With the beginning of the Renaissance in art, at the close of the Middle Ages, the constantly in creasing tendency toward modern habits caused a great increase in the number of separate pieces of furniture; and with this came at once the disposi tion toward slighter methods of work and a less careful system of design. It is not to be denied that very magnificent single pieces were made at this time. The single armchair and the small or the larger cabinet would be massive and splendidly carved, with elaborately wrought iron hinges and with extreme beauty of design. Indeed, it is known that such pieces were modeled in clay exactly as a modern sculptor models his group of human figures. The chief object of the designer of such a cabinet as we are considering would be the general dignity of form set off and aided by the carving upon all its surfaces, this carving being appropriate now to the panel and now to the square or rounded upright. Architectural forms were introduced into these cabinets also, and this, though of questionable propriety, has taken such strong hold upon our minds that it amounts to a traditional standard from which we cannot escape altogether. Still in connection with these pieces of exceptional splendor, set off, as they were by tapestries and by mural paintings of interest and importance, of religious or of legend ary subject, there were multitudes of plain stools and tables, and the like, which were easily made by village carpenters, and of which a few have come clown to us. Some trace of this custom is seen in the curious stools still in use in the choirs and sacristies of ancient European churches. These will be absolutely plain in form and an oval hole through the top allows of easy grasping by the hand; they have no carving, no molding, no chamfering, nor are they elaborate in form, hut they are painted in sonic brilliant color, and have, perhaps, the emblem of a saint, perhaps the arms of the bishop upon them. The praying-chair (prie-dieu), as a piece of domestic furniture, seems to have been introduced in the fifteenth century. it is a modification of the ordinary church chair, a form which has existed since the Middle Ages, upon the low seat of which one might kneel, and upon the back of which is secured a small shelf to support the service hook. There was, however, another form, more resem bling a small bookcase with shelves below and a sloping top, and this allowed of considerable sculpture of its panels and frame. Such a pray ing-desk as this would have no kneeling place; one kneeled upon a footstool or piled cushions.
It is impracticable to follow the changing forms of the richer furniture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The marked changes seen in the eighteenth century are chiefly in the increase of the desire for luxurious comfort, that is to say, for low and soft seats with sloping backs, and tables of very diverse forms and of elaboration of outline and construction—all these refinements tending toward that exact fitting of the utensil to the immediate need which we think necessary to-day. In the eighteenth cen tury, however, the ancient traditions of decora tive splendor had not lost their power as much as they have to-day, and a person who could afford to have a large and well-made writing-table would not be content with plain wood and ma chine methods of building and adorning with moldings and the like; he would have fewer pieces and they would be richer. The furniture of Louis XIV.'s time is still made for large and high and somewhat bare palace halls, and is bulky and massive, but here, as early as 1650, the use of veneering and the inlaying of different colored woods, and the use of gilded bronze for metal hinges and lock plates, and even for adornments of the angles and fittings of chests of drawers and tables, shows a marked change from the straightforward woodwork of early times. In this connection we are reminded of
the silver furniture with which Versailles seems to have been supplied, in so far, at least, as the royal apartments were concerned, which furniture was sent to the melting-pot during the pecuniary distress of the last years of that long reign. In the next reign, that of Louis XV., silver furni ture was used again, and in considerable quan tities. In the Paris Exhibition of 1900 the splendid collection of French paintings of the time, made by Frederick the Great, was sent from Sans Souci to the Prussian royal pavilion on the Seine, and with this came, that the setting might be complete, the bronze busts and statu ettes and the solid silver tables which adorned the Potsdam rooms where the pictures were hung. It is probable that none of the original make still exists in France. During the reign of Louis XV. the elaboration of form surpassed anything known to previous times; the legs of tables were carved, the shape of the tops also was no longer square-cornered, but uneven, bounded on every side by curves which flow into one another, the upright sides of chests of drawers and bookcases were also worked into slight but telling curvature, and this tendency toward softened lines was emphasized by the mounting of every part with scrollwork and floral adornment of gilded bronze. The furniture of the time of Louis XV. marks, indeed, the cul mination of the easy and luxu;ious habits of Europe before the French Revolution. There was a sudden change at the close of this reign, and the style named from the succeeding reign, that of Louis Seize, is marked by severe lines, straight and slight tapering legs of tables and the like, and minuteness of decoration, the inlaid patterns and the slight carvings being extremely refined in detail and small in their parts, and the inlay of delicate medallions of porcelain and the like being introduced for the first time, as if mere woodwork was unable to give the high finish and the minute subdivision required.
Contemporaneous with the rich and splendid forms which we call by the names of the three last kings of the old monarchy there was made in Eng land, and, to a certain extent, in the American col onies, a simpler kind of furniture; at first square and plain in its forms, although elaborately carved over large parts of the surface, but, after about 1720, with forms suggested by the rich decorative work of France. Curved legs, with goats' feet and lions' paws, are given to tables, 'tallboys,' scru toires, and armchairs throughout the eighteenth century, and the forms were not abandoned until the more delicate designs of Sheraton, Heppel white, and their contemporaries ih London had made familiar to English-speaking people the re finements of the Louis Seize style. This Georgian furniture, often called in America Old Colonial, has the same charm which the contemporary Eng lish architecture has—it is not stately, it is not very graceful, but it is felt to correspond with and to fit the small rooms, the quiet domestic interiors for which it was designed. In France, a very dignified style existed in the provinces, carving in low relief in the solid wood replacing the marqueterie and the gilded metal mountings of the capital. In Germany there existed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a school of brilliant and somewhat fantastic decoration in color applied to standing bed-places, ward robes, and the cases of tall clocks. (See Zell, Bauern-Möbel.) In Holland, in consequence of the strong feeling for landscape art, resulting from the achievements of the Dutch seventeenth century painters, such pieces of furniture as were susceptible of it were often covered with land scape painting, or the panels being painted thus, the uprights were covered with floral decoration.