[Illustration: Clock, By Robin, in Marqueterie
Case, with Mountings of Gilt Bronze, (Jones Collection.
South Kensington Museum.) Louis XVI. Period.]
Soon after this generous bequest was placed in the
South Kensington Museum, for the benefit of the public,
a leading article appeared in the Times, from
which the following extract will very appropriately
conclude this chapter:—“As the visitor
passes by the cases where these curious objects are
displayed, he asks himself what is to be said on behalf
of the art of which they are such notable examples.”
Tables, chairs, commodes, secretaires, wardrobes,
porcelain vases, marble statuettes, they represent
in a singularly complete way the mind and the work
of the ancien regime. Like Eisen’s
vignettes, or the contes of innumerable story-tellers,
they bring back to us the grace, the luxury, the prettiness,
the frivolity of that Court which believed itself,
till the rude awakening came, to contain all that
was precious in the life of France. A piece of
furniture like the little Sevres-inlaid writing table
of Marie Antoinette is, to employ a figure of Balzac’s,
a document which reveals as much to the social historian
as the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus reveals to the
palaeontologist. It sums up an epoch. A whole
world can be inferred from it. Pretty, elegant,
irrational, and entirely useless, this exquisite and
costly toy might stand as a symbol for the life which
the Revolution swept away.
[Illustration: Harpsichord, from the Permanent
Collection belonging to South Kensington Museum.
Date: About 1750.]
[Illustration: Italian Sedan Chair. Used
at the Baptism of the Grand Ducal Family of Tuscany,
now in the South Kensington Museum. Period:
Latter Half of XVIII. Century.]
Chapter VII.
Chippendale and his Contemporaries.
Chinese style—Sir William
Chambers—The Brothers Adams’ work—Pergelesi,
Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffmann—Architects
of the time—Wedgwood and Flaxman—Chippendale’s
Work and his Contemporaries—Chair in
the Barbers’ Hall—Lock, Shearer, Hepplewhite,
Ince, Mayhew, Sheraton—Introduction of
Satinwood and Mahogany—Gillows of Lancaster
and London—History of the Sideboard—The
Dining Room—Furniture of the time.
Soon after the second half of the eighteenth century
had set in, during the latter days of the second George,
and the early part of his successor’s long reign,
there is a distinct change in the design of English
decorative furniture.
Sir William Chambers, R.A., an architect, who has
left us Somerset House as a lasting monument of his
talent, appears to have been the first to impart to
the interior decoration, of houses what was termed
“the Chinese style,” after his visit to
China, of which a notice was made in the chapter on
Eastern furniture: and as he was considered an
“oracle of taste” about this time, his
