CHAPTER XI

CHAIRS

THE old-fashioned idea that a collector must arrange his treasures grouped in one spot no longer obtains. I recall asking one who had returned from a visit to a very interesting house if the host and hostess were collectors of antiques, curios, or rare objets d’art. “Oh, no,” was the reply, “I don’t think so. They showed me many beautiful things, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a collection.” Later I learned that this home contained one of the most notable collections of early furniture in America! All these pieces, of course, had been considered as articles entering into the adornment of this home and not merely as objects gathered clutter-wise into the semblance of an old curiosity shop. Even our museums are now often exhibiting their furniture collections arranged in such a manner as to carry out a complete idea of the original intention of the various pieces, displaying them in reconstructed rooms or in the counterpart of a portion of a room.

Probably no piece of furniture holds greater interest for the specialized or even the general collector than the chair. Its ancestry is venerable, but its remote antiquity need not be dwelt upon at length here. It is true that in a magnificent Louis Quatorze drawing-room, perfectly appointed and historically correct, the introduction of a cottage chair of the Windsor type would be as displeasing an anachronism as putting a wild thrush to neighbor with all the parrots of an avairy. On the other hand, the drawing-room of the average typical home in good taste the world over might contain a Chippendale chair, a Carolean settee, a Sheraton card-table, a Louis XIII stool, and an Italian Renaissance table, and yet be agreeably pleasing and pleasantly inviting if skill, good taste, and common sense had entered into the character of arrangements.

The collector who wishes to devote some attention to old furniture would do well to begin with old chairs. All the old chairs (the good ones and the fine ones) have not been “collected up” in the sense that they are permanently retired from business. When once they get into the museums, of course, they stay there, but even museums are not omnivorous. The acquiring of supremely rare or unique objects is by no means the only pleasure to be derived from collecting. In fact, it is one of its least thrilling forms, being measured more by dollars and cents and the commerce of things than it is by the mere joy of acquisition.

Some one has estimated that every collection which does not go into a museum changes hands every twenty years on an average. It is a fact that collecting in America to-day is infinitely more easy of accomplishment than it was a century ago. In New York, for instance, the auction sales of a single recent season presented to the collector more opportunities than could have come his way in six seasons years ago. It is a mistake to suppose that all good “chances” have passed; they are, as a matter of fact, just about beginning in America. We are told that collectors have ransacked farmhouses and old houses in the East for interesting pieces of antique furniture. That is true, but the process means only a change of location and not an elimination of possibilities.

The collector of old chairs can easily become familiar with the various forms of peculiarities of design which mark the different styles and periods, as may be seen by even a passing glance at the accompanying illustrations. Indeed, the ear-marks that distinguish certain pieces of furniture of the historic periods and distinct styles from others are, happily, so numerous that the art of identification becomes comparatively an easy one. Beginners will, to be sure, often come across modern reproductions of genuine old chairs. Not all of these—in fact, comparatively few of them—were made with intent to defraud. Occasionally some unscrupulous or ignorant person will offer a modern piece as genuine, but your true collector need hardly be deceived, except in rare instances, by attempted impositions. The form of the master furniture designers of yesterday has never been surpassed. There is nothing in modern design more beautiful or so beautiful as many of the old chairs of Chippendale, Sheraton, and Hepplewhite, and likewise of the early English and the French periods. Realizing this, the furniture-makers of to-day at home and abroad have sought to reproduce the best of these antique pieces for the service and the benefit of the modern home-maker, obviously as undisguised reproductions.

The collector who studies old chairs will glean many a helpful hint from these modern reproductions. The fine ones faithfully carried out are really worth collecting in themselves, as accessory to a collection of other pieces which the collector has been fortunate in obtaining in the originals. If you

chance to come across an old chair fine in the lines of its design, do not give it up as hopeless should you notice that it is disfigured with paint, dowdy, broken-down upholstery, and the like. A good restorer of old furniture will be able to work wonders with a piece of the sort. I remember discovering an old chair so hidden under the disguise of paint, putty, and car-plush as to have discouraged any but a discriminating enthusiasm. When this chair was turned over to a restorer he delivered it from its bondage of humiliation and it came forth an excellent and treasured genuine example of the finest Hepplewhite style. The “stuffing” had completely hidden a splendid ostrich-plume back.

To collect anything sensibly requires an interest in the available data concerning it. One might as well collect buttons manufactured in 1920 as to pay no attention to the study of things gathered together in pleasurable pursuit. So, too, it is with chairs. A chair-collector looks beyond the mere utilitarian fact that each chair can be sat upon with comfort, or can’t be.

