MANUFACTURE.

A return prepared by the Commissioners for the Paris Exhibition, in

1867, gave the following as the number of manufacturers engaged in

London in "the several branches of the fancy furniture trade."

Cabinet makers 812

Upholsterers 486

Carvers and gilders 342

French polishers 142

Cabinet carvers, inlayers, and liners 108

Bedstead-makers 43

Chair, sofa, and stool-makers 252

Wood and cabinet wares were exported (in 1865) to the value of

289,887_l._, and imported to the value of 128,925_l._[5]

[5] Cat. Brit. Section Exhibition, 1867, Introduction, p. 61.

The highest efforts of the trade are concentrated in a few large

establishments in London and the great cities, which have their own

cabinet makers, carvers, upholsterers, &c., on their premises. In some

instances, one piece of furniture may pass through the hands of

several branches of the manufacture. I may choose a few names of

makers who presented their works in Paris in 1867 in alphabetical

order, e.g. Messrs. Collinson and Locke, Crace, Dyer and Watts,

Gillow, Herring, Holland, Howard, Hunter, Ingledew, Jackson and

Graham, Morant, Trollope, Wertheimer, Wright and Mansfield. The larger

of these establishments are supplied with steam machinery, and all the

work that can possibly be executed by mechanical agency is prepared by

these engines, leaving only the most costly operations to be executed

by hand.

It is the province of the carpenter to put together simple woodwork;

that which is an actual part of architecture, such as boxes, chests,

benches, seats, shelves, and so forth as require only good material

and neatness of hand in execution. The joiner and cabinet maker

include this amount of skill as a foundation for their

accomplishments, as a sculptor can block out a statue and a painter

grind his colours, work, however, which in ordinary practice is handed

over to assistants or apprentices.

Before discussing the materials and the methods of execution now in

use, it would be well to notice a great change which has taken place

both in the status of the workman, the division of labour, and the

mechanical appliances now at his command.

Down to recent times, joinery and cabinet making were in the hands of

a number of masters in the trade, far greater in comparison to the

pressure of the demand on the part of buyers than is the case at

present. We have a larger society of buyers, a greater demand for the

execution of large orders at a rapid rate, than was the case in former

generations. On the other hand, the trade is gathered up into fewer

master hands. The masters then employed a less amount of labour. They

took in apprentices, many of whom remained for years with them as

assistants, and the establishment was more of a family. It followed,

that all members of this smaller society worked together and took part

in the particular sets of chairs, the tables, cabinets, and so forth,

turned out from their own house. They were, moreover, animated in a

closer and truer degree by the spirit, and adopted the ideas, of a

master who worked with or overlooked and advised them constantly, than

could be the case in our great modern establishments. Again, though,

as I have already said, the old operations by which boards, bars, and

other members of wood construction are joined together, have not

substantially varied since the days of Egyptians and Romans, the

methods of execution have undergone a great change, owing to the

introduction of machinery. The skill and training of the hand of the

workman must necessarily undergo a change as well, whether for the

better or the worse. The workman is relieved from the necessity of

attaining an absolute accuracy in much of the ordinary but essential

work of joints, mortises and other operations which can be produced

with an uniform exactness by mechanical means.

The fact, also, that different engines or lathes can produce at a

prodigious rate certain separate parts of many pieces of furniture,

has made skilled mechanics less universal "all round" men than they

were. If this combination of qualities is to be met with in provincial

towns or villages, there, without doubt, the standard of excellence is

a lower one.

_Materials and Execution._--The woods used for making furniture

besides pines and deals, are birch and beech (used for stuffed

chair-frames, couches, &c.) walnut, letter wood, Spanish and Honduras

mahogany, sycamore, lime, pear, cherry of several kinds, and maple;

ash, English, American, and Hungarian; oak, English, foreign, and

pollard, with pieces cut from wens and sweet cedar. Turners use also

plane, laburnum, yew, holly, and box. More precious woods are also

used in furniture: rose-wood, satin-wood, ebony, and sandal-wood.

Other rare woods are used in inlaying and marquetry.

Some of these materials, mahogany and walnut, which are much in use,

are imported in vast logs, the former sometimes three feet square;

when of very fine grain suited to veneers, worth 1000_l._ or more, per

log.

