marqueteurs were produced, which have made French furniture recognised
by the public as well as by connoisseurs as an art manufacture, in
conjunction with the wonderfully chiselled ormolu mountings. Mention is
made of intarsia in France as early as the end of the fifteenth century,
however. In the inventory of Anne of Brittanny's effects (1498) may be
read "ung coffret faict de musayeque de bois et d'ivoire," and in a
still earlier one of the Duke de Berry's, dated 1416, is mentioned a
"grant tableau, où est la passion de Nostre Seigneur, fait de poins de
marqueterie." This is as early as the intarsias of Domenico di Nicolò at
Siena, and was probably of foreign manufacture. In 1576 a certain Hans
Kraus was called "marqueteur du roi," but the first Frenchman known to
have practised the art is Jean Macé of Blois, who was at work in
Paris from 1644 or earlier to 1672 as sculptor and painter. He is said
to have been the first who brought intarsia into France, under the name
of "marqueterie," having been for some time in the Netherlands. His
title was "menuisier et faiseur de Cabinets et tableaux en marqueterie
de bois." He was lodged in the Louvre in 1644 (when Louis XIV. was six
years old), "en honneur de la longue et belle pratique de son art dans
les Pays Bas." His daughter married Pierre Boulle, who in 1619 was
turner and joiner to the King, probably both to Louis XIII. and Henry
IV. In 1621 Paul Boulle was born, and five years later Jacques. The
family was settled at Charenton-le-Pont, near Paris, the principal town
of the Huguenots for eighty years. Here, in 1649, Pierre Boulle was
buried, the father of seven children. The earlier seventeenth century
designs show picturesque landscapes or broken ruins or figures, _motifs_
which recur a century later, as in the beautiful panel signed "Follet"
in the Cabinet by Claude Charles Saunier in the Wallace collection. The
colours are occasionally stained, and ebony and ivory are favourite
materials. It is impossible to fix the exact time when copper and
tortoiseshell came into use in France. Some of the cabinets in which
they appear are certainly of the period of Louis XIII. It was probably
imported either from Spain or Flanders; it became very fashionable
about the middle of the seventeenth century, and ended by entirely
absorbing the official orders of the Court of Louis XIV. With this work
the name of Boulle is indissolubly associated. Pierre Boulle was lodged
in the Louvre about 1642. In 1636 he is on the list for 400 livres
annually. Jean Boulle died in the Louvre in 1680. He was the father of
André Charles probably, who was born in November, 1642, and the nephew
of Pierre. André Charles Boulle in 1672 succeeded to the lodging of Jean
Macé in the same building, and seven years later by a second brévet to
the "demilogement," formerly occupied by Guillaume Petit "to allow him
to finish the works executed for His Majesty's service." It is told of
him by a contemporary that the talented boy wanted to be a painter, but
his father would not allow it, and insisted upon his keeping to
handicraft. He was a man of most varied talent; when he was first
granted apartments in the Louvre it was as "joiner, marqueteur, gilder,
and chiseller," and in the decree of Louis XIV., by which he was
appointed the first art-joiner to the King, he is called "architect,
sculptor, and engraver." He had a passion for collecting drawings,
paintings, and other works of art, and when his workshops were burnt his
collection was valued at 60,000 livres. This taste brought him into
money difficulties, and in 1704 his creditors obtained a decree
against him, and he would have been imprisoned if the King had not
extended the safeguard of the Palace of the Louvre to him on condition
that he made an arrangement with them. He was a member of the Academy of
S. Luke as sculptor and brass engraver. The Cabinet of the Dauphin was
considered his masterpiece, in which the walls and ceiling were covered
with mirrors in ebony frames, with inlays of rich gilding, and the floor
laid with wood mosaic, in which the initials of the Dauphin and his wife
were intertwined. The drawing made for it is now in the Musée des Arts
Décoratifs, but the work itself no longer exists. On August 30th, 1720,
his works were burnt, it was thought by a thief whom the workmen of
Marteau, his neighbour at the Louvre, had surprised some months before
and punished summarily, who, by way of vengeance on the "menuisiers,"
set fire to the "ébénistes." Nearly everything he possessed was either
burnt, lost, or stolen; models of the value of 37,000 livres, wood and
tools worth 25,000, many pieces of furniture finished or in course of
construction; works in metal, as well as in wood, and his whole
collection of drawings, paintings, and objects of art. His total loss
was estimated by experts at 383,780 livres, more than 1,000,000 of
francs in the money of to-day, from which an income of 50,000 francs
might be expected. This valuation was on an inventory drawn up shortly
after, perhaps for the purpose of getting the King's help. The number of
undeniable productions of his hand is small, but objects which came from
the studio after his death are tolerably plentiful since his four sons
carried on the business, though not the inspiration; contemporaries
characterised them as "apes." Two commodes which were in Louis XVI.'s
bedroom at Versailles are now in the Bibliothêque Mazarin, and a chest
which was forgotten in the Custom House at Havre now belongs to the
museum of that city. A cabinet is in the Mobilier National, and a
pedestal is in the Grünes Gewölbe at Dresden. Other genuine Boulles are
in the Wallace collection, in the Rothschild collection, and at the
Hotel Cluny. A writing table, for which the millionaire Samuel Bernard
(who died in 1739), a great collector of art treasures, had given 50,000
livres, appears to be lost. M. Luchet asks, with some truth, "Can you
imagine a financier, Jew or Christian, paying 100,000 francs for a new
bureau? Old, it would be another thing--an object of art to sell."
