BY J. H. POLLEN, M.A., South Kensington Museum.
I propose in the following pages to give some account of the materials
used in making furniture, and of the arts applied to its decoration.
From the earliest ages of society, when men moved about in tribes,
they had in their tents of camels' hair simple necessaries, such as
their wants required. Before people were gathered into distinct
nations, or cities built with walls and gates, there were still
certain human wants that must needs be supplied; and the objects that
were needed to enable mankind to live with convenience and decency
were found in their furniture. To this very day we may see Arab tribes
wandering over sunny deserts, seeking pasturage, sowing here and there
an acre of wheat or barley, or gathering dates. Their camels and
dromedaries are their waggons, their horses are their friends, their
families and those of others that make up their tribe are their only
nationality. Yet they furnish in some sort the temporary homes which
they shift from one spring of water to another, as the patches of
grass or grain grow up and ripen. Their chief wants are, a cloth
strained over three staves to make a house, mats or carpets to lie on,
a few bowls to cook in, saddles of wood, and a few baskets or chests,
made of light sticks fastened together.
In later periods of history and in more conventional states of
society, we shall find this primitive type of furnishing carried out
with growing splendour. In the West and in the East, in ancient and
mediA|val times, great rulers, though constantly in the saddle, have
been followed by enormous trains of camp followers, by whom costly
furniture, hangings, vessels of plate, and other luxuries, have been
carried for the convenience of the leaders and warriors of moving
hosts; and of course this splendour was the measure of the state and
magnificence kept at home. The wealth or feudal state, shown in the
furniture of old castles and palaces, extended not only to halls and
rooms, but to dresses, and armour, weapons, the furniture of horses,
tents, and other objects that could be carried on distant expeditions.
Ancient nations have been as well, and more splendidly, if less
conveniently, provided with furniture for their houses than modern
ones. It happens that there are distinct records of many kinds,
showing what wealth and elaborate decoration some of the oldest races,
such as the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks,
bestowed on their thrones, beds, chairs, and chariots. Beds of silver
and gold are mentioned in Esther i., and the curtains of the bed of
Holofernes were covered with a canopy of purple and gold, with
emeralds and precious stones (Judith x. 19; Esther i.). Modern princes
in India continue to devote their jewels and gold to similar uses. It
must be borne in mind also, that this kind of splendour is an
investment of property in times and countries in which banks,
insurance offices, government funds, and other organized means of
investing money are unknown.
Silver, if not gold, has been used occasionally, not only in the East,
but in Europe, for seats, tables, even the frames of pictures and
mirrors. The royal apartments in Whitehall were completely mounted
with hammered and filagree silver furniture in the seventeenth
century. Carlyle records of Frederick the Great, that silver ornaments
were kept in his palace, and turned to account under the exigencies of
war. But of furniture generally, wood is the readiest and most proper
material. It is handy, easily worked, light to carry about, and may be
manufactured with or without decorations of carved work, or of any
other kind. Hence, in giving an account, whether historical or
mechanical, of furniture, I class it under the more general head of
woodwork. Any other materials, either for the framing or ornamentation
of furniture, are exceptional. The remarks now to be submitted to the
reader will refer to wood that is manufactured, though I shall not
enter on the interesting subject of wood structure, which has been
applied to such noble and elaborate uses, and of which such splendid
monuments of many periods still remain for us to study.