The woods are stacked in yards, or, in London, where the space cannot

otherwise be had, on platforms resting on the walls of the workshops,

and fully exposed to the weather. Woods are dried after a year, or two

years, according to the size of the log and nature of the wood. Oak is

sometimes kept for eight or more years. When sawn into the scantlings

required, it is further dried by placing the logs and planks in rooms

heated by the waste steam from the engine. An American patented method

of drying is to place a coil of pipes, through which exceedingly cold

water is passed in the drying room, which condenses and carries off

the vapours from the wood exposed to this heat. Some firms have tried

this method, but, I believe, without much success.

Logs are cut up by the engine with three or more perpendicular saws at

once, the teeth being set to the right and left alternately, to open a

passage for the blades. More valuable woods, e.g. mahogany, are cut

into thin plank by an horizontal saw. In this case the teeth are not

bent, but a labourer opens the passage for the blade by lifting the

plank with a wedge. As little waste of the material as possible is

thus secured.

Further cutting up of the material is done by means of circular saws.

Part of the saw rises through a metal table. A moveable bar is firmly

screwed at one, two, or more inches from the blade, and the wood is

pushed by the workman against the saw, keeping one surface against the

fixed bar, so as to secure a straight cut of the thickness required.

Most modern _planing_ is done by a revolving cutter, brought to

bear upon the wood, which is drawn under it on an iron table, with

more or less pressure, according to the quantity to be taken off the

surface. Messrs. Howard have contrived a tube with a blast down it,

which carries the shavings at once to the furnace, otherwise the dust

made by the flying particles of wood would be unendurable.

_Mouldings_ for panelling, cornices, skirtings, &c., are cut by

revolving cutters or chisels, filed to any desired shape and

case-hardened. They are set in a perpendicular axle and cut

horizontally, the wood being firmly pressed against the tool. The

workman can gear the cutter or reverse the action, so as to make a

neat finish to his work.

Formerly all such work was done with a plane, cut to the required

figure, and the finishings of lines of moulding had to be carved with

the hand.

_Mortising_ is done by a revolving boring tool, against which the

wood to be mortised is moved by a gradual action, from side to side,

and backwards and forwards, till the exact depth and width are bored

out; tenons fitting these cavities are cut in another lathe, also by

mechanical action.

_Turning lathes._--The legs of chairs and tables are made in lathes,

the general outline being obtained by turning in the simple form.

Portions of the legs are sometimes squared, and the square faces must

be evenly graduated. These parts are cut as follows: the lathe and the

leg in it are kept at rest, and a revolving tool--in fact, a small

lathe with a perpendicular cutter in it, connected by a leather band

with a spindle overhead--set in motion by the steam-engine. The

workman passes this cutter carefully down the four surfaces of the

portions to be squared, cutting to a given depth all down, but never

losing the angle outlines originally found by the first turning. When

flutings have to be cut down the legs, whether they are round or

square, this is done by using a revolving cutter set with horizontal

action, which passes carefully along at one level, and is geared by

the joiner so as to graduate the width of each fluting, as it

descends, if the diminishing size of the support or leg requires it.

Bars of chairs, edges of shelves, the stretchers (or connecting bars)

under some kinds of tables, are cut into carved or other shapes by an

endless band saw revolving on two rollers. The workman passes his wood

along an iron table against the saw, gearing the former according to

the pattern drawn on the surface.

_Fretwork_ is done with a still finer hair or watch-spring saw, of

which one end can be detached from the holder and passed through a

small hole in the piece of wood where the piercing is to be cut out by

the saw. This could not be done by an endless saw, which can only be

used to shape out edges. The best saws of this description are made by

Perin, in Paris.

Watch-spring saws strained in frames have long been in use. In the

steam-engine it is the wood only that is moved, and as it rests on a

steady table, it gives the workman a great advantage, and should

enable him to shape out his design with a delicacy only attainable

with greater difficulty by the old method.

The process of _mitreing_ pieces of moulding, where they meet at

an angle at a corner, is done by machinery in some houses. In the

works of Messrs. Jackson and Graham, this is done by setting the

pieces in a metal T square. They are carefully cut by hand, and

as each piece is set in a frame geared to the angle required, and

under the hand of an experienced workman, no inaccuracies are likely

to occur. In cabinet-making and joinery of all kinds, the number of

angles round which mouldings have to pass is very great, as anyone

will see who is at the pains to notice the construction of furniture

of the most ordinary kind. Any staring or opening of an oblique joint

is destructive of the effect of such workmanship, as it is of the

strength of the joint which is glued together, and requires absolute

contact of the parts to be joined.

Much work, such as chair rails, table legs, balusters for little

galleries or on a large scale, is turned and cut in the steam lathe by

hand, using steam power only to turn it.