Boulle was most careful over his materials. He had 12,000 livres worth
of wood in his stores, fir, oak, walnut, battens, Norwegian wood, all
collected and kept long and carefully for the benefit of the work. He
also used real tortoiseshell, which, is replaced in the economical art
industry of the day with gelatine. The mountings were always chiselled,
cast quite roughly, so that the artist did nearly everything. He was
helped in this part of the work by Domenico Cucci and others. The inlay,
instead of being tortoiseshell, may have been horn, mother-of-pearl,
ivory, or wood; the motive, instead of brass, may be pewter, silver,
aluminium, or gold; it is still known by the name of Boulle work. Boulle
himself worked intarsia of wood also at intervals all through his life.
He died February 29th, 1732.
[Illustration: Plate 46.--_Cabinet belonging to Earl Granville. Boulle
work of about 1740._
_To face page 96._] [Illustration: Plate 47.--_Top of writing table in
the Saloon, Roehampton House. Period of Louis XV._]
[Illustration: Plate 48.--_Encoignure, signed J. F. Oeben, in the Jones
bequest, Victoria and Albert Museum._
_To face page 98._]
His pupil, J. F. Oëben, became "ébéniste du roi," with a lodging in the
_dépendances_ of the Arsenal in 1754. He was marqueteur especially.
Examples of his work are both at South Kensington and in the Wallace
collection, and in the Gallerie d'Apollon at the Louvre is the great
secretary bureau, which he was making for Louis XV. at the time of his
death, in or about 1765. His widow carried on the establishment; her
foreman, J. Henry Riesener, completed the unfinished work. He was also a
German, born in 1735 at Gladbach, near Cologne, and coming to Paris
quite young entered Oëben's atelier. On his death he was made foreman,
and two years after, when he was thirty-two years of age, married his
master's widow. The year following 1768 he was received as master
_menuisier ébéniste_. In 1776 his wife died, and six years after he
married again, but was divorced as soon as the new legislation allowed
it. When he was married the first time he had no fortune, but fifteen
years after he declared in his marriage contract that there was then
owing to him by the King, the royal family, and other debtors 504,571
livres, without counting the finished objects in his warehouses, his
models of bronze, his jewels, and personal effects, and several
important life annuities. Between 1775 and 1785 he received from the
Garde Meuble 500,000 livres, so profitable had the production of
furniture of the highest class become. He was in full work at the time
of the Revolution, and two of his finest pieces bear the dates 1790 and
1791 in their marquetry. When the furniture of the royal residences was
sold, Riesener bought back several pieces, being aided by Charles
Delacroix, the husband of his first wife's daughter, who directed the
sale at Versailles. He tried to sell these again, but with poor success,
and when he died, on January 8th, 1806, at the age of 71, he was again
almost without fortune. His beautiful bureau secretary in the Wallace
collection, made for Stanislas Leczinski, King of Poland, and dated
1769, shows him at his best. The workmanship is superb, and the design
most pleasing, almost the only point to which exception may be taken
being the crude green, obtained by staining, here and there. The
half-length of Secrecy in the oval cartouche at the back is as good as
the best Italian figure work, and was often reproduced by him. The
flower panels are particularly delicate and beautiful. There is an
upright secretary, also by him, in the same collection almost equally
delicate and beautiful in its marquetry decorations. The diaper patterns
so characteristic of this period are most beautifully executed, but are
not very interesting, and the mountings take the interest rather from
the marquetry, becoming more and more delicately designed and
elaborately worked. The principal woods used by Riesener were tulip and
rose wood, holly, maple, laburnum, purple wood, and sometimes snake
wood. His contemporary, David Roentgen, used principally pear, lime, and
light-coloured woods, burnt for the shades.
