Illustrated History of Furniture, fifth ed.: From the Earliest to the Present TimeLitchfield, Frederick
History
Illustrated History of Furniture, fifth ed.: From the Earliest to the Present Time
Litchfield, Frederick
Furniture -- History
In Mr. J. H. Pollen's larger work on furniture and woodwork, which
includes a catalogue of the different examples in the South Kensington
Museum, there is a list of the various artists and craftsmen who have been
identified with the production of artistic furniture either as designers
or manufacturers, and the writer has found this of considerable service.
In the Appendix to this work, this list has been reproduced, with the
addition of several names (particularly those of the French school)
omitted by Mr. Pollen, and it will, it is hoped, prove a useful reference
to the reader.
* * * * *
Although in deference to the prevailing taste for our National manufacture
of the latter half of the last century, this chapter is somewhat long, on
account of the endeavour to give more detailed information about English
furniture of that period, still, in concluding it, a few remarks about the
"Sideboard" may be allowed.
The changes in form and fashion of this important article of domestic
furniture are interesting, and to explain them a slight retrospect is
necessary. The word "Buffet," sometimes translated "Sideboard," which was
used to describe continental pieces of furniture of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, does not designate our Sideboard, which may be said
to have been introduced by William III., and of which kind there is a fair
specimen in the South Kensington Museum; an illustration of it has been
given in the chapter dealing with that period.
The term "stately sideboard" occurs in Milton's "Paradise Regained,"
which was published in 1671; and Dryden, in his translation of "Juvenal,"
published in 1693, when contrasting the furniture of the classical period
of which he was writing, with that of his own time, uses the following
line:--
"No sideboards then with gilded plate were dressed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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