WARDROBES AND CUPBOARDS.
Sometimes a room has to play the part of both bed-room and boudoir, and
then it is of importance what form the "_garde-robes_" shall assume.
Fortunately there are few articles of furniture on which more lavish
pains have been bestowed, and in which it is possible to find scope for
a wider range of taste and choice. Recesses may be fitted up, if the
room be a large one, and have deep depressions here and there in the
masonry with doors to match the rest of the woodwork, panelled, grained,
and painted exactly alike, and very commodious hanging cupboards may
thus be formed. But however useful these may be to the lady's maid, they
are scarcely æsthetic enough to be entitled to notice among descriptions
of art furniture. Rather let us turn to this little wardrobe (Fig. 6),
too narrow, perhaps, for aught but a single gown of the present day
to hang in, yet exquisitely artistic and pleasant to look upon. Its
corner columns are mounted with brass, and every detail of its
construction is finished as though by the hand of a jeweller. The lower
drawers are probably intended for lace or fur, or some other necessary
of a fine lady's toilette. It is very evident from the accommodation
provided in the distant days when such wardrobes were designed, that
"little and good" used to be the advice given to our grandmothers with
their pin-money, and that even in their wildest dreams they never beheld
the countless array of skirts and polonaises and mantles and Heaven
knows what beside, that furnish forth a modern belle's equipment. Yet
these moderate-minded dames and damsels must have loved the garments
they did possess very dearly, for the heroine of every poem or romance
of the last century is represented as depending quite as much on her
clothes in the battle of life as any knight on his suit of Milan mail.
Clarissa Harlowe mingles tragic accounts of Lovelace's villanies with
her grievances about mismatched ruffles and tuckers, and even the
excellent Miss Byron has by no means a soul above court suits or French
heels. Still these lovely ladies had not much space assigned to them
wherein to bestow their finery when it was not on their backs, and we
must expect to find all the wardrobe designs of former times of somewhat
skimpy proportions. Here is an antique lock-up (Fig. 7) of French make
(most of the best designs for furniture came from France in those days)
of a very practical and good form to copy in a humbler material. This is
made of a costly wood, probably rosewood, with beautifully engraved
brass fittings all over it. The door of the upper half seems rather
cumbrous, being only a flap which opens out all in one piece, but a
modern and less expensive copy might be improved by dividing this large
lid into a couple of doors to open in the middle in the usual way,
without at all departing from the original lines.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
Fig. 8, again, is more of a bureau, and affords but scanty room for the
ample stores of a lady's _lingerie_. It is, however, of a very good
design in its way, its chief value being the workmanship of its fine
brass ornaments. The handles of the drawers are peculiarly beautiful,
and represent the necks and heads of swans issuing from a wreath of
leaves. It would look particularly well in a bed-room in a large
old-fashioned country house, where the rest of the furniture is perhaps
rather cumbrous as well as convenient, and the glitter of the metal
mounting would help to brighten a dingy corner. It cannot, however, be
depended upon to hold much, and is chiefly valuable in a decorative
sense, or as a stand for a toilette glass.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
In strong contrast to these two designs is Fig. 9 of modern Japanese
manufacture. It is easy to see that the original idea must have been
taken from a common portable chest of drawers, such as officers use. The
slight alteration in its arrangement is owing to Japanese common sense
and observation, for it would have required more strength of character
than a cockney upholsterer possesses, to divide one of the parts so
unequally as in this illustration. But the male heart will be sure to
delight specially in that one deep drawer for shirts, and the shallow
one at the top for collars, pockethandkerchiefs, neckties, and so forth.
The lower drawers would hold a moderate supply of clothes, and the
little closet contains three small drawers, besides a secret place for
money and valuables. When the two boxes, for they are really little
else, are placed side by side they measure only three feet one inch
long, three feet four high, and one foot five deep. They hardly appear,
from the prominence of the sliding handles, intended to be packed in
outer wooden cases as portable chests of drawers usually are; but it
must be remembered that in Japan they would be carried from place to
place slung on poles carried on men's shoulders. There is a good deal of
iron used in the construction, which must be intended to give strength,
but it does not add to the weight in any excessive degree, for it is
very thin. The wood is soft and light, and rather over-polished, but the
Japanese artist would have delighted in varnishing it still more, and
covering it with grotesque gilt designs in lacquer, if he had been
allowed. On page 55 will be found a roomy Chinese cupboard with drawers
and nicely-carved panels.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
Many of our most beautiful old Indian chests of drawers and cabinets
have this black ground with quaintest bronze or brazen clamps and
hinges, locks and handles, to give relief to the sombre groundwork.
