The course of natural development and change in all matters of decorative art was broken rude ly by the French Revolution, and the political changes and aspirations which it brought with it. Even in France, where the instinct for flue art applied to the purposes of daily life was far more powerful than elsewhere, the years from 1800 to 1850 were marked by ill-calculated at tempts to secure novelty, and by continued de cline. The famous style of the Empire was almost wholly the creation of two or three designers trying to please Napoleon I., and it deserves little of the attention it has received in late years. (See De Champeaux in bibliog raphy.) In the rest of Europe the furniture of the years before the great Exhibition of 1851 was clumsy and funereal in aspect, and generally tasteless in decorative detail. With the close of this epoch began the years of rapid and cheap manufacture of furniture in large factories, by means of which the requisite bedsteads, tables, and chairs of what might be thought elegant ap pearance were turned out at a surprisingly low price. No refinement of design is possible in such work as this where a vast number of pieces are made from one design, itself calculated to offend no one and to seem respectable to many rather than attractive to one person. The con sequence of this rapid and cheap manufacture is that even the little hand work that is done tends to share the same characteristics of design, and a general reign of bad taste is the inevitable consequence. A reaction begins every few years, and has a little effect; it passes out of general notice, and is succeeded by another movement for bettering the condition of things. Thus. the furniture of 1865 and following years was an attempted return to great simplicity of parts, an obvious constructive character in all the designs. Partly founded upon this, a system of design existed in England from 1875 to the close of the century, in which no past style could be said to dictate the disposition, but common sense and utility were carefully considered; all this, however, without great charm of form or delicacy of detail. On the Continent the forms of the eighteenth century were repeated again and again with generally a negative good taste seen in their use, but without anything very attractive— the furniture might be inoffensive, but it was without charm. On the whole, the best thing that the years from 1850 have to show is the work done by the few upholsterers, furniture makers, and decorators of considerable preten sions and doing a large business even at high prices. Some of the designs turned out by such houses in the American cities, as well as in the principal cities of Europe, are really of surpris ing elegance and fitness for their purpose, but all this is done at prices which put such furni ture wholly out of the reach of all but a few wealthy householders. The attempts made since 1895 to create what is called a. new art are as yet too recent to be judged; it may be said, however, that the use of abstract curves, however appropriate to metal-work or to mural painting, has less application to wood on account of the very nature of the material, its strength lying in the direction of its straight parallel fibres.
There is still no school of good furniture; the only chance of obtaining any is to employ a de signer of individual force and large acquaintance with past styles, and to have his designs carried out by first-rate workmen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The general history of furniBibliography. The general history of furni- ture is traceable in Racinet, Le costume histo rique (London, 1876), as the plates and text of that work deal with the whole life of the peoples whose costume is considered. To a less extent this is true of the lesser works named in the bibliography under COSTUME; also Viollet-le Due's Histoire de l'habitation humaine (Paris, 1875). The illustrated history of furniture by Frederick Litchfield (London, 1893) attempts to cover the whole subject, but is, in the main, a compilation. It is valuable for reference. For antiquity, consult the plates of the works named in the bibliography under ASSYRIA, EGYPT, and other articles; also Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de Part dans Pantiguite (Paris, 1882 et seq.), of which seven volumes had appeared in 1892, those for the historic ages of Greece and for Roman art not having appeared; for furniture since the beginning of the Middle Ages, De Chain peaux, Le ineublc (Paris, 1885), which forms two volumes of the Bibliothegue de l'Enseignement des and is an excellent work show ing great knowledge of the subject; also Jacque mart, II istoirc du mobilicr (Paris, 1876) ; An cient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork in the South Kensington Museum, with an Introduc tion by Pollen (London, 1874). For special epochs, consult: Viollet-le-Duc, llistoire du mo bilier francais; Zell, aus dem bayerischen lloehland (Frankfort, 1899), a folio with valuable colored plates; for English oak of the sixteenth and following centuries, Sanders, Houses and rarecei Woodirork (London, 1894) ; Ilurrel, Measured Drawings of Old Oak Furniture; and several other books, con sisting chiefly of plates; also for the Georgian period, Lyon, The Colonial Furniture of New Eng land (Boston, 1891) ; Singletog, The Furniture of Our Forefathers, with description of the plates by Russell Sturgis (New York, 1900) ; Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America (New York, 1901) ; Morse, Furniture of the Olden Time (New York, 1902). For Japan, consult Morse, Japan ese Homes and Their Surroundings (Boston, 1886) ; for the Orient, Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1871), and books of travel in the nearer East; also the numerous notes added to Sir Richard Burton's Translation of the Thousand and One Nights (London, 1886-87), the text of this and other literal and minute translations from books written in Oriental languages.
Numerous volumes of large plates, photographic and other, including catalogues of famous sales and of temporary expositions, universal and local, furnish an unlimited supply of illustrations of furniture, sometimes accompanied by valuable comment. See BOULLE; CHIPPENDALE; SHERA TON; RIESENER, etc.