italy and Egypt and
where not, who can talk learnedly enough (and fantastically enough
sometimes) about art and literature of past days, sitting down without
signs of discomfort in a house that, with all its surroundings, is
just brutally vulgar and hideous. All his education has done for him
no more than that."
"You cannot civilize man unless you give him a share in art." But the
man must be civilized by education to accept that share of art that
his life offers to him. It must be admitted that though a man may be
educated enough to enable him to theorize, he may yet be too poor to
furnish with taste. If he is able to act up to his theories, and to
surround himself with what is refined, and fail to do so, and is
contented not to stir in this matter, he is not truly educated.
"Now that which breeds art is art. Any piece of work that is well done
is so much help to the cause." "The cause is the Democracy of Art, the
ennobling of daily and common work."
FOOTNOTES:
[461] Odyssey, xxiii., l. 190.
[462] Layard's "Monuments," 1st series, pl. 77; see
"Histoire de l'Art," ii., Perrot and Chipiez.
[463] A bed may be absolutely without any hangings or
tester, and yet carry embroidery, as in the curious
funeral couch of a sepulchral monument in painted
terra-cotta in the Campana Museum of the Louvre. Here
the mattress is worked to resemble ticking, striped, and
the cushions have embroidered ends; and are made in the
form of bolsters. There is a similar sepulchral monument
in the British Museum. Both of them were found at
Cervetri, and are quaint examples of early Etruscan art.
See Dennis' "Etruria," 2nd ed., p. 227.
[464] The thread embroideries in counted stitches were
worked in an endless variety of beautiful designs, of
which the collection in Franz and Frida Lipperheide's
"Musterbücher für Weibliche Handarbeit" is most
interesting and exhaustive; including Italian and German
"Lienenstickerei," Berlin, 1883.
[465] Of the seventeenth century.
[466] The carpets used by the Romans were called
Triclinaria Babylonica, for the use of the triclinium,
and Polymata cubicularia, for the cubiculum. These were
dyed crimson, scarlet, and purple. See Horace's Satires,
ii. 6; also Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities," s.v. Tapes., p. 102-106, Triclinium.
[467] "Marco Polo," p. 92, ed. Yule, speaking of the
ladies of Caramania in the thirteenth century, says they
produced exquisite needlework on silk stuffs of divers
colours, with figures of birds, beasts, trees, and
flowers. They worked hangings for the noblemen's use, as
well as cushions, pillows, quilts, and all sorts of
things.
[468] Lampridius ("Antonin. Heliogab." cap. xxvi. see
Bock, p. 129) says, in the life of Heliogabalus, that
table-covers were embroidered for the emperor,
representing the dishes which were to be placed upon
them at the festal table of this epicure.
[469] See the screen on the Assyrian bas-relief in the
British Museum, placed round the back of the throne on
which the king is seated. This is apparently a frame on
which hangings are fixed.
[470] See inventory Of Henry VIII.'s goods, &c., I. Ed.
VI. (Bib.) Harl. 1419, quoted by Felix Summerley in his
"Handbook of Hampton Court."
[471] I would add, "except that which is consecrated by
time or sentiment."