Except that the drawers seldom open well, and are nearly always
inconveniently small, they are the most beautiful things in the world
for keeping clothes in, but it would certainly be as well to have, out
of the room in a passage, some more commodious and commonplace
receptacles. I have seen a corridor leading to bed-rooms, lined on each
side with wardrobes, about six or seven feet high, consisting merely of
a plain deal top with divisions at intervals of some five feet from top
to bottom. A series of hanging cupboards was thus formed, which had been
lined with stretched brown holland, furnished with innumerable pegs, and
closed in by doors of a neat framework of varnished deal with panels of
fluted chintz. Besides these doors to each compartment, an ample curtain
hung within, of brown holland, suspended by rings on a slender iron rod;
and this curtain effectually kept out all dust and dirt, and preserved
intact the delicate fabrics within. Such an arrangement must have been,
I fear, far more satisfactory to the soul of the lady's maid than the
most beautiful old Indian or French chest of drawers.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
For rooms which are not old-fashioned in style, and in which it is yet
not possible to indulge in French _consoles_ or Indian cabinets as
places to keep clothes in, then I would recommend the essentially modern
simple style of wardrobe and chest of drawers. I would eschew "gothic,"
or "mediæval," or any other style, and I would avoid painted lines as I
would the plague. But there are perfectly simple, inoffensive wardrobes
to be procured of varnished pine or even deal (and the former wears the
best) which, if it can only be kept free from scratches, is at least in
good taste and harmony in a modern, commonplace bed-room. It is quite
possible, however by the exercise of a little ingenuity to dispense with
modern, bought wardrobes, and to invent something which will hold
clothes, and yet be out of the beaten track. I happened only the other
day, to come across so good an example of what I mean,[1] that I feel
it ought to be described. First of all, it must be understood that the
bed-room in question was a small one, in a London house recently
decorated and fitted up in the style which prevailed in Queen Anne's
reign, and to which there is now such a decided return of the public
taste. The other portions of the furniture were in accordance with the
original intention of the room and consisted of a very beautiful, though
simple, carved oaken bedstead, and a plain spindle-legged toilette table
and washstand, also old in design. The chairs were especially fine,
having been bought in a cottage in Suffolk, and yet they matched the
bedstead perfectly. They had substantial rush-bottomed seats, but the
frame was of fine dark oak, and the front feet spread out in a firm,
satisfactory fashion giving an idea of solidity and strength. The
fireplace was tiled after the old style, and the mantelpiece consisted
of a couple of narrow oak shelves, about a dozen inches apart, connected
by small pillars. These ledges afforded a stand for a few curious little
odds and ends, and on the top shelf stood some specimens of old china.
But the difficulty remained about the wardrobe, for the room was too
small to admit old _bureaus_ which would only hold half a dozen articles
of clothing.
[Footnote 1: See Frontispiece.]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
So the ingenious owner devised a sort of corner cupboard to fit into an
angle of the room, and to match the rest of the woodwork in colour and
style, having old brass handles and plates like those on the doors. It
is a sort of double cupboard; that is to say, whilst the left-hand side
is a hanging wardrobe which only projects away from the wall
sufficiently to allow the dresses to be hung up properly, the right-hand
division is a chest of drawers. Not a row of commonplace drawers,
however. No; the front surface is broken by the introduction of little
square doors and other arrangements, for bonnets, &c. We must bear in
mind these drawers extend much higher than usual, and the cornice being
nearly on a level with that of the wardrobe, there can be no possibility
of putting boxes and so forth on the top; but then, on the other hand, a
goodly range of drawers of differing depth is provided. It certainly
seemed to me an excellent way of meeting the difficulty; and I also
noticed in other bed-rooms in the same house how odd nooks and uneven
recesses were filled in by a judicious blending of cupboard and wardrobe
which is evidently convenient in practice as well as exceedingly quaint
yet correct in theory.