TUDOR AND STUART STYLES.
The list of reigns supplies more convenient dates than the beginning
or the end of a century for marking changes of national tastes in such
matters as furniture. The names of kings or queens are justly given to
denote styles, whether of architecture, dress, or personal ornaments,
and utensils of the household. Society in most countries adopts those
habits that are first taken up by the sovereign. In England, the reign
of Elizabeth was pre-eminently a period during which the tastes,
even the fancies, of the queen were followed enthusiastically by her
people. Elizabethan is the name of the style of architecture gradually
developed during her reign. Italian taste, though not perhaps so
pure as it had been a few years earlier, had become far more general;
classical details, however, were mixed even more in England than in
other countries (Flanders excepted) with relics of older styles, the
love of which was still strong in this country. The fireplaces and the
panelling of our old houses, Crewe hall, Speke in Lancashire, Haddon
hall in Derbyshire, Kenilworth castle, Raglan castle, and many other
old buildings, are thoroughly characteristic of this mixed classical
revival. The fashion is quaint and grotesque, the figure sculpture
being good enough to look well in the form of caryatid monsters, half
men, half terminal posts or acanthus foliations, but not sufficiently
correct or graceful to stand altogether alone. Specimens, however,
of very good work can be pointed out, and we give here some of the
details of a panelled room brought lately from Exeter, and now in the
South Kensington collection.
We may say that the character of the woodwork throughout this period
consists in actual architectural façades or portions of façades,
showy arrangements wherever they are possible of the "five orders" of
architecture, or of pedimental fronts. Doorways and chimney fronts
are the principal opportunities in interiors for the exercise of this
composing skill. Panelling remained in use in the great halls and most
of the chambers of the house, but the linen pattern, so graceful and
effective, went out of fashion. The angles of the rooms, the cornices,
and spaces above the doors were fitted with groups of architectural
cornice mouldings, consisting of dentil, egg and tongue, and running
moulds, and sometimes room walls were divided into panels by regular
columns.
[Illustration]
Heraldry, with rich carved mantlings and quaint forms of scutcheons
(the edges notched and rolled about as if made of the notched edges
of a scroll of parchment), was a frequent ornament. Grotesque terminal
figures, human-headed, supported the front of the dresser--the chief
furniture of the dining-room and of the cabinet. Table supports and
newels of stair rails grew into heavy acorn-shaped balusters. In the
case of stair balusters, these were often ornamented with well-cut
sculpture of fanciful and heraldic figures. Inlaid work also began to
be used in room-panelling as well as furniture; bed heads and testers,
chest fronts, cabinets, &c., were inlaid, but scarcely with delicacy,
during the early Elizabethan period. The art was developed during the
reign of James, when, in point of fact, the larger number of the Tudor
houses were erected.
When the Tudor period was succeeded by that of the Stuarts the same
general characteristics remained, but all the forms of carving grew
heavier and the execution coarser. The table legs, baluster newels,
and cabinet supports, had enormous acorn-shaped masses in the middle.
The objects themselves, such as the great hall tables, instead of
being moveable on trestles, became of unwieldy size and weight.
The general character of Flemish work was much of the same kind and
form. It is not easy to distinguish the nationality of pieces of
Flemish and English oak furniture of this period. The Flemings,
however, retained a higher school of figure carvers, and their
church-stall work and some of their best things are of a higher stamp
and better designed; and where figure sculpture was employed this
superiority is always apparent. A good example of Flemish panelling
can be studied in the doorway at South Kensington, n^{o.} 4329. Their
furniture is represented by an excellent specimen, amongst others, of
this mixed period in the cabinet, n^{o.} 156. Though large and heavy,
and divided into massive parts, the treatment of ornament is well
understood on such pieces. The scroll-work is bold but light, and the
general surface of important mouldings or dividing members is not cut
up by the ornamentation. The panels are very generally carved with
graceful figure subjects, commonly biblical. As the years advanced
into the seventeenth century Flemish work became bigger and less
refined. Diamond-shaped panels were superimposed on the square, turned
work was split and laid on, drop ornaments were added below tables and
from the centres of the arches of arched panels; all these unnecessary
ornaments were mere additions and encumbrances to the general
structure.
[Illustration]
Our own later Jacobean or Stuart style borrowed this from the Flemish.
The Flemings and the Dutch had long imported woodwork into England,
and it is to that commerce that we may trace the greater likeness
between the late Flemish renaissance carving and corresponding English
woodwork, than between the English and the French. Dutch designs
in furniture, though allied to the Flemish, were swelled out into
enormous proportions. The huge wardrobe cabinets made by the Dutch of
walnut wood with ebony inlaid work and waved ebony mouldings are still
to be met with. The panels of the fronts are broken up into numerous
angles and points.