First of all he must acquaint himself with the various periods: Italian Renaissance, French Renaissance, Flemish, Spanish, Elizabethan, Carolean, and Jacobean (Tudor to Stuart), William and Mary, Queen Anne, the Early Georgian, the French periods of the Henris, the Louis, the Empire, the styles of Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, and the early American forms.

The collector will find many excellent works in English by eminent authorities on furniture, all of which devote proper space to the subject of the chairs of the particular period of which they are treating. There the chair enthusiast will learn that walnut came to be widely used in English chairs after 1650; that Hepplewhite suggested haircloth for chair coverings; that the Carolean crown is a distinguishing feature of the Restoration period; that Queen Anne chairs are marked by simplicity, their beauty depending mainly on their fine lines, graceful curves, delicate veneering, and restraint where inlay is used; that mahogany came into use between 1720 and 1725, and not into general use before 1730; that Chippendale’s best pieces were made between 1730 and 1760; that in all real Chippendale ball-and-claw terminations the claw is carved to suggest vividly a gripping strength, and not as merely resting passively on the ball as in the imitations and in nearly all modern reproductions. These are but a few of the many interesting facts every old-furniture collector should know, points that enable one to collect chairs intelligently and with joy in the pursuit of a delectable hobby that is also a very practical one.

CHAPTER XII

ENGLISH DRINKING-GLASSES

Glass-making in England had an early origin, derived, it would seem probable, from the Roman invaders. We know it to have flourished to some extent at Cheddingfold in the thirteenth century, continuing there for several hundred years, as we glean from a reference in Thomas Charnock’s “Breviary of Philosophy,” published in 1557, wherein is written: “You may send to Cheddingfold to the glassmaker and desire him to blow thee a glass after thy devise.” An entry in Evelyn’s Diary for February 10, 1685, refers to “his Majesty’s health being drunk in a flint glass of a yard long, by the Sheriff, Commander, Officers and Chiefe gentlemen.” This reminds us that flint glass was discovered and came into vogue prior to 1680; or in that year its fame had caused it to be so highly regarded elsewhere in Europe that manufactories to compete with English ones were established at Liège in that year. The early flint glass of England differed somewhat from the later product. Probably the flint glass as we know it now was not introduced before 1730, or perfected until over a century later.

Of all the English glass none is more beautiful or attractive than the drinking-glasses of this period. Particularly is this true of the engraved and inscribed drinking-glasses which collectors now eagerly seek. Rare, indeed, these glasses have become, and fortunate is the collector who comes across a “find” of the sort. English glass of the eighteenth century, though less ornamental than Venetian, was nevertheless more utilitarian. In respect to the spirit glasses and rummers, which succeeded ale-tankards of metal and of pottery, this is particularly true. No “glasse of Venice” could have withstood the table impact which the English eighteenth-century spirit glasses were designed to survive, a virtue which gave them the name of “firing-glasses,” as the setting down of them by a company surrounding the jovial board produced a noise like a miniature cannonade. Some of these “firing-glasses” in the Leckie Collection, now forming part of the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Museum, are engraved with grape-vine designs, and arms, and are inscribed. Of course such engraved and inscribed glasses are of greater interest and rarity than those which are without decoration or inscription.

The method of classification of English drinking-glasses takes into consideration the types of the feet, the types of the bowls, and the types of the stems. There is the plain-footed glass, the glass with the folded foot (so called because the outer circle of the foot is folded back beneath it to strengthen it), the domed foot (shaped as its name suggests), and the domed-and-folded foot glass (a combination of dome and fold). The folded foot is a type which indicates early origin, just as those glasses which have the foot broader than the bowl indicate their origin to have been prior to the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

As to types of bowls, there are the drawn bowl (bowl and stem drawn from a single piece of glass, as in the glasses of the seventeenth century); the bell-shaped bowl, the waist-formed bell bowl, the waisted bowl, the ovoid bowl, the straight-sided bowl, the straight-sided rectangular bowl, the ogee bowl, the lipped ogee bowl and the double ogee form. The waist-formed bell-shaped (waisted-bell) bowl is rarely met with—the early eighteenth century marks its decline—and the waisted bowl is uncommon also. The bell-shaped bowls seem longest to have maintained favor. The Bristol Glass Works originated the ogee bowl shapes, which date from the middle of the eighteenth century.