_Joinery._--The pieces of wood thus prepared are made up in many

different combinations. This is the work of the joiner. In the

joiners' shop of Messrs. Jackson and Graham, for instance, several

benches were shown to me occupied by lengths of wall-panelling in

ebony, some of the work being intended to cover the wall of a

staircase; it was therefore framed in sloping lines. Each panel was a

rhomboid, and none of the sides or mouldings were at right angles to

each other. The mouldings had several fine strings, ovaloes, &c., all

specially designed by the architect of the house--as the fittings of

well-furnished houses should be. For these, special cutters had been

made and fitted to the steam-moulding machine. To show the back of the

panelling, the workmen turned it over. Instead of each panel being

held in a groove provided in the stiles and rails, a rebate only has

been cut in the frame, and the panel fits into it from the back (as

the stretcher of a picture fits into a picture-frame), while iron

buttons screwed into the frame pieces hold the panels firmly in their

places. The object of this is to allow for the contraction of the wood

with the alterations of temperature. With some woods, however well

seasoned, this provision is requisite, and it is the more necessary,

when more than one material is employed. In using ebony over large

surfaces, it is found that the lengths required for the continuous

rails cannot be procured free from knots or faults; and particular

kinds of wood (pear and other material) are stained and prepared, to

supplement the ebony in these instances.

The joiners put together panelling, chairs, couches, frames of tables,

shelves, cupboards, and other complex pieces of furniture.

_Upholstery._--Chairs and sofas required to be stuffed are then

handed over to the upholsterer, and the seats and backs are stuffed

with curled horsehair, carefully arranged so as not to wear into

holes. A _French edge_ is given to some stuffed seats by bringing

the edges of several ridges of horsehair together, so inclined towards

the upper edge, that each roll receives support from the others, which

react on the pressure thus brought upon them, like springs. One would

suppose that these edges were maintained by whalebone, like the stocks

in which a past stiff-necked generation suffered so much. Where ribbon

scrolls, tiny bunches of flowers, &c., are carved on the frames and

top rails of chairs and sofa-frames, if these are to be polished only,

the polishing is done before the upholstery. If _parts_ are to be

gilt, or the _whole_ gilt, these operations are postponed till

the upholstery is completed. So also when panelling, sideboards,

bookcases, &c., are to be made up, the moulded lines which can only be

conveniently hand-polished while in lengths, are treated thus before

making up; and there remain only flat panels and surfaces, that can be

evenly rubbed for the final polishing. In upholstered furniture, the

coverings would be greased and stained, if polishing were done over or

in connection with them; but in the case of gilt work, it must be left

in most cases to the last, for fear of dimming or rubbing the gold

during the processes of sewing, nailing, stuffing, &c.

I may remark here, that though arm-chairs, fauteuils, &c., are made in

great London establishments, the manufacture of light chairs on a

large scale is a special branch of the trade, and mostly carried on at

High Wycombe, in the neighbourhood of which town there are extensive

woods of beech, and where land and water carriage is at hand to convey

these productions to London and elsewhere.

_Cabinet-making._--It is by no means easy to lay down the exact

technical boundary between what I have been describing as _joinery_,

and what I am now about to call _cabinet-making_. They are

considered, however, as distinct branches or rather, perhaps,

different operations of the trade; and in such establishments as we

are discussing, the cabinet makers and joiners have their own separate

workshops and benches, and corresponding separate repositories for

storing and drying their woods. Every kind of work is required in

making costly cabinets, bookcases, sideboards, commodes, or by

whatever name we choose to call the beautiful chests, cupboards, and

other artistic receptacles, tables, consoles, brackets, &c., that go

to complete the requirements of our modern reception rooms.

They are seldom made with the quaint or elaborate interior fittings,

such as have been alluded to in older work, but every resource is

brought to bear on the external decoration. Here we come to the arts

brought to bear on the ornamentation of furniture.

Let us begin with carving. Sculpture is the highest or most beautiful

kind of decoration that can be applied to furniture. It can only be

executed by a trained artist. To go no farther back here than the

Italian and French Renaissance furniture, generally made of

walnut-wood, it is the spirited and graceful sculpture that makes its

_first_ great attraction. The Italian carving of this kind is the

most graceful; while that of France by Bachelier and others, and much

that was executed in England and Germany, being, if less graceful,

always spirited and thoroughly decorative. As a general rule,

sculpture so applied is _conventional_ in design and treatment,

that is, we rarely see it, (except, perhaps, occasionally in little

ivory statuettes, and in bas-reliefs,) strictly imitative of nature,

like perfect Greek sculpture. But neither should we find strict

studies from nature on Greek furniture, if we had it, except with the

same limitations. The furniture made by Greco-Roman artists, and

discovered at Pompeii,[6] bears witness to this assertion, such as a

head, a bust, the claws of animals, sculptured on furniture generally

ending in scrolls or leafwork. If a human figure is complete, it bears

no real proportion to objects round it, and so on.

