SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS.
EDITED BY WILLIAM MASKELL.
No. 3.--FURNITURE ANCIENT AND MODERN.
_These Handbooks are reprints of the dissertations prefixed to the
large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the Museum
at South Kensington; arranged and so far abridged as to bring each
into a portable shape. The Lords of the Committee of Council on
Education having determined on the publication of them, the editor
trusts that they will meet the purpose intended; namely, to be useful,
not alone for the collections at South Kensington but for other
collections, by enabling the public at a trifling cost to understand
something of the history and character of the subjects treated of._
_The authorities referred to in each book are given in the large
catalogues; where will also be found detailed descriptions of the very
numerous examples in the South Kensington Museum._
W. M.
_August, 1875._
ANCIENT AND MODERN
FURNITURE AND WOODWORK
BY
JOHN HUNGERFORD POLLEN
WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS
[Illustration]
_Published for the Committee of Council on Education_
BY
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY
LONDON.
DALZIEL BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CAMDEN PRESS, N.W.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I Furniture Ancient and Modern 1
II Antique: Egypt, Nineveh and Greece 4
III The Romans 17
IV Byzantine Art 29
V The Middle Ages 41
VI The Fifteenth Century 59
VII The Renaissance in Italy 66
VIII Renaissance in England, Flanders,
France, Germany, ans Spain 78
IX Tudor and Stuart Styles 85
X Furniture of the Eighteenth Century 103
XI Changes of Taste and Style 116
Appendix: Names of the Designers of
Woodwork and Makers of Furniture 133
Index 140
LIST OF WOODCUTS.
PAGE
Egyptian chair 4
Assyrian chairs 7
Greek chair 10
Greek chairs 11
Greek couches 13
Greek mirror 14
Greek chariot 15
Pompeian interior 19
Roman tripod 22
Roman candelabra 23
Roman candelabra 24
Roman table 26
Roman couch 27
Roman ceremonial chair 28
Roman _sella_ 28
Roman kitchen utensils 30
St. Peter's chair 35
The chair of king Dagobert 43
Anglo-norman bedstead 46
The Coronation chair 49
Interior of English mediæval bedroom 51
Anglo-saxon dinner-table 52
Dinner-table of middle-class, fifteenth century 53
Table of fifteenth century 53
Travelling carriage of fifteenth century;
"Tullia driving over the body of her father" 55
Oriental panels 57
A royal dinner-table of the fourteenth century 58
French panel; fifteenth century 60
Venetian cornice 68
Portion of carved Italian chest 69
Venetian chair 71
Italian bellows 72
Another example 73
Knife-case; 1564 76
Carved panels 80
French table; sixteenth century 81
French panel; 1577 82
English panel; about 1590 86
French cabinet; sixteenth century 88
Italian oak pedestal 90
Venetian mirror-frame 91
German arm-chair; seventeenth century 93
English bracket; about 1660 97
English doorway; about 1690 98
Venetian looking-glass 100
Holy-water stoup 101
English dinner-table; 1633 102
Italian distaff 106
Roman _triclinium_ 117
Bedstead; fifteenth century 118
The great bed of Ware 119
Bedstead at Hampton Court 120
Mediæval room 120
Cradle; fifteenth century 121
Folding chair; fifteenth century 122
Italian chair; sixteenth century 123
Antique Roman tables 125
Folding table; English, 1620(?) 126
Mediæval chest 127
Roman carriages 130
English carriage; fourteenth century 131
State carriages 132
FURNITURE,
ANCIENT AND MODERN.
CHAPTER I.
The study of a collection of old furniture has an interest beyond
the mere appreciation of the beauty it displays. The carving or the
ornaments that decorate the various pieces and the skill and ingenuity
with which they are put together are well worthy of our attention. A
careful examination of them carries us back to the days in which
they were made and to the taste and manners, the habits and the
requirements, of bygone ages. The Kensington museum, for example,
contains chests, caskets, cabinets, chairs, carriages, and utensils of
all sorts and of various countries. Some of these have held the bridal
dresses, fans, and trinkets of French and Italian beauties, whose sons
and daughters for many generations have long gone to the dust; there
are inlaid folding chairs used at the court of Guido Ubaldo, in
the palace of Urbino, and of other Italian princes of the fifteenth
century; buffets and sideboards that figured at mediæval feasts; boxes
in which were kept the jesses and bells of hawks; love-tokens of
many kinds, christening-spoons, draught and chess men, card boxes,
belonging to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries;
carriages of the London of Cromwell and Hogarth, and of the Dublin of
Burke; panelling of the date of Raleigh; a complete room made for a
lady of honour to Marie Antoinette.
Besides these memorials of periods comparatively well known to us, we
shall find reproductions of the furniture of ages the habits of which
we know imperfectly, such as the chair of Dagobert, and various relics
illustrating the old classic manners and civilisation, as they have
come down to us from Roman and Greek artists, and brought to light by
the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii.
The field through which a collection of old furniture stretches is
too wide to be filled with anything like completeness; but the South
Kensington collection is already rich in some very rare examples, such
as carved chests and cabinets, decorated with the most finished wood
carving of Flanders, France, and Italy, as well as of our own country.
As wood is the material of which furniture for domestic use has
generally been made, there are, of course, limits to its endurance,
and not much furniture is to be found anywhere older than the
renaissance. Objects for domestic use, such as beds, chairs, chests,
tables, &c., are rare, and have not often been collected together.
The museum of the hôtel de Cluny, in Paris, is the best representative
collection of woodwork anterior to the quattro or cinque cento
period--_i.e._ the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
centuries. Some carved and gilt carriages belonging to the last
century are also there; and a set of carriages, carved and gilt, made
for state ceremonials, used during the latter part of the last century
and down to the days of the empire of Napoleon III. are, or were till
the war of 1870, kept at the Trianon at Versailles.
Many cabinets and tables in Boule work, Vernis-Martin work, and in
marquetry by Riesener, Gouthière, David, and others, in the possession
of Sir Richard Wallace, were lately exhibited in the museum at Bethnal
Green, and examples by the same artists from St. Cloud and Meudon are
in the Louvre in Paris. A fine collection of carriages, belonging to
the royal family of Portugal, is kept in Lisbon. These are decorated
in the "Vernis-Martin" method. Several old royal state carriages,
carved and gilt, the property of the emperor of Austria, are at
Vienna.
In order to take a general review of the kinds, forms, and changes of
personal and secular woodwork and furniture, as manners and fashions
have influenced the wants of different nations and times, it will
be well to divide the subject in chronological order into
antique; Egyptian, Ninevite, Greek, Roman:--modern; early and late
mediæval:--renaissance; seventeenth and eighteenth century work: to
be followed by an inquiry into the changes that some of the pieces of
furniture in most frequent use have undergone.