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To know anything
at all about a subject one must begin at the beginning, and to make the
long run seems a mere spin in an auto, let us at once remind you that the
whole fascinating tale lies between the covers of one delightful book, the
"Illustrated History of Furniture," by Frederick Litchfield, published by
Truslove et Han-son, London, and by John Lane, New York.
There are other
books many of them but first exhaust Litchfield and apply what he tells
you as you wander through public and private collections of furniture.
If you care for
furniture at all, this book, which tells all that is known of its history,
will prove highly instructive.
One cannot speak
of the gradual development of furniture and furnishing; it is more a case
of waves of types, and the story begins on the crest of a wave in Assyria,
about 3000 years before Christ! Yes, seriously, interior decoration was an
art back in that period and can be traced without any lost links in the
chain of evidence.
From Assyria we
turn to Egypt and learn from the frescoes and bas-reliefs on walls of
ruined tombs, that about that same time, 3000 B. C., rooms on the banks of
the Nile were decorated more or less as they are today.
The cultured
classes had beautiful ceilings, gilded furniture, cushions and mattresses
of dyed linen and wools, stuffed with downy feathers taken from water
fowl, curtains that were suspended between columns, and, what is still
more interesting to the lover of furniture, we find that the style known
as Empire when revived by Napoleon I was at that time in vogue.
Even more
remarkable is the fact that parts of legs and rails of furniture were
turned as perfectly (I quote Litchfield) as if by a modern lathe. The
variety of beautiful woods used by the Egyptians for furniture included
ebony, cedar, sycamore and acacia. Marquetry was employed as well as
wonderful inlaying with ivory, from both the elephant and hippopotamus.
Footstools had little feet made like lion's claws or bull's hoofs.
According to
Austin Leyard, the very earliest Assyrian chairs, as well as those of
Egypt, had the legs terminating in the same lion's feet or bull's hoofs,
which reappear in the Greek, Roman, Empire and even Sheraton furniture of
England (eighteenth century).
The first
Assyrian chairs were made without backs and of beautifully wrought gold
and bronze, an art highly developed at that time.
In Egypt we find
the heads of animals capping the backs of chairs in the way that we now
see done on Spanish chairs.
The pilasters
shown on the Empire furniture, Plate XVI, capped by women's heads with
little gold feet at base, and caryatides of a kind, were souvenirs of the
Egyptian throne seats, which rested on the backs of slaves possibly
prisoners of war.
These chairs were
wonderful works of art in gold or bronze. We fancy we can see those
interiors, the chairs and beds covered with woven materials in rich colors
and leopard skins thrown over chairs, the carpets of a woven palm-fiber
and mats of the same, which were used as seats.
Early Egyptian
rooms were beautiful in line because simple; never crowded with
superfluous furnishings. It is amusing to see on the very earliest
bas-reliefs Egyptian belles and beaux reclining against what we know
to-day as Empire rolls, seen also on beds in old French prints of the
fourteenth century. Who knows, even with the Egyptians this may have been
a revived style!
One talks of new
notes in color scheme. The Bakst thing was being done in Assyria, 700
B.C.! Sir George Green proved it when he opened up six rooms of a king's
palace and found the walls all done in horizontal stripes of red, yellow
and green! Also, he states that each entrance had the same number of
pilasters. Oh wise Assyrian King and truly neutral, if as is supposed,
those rooms were for his six wives!
In furniture, the
epoch-making styles have been those showing line, and if decorated, then
only with such decorations as were subservient to line; pure Greek and
purest Roman, Gothic and early Renaissance, the best of the Louis,
Directoire and First Empire, Chippendale, Adam, Sheraton and Heppelwhite.
The bad styles
are those where ornamentations envelop and conceal line as in late
Renaissance, the Italian Rococo, the Portuguese Barrocco (baroque), the
curving and contorted degenerate forms of Louis XIV and XV and the
Victorian all examples of the same thing, i. e.: perfect line achieved,
acclaimed, flattered, losing its head and going to the bad in extravagant
exuberance of over-ornamentation.
There is a
psychic connection between the outline of furniture and the inline of man.
Perfect line,
chaste ornamentation, the elimination of the superfluous was the result of
the Greek idea of restraint self-control in all things and in all
expression. The immense authority of the lawmakers enforced simple
austerity as the right and only setting for the daily life of an Athenian,
worthy of the name.
There were
exceptions, but as a rule all citizens, regardless of their wealth and
station, had impressed upon them the civic obligation to express their
taste for the beautiful, in the erecting of public buildings in their city
of Athens, monuments of perfect art, by God-like artists, Phidias, Apelles,
and Praxiteles.
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