In France the fine architectural wood construction of the style of
Philibert de l'Orme and so many great masters maintained itself, and
a number of fine cabinets and sideboards in various collections attest
the excellence of the work. The cabinet on the opposite page (n^{o.}
2573 in the Kensington museum) is of late French sixteenth century
work, and combines the characteristics of the heavy furniture made in
the north of Europe with a propriety of treatment in the ornamentation
of mouldings and cornices peculiar to French architects, who continued
to design such structures for the houses they built and fitted up. The
descendants of Catherine de' Medicis and their generation were trained
by Italian artists and altogether in Italian tastes, and no great
change occurred in France in woodwork or furniture till the sixteenth
century had closed.
In German and in Italian furniture the principal changes were in the
direction of veneered and marquetry work. The same vigorous quaintness
continued to distinguish German decorative detail as has been already
noticed.
The Italians carved wood during the later sixteenth and the whole of
the seventeenth centuries with extraordinary grace and vigour. The
next woodcut, a pedestal in oak, shows their power in hard material:
and smaller objects, such as the frames of pictures, were cut out in
great sweeping leaves, perhaps of the acanthus, showing an ease and
certainty in the artist that look as if he were employed upon some
substance more yielding than the softest wood. Chairs were cut in
the same rich style, and this luxurious carving was not unfrequently
applied to the decoration of state carriages. Venice maintained a
pre-eminence in this perhaps in a greater degree than Florence, though
in the valley of the Arno the willow, lime, sycamore, and other soft
white woods were to be had in abundance, and invited great freedom in
carving.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
We may now treat of an important epoch in the history of modern
furniture. Venice was the seat of the manufacture of glass. In the
sixteenth century workmen had received state protection for the
manufacture of mirrors, which till that time had been mere hand
mirrors and made of mixed metals highly polished. Gilt wood frames
were extensively manufactured for these Venetian looking-glasses,
which found their way all over Europe. Besides gilt frames, gilt
chairs, carved consoles, and other highly ornate furniture were
introduced as the century went on, and most of this took its origin
from Venice. The woodcut represents a small frame, n^{o.} 1605, at
South Kensington.
Another remarkable class of gilt woodwork, for which Florence
and other cities had found trained carvers, was the framework of
carriages. In England, France, Germany, and Italy carriages during the
seventeenth century were stately, and certainly wonderful pieces of
furniture. Examples of these showy carriages exist still. There is a
collection belonging to the royal family of Portugal, now preserved
at Lisbon, one or two in the museum of the hôtel de Cluny at Paris,
dating from the time of Martin and painted by him, and there are a few
carriages of old date at Vienna and probably in some private
houses. The state-coach of the Speaker is an English example of the
seventeenth century.
Germany differed less from Italy even than France in wood carving,
interior room fittings, and the frequent pedimental compositions
containing grotesques, or heraldic achievements on a scale of
sumptuous display. The German princes were many of them skilful and
intelligent patrons of art, and made collections in their residences.
A well-known piece belonging to the early seventeenth century
is preserved in the royal museum at Berlin. This is known as the
Pomeranian art cabinet. It is 4 ft. 10 in. high, 3 ft. 4 in. wide by 2
ft. 10 in. deep, made of ebony with drawers of sandal wood lined with
red morocco leather, and is mounted with silver and pietra dura work,
and fitted inside with utensils of various kinds. The chair, of which
we give a woodcut, is German of about the same date.
[Illustration]
In the west of Europe, during the seventeenth century, marquetry
was extensively used, and became the leading feature of furniture
decoration. Inlaying had long been in use; but the new marquetry was
a picturesque composition, a more complete attempt at pictorial
representation. It comes before us in old furniture under various
forms, and many examples of it may be studied in different
collections. In this country we may consider it mainly as an imported
art of the reign of William and Mary, when Dutch marquetry furniture
became the fashion in the form of bandy-legged chairs, upright clock
fronts, secrétaires or bureaux, or writing cabinets which were closed
in the upper and middle parts with doors, and other pieces that
offered surfaces available for such decoration. The older designs on
work of this kind represent tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds,
&c., all in gay colours, generally the self colours of the woods
used. Sometimes the eyes and other salient points are in ivory
or mother-of-pearl. In France, in the earlier marquetry designs,
picturesque landscapes, broken architecture, and figures are
represented. Colours are occasionally stained on the wood. Ivory and
ebony were favourite materials; as also in Germany and in Italy.