[6] See also Q. de Quincy, Le Jupiter Olympien.

Excellent wood sculpture used to be executed in England, from the days

of Grinling Gibbon to those of Adam and the Chippendales, suited to

the furniture then in fashion. I wish I could say that our furniture

makers of to-day could easily, or did generally, command such talents.

Ingeniously carved representations of animals and game on sideboards

we sometimes see, but game 'dead' in every sense. If, indeed, Messrs.

Crace, Howard, Jackson and Graham, and other firms could persuade the

Royal Academicians to model for them, those artists would have to give

some material amount of time to the study of how they could so

effectually modify their skill as to suit the requirements and

opportunities of a piece of furniture, these being quite peculiar. The

French are easily our masters in this respect, but even they sacrifice

good qualities proper to this kind of sculpture, in a morbid search

after the softness of nature.

A curious piece of mechanism has been invented, and is in use in most

large London furniture workshops, for _carving by steam_. Besides

boring out and cutting away superfluous material, there is an engine

for making mechanical sculpture in bas-relief, or the round. The wood

is fixed on a metal table, which is moved to and fro and up and down,

so as to come in contact with a revolving cutter held above it. The

wood is then shaped and cut, according as it is elevated or moved.

There are three or four cutters, and one piece of wood may be placed

under each. Under the middle cutter, replaced by a dummy tool that

does not really cut, the workman places his cast or model, and makes

the dummy cutter pass over every undulation of its surface. The two or

three cutters on either side cut the corresponding blocks exactly to

the same depths and undulations as are followed by the blunt tool. It

is a _copying machine_. That such copies, though they may pass

muster, will ever have the charm of original carving, the reader shall

not be asked to believe.

Certain elaborate methods of decorating and finishing woodwork must

now be described, viz. those known as _inlaying_ and _marquetry_.

These two processes are distinct, but marquetry furniture has often

portions decorated with inlaying, as also carved ornaments and

decorations of beaten, cast, or chiselled metal-work. This last

addition is not generally of the same importance in our modern English

woodwork that it was a century ago, and I will describe the former

methods first.

_Inlaying_ means the insertion of pieces of more costly wood, stone,

small discs, or carved pieces of ivory, into a less valuable material.

The process is as old as any manufacture in wood working of which we

possess records. Beautiful plates or blocks of ivory can be seen in

the Assyrian gallery of the British museum, found at Nineveh by Mr.

Layard. They are deeply cut with lotus and other leaf decorations,

figures and hieroglyphics, and most of them have an Egyptian

character. The ivory figures, too, have been inlaid and filled up

with vitrified material. Remains of these decorations are still

discernible, and the thickness of many of these pieces of ivory shows

that they have been sunk bodily into woodwork of a solid character.

No such work as this can be pointed out in our London workshops, but

patterns and arabesques, both of wood and ivory, are occasionally let

into solid beds of wood so deeply, as to be actually mortised into the

main body of the structure. This is done both by our own makers and by

the French cabinet maker, Henri Fourdinois, a prize piece of whose

make was bought for the South Kensington museum. It is not uncommon to

insert pieces of lapis lazuli, bloodstone, and precious marbles into

centres of carved woodwork, and I may call attention to the use of

plates, medallions and cameos of Wedgwood, or SA"vres ware, which were

frequently inlaid by Chippendale, and by the great French furniture

makers, or _A(C)bA(C)nistes_, of the last century. These are used in the

modern satin-wood furniture of Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and I

have lately seen a coarser material used, viz. bas-reliefs in

_stoneware_, imitations of the _gris de Flandres_, by Messrs. Doulton.

These last, however, may be said to be rather panels set in frames,

than pieces let into cavities in wood.

_Veneering and Marquetry._--An effective method of ornamenting

woodwork by the application to the _surface_ of other woods is what is

known as _veneering_ and _marquetry_. The surface is in both cases

covered with a thin layer of other woods, fastened on with glue and by

strong pressure. Some of the panelling, table tops, and other joiner's

work already described, is clothed with a thin slice of more valuable

wood. This is called _veneering_. Woods such as ebony, tuya,

satin-wood, palm, hare-wood, and a number more, are only to be had in

small scantlings, logs a few feet long, and six or seven inches wide.

