In this century, in Italy, Andrea Brustolone (1670-1732) was noted as a carver, gilder, and cabinet-maker who worked in the extravagant style of the Louis Quinze (Louis XV.), and in the first half of the eighteenth century (1700-77) Pifetti, a Piedmontese cabinet-maker, was honoured by the Italian Court, for which he executed many works in ivory carving and marquetry work in the style of Boulle. Many other cabinet-makers and carvers were employed to make furniture and to decorate the queen’s palace at Turin, among whom may be mentioned the names of Galleti, the successor of Pifetti, and Maggiolino of Milan, who chiefly made a kind of marquetry in light woods. We are indebted to Mr. J. H. Pollen’s handbook on furniture for some of these names, and a list of many others will be found at the end of his useful book.

The French architect, Le Pantre (1617-82), designed furniture and decoration in the heavy classical style of the Roman antique, mixed with shell-work, grotesques, and little Cupids or “putti,” and also engraved and published a book of studies of Roman ornament from sketches that his master, Adam Phillipon, had made in Italy. He worked with Le Brun, the painter and director of the decoration at Versailles. Le Brun’s own work was heavy and dull, although he aimed at grandeur and gorgeousness of effect. He was director of the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, and his style of work was in harmony with the pompous ideas of Louis the “Grand Monarch.” Madame de Maintenon says in one of her letters to a friend, that Louis was so fond of symmetry and stateliness in his architecture, as in other things, that he would have you “perish in his symmetry,” for he caused his doors and windows to be constructed in pairs opposite to one another, which gave to everybody who lived in his palaces their death of cold by draughts of air.

Much of the more artistic kind of furniture was imported from the Continent into England during the seventeenth century, and a feature of this period was the highly decorative silver furniture already noticed in the chapter on metal work.

In this century and early in the following one, the art of wood carving was greatly developed in England, chiefly owing to the genius of Grinling Gibbons and to the influence of Sir Christopher Wren, the style developed being a more or less realistic or baroque form of the Renaissance (Figs. 245, 246). Gibbons carried out some of his carvings to an astonishing degree of realism: bouquets of flowers, festoons of fruit and flowers, birds, figures, and drapery were executed by him in the highest possible relief, which looked detached from the ground, and yet they usually formed a part of the solid wood with the background. Ornament was carved with a singular crispness, and apparently without any hesitation on the part of the carver. Though we may condemn the florid looseness of the style of Gibbons, we must admire the dexterity of workmanship and general technical excellence imparted to everything he touched. Some of his best work may still be seen at Chatsworth, Petworth House in Sussex, Lyme Hall in Cheshire, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Trinity College Chapel at Oxford. Many of the old English halls and manor houses also contain examples of carving done either by Gibbons or his pupils and immediate successors, namely, Watson, Drevot, and Laurens.

Under the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans in France (1715-1723) decoration and ornament assumed a light and fanciful character, very naturalistic, but still having some classic details; of this style Claude Gillot is the chief exponent. Watteau, his pupil, made a great name as a painter of pastoral scenes, fêtes galantes, and all kinds of light and daintily-treated subjects of a theatrical and artificial kind of composition. His colour was silvery and harmonious, and sometimes he decorated furniture with pastoral scenes.

The Rococo style had begun under the Regency, if not earlier, and such men as Oppenort, the De Cottes, father and son, François de Cuvilliés, the Italians Bernini and Borromini, and lastly the great apostle of the Rococo, Meissonier, were all designers of furniture or architects who belonged to the period of Louis XV., and who executed works that reflected the loose and unrestrained character of the times (1723-1774). Chinese and naturalistic elements were grafted on, or mixed with, the former Louis Quatorze, with an addition of still life that did duty for architectural form in objects of pottery and metal work, and a combination of shell work; all these elements made up the style known under the different names of rococo, rocaille, baroque, or Louis Quinze.

Furniture was made with curved and swelling panels to show to more advantage the marquetry, or paintings on gold grounds: these kinds of panels and friezes were known as “bombé.”