[Illustration: Plate 49.--_Panel from back of Riesener's bureau, made
for Stanislas Leczinski, with figure of Secrecy._
_To face page 100._]
[Illustration: Plate 50.--_Roundel from bureau, made for Stanislas
Leczinski, King of Poland, now in the Wallace Collection._
_To face page 102._]
Paris has endured a regular invasion of German craftsmen from the middle
of the eighteenth century, and the Faubourg S. Antoine still has a
number of German-born joiners among its workmen. Among the most
celebrated of them was David Roentgen, born either at Neuwied or
Herrenhagen in 1743. In 1772 he succeeded his father, Abraham Roentgen,
in his business at Neuwied am Rhein, which he had founded in 1753, and
from which he retired into the house of the Moravian brethren, where he
lived for twenty years longer. The engraver Wille relates that he came
to his house in Paris in 1774 with letters of recommendation, and that
he put him in touch with designers and sculptors. When Marie Antoinette
became Queen he was appointed "Ébéniste méchanicien" to the Queen. He
was in such good odour with her as to be charged on several occasions to
carry presents to her mother and sisters. Her favour excited the
jealousy of the other joiners, and they contested his right to sell
foreign-made furniture. He got out of this difficulty by being admitted
a member of their corporation on May 24th, 1780. He was so entirely
master of his craft, and increased its resources so much by using exotic
woods, that contemporary opinion thought it difficult to imagine greater
success in the particular direction in which he worked. In 1779 he
showed a table of marquetry, made in a new fashion, which he described
as a mosaic, "in which the shades are neither burnt, nor engraved, nor
darkened with smoke, as one has been obliged to express them until now,"
a return in fact to the earlier Italian method. His designs were many of
them made by Johann Zick of Coblenz, others by Jean Baptiste Le Prince,
chinoiseries, and shepherd games. Under him the later German marqueterie
reached its highest point. His works went all over Europe, from St.
Petersburg to Paris, and replicas were ordered by those who were obliged
to forego the originals. He sold to Catherine of Russia a series of
articles of furniture for 20,000 roubles, and the Empress added a
present of 5000 roubles and a gold snuff-box. The King of Prussia was
his constant protector, and in February, 1792, gave him the title of
Secret Councillor, and in November of the same year named him Royal
Agent on the Lower Rhine. The Revolution ruined him, and he was obliged
in 1796 to close his factory. He abandoned France at this period, and
the Government, considering him as an "Emigré," seized all his effects
in 1793, including the furniture made at Neuwied, then in his stores. He
died at Wiesbaden in 1807. With him these incomplete historical notes
may terminate. Many of the names mentioned are but names, while in many
cases names and works cannot be connected, for the carver and
intarsiatori were often, like other craftsmen, content to do the work
without caring about the reputation of doing it; but the cases in which
facts of the lives or work of these men have been preserved are so much
the more interesting from their rarity, and certainly do not show them
to any disadvantage compared with other artists, or those among whom
their lives were passed.
THE PROCESS OF MANUFACTURE
The early mode of working intarsia in Italy, where it is more than 100
years more ancient than in any other country, was by sinking forms in
the wood, according to a prearranged design, and then filling the
hollows with pieces of different coloured woods. At first the number of
colours used was very small--indeed, Vasari says that the only tints
employed were black and white, but this must be interpreted freely,
since the colour of wood is not generally uniform, and there would
consequently often be a difference in tint in portions cut from
different parts of the same plank. A cypress chest of 1350, now in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, shows another mode of decoration standing
between tarsia proper and the mediæval German and French fashion of
sinking the ground round the ornament and colouring it. In this example
the design is incised, the ground cleared out to a slight depth, and the
internal lines of the drawing and the background spaces filled in with a
black mastic, the result much resembling niello. If dark wood be
substituted for the mastic background we have almost the effect of
the stalls of the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, which, though
an early work of Domenico di Nicolò, are well considered in design, well
executed, and quite satisfactory in point of harmony between material
and design.