Other woods, of which the grain is most beautifully marked, are cut

from roots, wens, and other excrescences of the trees, to which they

belong, and are only found occasionally, and in lumps of no great

size. The contortions of the grain, which make them so valuable and

beautiful, are owing to peculiar conditions of growth. In all these

cases an inch plank of wood has to be cut into very thin slices,

twelve being cut with a saw, or from eighteen to twenty-two if it is

cut with a knife, as in that case no material is wasted by the opening

made by a saw. These slices are laid on the surface of well-seasoned

wood, and in the workshops of our great manufacturers will be seen a

metal table or bed, prepared expressly for the process of veneering.

Supposing the object to be veneered to be a large surface--a number of

panels, or the top of a table of ebony, for instance--the substance of

the table may be Honduras mahogany. The wood has been carefully

seasoned, and the top grooved, tongued, and firmly glued up to the

required form. The ebony surface is also carefully fitted together and

glued on paper, the surface being left rough, so that the glue may

have a firm hold on the fibre of the grain. A corresponding roughness

is produced on the upper surface of the mahogany, which is then laid

on the metal bed. Glue, perfectly fluid and hot, is now rapidly

brushed over the entire surface, and the thin veneer top is laid upon

it, and firmly pressed down by several workmen, who then carefully go

over the whole with hammers having broad, flat heads; the object of

this being to flatten any apparent thicknesses of glue or bubbles of

air which would interfere with the perfect contact of the two surfaces

of wood. The whole is then placed under a caul or frame that touches

it all over, and a number of strong bars are screwed down till the

greater part of the glue has been pressed out. The complete union of

the surfaces of the woods is effected not so much by the quantity of

glue as by the absolute exclusion of the air, and this can only be

done by pressure. The whole metal bed or frame in which the veneering

is performed is heated by steam, or by gas-burners, where steam cannot

be applied. The wood is left for twenty-four or thirty hours, till the

glue has been completely set and hardened. The caul or frame is then

removed, the paper used to keep the thin veneer together before gluing

is scraped off, and the work of finishing and French polishing takes

place. French polish, or careful wax polish, has the effect of keeping

out air and damp, which latter might soften the glue and disintegrate

the surface veneer. It is to be observed, that such wood as the finest

French or Italian walnut is often veneered on mahogany, for it lasts

better in this condition than if it was solid; large surfaces and

thicknesses of walnut being difficult to procure without faults.

Walnut veneers are applied in greater thicknesses than ebony; and if

the surfaces to which they are applied are curved, cauls, or shaped

pieces of wood made to fit them, are screwed down and held by numerous

wooden vices, as in the method already described.

_Marquetry_ is the application of veneer made of different woods,

ivory, &c., composed like a mosaic or painting executed in coloured

woods. This kind of decoration is of ancient use, was much in vogue

during the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and

was carried to a great pitch of perfection in France during the

seventeenth and eighteenth. It is still practised, and the process may

be seen in full activity in the workshops of our modern furniture

makers. In cutting out the forms required for marquetry decoration,

one, two, or more thicknesses of thin wood are gummed or pasted

together, according to the pattern required. In many fine pieces of

marquetry there are, as in the case of a cabinet or table, portions of

the surface entirely occupied by quiet reticulated patterns. As in

these cases the same pattern often recurs, several thicknesses of wood

can be laid together, and are then firmly fixed in a vice, having

pasted over them a piece of paper on which the pattern is drawn. A

small hole is bored where it will not interfere with the design, and

the end of a thin watch-spring saw is passed through, and then

re-attached to the frame that strains it out in working order. With

this in his hand, the workman carefully traces the outlines of his

drawing, which the tenuity of the saw-blade allows the tool to follow

into every curve and angle. The thicknesses are then separated with

the blade of a knife, and the slices become alternately pattern and

ground, so that a set of patterns and a set of matrices of each wood

are ready for use, and can be applied either on different parts of the

same, or on two separate pieces of furniture. If a flower or other

ornament is required which will not be repeated, two thicknesses only

will be cut together. It is necessary that the same action of the saw

should cut out the pattern and the ground in the two woods required,

so that they may fit exactly.

