Part 19 (1/2)
In 1808 a designer and maker of furniture, George Smith by name, who held the appointment of ”Upholder extraordinary to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales,”
and carried on business at ”Princess” Street, Cavendish Square, produced a book of designs, 158 in number, published by ”Wm. Taylor,” of Holborn.
These include cornices, window drapery, bedsteads, tables, chairs, bookcases, commodes, and other furniture, the t.i.tles of some of which occur for about the first time in our vocabularies, having been adapted from the French. ”Escritore, jardiniere, dejune tables, chiffoniers” (the spelling copied from Smith's book), all bear the impress of the pseudo-cla.s.sic taste; and his designs, some of which are reproduced, shew the fas.h.i.+on of our so-called artistic furniture in England at the time of the Regency. Mr. Smith, in the ”Preliminary Remarks” prefacing the ill.u.s.trations, gives us an idea of the prevailing taste, which it is instructive to peruse, looking back now some three-quarters of a century:--
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Library Fauteuil.” Reproduced from Smith's Book of Designs, published in 1804]
”The following practical observations on the various woods employed in cabinet work may be useful. Mahogany, when used in houses of consequence, should be confined to the parlour and the bedchamber floors. In furniture for these apartments the less inlay of other woods, the more chaste will be the style of work. If the wood be of a fine, compact, and bright quality, the ornaments may be carved clean in the mahogany. Where it may be requisite to make out panelling by an inlay of lines, let those lines be of bra.s.s or ebony. In drawing-rooms, boudoirs, ante-rooms, East and West India satin woods, rosewood, tulip wood, and the other varieties of woods brought from the East, may be used; with satin and light coloured woods the decorations may be of ebony or rosewood; with rosewood let the decorations be _ormolu_, and the inlay of bra.s.s. Bronze metal, though sometimes used with satin wood, has a cold and poor effect: it suits better on gilt work, and will answer well enough on mahogany.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Parlor Chairs,” Shewing the Inlay of Bra.s.s referred to.
From Smith's Book of Designs, published 1808.]
Amongst the designs published by him are some few of a subdued Gothic character; these are generally carved in light oak, or painted light stone colour, and have, in some cases, heraldic s.h.i.+elds, with crests and coats of arms picked out in colour. There are window seats painted to imitate marble, with the Roman or Greco-Roman ornaments painted green to represent bronze. The most un.o.bjectionable are mahogany with bronze green ornaments.
Of the furniture of this period there are several pieces in the Mansion House, in the City of London, which apparently was partly refurnished about the commencement of the century.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Bookcase. Design Published by T. Sheraton, June 12th, 1806. _Note_.--Very similar bookcases are in the London Mansion House.]
In the Court Room of the Skinners' Company there are tables which are now used' with extensions, so as to form a horseshoe table for committee meetings. They are good examples of the heavy and solid carving in mahogany, early in the century before the fas.h.i.+on had gone out of representing the heads and feet of animals in the designs of furniture.
These tables have ma.s.sive legs, with lion's heads and claws, carved with great skill and shewing much spirit, the wood being of the best quality and rich in color.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Drawing Room Chairs in Profile.” From G. Smith's Book, published 1808.]
Early Victorian.
In the work of the manufacturers just enumerated, may be traced the influence of the ”Empire” style. With the restoration, however, of the Monarchy in France came the inevitable change in fas.h.i.+ons, and ”_Le style de l'Empire_” was condemned. In its place came a revival of the Louis Quinze scrolls and curves, but with less character and restraint, until the style we know as ”baroque,” [19] or debased ”rococo,” came in. Ornament of a florid and incongruous character was lavished on decorative furniture, indicative of a taste for display rather than for appropriate enrichment.
It had been our English custom for some long period to take our fas.h.i.+ons from France, and, therefore, about the time of William IV. and during the early part of the present Queen's reign, the furniture for our best houses was designed and made in the French style. In the ”Music” Room at Chatsworth are some chairs and footstools used at the time of the Coronation of William IV. and Queen Adelaide, which have quite the appearance of French furniture.
The old fas.h.i.+on of lining rooms with oak panelling, which has been noticed in an earlier chapter, had undergone a change which is worth recording. If the ill.u.s.tration of the Elizabethan oak panelling, as given in the English section of Chapter III., be referred to, it will be seen that the oak lining reaches from the floor to within about two or three feet of the cornice. Subsequently this panelling was divided into an upper and a lower part, the former commencing about the height of the back of an ordinary chair, a moulding or chair-rail forming a capping to the lower part. Then pictures came to be let into the panelling; and presently the upper part was discarded and the lower wainscoting remained, properly termed the Dado,[20] which we have seen revived both in wood and in various decorative materials of the present day. During the period we are now discussing, this arrangement lost favour in the eyes of our grandfathers, and the lowest member only was retained, which is now termed the ”skirting board.”