It is to be noted that as the vigour of the great sixteenth century
movement died out, the mania for making furniture in the form of
architectural models died out also; nor do we find it becoming a
fashion again till quite modern times, under the Gothic and other
revivals at the end of the last and the beginning of the present
century. The architectural idea was in itself full of grandeur, and
it was productive of very beautiful examples in the sarcophagus-shaped
chests or cassoni, and in cabinet work, though the façades of temples
and the vaults and columns of triumphal arches in Rome do not bear
to be too completely reduced to such small proportions. With the
introduction of marquetry into more general use we recognise not
only a new or renewed method of decoration, but a changed ideal of
construction. Boxes, chests, tables, cabinets, &c., were conceived
as such. They were made more convenient for use, and were no longer
subdivided by architectural mouldings and columns, all so much extra
work added to the sides and fronts.
About the middle of the seventeenth century a kind of work altogether
new in the manufactory of modern furniture made its appearance under
the reign of Louis the fourteenth of France. That king rose to a
position in Europe that no monarch of modern times had occupied
before, and the great ministers of his reign had the wisdom to
take special measures for the establishment of the various arts and
manufactures in which either the Italians or Flemings excelled the
French as well as other nations. Colbert, his minister of finance,
amongst his commercial reforms of learned societies and schools of
art, founded in 1664 an "Academie royale de peinture d'architecture
et de sculpture." It was into this that the designers of architecture,
woodwork, ornament or furniture, were admitted. He established also
the famous factory of the "Gobelins" for making pictorial tapestry.
The place took its name from the brothers Gobelin, Flemings, who had a
dyeing-house in the Rue Mouffetard. Lebrun, the painter, was the first
head of it. Another important name is that of Jean Lepautre. He has
left numerous designs of ornament behind him for panelling, mirror
frames, carriages, &c. Lepautre was a pupil of Adam Philippon. This
artist, whose chief calling was that of a joiner and cabinet maker,
has also left designs.
To Colbert is due the credit of pushing forward the renewal or
completion of the royal palaces; especially the château of Versailles.
For the furniture of this palace we find the new material employed,
namely, boule marquetry, which owes its name to the maker. The
orthography of proper names was still often unsettled at that time,
and we find the name variously spelt. The correct way seems to have
been Boulle; but we shall retain the more usual mode, both for the
artist and for his work. André Charles Boule was born in 1642, and
made the peculiar kind of veneered work composed of tortoiseshell and
thin brass, to which are sometimes added ivory and enamelled metal;
brass and shell, however, are the general materials. Boule was made
head of the royal furniture department and was lodged in the Louvre. A
very interesting early specimen of this work is now at Windsor
castle, and other early pieces belong to Sir Richard Wallace. The date
attributed to the first makes it doubtful whether Boule may not have
seen the same sort of work practised in other workshops. This kind of
marquetry has, however, been assigned by general consent to Boule.
In the earlier work of Boule the inlay was produced at great cost,
owing to the waste of valuable material in cutting; and the shell is
left of its natural colour; in later work the manufacture was more
economical. Two or three thicknesses of the different material were
glued or stuck together and sawn through at one operation. An
equal number of figures and of matrices or hollow pieces exactly
corresponding were thus produced, and by counter-charging two or more
designs were obtained by the same sawing. These are technically known
as "boule and counter," the brass forming the groundwork and the
pattern alternately. In the later or "new boule," the shell is laid on
a gilt ground or on vermilion. The brass is elaborately chased with a
graver.
Besides these plates of brass for marquetry ornaments, Boule, who
was a sculptor of no mean pretensions, founded and chased up feet,
edgings, bracket supports, &c., to his work in relief, or in the
round, also in brass. The original use of these parts was to protect
the edges and angles, and bind the thin inlaid work together where it
was interrupted by angles in the structure. Afterwards brass mounts,
more or less relieved, were added to enrich the flat designs of
the surfaces. Classical altars, engraved or chased as mere surface
decoration, would receive the addition of claw feet actually relieved.
Figures standing on such altars, pedestals, &c., were made in relief
more or less bold. In this way Boule's later work is not only a
brilliant and rich piece of surface decoration, but its metallic parts
are repoussé or embossed with thicknesses of metal ornament. In boule
work all parts of the marquetry are held down by glue to the bed,
usually of oak. The metal is occasionally fastened down by small brass
pins or nails, which are hammered flat and chased over so as to be
imperceptible.
[Illustration]
In England, during the reign of Charles the second and of James,
French furniture was imported; the old Tudor oak lingered in country
houses. Boule hardly found its way till the following century to
England. Splendid silver furniture consisting of plates embossed and
repoussé, heightened with the graver and of admirable design, was
occasionally made for the Court and for great families. Wood carving,
in the manner of the school of Sir Christopher Wren, as in the bracket
here shown, was long continued in connexion with architecture and
furniture. Another style was carried to the highest pitch of technical
execution and finish, as well as of truth of natural forms in the
carving of Grinling Gibbons. This artist was English, but partially of
Dutch descent. He carved foliage, birds, flowers, busts and figures,
pieces of drapery, &c., with astonishing dexterity. We find his
work principally on mirror frames, wall panels, chimney pieces, &c.