As to the types of stems, the earliest in design is the baluster stem, in use as early as 1680, and popular till 1730; the plain stem, most frequently met with in glasses from 1700 to 1750; the air-twist stem, in vogue from 1725 to 1775, and perhaps later; the opaque white twist stem, dating from 1745 till the end of the century; the air and opaque white twist stem, the color twist stem, and the cut stem, dating from about the middle of the eighteenth century. Air-bubbles imprisoned in the stems of glasses have given to this type of glass the name of “tear-glass.” Almost without exception the “tears” have their points downward, although glasses showing the reverse of this have in rare instances been met with.

The air-twist stems are an evolution of the tears. The glass containing air-bubbles came to be heated and drawn out and ingeniously manipulated in such a way as to produce the effect of twisted filaments which formed such patterns within the glass as one now and then chances to find. Before manipulation the bubbles were produced artificially by pricking into the glass, softened by heat and covered over, in turn, with a film of molten glass.

The opaque white twist stem, and also the color twist stem, were obtained after the Venetian fashion of making Millefiori glass, described in Chapter XXVII (page 221), as derived from the Roman glass of antiquity. Rare specimens of stems are found with delicate tints of blue and red among the filaments.

All these twist and tear stems are nowadays reproduced and are occasionally fraudulently offered the unwary as genuine. But such glass neither rings true nor is right in color, though the copyists are coming to display their skill in the matter of tint likewise, even though balked by specific gravity. A number of the cut-stem glasses were coaching-glasses—that is, glasses without feet, which stood inverted on the tray when brought to the coach traveler at a relay inn. After his hasty drink the traveler would replace the glass inverted, hence there was no need for a foot; and there was less likelihood of a tray of such glasses, hurriedly carried, coming to grief through carelessness. With the advent of railroads and the decline of coaching such glasses were retired from service. Many of these old-time coaching-glasses were engraved and inscribed, but few of them have survived and a specimen would, indeed, be a pièce de résistance in any collection of glass.

We see from these notes that there is less guesswork connected with the study and collecting of old glass than one uninitiated in the rudiments of its lore might suppose. Nothing is without a reason; the thing is to find the raison d’être—that is a true collector’s pleasure.

Of all the engraved or the inscribed English glass none is more interesting in its historical connection than the Jacobite drinking-glasses. Their story, briefly, is this: After the flight of James II left William of Orange firmly in possession of the government, an act of Parliament, in 1701, formally excluded the house of Stuart from the throne and settled the succession (after William and his sister-in-law Anne should have died) upon the house of Hanover. Prince Charles James Edward, Chevalier of St. George (the son of James II), was recognized by Louis XIV of France as rightful King of England. This led William to prepare to make war on France, when death overtook him, and Anne became Queen of England. Queen Anne, thanks to Marlborough, successfully carried out William’s policies, and every attempt of the Stuarts to regain the throne was frustrated. Anne died in 1714, but as early as 1710 the Cycle, a famous and factious Jacobite club, was formed. Other Jacobite clubs followed throughout England and Scotland. The Jacobites were, of course, those who sought to restore the house of Stuart to the throne, a dangerous treason from the Crown’s point of view, and those Jacobites who had any desire to keep their heads on their shoulders had to proceed with care and secrecy. Nevertheless, even after the rebellion of 1715 and the famous “disappointment” of 1745 the Jacobites, when toasting the king, would hold their drinking-glasses above a bowl of water to signify that they drank to “the king over the water,” the Old Pretender or, after his death, to the Young Pretender.

The bolder Jacobites had their drinking-glasses engraved with Stuart emblems: a heraldic rose and two buds were, for instance, emblematic of James II, his son, and his grandson, while the star, oak-leaves, and acorns, etc., were obvious in allusion. The very boldest Jacobites had glasses inscribed with mottoes—Fiat being the most general one, as this “Let it be done,” was the motto of the Cycle Club, ancestor of Jacobite activity. The more timid Jacobites contented themselves with symbols or inscriptions engraved upon the under side of the foot of the glass. One comes across specimens of the Fiat Jacobite drinking-glass with the two oak-leaves engraved on the foot. Others are engraved with the heraldic rose upon the bowl and a star upon the foot. A large glass—its owner must have been the very boldest Jacobite of all!—is inscribed Audentior Ibo and also bears the portrait of the Young Pretender, whose death in 1788 did not, strangely enough, put an end to Jacobite activities. Indeed, the “Stuart fascination” is one of history’s great mysteries. On the foot of Jacobite glasses one sometimes finds engraved the feathers of the crest of the Prince of Wales; the rose and two buds of the Stuarts on the bowl. Still other glasses are not heraldic, but have the heraldic Stuart rose engraved upon the foot.