When all the portions of the design are cut out, they are pasted on

paper, and can be fitted together like mosaic. A little sawdust from

the woods used, and a very small quantity of glue, join the edges and

fill up the fine openings made by the saw; and in this way the whole

surface of the marquetry is laid down on paper. In the case of

flowers, heads, architectural or other designs, some slight additions,

either of lines to indicate stalks, leaf-fibre, or the features of the

face, are made with a graver, and stained; or gradations of a brown

colour are given, in the case of white or light-tinted wood, by

partial burning. It was formerly the custom to burn with a hot iron,

but a more delicate tint is given by using hot sand, and this is the

best method of tinting beech, lime, holly, box, maple, or other woods

which are nearly white. There remains nothing but to rough the surface

of the furniture, and to lay down the marquetry on it, precisely as in

the case of plain veneering. When the glue is dry and hard, the

pressure is taken off, the paper which is on the outer surface is

scraped away, and the whole rubbed down to a fine surface and French

polished. The most beautiful work of this description was made in

France by Riesener and David, during the reigns of Louis XV. and Louis

XVI. Besides graceful and delicate _design_, which these artists

(for such they were) thoroughly understood, the beauty of their work

owes much to their charming feeling for colour. Both used light woods,

such as maple, holly, box, lime, &c., and laid brown woods, such as

laburnum and walnut, on this light ground. Sometimes architectural

compositions in the manner of Pannini, a favourite Roman painter of

the day, were designed over the doors or flaps of secrA(C)taires and

cabinets, or busts, medallions, baskets of roses, &c. The charm of the

work is the grace and repose with which these simple decorations are

laid on. Compare some of the work of Riesener and David, on the

cabinet doors in the collection of Sir Richard Wallace, with the

glaring contrasts, the gaudy, often discordant colouring, and the

crowded compositions of modern marquetry, at least of most of it.

There is a tenderness of treatment, a grace and harmony of colour and

arrangement throughout the former, which is wholly wanting, and which

no lapse of time will add to the latter. Though these criticisms are

not meant to be applied to the products of the leading houses now

under review, the reader who has taken an observant stroll amongst the

furniture of Sir Richard Wallace, at Bethnal Green, will find abundant

contrasts as he walks along the streets of London.

In order to illustrate my remarks on the processes of colouring woods

by burning or etching, I may point to a large writing bureau, or

secrA(C)taire, belonging to Sir Richard Wallace, made by Riesener, in

1769 (and signed), for Stanislaus, king of Poland. It is decorated

partly with reticulated pattern work, partly with the royal cipher in

medallions, and with other medallions containing emblematic figures,

such as a carrier pigeon, a cock, the emblem of vigilance, or the head

of a girl placing her finger on her lips, an emblem of silence. All

these medallion figures are broadly drawn, the very slightest and most

delicate tint only being added to represent shading, while the drawing

is a single line lightly pencilled.

The materials used in the best marquetry are lime, holly, box, maple,

beech, poplar, for white; pear, laburnum, palm (cut across the grain),

lignum vitA|, walnut, teak, partridge-wood, for brown; wood called in

the trade fustic, satin-wood, for yellow; tulip, purple-wood, amboyna,

mahogany, thuya, log-wood, cam-wood, and varieties of these woods, for

red; ebony for black, or stained wood. Greens and blues are also

stained with metallic dyes. The finest of the old work may be called

studies in brown and white, and the red woods are used sparingly; the

dyed woods still more so, nor can they be said ever to be really

effective.

As an example of great mechanical skill in a modern piece of very

difficult execution, I might call attention to Messrs. Jackson and

Graham's elaborate cabinet of marquetry, in patterns of Oriental

character, after designs by the late Mr. Owen Jones (sent to the

Vienna Exhibition by Messrs. Jackson and Graham). It had an

architectural front, with detached columns and groups of architectural

mouldings, some of them put together with the lines of moulding in

woods of contrasted hue, an element of ornamentation that took from

the unity and completeness of cap or corona mouldings. The little

columns of an inch and a half diameter were entirely covered with

reticulated pattern in different woods. As the shafts were tapering,

so the reticulated patterns had to be graduated in size from top to

bottom. This was a feat of most difficult execution, nor was it the

only difficulty in this portion of the design. The marquetry in the

instance of these columns had to be wrapped round each circular shaft;

and each edge, therefore, of every portion of pattern and groundwork

had to be sawn out with bevelled edges, so that when rolled, the inner

edges might meet and the outer edges remain in contact, which would

not be so, were they not bevelled: the contrary would happen in that

case, and the outer edges would start in sunder. These columns were

two feet and some inches high, and the little reticulations of pattern

recurred many dozens of times. The conditions of which I speak had to

be carefully observed in the case of each. The pattern, too, was

graduated, as above stated, so that they had to be sawn out by

separate cuttings--a most laborious and costly operation.