Specimens may be seen over the communion table of St. James's church,
Westminster, and in the choir of St. Paul's cathedral. The finest
examples known are probably the carved work at Petworth house in
Sussex, and at Chatsworth. His material is generally lime and other
white woods. The flowers and foliage of his groups or garlands sweep
round in bold and harmonious curves, making an agreeable whole, though
for architectural decorative carving no work was ever so free from
conventional arrangements. His animals or his flowers appear to be so
many separate creations from nature, laid or tied together separately,
though in reality formed out of a block, and remaining still portions
of a group cut in the solid wood.
[Illustration: A. REID PEARSON, S.C.]
Gibbons died in 1721. Walpole mentions Watson as having been his pupil
and assistant at Chatsworth. Drevot of Brussels and Laurens of Mechlin
were other pupils: the former did not survive him. His school had
many followers, for we find the acanthus carvings on mouldings, round
doorways and chimney pieces, down to the middle of the eighteenth
century, executed in England with a masterly hand. Specimens of such
work have been recently acquired in the Kensington museum, the fruits
of the demolition of old London, continually in progress. The border
of this page represents one of these admirable pieces; a door and
frame from a house in Lincoln's-inn. Nothing can surpass the perfect
mastery of execution. All the work is cut clean and sharp out of wood
which admits of no tentative cuts, and requires no rubbing down with
sand paper, and in which errors are not to be repaired. Lengths of
these mouldings were worked off by hand, evidently without hesitation
and without mishap. Country houses abound with this fine though
unpretending work, and give ample evidence of the existence of a
school of fine workmen, carvers at the command of the architects of
the day.
We may here revert to an important addition to room furniture, which
became European during this century. Mirrors had been made from the
earliest times in polished metal, but were first made of glass at
Venice. In 1507 Andrea and Dominico, two glass workers of Murano,
declared before the Council of ten that they had found a method of
making "good and perfect mirrors of crystal glass." A monopoly of
the right of manufacture was granted to the two inventors for twenty
years. In 1564, the mirror makers became a distinct guild of glass
workers. The plates were not large: from four to five feet are the
largest dimensions met with till late in the eighteenth century. They
were commonly bevilled on the edges. The frames in soft wood (as
in the woodcut, p. 100) are specimens of free carving during the
seventeenth century. Both in Venice and in Florence soft woods, such
as willow or lime, were used. The mirror-plates were, at first, square
or oblong. Towards the end of the century we find them shaped at the
top. In the eighteenth century they were generally shaped at the top
and bottom. Figures were sunk in the style of intaglio or gem cutting
on the back of the glass and left with a dead surface, the silver
surface of the mercury showing through as the mirror is seen from the
front.
The looking-glasses made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
by colonies of Venetian workmen in England and France had the plates
finished by an edge gently bevilled of an inch in width, following
the form of the frame, whether square or shaped in curves. This gives
preciousness and prismatic light to the whole glass. It is of great
difficulty in execution, the plate being held by the workman over his
head and the edge cut by grinding. The feats of skill of this kind in
the form of interrupted curves and short lines and angles are rarely
accomplished by modern workmen, and the angle of the bevil itself
is generally too acute, whereby the prismatic light produced by this
portion of the mirror is in violent and too showy contrast to the
remainder.
[Illustration]
In England, looking-glasses came into general use soon after the
Restoration. "Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room at Vauxhall in
1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains, very pleasant
to behold. It stands in the middle of the garden covered with Cornish
slate, on the point whereof he placed a Punchinello." At about the
same period the house of Nell Gwynne, "the first good one as we enter
St. James' Square from Pall Mall, had the back room on the ground
floor entirely lined with looking-glass within memory," writes
Pennant, "as was said to have been the ceiling." "La rue St.
André-des-arts," says Savarin, speaking of Paris in the seventeenth
century, "eut le premier café _orne de glaces_ et de tables de marbre
à peu près comme on les voit de nos jours."
[Illustration]
During the seventeenth century, tapestry, the material in use for
hanging and decorating the walls of splendid rooms in France, was made
also in this country. Factories were set up at Mortlake, where several
copies were made of the Raphael tapestries, the cartoons of which were
in this country; and in Soho fields. Sometimes tapestry was hung on
bare walls; occasionally it was strained over the older panelled work
of the days of the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns, the fruitful period of
country house architecture in England.
[Illustration: An English table and chairs of the year 1633, from a
woodcut of that date.]
With a woodcut (on preceding page) of a bedroom holy-water vessel we
finish the account of this period.