[Illustration: Plate 51.--_Antonio Barili at work, by himself._
_To face page 104._]
At the commencement of the Renaissance the fancy of the intarsiatori
overflowed in the most graceful arabesques, which are perfectly suited
to the material and are often executed with absolute perfection, and
these may perhaps be held to be the most entirely satisfactory of their
works, though not the most marvellous. The ambition of the craftsman led
him to emulate the achievements of the painter, and we find, after the
invention of perspective drawing, views of streets and other
architectural subjects, which are not always very successful, and the
representation of cupboards, the doors of which are partly open, showing
objects of different kinds on the shelves, which are often rendered with
the most extraordinary realism, when the means adopted are
considered.[3] This realism was much assisted by Fra Giovanni da
Verona's discovery of acid solutions and stains for treating the wood,
so as to get more variety of colour, and by the practice of scorching
portions of the pieces of which the subject was composed, thus
suggesting roundness by means of shading. It was a common practice to
increase the decorative effect by means of gilding and paint, thus
obtaining a brilliancy of colour at the expense of unity of effect
sometimes, one may think, if one may judge from the panels in the stalls
at the Certosa of Pavia--though perhaps it is scarcely fair to take them
as examples of the effect of the older work since they have been
restored in modern times. At the best period it was used almost entirely
for church furniture and the furnishings of public edifices, in Italy at
least, and many of the ranges of stalls still occupy their original
positions.
[Illustration: Plate 52.--_Panel from the Victoria and Albert Museum._
_To face page 106._]
The principal woods used in the work of the best period were pear,
walnut, and maple, though pine and cypress also appear. Ebony was
imitated with a tincture of gall apples, green was obtained with
verdigris, and red with cochineal. Sublimate of mercury, arsenical acid,
and sulphuric acid were also used to affect the colour of the wood. This
treatment lessened its lasting power, and often caused its decay through
the attacks of worms. The scorching was done with molten lead, or in
very dark places with a soldering-iron. It is now done with hot sand.
The following technical description is taken from a German book of
1669--"Wood-workers paint with quite thin little bits of wood, which
are coloured in different ways, and the same are put together after
the form of the design in hollowed-out panels, fastened with glue and
polished with an iron on the surface so that they may become quite
smooth. They paint at the present time in this manner tables and jewel
chests or trays, and all in the highest artistic manner. Also separate
pictures are put together, which copy the works of the most celebrated
masters. First, they take small, very thin pieces of pear or lime dyed
through with different colour-stuffs, which are prepared by certain
processes, so that the wood is the same colour within and without. Then
they give them their several shapes as the kind of picture requires,
cutting them according to the size and shape, and stick them with glue
on the board. In the place of wood they sometimes use bone, horn, and
tortoiseshell cut into fine strips, also ivory and silver. The whole
work is called by the Germans 'Einlegen' or 'Furnieren,' because
although each piece is separate from the others no part is taken out
from the surface in which such figures are inlaid, but the whole is
covered." With the use of the fret-saw for cutting the patterns, and the
consequent discovery of the possibility of counterchanging the ground
and the design (that which was black becoming white, and _vice versâ_),
called male and female forms, the manufacture of tarsia, or marquetry
rather, commenced to take a more commercial aspect, the cost being
considerably reduced by the making of several copies by one sawing. This
is the process used at the present day.
The durability of inlaid work depends upon the tightness and
completeness with which the inlaid parts are fitted together or mortised
into the main body or bed of the wood, and also on the level grounding
out of the matrix. In Spanish and Portuguese work ivory or ebony pins or
pegs were used also. Marquetry is a form of veneering, and the operation
is thus conducted:--The under surface of the veneer and the upper
surface of the bed are both carefully levelled and toothed over so as to
get a clean, newly-worked surface; the ground is then well wetted with
glue, at a high temperature, and the two surfaces pressed tightly
together so as to squeeze as much out as possible. The parts are screwed
down on heated metal beds, or between wooden frames, made so as to
exactly fit the surfaces in every part, called "cauls," until the glue
is hard. In cutting the patterns of Boulle work two or three slices of
material, such as brass and tortoiseshell or ebony, are glued together
with paper between, so that they may be easily separated when the
cutting is done. Another piece of paper is glued outside, upon which the
pattern is indicated. A fine watch spring saw is then introduced
through a hole in an unimportant part of the design, and the patterns
sawn out as in ordinary fretwork. The slices are then separated, and
that cut out of one slice is fitted into the others so that one cutting
produces several repetitions of the design with variations in ground and
pattern. When there are only two slices of material the technical term
for them is Boulle and Counter. When the various parts have been
arranged in their places, face downwards, paper is glued over them to
keep the whole in place, and filings of the material rubbed in to fill
up any interstices. The whole is then toothed over and laid down in the
same manner as ordinary veneer, the ground being first rubbed over with
garlic, or some acid, to remove any traces of grease. Marquetry of wood
is made in the same way, but more thicknesses of wood are put together
to be sawn through, as many as four not being an unusual number, while
for common work even eight may be sawn at one time, and the various
sheets are pinned together only with a stiff backing of common veneer of
good thickness to steady the work. Dye woods are used as far as
possible, and holly stained to the required colour serves for greens and
blues and a few other tints. Pearl is always cut in one thickness, and
is glued down on a backing of wood at least 1/8-inch thick.