As we approach a period that our older contemporaries can remember, it is very interesting to turn over the leaves of the back numbers of such magazines and newspapers as treated of the Industrial Arts. The _Art Union_, which changed its t.i.tle to the _Art Journal_ in 1849, had then been in existence for about ten years, and had done good work in promoting the encouragement of Art and manufactures. The ”Society of Arts” had been formed in London as long ago as 1756, and had given prizes for designs and methods of improving different processes of manufacture. Exhibitions of the specimens sent in for compet.i.tion for the awards were, and are still, held at their house in Adelphi Buildings. Old volumes of ”Transactions of the Society” are quaint works of reference with regard to these exhibitions.
About 1840, Mr., afterwards Sir, Charles Barry, R.A., had designed and commenced the present, or, as it was then called, the New Palace of Westminster, and, following the Gothic character of the building, the furniture and fittings were naturally of a design to harmonize with what was then quite a departure from the heavy architectural taste of the day.
Mr. Barry was the first in this present century to leave the beaten track, although the Reform and Travellers' Clubs had already been designed by him on more cla.s.sic lines. The Speaker's chair in the House of Commons is evidently designed after one of the fifteenth century ”canopied seats,”
which have been noticed and ill.u.s.trated in the second chapter; and the ”linen scroll pattern” panels can be counted by the thousand in the Houses of Parliament and the different official residences which form part of the Palace. The character of the work is subdued and not flamboyant, is excellent in design and workmans.h.i.+p, and is highly creditable, when we take into consideration the very low state of Art in England fifty years ago.
This want of taste was very much discussed in the periodicals of the day, and, yielding to expressed public opinion, Government had in 1840-1 appointed a Select Committee to take into consideration the promotion of the fine Arts in the country, Mr. Charles Barry, Mr. Eastlake, and Sir Martin Shee, R.A., being amongst the witnesses examined. The report of this Committee, in 1841, contained the opinion ”That such an important and National work as the erection of the two Houses of Parliament affords an opportunity which ought not to be neglected of encouraging, not only the higher, but every subordinate branch of fine Art in this country.”
Mr. Augustus Welby Pugin was a well-known designer of the Gothic style of furniture of this time. Born in 1811, he had published in 1835 his ”Designs for Gothic Furniture,” and later his ”Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume”; and by skilful application of his knowledge to the decorations of the different ecclesiastical buildings he designed, his reputation became established. One of his designs is here reproduced.
Pugin's work and reputation have survived, notwithstanding the furious opposition he met with at the time. In a review of one of his books, in the _Art Union_ of 1839, the following sentence completes the criticism:--”As it is a common occurrence in life to find genius mistaken for madness, so does it sometimes happen that a madman is mistaken for a genius. Mr. Welby Pugin has oftentimes appeared to us to be a case in point.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Prie-dieu, In Carved Oak, enriched with Painting and Gilding. Designed by Mr. Pugin, and manufactured by Mr. Crace, London.]
At this time furniture design and manufacture, as an Industrial Art in England, seems to have attracted no attention whatever. There are but few allusions to the design of decorative woodwork in the periodicals of the day; and the auctioneers' advertis.e.m.e.nts--with a few notable exceptions, like that of the Strawberry Hill Collection of Horace Walpole, gave no descriptions; no particular interest in the subject appears to have been manifested, save by a very limited number of the dilettanti, who, like Walpole, collected the curios and cabinets of two or three hundred years ago.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Secretaire And Bookcase, In Carved Oak, in the style of German Gothic. (_From Drawing by Professor Heideloff, Published in the ”Art Union,” 1816._)]
York House was redecorated and furnished about this time, and as it is described as ”Excelling any other dwelling of its own cla.s.s in regal magnificence and vieing with the Royal Palaces of Europe,” we may take note of an account of its re-equipment, written in 1841 for the _Art Journal_. This notice speaks little for the taste of the period, and less for the knowledge and grasp of the subject by the writer of an Art critique of the day:--”The furniture generally is of no particular style, but, on the whole, there is to be found a mingling of everything, in the best manner of the best epochs of taste.” Writing further on of the ottoman couches, ”causeuses,” etc., the critic goes on to tell of an alteration in fas.h.i.+on which had evidently just taken place:--”Some of them, in place of plain or carved rosewood or mahogany, are ornamented in white enamel, with cla.s.sic subjects in bas-relief of perfect execution.”