The other room was furnished in yellow mohair. There were six chairs, a large chair, two stools, a desk and bookcase with glass doors, a dressing-table and glass, a chimney-glass and sconce, a bed and brass andirons, etc. The window curtains and window cushions matched the bed, whose bolster and counterpane, as well as draperies, were of yellow mohair. [Illustration: PLATE XXVIII] ----- Footnote 15: Bridgman was a famous landscape gardener of the day, and Gibbs a noted architect. LOUIS XV. PERIOD [Illustration] THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD The gloom and solemnity of the last years of Louis XIV., ruled by a morose monarch and his bigoted, unacknowledged wife, gave place to the license of the Regency, and the exuberant vitality of a young king, the influence of which is fully reflected in decorative art. The Regency saw a short period of inflated wealth such as had never been dreamed of by any living man. Law’s Mississippi Bubble, before it was pricked, enabled men to get rich in a day, and some of the upstarts paid fabulous sums for the best work that artists of all kinds could produce. Architecture had to give up parade and magnificence, and cater to comfort and convenience. Paris saw mansions and pretty little houses rise by the hundred. Their furniture and decoration bore the stamp of gaiety and caprice. There was open rebellion against the rigid rule of the last reign. Le Brun’s divinities become gay and frisky and laugh at you. Fauns get very hairy about the snout, plants climb and frolic along the limbs of the goddesses. Olympus becomes human; partitions are built to break up the too cold and imposing grand galleries and transform them into _cabinets particuliers_. The pier invades the walls, the chimney-piece assumes shell forms. In fact, as the subtle “Advice to lovers of design,” which heads Oppenord’s collection of engravings says, these works are composed in a “taste after the antique,—but richer.” Then, we are led on to the charming follies of Meissonier, whom later we shall see go even further, growing ever and ever more “rich,” but still thoroughly under the illusory conviction that his style is “antique.” Now we have arrived at what is perhaps the most exquisite and perfect period of the history of furniture in France. The workers of the Regency and of the reign of Louis XV. united with an incomparable manual dexterity a grace, fancy and caprice that is found nowhere else except perhaps in the best art of Japan. Perhaps the greatest furniture-maker of this time was Charles Cressent (b. 1685). For the perfection of his workmanship, he ranks as high as André Charles Boulle, and perhaps surpasses the latter in the qualities of seductiveness and elegance. He was an engraver as well as a carver. Copper played a great part in the ornamentation of his coloured marquetry works, and he was able to set his own mark of taste and finesse directly upon his productions.