Most of the methods used for decorating woodwork made up into
furniture are still in regular use, and the processes of putting it
together are the same as they have always been. The reader may satisfy
himself on this point any day by a walk in the Egyptian rooms and in
the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum. In both these sections of
that wonderful collection, there are remains of woodwork and of
furniture, made of wood three or four thousand years old, such as
stools, chairs, tables, head-rests or pillows, workmen's benches of
Egyptian manufacture, fragments less complete of Nineveh make that
have been portions of various utensils, and precious articles of
sculptured and inlaid ivory that have been inserted into thrones and
chariots. These pieces of furniture have been mortised together, or
joined by dowels, dovetailed at the angles, glued, nailed, or, in
short, made up by the use of several of these methods of junction at
the same time. And no great changes have been introduced in the
various ways of ornamenting furniture. The Egyptian woodwork was
painted in tempera, and carefully varnished with resinous gums. It was
inlaid with ebony and other woods, carved, gilt and, perhaps,
sparingly decorated with metal ornaments. The Greeks inlaid chests and
tables with carved ivory and gold, sometimes relieved with colour. The
Romans, who made much furniture of bronze, cast, inlaid, damascened
and gilt, made much more in wood, which they stained, polished,
carved, and inlaid. MediA|val furniture was put together with mortises,
tenons and glue, and was gilt and painted; the painting and gilding
being laid on a ground prepared with the utmost care, and tooled and
ornamented in the same way that bookbinders ornament leather. At a
later period, a beautiful manufacture was carried on in various parts
of Italy; a sort of mosaic in very hard stone, such as agate, lapis
lazuli, and other precious materials. The Italians also used these
beautiful stones inlaid in ebony. But the furniture most valued in
modern times has been that which owes its name to Boulle, a French
artist of the seventeenth century; and the marquetry, or wood mosaic
surface decoration, which reached so high a standard of excellence
during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century in France.
The former of these two classes of manufacture made, if not
originated, by Boulle (and I am inclined to think that he was not the
first maker), was a marquetry, or surface decoration, not composed of
various woods, but of tortoiseshell and brass, with the occasional
introduction of other metal, and with metal enamelled in blue and
other colours. The materials principally in use, however, in Boulle
marquetry are tortoiseshell and brass. In the older work, viz. that of
the seventeenth century, the tortoiseshell is dark, and left in its
natural hue. In later Boulle, called new Boulle, the tortoiseshell is
reddened by colour, or by gilding laid under it. There is much grace
and variety in the delicate arabesque designs in which one material is
inlaid in the other. Parts of the surfaces are sometimes diapered, as
a contrast to the free lines and curves of other parts. The inlaid
surface of Boulle work is framed in by borders, cornices, or handles
of brass or gilt bronze, giving a massive architectural character to
the whole.
Thus if we look back to the history of furniture, not only will every
kind of splendid material be found devoted to the manufacture or
decoration of it, but the best art too of many different periods that
money could command. It is in the late times of antiquity, and since
the period of the Renaissance in modern times, that works of art have
been kept on shelves or gathered into galleries. Many works of great
masters, such as the chest of Cypselus, and the chairs of the great
statues of ivory and gold, were prepared for celebrated shrines and
temples in the cities of Greece. It was but the excessive wealth of
great patricians in Rome and Constantinople that led to their becoming
collectors, whether of sculpture, painting, or sumptuous silver plate.
The chief object of rich and accomplished men in most ages of luxury
and refinement has been, to make the house, its walls, ceilings,
floors, and necessary or useful furniture, costly and beautiful. It
was the same in the days of Donatello, Raphael, Cellini, and Holbein.
Chests and trays were painted, together with gems, dies, brooches;
table plate was modelled and chiselled; while chairs of wrought steel,
or tables, cabinets, and other pieces of rich furniture, were either
designed or carried into execution by these masters with their pupils
and followers. In some instances, as, e.g., in that of the famous
Pomeranian cabinet, in the Kunst Kammer in Berlin, a long list has
been preserved of artists and craftsmen of note in their day, who
combined to produce monumental examples of actual room furniture.
It cannot be denied that though great pains are taken and much expense
is incurred in modern furnishing, the habits of the day lead rather to
the search for comfort than for grace or beauty; and convenience
rather than intrinsic value or artistic excellence. Nevertheless, a
certain amount of decency and splendour is indispensable in both
receiving and sleeping rooms; and though a house really well, that is
beautifully, furnished is of rare occurrence, this is not for want of
serious efforts, nor altogether to be laid to the account of
unwillingness to spend money for such a purpose. Whether the "art of
furnishing" or the desire to have what people require for use in their
houses more becoming and beautiful, be a rising influence or not, it
is certain that the "fancy" or ornamental furniture trade is of large
and increasing importance, corresponding to the increased size and
cost of modern London and country houses, compared with those built
during the reigns of William III. and George IV. Every tradesman who
has the pretension to repair chimney-pots, to whitewash, or paint
house-fronts, ceilings, or offices, writes up the word "decorator," on
his shop-front.