It is especially true of the furniture of this great French period that it requires harmonious surroundings. The slightest false touch throws everything out of balance at once. Of this fact the inventors were well aware. If Dutch furniture requires the quiet, restful art of Cuyp or Van der Neer, or Metzu or Jan Steen on the surrounding walls, the interiors of Louis Quinze demand the works of contemporary French genre-painters. [Illustration: LOUIS XV. SECRETAIRE. By Riesener, in his earlier manner. IN TRANSITIONAL STYLE, APPROACHING LOUIS SEIZE PERIOD. (_Wallace Collection._)] All things worked together to produce a harmonious _ensemble_ in this brilliant period. The royal tapestry and Sevres porcelain factories turned out their most beautiful productions to decorate rooms, furniture, and for the table. Tapestries from Beauvais, Gobelins, and Aubusson, rich silks from the looms of Lyons, or from Lucca, Genoa, or Venice were made for wall-hangings, for chair-backs, for seats, and for sofas. Fragonard, Natoire, and Boucher painted lunettes over chimney-fronts, or panels of ceilings. Of great cabinetmakers, Riesener and David Roentgen, princes among _ebenistes_, worked in wonderful manner in tulip-wood, in holly, in rosewood, purple wood, and laburnum to produce marquetry, the like of which has never been seen before nor since. Associated with the period of Louis XV. is the love for the lacquered panel. Huygens, a Dutchman, had achieved good results in imitations of Oriental lacquer, which in France, under the hand of Martin, a carriage-painter, born about 1706, rivalled the importations from Japan. It is stated that the secret of the fine, transparent lac polish that he used was obtained from the missionaries who resided in Japan before the date of the massacres and foreign expulsion of all except the Dutch traders. Vernis-Martin, as his varnish was termed, became in general request. From 1744 for twenty years, Sieur Simon Etienne Martin was granted a monopoly to manufacture this lacquered work in the Oriental style. Although he declared that his secret would die with him, other members of his family continued the style, which was taken up by many imitators in the next reign. His varnish had a peculiar limpid transparency, and he obtained the wavy network of gold groundwork so successfully produced by Japanese and Chinese craftsmen. On this were delicately painted, by Boucher and other artists, Arcadian subjects, framed in rocaille style with gold thickly laid on, and so pure that in the bronze gilding and in the woodwork it maintains its fine lustre to the present day. [Illustration: _By permission of Messrs. Foley & Eassie._ THE "BUREAU DU ROI." THE MASTERPIECE OF RIESENER. (From a drawing by Walter Eassie.) (_Wallace Collection._)]