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  SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS.

  EDITED BY WILLIAM MASKELL.

  No. 3.--FURNITURE ANCIENT AND MODERN.




_These Handbooks are reprints of the dissertations prefixed to the
large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the Museum
at South Kensington; arranged and so far abridged as to bring each
into a portable shape. The Lords of the Committee of Council on
Education having determined on the publication of them, the editor
trusts that they will meet the purpose intended; namely, to be useful,
not alone for the collections at South Kensington but for other
collections, by enabling the public at a trifling cost to understand
something of the history and character of the subjects treated of._

_The authorities referred to in each book are given in the large
catalogues; where will also be found detailed descriptions of the very
numerous examples in the South Kensington Museum._

  W. M.
  _August, 1875._




  ANCIENT AND MODERN

  FURNITURE AND WOODWORK


  BY

  JOHN HUNGERFORD POLLEN


  WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS


  [Illustration]


  _Published for the Committee of Council on Education_

  BY

  CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY




LONDON.

DALZIEL BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CAMDEN PRESS, N.W.




CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER                                           PAGE

     I  Furniture Ancient and Modern                   1
    II  Antique: Egypt, Nineveh and Greece             4
   III  The Romans                                    17
    IV  Byzantine Art                                 29
     V  The Middle Ages                               41
    VI  The Fifteenth Century                         59
   VII  The Renaissance in Italy                      66
  VIII  Renaissance in England, Flanders,
          France, Germany, ans Spain                  78
    IX  Tudor and Stuart Styles                       85
     X  Furniture of the Eighteenth Century          103
    XI  Changes of Taste and Style                   116
        Appendix: Names of the Designers of
          Woodwork and Makers of Furniture           133
        Index                                        140




LIST OF WOODCUTS.


                                                    PAGE

  Egyptian chair                                       4

  Assyrian chairs                                      7

  Greek chair                                         10

  Greek chairs                                        11

  Greek couches                                       13

  Greek mirror                                        14

  Greek chariot                                       15

  Pompeian interior                                   19

  Roman tripod                                        22

  Roman candelabra                                    23

  Roman candelabra                                    24

  Roman table                                         26

  Roman couch                                         27

  Roman ceremonial chair                              28

  Roman _sella_                                       28

  Roman kitchen utensils                              30

  St. Peter's chair                                   35

  The chair of king Dagobert                          43

  Anglo-norman bedstead                               46

  The Coronation chair                                49

  Interior of English mediæval bedroom                51

  Anglo-saxon dinner-table                            52

  Dinner-table of middle-class, fifteenth  century    53

  Table of fifteenth century                          53

  Travelling carriage of fifteenth century;
    "Tullia driving over the body of her father"      55

  Oriental panels                                     57

  A royal dinner-table of the fourteenth century      58

  French panel; fifteenth century                     60

  Venetian cornice                                    68

  Portion of carved Italian chest                     69

  Venetian chair                                      71

  Italian bellows                                     72

  Another example                                     73

  Knife-case; 1564                                    76

  Carved panels                                       80

  French table; sixteenth century                     81

  French panel; 1577                                  82

  English panel; about 1590                           86

  French cabinet; sixteenth century                   88

  Italian oak pedestal                                90

  Venetian mirror-frame                               91

  German arm-chair; seventeenth century               93

  English bracket; about 1660                         97

  English doorway; about 1690                         98

  Venetian looking-glass                             100

  Holy-water stoup                                   101

  English dinner-table; 1633                         102

  Italian distaff                                    106

  Roman _triclinium_                                 117

  Bedstead; fifteenth century                        118

  The great bed of Ware                              119

  Bedstead at Hampton Court                          120

  Mediæval room                                      120

  Cradle; fifteenth century                          121

  Folding chair; fifteenth century                   122

  Italian chair; sixteenth century                   123

  Antique Roman tables                               125

  Folding table; English, 1620(?)                    126

  Mediæval chest                                     127

  Roman carriages                                    130

  English carriage; fourteenth century               131

  State carriages                                    132




FURNITURE,

ANCIENT AND MODERN.




CHAPTER I.


The study of a collection of old furniture has an interest beyond
the mere appreciation of the beauty it displays. The carving or the
ornaments that decorate the various pieces and the skill and ingenuity
with which they are put together are well worthy of our attention. A
careful examination of them carries us back to the days in which
they were made and to the taste and manners, the habits and the
requirements, of bygone ages. The Kensington museum, for example,
contains chests, caskets, cabinets, chairs, carriages, and utensils of
all sorts and of various countries. Some of these have held the bridal
dresses, fans, and trinkets of French and Italian beauties, whose sons
and daughters for many generations have long gone to the dust; there
are inlaid folding chairs used at the court of Guido Ubaldo, in
the palace of Urbino, and of other Italian princes of the fifteenth
century; buffets and sideboards that figured at mediæval feasts; boxes
in which were kept the jesses and bells of hawks; love-tokens of
many kinds, christening-spoons, draught and chess men, card boxes,
belonging to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries;
carriages of the London of Cromwell and Hogarth, and of the Dublin of
Burke; panelling of the date of Raleigh; a complete room made for a
lady of honour to Marie Antoinette.

Besides these memorials of periods comparatively well known to us, we
shall find reproductions of the furniture of ages the habits of which
we know imperfectly, such as the chair of Dagobert, and various relics
illustrating the old classic manners and civilisation, as they have
come down to us from Roman and Greek artists, and brought to light by
the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii.

The field through which a collection of old furniture stretches is
too wide to be filled with anything like completeness; but the South
Kensington collection is already rich in some very rare examples, such
as carved chests and cabinets, decorated with the most finished wood
carving of Flanders, France, and Italy, as well as of our own country.

As wood is the material of which furniture for domestic use has
generally been made, there are, of course, limits to