Furniture is not like silver, where the mark of the maker was almost as obligatory as the hall mark. Artists, both great and small, have signed their pictures, and in the glorious days of the great French _ebenistes_ and metal-chasers, signed work is frequently found. But in England, at a time when furniture of excellent design, of original conception, and of thoroughly good workmanship was produced in great quantities, the only surviving names are those of designers or cabinetmakers who have published books. [Illustration: _By permission of Messrs. Harold G. Lancaster & Co._ CHIPPENDALE BUREAU BOOKCASE. With drop-down front, showing secret drawer.] So great was the influence of the style of Chippendale that it permeated all classes of society. An interesting engraving by Stothard (p. 235) shows the interior of a room, and is dated 1782, the year that Rodney gained a splendid victory over the French fleet in the West Indies, and the year that saw the independence of the United States recognised. [Illustration: _By permission of Messrs. Harold G. Lancaster & Co._ MAHOGANY CHAIR. IN THE CHIPPENDALE STYLE. LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.] [Illustration: COTTAGE CHAIRS, BEECHWOOD. LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, IN STYLE OF CHIPPENDALE.] Kitchen furniture or cottage furniture was made on the same lines by makers all over the country. The wood used was not mahogany; it was most frequently beech. Chairs of this make are not museum examples, but they are not devoid of a strong artistic feeling, and are especially English in character. More often than not the soft wood of this class of chair is found to be badly worm-eaten. Two chairs of this type, of beech, are illustrated (p. 233), and it is interesting to note that, as in the instance of the Yorkshire and Derbyshire chairs of Jacobean days made by local makers, it is not common to find many of exactly the same design. The craftsman gave a personal character to his handiwork, which makes such pieces of original and artistic interest, and cabinetmaking and joinery was not then so machine-made as it is now. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ROOM, ABOUT 1782. (_From engraving after Stothard._)] It may be here remarked that the earlier pieces of the eighteenth century were polished much in the same manner as was old oak previously described. Highly polished surfaces and veneers, and that abomination "French polish," which is a cheap and nasty method of disguising poor wood, bring furniture within the early nineteenth-century days, when a wave of Philistine banalities swept over Europe. RECENT SALE PRICES.[1] L s. d. Side table, Chippendale, with gadrooned border, the front boldly carved with a grotesque mask, festoons of flowers and foliage, on carved legs with claw feet, 64 in. long. Christie, February 14, 1902 126 0 0