EXOTIC BIRD AND GOTHIC STYLES (EIGHTEENTH CENTURY) 327 HAND-PRINTED CHINTZ BY R. JONES (OLD FORD) 331 HEPPLEWHITE PERIOD AND VICTORIAN PERIOD DESIGNS 335 VICTORIAN CHINTZ (IN THE COLLECTION OF MRS. COBDEN UNWIN) 339 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY NOTE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY NOTE The minor collector--The originality of the village cabinet-maker--His freedom from foreign influences--The traditional character of his work--Difficulty to establish dates to cottage and farmhouse furniture--Oak the chief wood employed--Beech, elm, and ash used in lieu of mahogany and satinwood--Village craftsmanship not debased by early Victorian art--Its obliteration in the age of factory-made furniture--The conservation of old farmhouses with their furniture in Sweden and in Denmark--The need for the preservation and exhibition of old cottages and farmhouses in Great Britain. In regard to launching another volume on the market dealing with old furniture, a word of explanation is desirable, for nowadays of making books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the collector. In the present volume attention has been especially given to that class of furniture known as Cottage or Farmhouse. There is no volume dealing with this phase of collecting. Prices for old furniture of the finest quality have gone up by leaps and bounds, and for those not possessed of ample means the collection of superlative styles is at an end. Singularly enough, the most native furniture and that most typically racy of the soil has not hitherto attracted the attention of wealthy collectors. The plutocrats who buy only the finest creations of Chippendale, who have immediate private information when an exquisitely designed Sheraton piece is found, who amass a mighty hoard of gilt Stuart furniture, or who boast of an unrivalled collection of Elizabethan oak, do not touch the minor furniture made during a period of three hundred years for the common people.