It is truly remarkable that any of these Jacobite glasses should have survived, for many of them must, in their perilous time, have had to meet with destruction to escape serving as telltales when sudden and unexpected raids upon Jacobite strongholds were made by the officers of the Crown. Some of these engraved and inscribed Jacobite glasses were probably decorated upon the Continent, but most of them are of English workmanship in engraving as well as in manufacture. Probably many of the Jacobite glasses were made at the glass-works of Newcastle-on-Tyne, proximity to the border of Scotland making such a location convenient on occasion. I think but few should be attributed to the Bristol glass-workers. Probably the largest number of Jacobite glasses were made shortly before the “Forty-five.”

As the Jacobites had specially engraved and inscribed glasses, so, too, did the partisans of King William. Williamite glasses were to be found in Ireland as well, where a number of them—some are extant—were engraved with anti-Jacobite toasts. But when it was not likely that the Irish could forget James II. Authorities are not agreed as to which were first put forth, Williamite or Jacobite glasses, but I am inclined to think precedence in chronological order should be given to the engraved and inscribed Williamite ones. There were, of course, fewer Williamite glasses than Jacobite glasses, just as later there were fewer Hanoverian glasses, as the Williamites and the Hanoverians were in the ascendant, and public loyalty considered itself beyond the necessity of symbolizing its fealty in other than the simple toast.

One may also include mention here of the Hanoverian engraved and inscribed glasses, one of which, for instance, was made to commemorate the coronation of George IV. Finally we come to rummers engraved with Nelson subjects, commemorating England’s naval hero. These, of course, are early nineteenth century, as Nelson lived till 1805.

CHAPTER XIII

STUART EMBROIDERIES

THE Stuart period of embroideries is one of great interest to the collector. A few years ago comparatively little attention was paid to examples of English embroidered work of the seventeenth century. Specimens of the sort are now eagerly sought for, not only by private collectors but by public museums as well. True it is that the English embroideries of the seventeenth century are not comparable in artistic quality with those of earlier periods, although the technical skill displayed therein, particularly in the class known as stump-work, has not been surpassed in English needle-work of any period since that of the very early ecclesiastical embroideries. Certain of its characteristic patterns survived the Elizabethan reign, only to degenerate, during King James’s time, into what one must confess to be some of the most uninteresting work in the whole history of English embroidery. Some quilted work, inspired by Oriental design, and certain crewels for hangings, were exceptions.

This Oriental influence was due to the rapidly developing intercourse, through commerce, of England with India and China, which marked the reign of James I and that of the two Charleses; a proclamation of Charles I, in 1631, for instance, permitted the importation from the East Indies of “quilts of China embroidered with gold.” Obelisks and pyramids were favorite devices with the embroiderers of James I, just as they were with woodcarvers and silversmiths of the day, a fact interesting to note, as these devices often aid the collector in fixing the period of an object he may be studying. Toward the end of this reign it became fashionable to represent religious subjects in needlework. The manufacture of tapestry in England flourished side by side with embroidery throughout the reign of James I and those of Charles I and Charles II, and it was from tapestry subjects that the needlework pictures of the Stuart period derived their inspiration. So thoroughly established had their vogue become, that although the fabrication of tapestry rapidly declined toward the end of the reign of Charles II, embroidered pictures still held their own.

The petit point or tent-stitch was effectively employed in the tapestry embroideries of this period. In its earliest form this stitch was worked over a single thread and produced a massed effect of very fine lines. The tapestry embroideries of the Stuart period often mirrored with extraordinary fidelity the fashions in the dress of the time.

Among objects in Stuart embroidery I have seen a little jewel-cabinet carried out mainly in silk flosses and some wool worked on irregularly woven tawny-white canvas, the material generally in use for petit point work, though the stitch employed in carrying out the pictorial subjects which adorned the sections of this cabinet is known as long-stitch.

Almost as precious as some of the jewels which once may have been treasured in this cabinet are the embroidered sachets, jewel-boxes, needle-case, pincushion, and two bits of beadwork which were tucked away in its recesses. Next to the long-stitch work of the cabinet itself, the stump-work sachet was perhaps the most important of these pieces. Stump-work consisted of featherstitching (though all other stitches were also employed) under which a padding was placed to form raised surfaces, taking this suggestion perhaps from the ancient opus anglicanum. These elevations or “stumps,” as they were called, were of cloth, of hair, of wool, and sometimes of wood, paper, and parchment. In fact, their materials were various. These stumps were glued

or basted on a ground of (generally) white satin, and the stitching was then executed to cover the stumping.