We miss in the great English houses one of the most costly and

beautiful elements in the adornment of furniture, and that is, the

fine moulded and chiselled bronze work, always gilt, which enters so

largely into the decoration of fine old French marquetry. The English

furniture makers of a century ago were not so behindhand, and old

carriages had door-handles, and furniture had mounts of gilt bronze.

Probably the French were always superior to us in this kind of skill.

They still produce good work of this class, cast and afterwards

cleaned and tooled with the chisel, but it is not equal to the work of

the same description by GouthiA"re, and the famous _ciseleurs_ of

Paris in the last century.

I must not pass over in silence a beautiful kind of furniture which

was in fashion a century since, and has been revived by Messrs. Wright

and Mansfield, and other firms, viz. satin-wood furniture. In the time

of Chippendale, Sheraton, Lock, and other great cabinet makers,

contemporaries of the French artists Riesener, GouthiA"re, and David,

satin-wood was imported from India. It was made up by veneering, and

was decorated with medallions, some of marquetry, some of Wedgwood

ware, after the model of the French inlaying of SA"vres porcelain

plaques, and in some instances painted with miniature scenes like the

Vernis Martin, called after a French decorator of the name of Martin.

Old examples of satin-wood furniture, such as tables, bookcases,

chests of drawers, &c., are not uncommon, decorated in one or more of

these methods. Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann were employed amongst

many others in painting cameo medallions, busts, Cupids and so forth

for satin-wood furniture. Messrs. Wright and Mansfield have executed

much of this work, and sent a cabinet of large size to the Paris

Exhibition of 1867, decorated with medallions, swags, ribbons, &c.,

partly in marquetry of coloured woods, partly in plates of Wedgwood

ware. The piece is further set off by carved and gilt portions, not,

however, sufficiently attractive to add greatly to the effect of the

whole cabinet, which is gay, cheerful, of beautiful hue, and excellent

workmanship. It is in the South Kensington Museum.

Allusion has been made to the furniture of Boulle. It began to be made

somewhere about 1660, and was perhaps the earliest start taken in the

more modern manufacture of sumptuous furniture. I have already called

it a great advance and improvement, rather than an absolutely new

invention, for pieces are found of a date too early to have been the

actual work of Boulle. When the tortoiseshell is dark and rich in hue,

the brass of a good golden yellow, and the designs carefully drawn,

Boulle work seems to equal in splendour, though not in preciousness,

the gold and silver furniture of the ancients, and the inlaid work of

agates, crystals, amethysts, &c., with mounts of ivory and silver made

in Florence in the sixteenth century.

Boulle work is made occasionally by French and other foreign houses,

and by Wertheimer of Bond street, but it is costly, and the rich

relieved portions, such as the hinge and lock mounts, the salient

medallions, masks, &c., set in central points of the composition, are

either copies or imitations of old work. They lack the freshness,

vigour, and spirit of the old French metallurgy.

A spurious kind of Boulle is made with a composition in place of the

tortoiseshell.

_Parquet floors_ are made by Messrs. Howard as follows: Slices of

oak, varied sometimes with mahogany, walnut, and imitation ebony, are

laid out and put together on a board. If rings, circles or other

figures are introduced, these portions, patterns, and cavities as well

as angular pieces are cut in the machine. The thickness of these

pieces is a quarter of an inch. They are then laid on three

thicknesses of pine, the grain of each thickness being laid crosswise

to the one below, so as to keep the wood above from warping and

opening. These are glued together, and kept for twenty-four hours

under an hydraulic press. It is, in fact, coarse marquetry, and the

whole is laid down over a rough deal floor. Messrs. Howard also glue

up their quarter inch hardwoods without a pine backing, and lay them

down with glue and fine brads on old deal floors, a less expensive

method, and which can be adopted without raising the level of an old

floor.

It is remarkable that English cabinet makers should so rarely make

these floors, or architects lay them down in rooms of modern houses.

The French, Germans of all states, Swiss, Belgians, in short most

continental nations have these floors, and Swiss and Belgian flooring

is imported into England. That of the Belgian joiners is in large

pieces four feet or so square, of seasoned wood, moderate in price,

and easily laid down.

In this country, our costly modern houses are barely provided with a

border of a foot or so round the edges of the reception rooms. Even

that is but an exceptional practice. Yet oak flooring is not a costly

addition to important rooms, while the habit of keeping floors always

covered with Brussels carpet tacked down is not the cleanest

imaginable.

