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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

An English table and chairs of the year 1633, from a woodcut of that date.