Quaint in conceit, though often crude enough in design, are the stitched emblems in much of this stump-work. The twice-repeated caterpillar was an emblem of the Stuart dynasty often employed, nor are other emblems without intended significance. The eyes of the birds, animals, and insects are often marked by seed-pearls, a practice of even earlier date in England, as one finds from the inventory of St. James House, 1549, wherein is mentioned a picture “of needlework, partly garnished with seed pearl.”

Silver threads are also effectively introduced in Stuart embroideries and edgings of silver lace surround many of the objects such as the pincushion. Many Stuart embroidery patterns were copied from the designs of the richly brocaded silks of the period.

CHAPTER XIV

DELFT

Dutch delft is one of the sorts of pottery that is especially dear to the gatherer of things ceramic. Its popularity has brought it to be uncommon, but if it is true that twenty years is, as statisticians say it is, the average time for a collection to rest before it comes upon the market again, we may take comfort in the fact that opportunities for picking up old delft are not vanishing. We have only to lie in wait for them, to be courageous in competition and alert in interest.

No faience has crept more winningly into literature than this to which the quaint, quiet little city that lies between The Hague and Rotterdam has lent its name. Here William the Silent dwelt and here he met his tragic death. Here in the little church is the tomb of Admiral van Tromp. Here, too, the Prince of Orange came to live. Knowles says:

The requirements of the well-to-do households of Delft gave encouragement to the potter’s art. The Dutch were well acquainted with the enameled and glazed pottery of Italy and of Spain. Such maiolica ware undoubtedly inspired experiment. With the importation of the Chinese blue-and-white porcelain—probably all that came to Europe at that early period passed first to Holland—the distinctive faience we know as old Dutch delft came into making, but it assumed distinctive qualities immediately, differentiating it from either the porcelain of China or the white-ground wares of Italy and Spain.

Some one once said to me: “I wish I could begin to collect real old delft, but I am afraid it is so difficult to pass judgment on pieces that without an expert to turn to constantly I should find my cabinet full of spurious ware. Mr. Antiqueman tells me it is very difficult to tell a piece of genuine old delft, unless one has had the years of experience he has had with it.” Happening to have a slight acquaintance with this Mr. Antiqueman, I did not find it difficult to understand why he chose to throw such mystery around the subject. Personally I think too many antique men lose more than they gain by so zealously guarding those trade secrets that are no secrets at all.

Once to know old Dutch delft is never to forget it. The knowing of it is not a difficult matter, once it is explained and one has contact with a genuine piece as an object-lesson.

In the first place, old Dutch delft is a pottery, not a porcelain. Pottery is always opaque, while porcelain is always translucent. Break a pottery object and it will be seen that it was formed of a baked clay base glazed or enameled over with a substance that has given it a coating which does not seem to be incorporated in substance with the base. Break a porcelain object and you will discover that all the way through it appears of a translucent substance. Old Dutch delft of the earliest sort was composed of a soft, friable, reddish clay base. Dutch delft of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a body base of yellowish or pale-brown color.

These bases instead of being glazed were coated with an enamel-like slip. Tin entered into the composition of this coating and this tin-enamel gave it a surface which I should describe as densely opaque, with a metallic feel but without the metallic lustre, for instance, of the maiolica wares of Italy and of Spain. The surface of old delft is absolutely different from the glazed surface of porcelain, of modern pottery.

The modern delft of to-day is not to be confused with the old Dutch delft. The Dutch ware made to-day which passes with the old name is a glazed ware and not, like the old, an enameled ware. In modern so-called delft one can see through the glaze. As I have said, old Dutch delft presents a completely opaque surface.

Just here I should say that in some of the later sorts of old Dutch delft a glaze was added to the enameled surface, but as the enameled coating is there, one will readily recognize it beneath the glaze. As the clay base of old Dutch delft was so soft and friable, the surface of a piece was entirely coated with the tin-enamel. While it was not metallic in the sense of having a metallic lustre like the maiolica of Deruta or of Gubbio, light glinted across the surface of a piece of old delft reveals a tinny sheen. The surface will prove smooth to the touch, but it will not feel glassy as does that of a glazed ware.