Another application of veneered wood practised by Messrs. Howard is

called by them "_wood tapestry_." Very thin slices are arranged

geometrically in large patterns, and fastened with glue on staircase

and passage walls, or made into dado panelling to the room, in this

case capped by mouldings.

An ingenious method of inlaying thin veneers on flat surfaces of wood

by machinery has been patented by the same firm. Veneers or slices of

wood about the thickness of coarse brown paper are glued on a board,

e.g. a table top. A design punched out in zinc, of a thickness

somewhat greater than that of the veneer, is laid over it, and the

board is then placed under a heavy roller. The zinc is forced into the

surface of the board by the roller to about the thickness of the

veneer. A plane cleans off the rest of the veneer, leaving the portion

only that answers to the zinc pattern, thus forced into the surface of

the board. If soaked, the grain of the wood would push up the thin

veneer, no doubt, but this is no greater risk than that to which all

marquetry is exposed.

Neither of these inventions have as yet been carried beyond the

simplest disposition of arrangement. What can be done in either method

remains to be shown.

All the woodwork passed under review thus far in joinery and

cabinet-work, is of _hard_ woods. Much, however, of our modern

furniture is of a less valuable description, and is made of pine,

American birch, Hungarian and other ash. Pitch-pine, an exceedingly

hard wood, difficult to dry, and with a disagreeable propensity to

crack if not very well seasoned, is also used, and a beautiful

material it is. Some small quantity of bedroom furniture in beech,

oak, and ash is made in the workshops that I have been describing. As

a general rule, however, this manufacture of soft woods is a separate

branch of the trade. To see soft wood, such as pine, made up into

admirable bedroom furniture, and French polished till the grain of it

shows much of the delicacy and agreeableness of satin-wood, we should

pay a visit to the works of Messrs. Dyer and Watts, in Islington, and

to other houses that occupy their time exclusively in work of this

kind. It is clean, cheerful, and, by comparison, cheap; is ornamented

(in the works of Messrs. Dyer and Watts) with neat lines of red, grey,

and black, some of the lines imitative of inlaid wood. It is popular,

and if we proceed from the workshops of Messrs. Graham, Holland, and

others, to their showrooms and warehouses, we shall find this deal

furniture for sale, though they do not profess to make any of it. Less

costly pine-wood furniture is painted green, or white, or in imitation

of other woods.

The surface of woodwork, if the woods are valuable, is finished by

_French polishing_. A solution of shell-lac is put on a rolled

woollen rubber, which is then covered with a linen rag, on which the

polisher puts a drop of linseed oil. He rubs this solution evenly over

the entire surface of the wood as it passes through the fibre of the

linen, smooth action being secured by the oil. It is laid on in

successive fine coats till a glossy surface is obtained which is air

and water-proof. For fine work the surface should not be so glossy as

to look like japan work. French polishing preserves woods liable to

split, such as oak, from the too rapid action of the air.

_Graining_ is an imitation of oak or other woods. A light colour,

chrome yellow, and white, is first laid on, and glazed over with

brown. While still wet, the brown is combed with elastic square

teethed combs to give the appearance of graining. Larger veins are

wiped out by the thumb and a piece of rag. All sorts of woods are thus

imitated, and the work when dry is varnished over. Independently of

any skill or deceptiveness, this broken painted surface looks

effective and lasts long.

Of the propriety of such a decoration there are many doubts, for the

discussion of which there is not space here. Marble graining has long

been represented in Italy, e.g. in the loggia of Raphael in the

Vatican. But in that particular instance, the painting is a

_representation_, not an _imitation_. Wood graining is performed in

all countries, and such imitations seem to have been practised by the

ancients.

Mr. Norman Shaw is now exhibiting in Exhibition road examples of woods

with fine grain stained green, red, and other colours, and French

polished, the grain showing as if the woods were naturally of those

hues.

For inexhaustible resource in tinting, polishing, and decorating wood

surfaces, we shall have to learn from the Japanese, from whom probably

the famous Vernis Martin was first borrowed in the last century. Much

imitation lac-japanning was executed in this country during the latter

years of the century. This work is still made in Birmingham. Pieces of

mother-o'-pearl are glued on wood and the intervening surface, covered

with lac varnish which is rubbed smooth, coat after coat, with pumice

and water, till the surface of the inlaid pearl shell is reached, and

the whole ground to a glassy polish.