Another mode of cutting the design approximates more nearly to the
ancient practice. The whole design is drawn on paper attached to the
ground, or counter, and cut out entirely. The various portions of inlay
are then cut from different veneers of the desired colour and fitted
into their places. Another method is to paste the paper with the whole
design on the ground, and on it to paste the various ornaments cut from
suitable veneers, then to cut through the ground, the saw grazing the
edges of the ornamental forms. The parts so cut out are then pushed
through the ornaments, separated from the paper, and laid down in the
vacant places. A variation on this method is to cut out the forms to be
inlaid in different veneers, and glue them in their proper positions on
a sheet of paper. A sheet of white paper is pasted on the veneer, which
is to serve as the ground. A sheet of blackened paper is laid over it,
and over this the sheet with the forms to be inlaid, which are then
struck with a light mallet, so as to print an impression of their edges
upon the paper. The printed shapes are then cut out one at a time, care
being taken to make the saw exactly follow the outline. The object of
all these processes is, of course, to ensure the ground and the inlaid
forms exactly fitting. After cleaning the surface from paper and glue it
is smoothed with plane and scraper, and the markings on leaves or other
figures made by a graver, if not already made by saw cuts, and they and
the lines between the male and female forms are filled with shellac or
wood-dust and glue.
In Germany the veneers used are one to two millimetres thick, _i.e._,
one-twenty-fifth or two-twenty-fifths of an inch. The principal woods
used are walnut, pear, ash, bird maple, holly, olive, amboyna, rose
wood, violet wood, thuya, and palisander, which name is also used on the
Continent for rose wood and violet, though it is really a sort of cedar.
Tortoiseshell, ivory, and metal plates are also used, principally of
pewter, brass, and zinc. Seeman's Kunstgewerbliche Handbücher advise
thus:--"When ivory or hard precious metals are used it is better to
divide the design into smaller parts. To avoid damage to the effect by
time and change of colour in the woods such combinations as the
following are to be preferred:--Mahogany and black walnut, pear and
black walnut, Hungarian ash and black thuya, pear and palisander, brass
and black, etc. For fine, small ornament smooth, even-textured woods
should be used such as pear, mahogany, maple, or holly; for broad
patches and backgrounds, which are not required to be dark, you should
use patterned or streaked woods, like bird maple, amboyna, thuya, or
olive. Ivory, mother-of-pearl, and metals in large pieces look hard and
loud, so it is better to use them in quite small pieces. If engraved,
larger pieces may be employed and used for inscription tablets, coats of
arms, and cartouches, or for bits of figures, birds, and butterflies.
Shading may be done in various ways. Lines may be engraved and filled up
with a glue cement, or hatchings may be drawn with a scorching solution,
or the wood may be burnt with hot sand. The sand is made hot in an iron
pot, and the piece to be darkened inserted. Or it may be scorched with a
hot iron or spirit or gas flame. The simplest way is with the poker used
in poker work." In England the sand is heaped upon a metal plate which
is heated underneath. The veneer is held with tweezers and pushed into
the sand, the gradation of heat giving gradation of tone. The hot sand
shrinks the wood, and allowance must be made for this.
Veneers are both saw and knife cut; the saw wastes about as much as the
thickness cut in sawdust. They range from 8 to 15 to the inch. The
French saw-cut their veneers thinner than the English do.
The woods in every-day use at the present day are white holly, box, pear
(in various shades), and holly (dyed all colours); while the veneer
merchants sometimes supply also planetree, sycamore, chestnut,
Brazilwood, yellow fustic, barwood, tulipwood, kingwood, East and West
India satinwood, rosewood, ebony, ash, harewood, Indian purplewood,
hornbeam, and snakewood. Bird's-eye maple and partridgewood may also be
bought.