So friable is old delft that it is prone to crip at the edges, there revealing the brown body base of the under clay. A drop of strong acid dropped on the body clay thus exposed will effervesce, since there is carbonate of lime in the understructure of old delft. This body clay is so soft that it is easily cut with a knife. This cannot be said of the English Lambeth delft, which English ware, though inspired by the old Dutch delft and contemporary with much of it, was of a much harder body base, denser and more glossy than the Dutch clay. The enamel lay much more closely and evenly to the body base in old Dutch delft than it did in the English delft.

Dutch delft rarely crazed in the kiln; English delft often did so and in consequence its enameled surface came to be glazed to prevent this.

Then one often finds the colors of the decoration of old Dutch delft to have run—neither under nor over the enamel surface but into the enamel. This is because the colors were put upon the Dutch delft while the enamel was still wet and fixed in it during the liquefaction and fixing of the surface coating in the firing of the piece in the kiln. In such pieces of English delft as show the colors of their decoration to have run, it will be seen distinctly that these colors have run upon the enamel of the surface and not into or with it.

Finally the color of the clay body of the Lambeth delft of England is buff.

While nature has given us a sense of blue skies, scientists will tell you that she has been overly sparing with blue in flowers and in bird life. The Chinese had long placed this color as the first of the five nominated in their popular traditions. To blue they gave a symbolism rich and varied. They associated it with the East, for instance, and again with wood. It is natural that it should have been a favorite color for the Chinese ceramicist. The palace china of some of the early Chinese emperors reserved the privilege of blue decoration, a blue, as an old Chinese writer tells us, as “seen through a rift in the clouds after rain.” It was not until the sixteenth century that the Chinese obtained cobalt. This bright and vivid blue made speedy headway as against the grayer blues that until then had alone been produced by the Chinese ceramic artist. Cobalt was introduced into China by either the Jesuits or the Mohammedans; the Chinese themselves named the color “Moslem Blue.”

The blue-and-white porcelain of China appears to have made a direct appeal to the Dutch potters. Blue was the earliest color used by them in their delft decoration. Purple followed, and after that the green, yellow, brown, and red of the polychrome delft pieces that we know.

We do know how popular the Dutch blue-and-white became. Every year quantities of it found their way to England. Much of it was sold there at the Dutch Fair held annually in Yarmouth. King Charles II soon came to fear the effect on local potteries of the extended importation of Dutch delft into England and in consequence issued a proclamation against this commerce, declaring the sale of Dutch delft in England to be “to the great discouragement of so useful a manufacture so late found out” at home, presumably by the potters of Lambeth, who naturally would not be slow in attempting to imitate the Dutch ware so flourishingly in vogue. Probably Dutch potters had come over to work in the English ateliers. In the British Museum are interesting examples of English delft, a particularly fine set of plates having a line of poetry on each, so that when the six are arranged in proper order they form a little five-line verse.

CHAPTER XV

EARLY DESK FURNITURE

In classifying the hobbies of several thousand collectors who stated their preferences, I found that a greater number were interested in old furniture than in any one other subject. This fact is not strange, when one comes to consider the utilitarian phase. Generally, the collector of old furniture starts in with the chance possession of two or three antique bits which, by inspiring interest and appreciation, lead him to wish to bring the other house furnishings into harmony with the loveliness of the old pieces. Few collectors of antique furniture, of course, are without homes of their own, or the modern substitute—the long-lease apartment. The skill of the modern restorer of old furniture accomplishes wonders with the battered derelicts of the houses of yesterday by making the old pieces to shine forth in their glory anew; all of which lends encouragement to the collector and new zest to his traditional delight in the “hunt.”

Upon first thought, a collection of desks might seem like a mastodonian assemblage. So it would be if the collector placed them all in a row or all in a single room! But the house of to-day can accommodate—indeed, finds necessary—more than a single desk in its furnishings. And so the collector of old furniture has another impetus in his search, a utilitarian one. Under the term “desk” we may include the various escritoires, bureau-bookcases and the secrétaires. All of these, in common with our cabinets, tall-boys, and so on, had their origin in the chest or coffer of the Middle Ages. To the bottom of the chest came to be added a drawer. Next, side doors instead of a top lid came into fashion, and in this manner followed the many steps that led to the development of the piece of furniture we designate, for convenience, the desk.

