The more elaborate decoration of such a room is confined to one small part of it, a kind of recess, single or double, within which is hung a picture mounted upon a scroll and unrolled for the occasion, or perhaps two such pictures, and in front of these a vase of flowers upon a rich stand. Even the possessor of a great collection of paint ings, of bronzes, porcelains, lacquered boxes, and trays would show in this way but two or three of his possessions at a time. All the rest are kept stored away in the Kura or fireproof store house, attached to each dwelling of any impor tance. As for the bed, it consists of quilts, per haps two or three, laid upon one another, and primarily upon the rice-straw mats which cover the floor. A wooden pillow supports the head— that is to say, the nape of the neck; and these pillow's are often topped with a roll of some textile fabric stuffed with straw or perhaps buck wheat hulls, upon which are laid sheets of paper fastened down by strings, and these sheets are pulled off one at a time, so that a clean surface is provided. Even where a mosquito-net is needed it is usually held upon a very light frame, without the slightest attempt at elaboration of any sort, so that even for these transparent curtains there are no bedposts and no testers.
From the moment that one must have a chair or a bench or a couch to sit upon, it becomes natural and in a sense essential to have a raised bed-frame as well, and, moreover, with the chair comes, of course, the high table in all its forms, for eating, for writing, for the playing of games. The Japanese writing-table may weigh a pound, but that of a family using chairs will be thirty inches high, and therefore wide and long in pro portion, and may weigh forty pounds even when in the simplest and most utilitarian form; while its size and shape invite elaboration and make it often massive and very costly. Alone among the peoples of Asia the Chinese have used, as far back as our knowledge goes, raised chairs and settles with such results as have been noted in Europe. The Chinese raised seat is indeed usually very high, and either fitted with a footstool or so broad and long that the feet can be drawn up upon it; then this is made of solid and heavy wood, and often the larger surfaces, such as would in Europe be wooden panels, are pieces of marble or other decorative stone inlaid flush with the wooden frame. The use of this material, conducting heat from the body and therefore feel ing cold to the touch, points to a custom which is known to exist of covering the whole piece of furniture with such a loose 'slip' as the French call the houssc: and it is probable that beneath this housse a thin cushion is sometimes laid upon the seat proper. Tables are made of many sizes; bedsteads are wrought into elaborate designs pe culiar to the Chinese, as when the cic/ or tester is supported, not by vertical posts, but by curved ends, which combine overhead to make an almost circular frame—a cylinder within which is placed the horizontal surface which serves as the bed proper. All this furniture in the more stately interiors is wrought into elaborate carvings in vested with that smooth and permanent painting whibh we call, for want of a better name, lacquer painting, and with gilding or the imitation of gilding in the same material as the solid color.
A throne-like chair will have the horizontals of the back terminating in dragon-heads, each one holding in its main a gilded ball, which is loose and yet cannot be withdrawn; the arms and the supports of the seat will be carved in leafage of brilliant design; the whole will often be excel lent in composition, denoting the presence of an cestral types of indefinitely great antiquity. And the reader is reminded that the furniture carved in dark-red wood, of which so much exists in the old families of Canton merchants, is not Chinese except in make—this is not the furniture which the Chinese would make for themselves.
With respect, then, to the high seat and what depends upon it, the furniture of the most ancient nations of Europe and the immediate neighbor hood of Europe, such as the Egyptians, seems to have taken the form which has never been, in essentials, abandoned since that time. Painted bas-reliefs and flat wall paintings of all historic epochs except the very earliest are known to us, and they never fail to contain representations of thrones and of chairs, stools and couches treated decoratively indeed and shown in such flat pro jection that their entire structure is sometimes doubtful, but which, when the pieces preserved in European museums are compared with the paint ings, may be sufficiently well understood. The use of metal, such as bronze, for such furniture as chairs and couches is peculiar, but such use existed still in the times of the early Roman Empire, as we know from the discoveries at Pom peii, and it need not be supposed that the ma jority of seats and bedsteads were made in this way—the bronze pieces have been preserved, while the wooden ones have decayed or have been de stroyed by the earliest discoveries. There is in the Louvre a piece of wooden furniture composed of four solid uprights inclining inward very slight ly, and having at top a box and below a compart ment opened by doors in the sides. In other words, this is a small cabinet with two compart ments. In the British Museum there are several pieces of furniture made of wood, though none of very great elaboration. The paintings above mentioned leave it generally uncertain whether the pieces represented are of wood or metal. One thing, however, is certain, that Perrot (see bib liography) is correct in his remark that "the in terior of the Egyptian house was not empty and bare, like that of a modern Oriental house; there were to be seen everywhere seats with or with out arms, tables of varied form, folding seats, stools upon which to put the feet, consoles upon which are placed vases full of flowers, and cab inets for locking up articles of value." That the decoration by carving and color applied to such wooden furniture was rich and varied is known by the singular collection of small wooden objects, such as spoons and ladles and small trays, which are found in great numbers in the museum at Gizeh and in the Louvre.