It is said that the Italian architects, Bernini and Borromini, were the first to introduce the rococo style into France, but no designer went so far in the wildness of its vagaries as the French Meissonier. His ornament furnishes a perfect example of the want of balance and symmetry. He designed for furniture, woodwork, silver-smithery, and modelled decoration, all of which work illustrated the broken shell-shaped panels with frilled and scalloped edgings and curved mouldings.

Rooms were lined with looking-glasses having these rocaille mouldings, which were well adapted to show to the best advantage the glitter of the gold leaf that was used inordinately on the furniture and decoration of the Louis-Quinze period.

Pierre Germain, Jean Restout, and Jean Pillement are well-known names of other designers of the rocaille style.

Painted panels of pastoral scenes and flower groups were the usual colour decorations of ceilings, furniture, carriages, and a host of minor articles such as fans, étuis, snuff-boxes, &c. The latter smaller articles, as well as the state carriages, were decorated with paintings in what was known as the Vernis-Martin style. Martin was a decorator of carriages and an heraldic painter, who invented the particular hard varnish or lacquer which bears his name. It was quite likely that this was as near as possible a successful imitation of the Japanese gold lacquer that decorated the articles which were at this period imported from Japan by the Dutch and Portuguese traders into Europe. Carriages, tables, cabinets, and especially smaller articles like snuff-boxes and needle-cases, were painted and decorated in “Vernis-Martin.” Some of the smaller objects were beautifully mounted in chased gold.

It was quite a common practice to cover or to panel furniture with plaques of Japanese lacquer, and to mount them in chased metal or ormoulu decorations. A unique commode is illustrated at Fig. 248, made from panels of very old Japanese lacquer and highly decorated with ormoulu mounts by Caffieri, a skilled chaser of the Louis-Quinze period.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century an improvement in the design of furniture and of ornament generally crept in, owing to the study of the ornamentation and design of the classic objects that had been found in the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These cities had been discovered in 1713, and about forty or fifty years later books were published illustrating the buried remains, which helped to change the public taste, and by degrees a demand arose for designs of a more severe and classic kind.

The prevailing taste was then apparently gratified by the mixture or grafting of a certain quantity of classic forms with the former frivolous style of the Louis Quinze.

The style in furniture and in ornament now developed into what is known as the “Louis Seize” (Louis XVI.), and consisted in its ornament of a composition of thin scrolls, garlands, bows and quivers of arrows, ribbons and knots, medallions with classic cameo-cut subjects. Mouldings were fine and delicately ornamented, and of straight-lined variety; in fact, the straight line now reasserted itself in architecture and furniture design (see Figs. 249, 250), in refreshing and healthy contrast to the tottering and riotous curves of Louis XV. and the Du Barry period.

Some of the most beautiful furniture expressive of the utmost elegance was made by Riesner and David, and was decorated with ormoulu mounts by Gouthière for the Queen Marie Antoinette. Riesner and Gouthière were the ablest men of their time, who generally worked together in the making and decorating of the finest furniture of this period. We are fortunate in possessing in the Jones Collection at South Kensington some of the very finest examples of this furniture, much of which was made for Marie Antoinette (Figs. 251, 252).

Riesner usually worked in light and richly-coloured woods, such as tulip-wood, holly, maple, laburnum, purple-wood, and rosewood, for his marquetry work, and used oak for the linings and foundations.

The best pieces of David and Riesner were usually mounted in ormoulu or bronze-gilt metal by Gouthière, who has never been equalled as a founder and chaser of this class of work. Prieur was also a good chaser of the Louis Seize period. Delafosse was an architect and designer of furniture and decoration of the period, whose designs were of a more heavy and classical kind. Cauvet was a German who worked in Paris, and designed graceful arabesques and figure work, and who published a book of designs. Lalonde designed work that might be classed in the same category as that of Cauvet, and Salembier was a prolific designer of a light and free kind of arabesque. Many of his designs for silk may be seen in the fabric at the Silk Museum in the Bourse at Lyons. Le Nôtre designed for furniture, carving, and was also famed with La Quintinie as a designer of the state and public gardens.