It is not possible to tell just when the earliest desks were made. The desk is a composite affair, combining a cabinet, a bureau, drawers, and a writing-table. In Ghirlandaio’s painting “Saint Jerome in His Study”—a work of about 1480, found in the collection of the Ognissanti in Florence—we see depicted a portable desk of the “schoolmaster” type; and another painting of the same period and in the same collection, the “St. Augustine” by Sandro Botticelli, depicts a desk with drawers. In other paintings by the old masters, and in very early engravings, we see delineated the various pieces of furniture in contemporary use designed for writing purposes, as well as others for the account-keeper. All suggest to us the probable units which combined to produce the escritoire and the secrétaire of later centuries, and lend interest to the collector’s enthusiasm for searching out pieces of the sort.

When living was so much less complex in the matter of domestic doings than it is in our own time, there was far less need of such objects as desks. Whole families, even of the prosperous classes, could get along without them very well. Your Mona Lisa of the Renaissance could have carried her household accounts in her head, and probably did, while the housewife of the Northern countries had little use for a place to keep quires or reams of correspondence paper. Nor had they, in all probability, entered into the sphere of feminine prowess in home-banking matters that made necessary a writing-bureau sacred to personal command.

The finest examples of the craft of the old master cabinet-makers of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth were originally produced for wealthy patrons who paid well for the master’s skill. While such pieces must naturally be beyond the reach of the collector of moderate means—except in rare instances where complete ignorance of their value is combined with a desire to part with them—they are still always interesting to note, and many of them have been reproduced with wonderful skill by some of the leading masters of the craft of furniture-making to-day.

Of course, no reputable dealer will attempt to pass off a modern copy of anything as an original. At the same time, one may take great pleasure in acquiring a truly fine copy of a Queen Anne secrétaire or a Hepplewhite bureau, if it is knowingly purchased as a copy, whereas if deception is practised, the result must be a disappointment and discouragement to the owner, however fine the piece.

Unfortunately, all dealers are not reliable and occasionally fraud is perpetrated in connection with antique furniture. Even the metal trimmings—knobs, handles, etc.—are given the appearance of antiquity by all sorts of devices at the command of skilful craftsmen who produce worm-holes with buck-shot, antiquity with acids, and a worn appearance with friction.

The general furniture-collector is not likely to come across anything in the way of a find in a desk of the Renaissance, seventeenth-century, or even early eighteenth-century Italian periods; nor is he be likely to meet with the finer pieces of other early continental furniture, as nearly all of these, if not in public or great private collections already, would be justly held at a very high price by dealers into whose stock such pieces might come. However, there are frequent public sales of old foreign household furnishings, and great bargains may, indeed, be met with at these. In any event, the collector must cultivate alertness, decision, and intuition for opportunities to buy—and once in a while to sell, too!

To the European the name bureau, from its French derivation, is understood to be associated with writing. In America we connect the term with a piece of furniture designed to hold articles of clothing in its various drawers. It was somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century that the drawer was added to the lower part of the chest. Later in the century further drawer capacity was developed, and by the beginning of the next we find the complete chest of drawers in use. In view of this we shall not expect to find Jacobean desks, though we may find cabinets for writing-materials and documents and even occasional desk-like pieces.

In the William and Mary period (1688-1702) cabinets, secrétaires, and bureaus came rapidly into use. Simplicity and an unobtrusive elegance marked the designs of this period. The desks displayed distinct characteristics which differentiate several groups. In the first division may be placed the cabinet with bracket (straight) feet or bun feet; a whole front flap, which when let down displayed the drawers and the pigeonholes; a top either single-hooded or straight with ovolo frieze. In the second division we have the bureau-desk with its slant-top desk-plane. Here we find the taller desk styles, sometimes with double-hooded tops, with or without vase-shaped finials. The third division includes the narrow slant-top desks on cup-turned legs, flat stretchers, and bun feet. The knee-hole desks (desks with the center portion arranged to permit the knees of the writer to go below the desk-plane) constitute the fourth division, while a fifth sort of desk had gate-legs braced by serpentine flat stretchers. The two center legs (there were six in all), pulled out as a support for the desk-flap when its plane was let down.

In the William and Mary period and in the Queen Anne period succeeding, the middle classes had come to a state of education undreamed of in the time of Elizabeth. Letter-writing, pamphlet-writing, and diary entries occupied many hours of the day and many candle-lit ones as well. This scriptorial activity called for more accessories than had been needed earlier. These newly devised bureau-desks combined solidity and dignity. They were distinctly architectural in design, with their moldings, cornices, and broken pediments. Bombé fronts came in with the Dutch influence. Walnut was the favorite wood employed, either solid or as a veneer for the wood bases.

