By thus seeking to give the furniture an appearance of the richest possible kind, such articles as chairs, couches, and beds lost in a corresponding degree their elegance and former constructive beauty. Under their gorgeous Italian and Oriental velvet coverings, their framed construction ceased to be visible. The above pieces of furniture still retained their sumptuous upholstery during the reign of Louis XIV., but the tables, armoires, cabinets, book-cases, pedestals, clock-stands and cases, came under the influence of the architecture of the period, when the king’s chief minister, Colbert, selected the best architects and cabinet-makers of the day to design the furniture for the palaces of the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Fontainebleau. The greatest name connected with the design and manufacture of the magnificent furniture of the Louis-Quatorze period is that of André-Charles Boulle, whose work is known under his name as “Boulle.” This celebrated furniture is an elaborate kind of marquetry of which the materials are rare woods, ebony, tortoiseshell, brass, mother-of-pearl, and white metal or tin. The mountings, mouldings, and other salient points are made in brass beautifully chased and finished, some of the mountings being in the forms of masks, foliage, cartouches, and animals’ heads and feet as termination. André-Charles Boulle was born in Paris in the year 1642. His father, Pierre Boulle, was also a distinguished _ébéniste_, or cabinet-maker, but his more eminent son possessed the artistic gift in a much higher degree. In addition to making his special marquetry from his own designs Boulle also executed a good deal of his best works from the designs of Jean Berain (1636-1711), his chief collaborateur. Berain’s designs were more Italian in style, more symmetrical in the composition of the ornament, and more correct from an architectural point of view, than those attributed to Boulle himself, whose designs had much of the looseness and freedom of the prevalent Louis Quatorze. At the death of Jean Macé, the king’s ébéniste, in 1672, who had formerly lived in the royal galleries of the Louvre, the _logement_ and office of ébéniste to the king had become vacant, and Boulle on the recommendation of Colbert, minister to Louis XIV., was appointed as the successor of Macé, and was installed in his rooms in the Louvre in the year 1673. He had previously executed some important work for the king, and was known as the ablest ébéniste at that time in Paris.