In Italy the prevailing ornament in furniture and decoration was more classical than in France. Piranesi, Albertolli, Pergolese, and Bartolozzi are names of the principal designers of this country in the eighteenth century, most of whom published extensive works on ornament. The latter two were brought to England by the brothers John and Robert Adam (1728-1792), who had travelled in Italy, bringing also with them classical ideas, which they developed in England, and which influenced to a great extent the style of architecture and furniture design in this country. The Adelphi building and the houses in Portland Place were built from designs by the Adams. All kinds of furniture, sedan chairs, carriages, plate, &c., were made from their designs. Fine mouldings, medallions, rosettes, light garlands, capitals in classic form, fluted pilasters and columns, were all designed by them with the utmost restraint in style—even to coldness.

Thomas Chippendale was a famous cabinet-maker of the eighteenth century. His furniture, or even any good imitation of it, fetches a good price at the present time. He published a book on furniture design and interior decoration in the year 1764. His sons are supposed to have made nearly all the best of the mahogany furniture known as “Chippendale.”

The parlour chairs (Fig. 253) are good examples of Chippendale furniture, and the chairs made in the so-called “Chinese style” (Fig. 254) are attributed to the elder Chippendale.

Sherraton and Heppelwhite are names of two other well-known cabinet-makers, who made excellent mahogany furniture in the last century, both of whom published works on the subject at the latter end of the century.

The names of Gillow, Lichfield, Lock, and Copeland are those of eminent English cabinet-makers and decorators of this period, the two former firms being still in existence in London.

In France, after the Revolution (1792), a more decided phase of the dry and heavy classicisms was apparent in the furniture design and decoration of the period (1801). This return to classic heaviness has been attributed to the influence of the academic painter David, but is more likely to have been a pandering to the national worship of Napoleon and the French Empire. It seemed to have been the universal desire to make everything echo or reflect in some measure the glory of the Emperor Napoleon I. The meanest thing had some symbol or allusion by the way of decoration that should remind everybody of the greatness of the new monarch and of the French Empire, and consequently the heavy and ponderous style of that period was known as the “Empire Style.” The furniture of the Empire was usually made in mahogany, decorated with mountings in brass or bronze, of sphinxes, griffins, Roman emblems, and antique scrollery (Fig. 255).

Percier and Fontaine are names of French cabinet-makers and designers who worked in the Empire style, and who published a book of their designs.

In England the style was copied, and we find that endless imitations of the French fashion in tables, sofas, chairs, cabinets, and clocks were designed after the same antique ideals.

In this country, during the earlier half of the present century, the mediæval Gothic style was partly revived in architecture and in furniture, mainly owing to the efforts of Augustus W. Pugin, the architect. He designed many pieces of furniture, and published a work consisting of Gothic designs in the year 1835. Notwithstanding the efforts of Pugin and some other eminent architects and “purists,” no particular lasting impression was made in this direction.

If we except a few of the best cabinet-makers’ shops, where in the present day some furniture of good design is made, the majority of such work is now made by machinery, or is often too much the work of the upholsterer, and is consequently less artistic and more mechanical both in design and construction.

Some of the most beautiful furniture of Japanese and Chinese manufacture is made in carved wood and lacquered in black or red. Cabinets with drawers and quaintly contrived cupboards and recesses (Fig. 256) are made by the Japanese, finished in lacquers, and inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. The Chinese are especially skilled in carving red lac-work. Some vases of great dimensions and of exquisite workmanship in this material may be seen in the Kensington Museum.

Lac-work is also executed with great skilfulness by the natives of India. Bracelets, armlets, or golias, are made of lac in various colours, the golden decorations of which are made from tinfoil and varnished with a yellow varnish made of myrrh, copal, and sweet oil boiled together. Boxes, bed-posts, and other furniture, made in wood or papier-mâché, are lacquered and decorated with flat renderings of flowers and conventional shapes of animals and birds (Figs. 257, 258). All kinds of toys, weights and measures, cooking utensils, circular playing-cards, turnery, &c., are objects in small wares made in the choicest lac-work of India.