The furniture-makers of the time of George I were beginning to find a demand, and to supply it, for writing-tables with tiers of drawers at each side of the knee-hole. From about 1720 mahogany entered into furniture-making extensively. Its use by the American furniture-makers in the colonies was coincident with, and possibly antedated, lacquer, which had been the rage and as a fashionable fad continued to hold the popular favor.

Of course, no writing-furniture is more eagerly sought than that of Chippendale. There were the writing-tables with bombé fronts, the bureaus, standing on legs that supported low bases, the bureau-bookcase style of desk (bureau-desk), the slant-top secrétaires, etc. In American desks of the period we find the block-front to have been very popular.

The writing-furniture of the brothers Adam exhibited the originality and excellence common to their other articles. They introduced the more general use of satinwood and others of the lighter-colored woods, and a contour of line in design that struck a new note. Painted ornament, too, was used by them more extensively than ever before it had been used in English furniture.

With the furniture of Hepplewhite we find the three section bookcase desk in vogue, and the pull-over top (tambour) which was ancestor to the modern roll-top. The Hepplewhite desks are in great variety and of much beauty and practical utility as well. Sheraton included in his desks all the forms brought into fashion by Hepplewhite or modified by him. All these various periods were reflected in American desks, some of them with local modifications and variations.

CHAPTER XVI

CHELSEA

The fifteen years from 1750 to 1765 comprised the period of old Chelsea’s social heyday, though the aftermath was not without its distinctly brilliant though somewhat irascible flashes. These were years demanding fine things for the fashionables. Horace Walpole and others had stirred up the passion for chinaware and the English porcelain and pottery-manufacturers were kept busy not only to supply the demand but to meet the exacting quality of that demand, which called for perfection in fabrique. With this in mind it is not at all strange that some enterprising potter with a provident eye to business should have decided on establishing a porcelain factory at Chelsea. Just when this venture was established, history has neglected to disclose, but it must have been somewhere around 1740. We do know that the Chelsea porcelain-works were already celebrated for their wares in 1745. Some students of ceramics believe a very early date should be assigned to Chelsea productions. It is even possible that porcelain was being made in the village as early as 1682, the year in which was begun the old hospital for invalid soldiers, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Of course as Oriental porcelain had been introduced into England some fifty years before that—in 1631, to be exact—it is likely enough that works for the purpose of imitating it were established in Chelsea. Horace Walpole made note of very early “specimens of Chelsea blue-and-white.” Perhaps these were the sort of crude porcelain which Dr. Martin Lister referred to in an account of his visit to France, in 1695, wherein he mentions the superiority of the “Potterie of St. Clou” over the “gomroon ware” of England, although he observes that the English were “better masters of the art of painting than the Chineses,” a statement that might have applied to Chelsea porcelains of the gomroon, or imitation Oriental genre, productions perhaps antedating the native English development in decoration.

The French manufacturers of 1745 had become concerned over the strides taken by the English potters and they petitioned, accordingly, for the privilege of establishing a soft-porcelain factory at Vincennes, complaining of the competition of English wares of Chelsea. Such early porcelains as are extant and ascribed to a period coeval with that of the porcelain of St. Cloud exhibit clumsiness and lack of finish. Already the village of Chelsea had become well known in the industrial world through its glass manufactory established there by Venetian glass-workers under the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, in 1676. It may be that the Chelsea pottery was evolved as an outcome of this experiment, an experiment so successful that Elers joined it in 1720.

The early bits of Chelsea were, almost entirely, copies of Oriental wares and mainly decorated with Chinese designs. Queen Anne does not appear to have bothered her head particularly about the Chelsea porcelain. The Hanoverian Georges paid more attention to it. In their minds porcelain was too intimately connected with the table to escape royal patronage. George II especially encouraged the manufactory at Chelsea. Frederick II had early borrowed and taken from France the art of porcelain-making and had initiated his several hundred princes in the mysteries of its allurements. Naturally the Hanoverians were interested and George II had everything, from models to workmen, brought over in the hope of rivaling the wares of Sèvres and of Dresden. The Duke of Cumberland took an especial interest in the Chelsea factory and made it an annual allowance.

Soon the fame of Chelsea porcelain had become so great that the demand was far in excess of the supply and the prices soared accordingly. In 1765 contemporary reference informs us that the china of Chelsea was in such repute “as to be sold by auction, and as a set was purchased as soon as baked, dealers were surrounding the doors for that purpose. Watkins in his “Life of Queen Charlotte” writes: