The use of the term console in this connection has been a matter of some dispute. It is reasonable to suppose that it was borrowed, because of the bracket supports--as distinguished from tables with four legs--from the French architectural term _console_, a bracket support. Since the idea came from the French, we must expect to find some of the earliest and most beautiful consoles in French period furniture. Some of the most notable ones are to be found in the great museums of America. Fortunate it is that these are available for public study; for many modern furniture-makers have been able to reproduce with fidelity the designs of these wonderful consoles. Collectors, of course, do not primarily seek reproductions, but many of the foremost among them realize that where originals are not obtainable, unusually fine reproductions are to be welcomed. The desirability lies not only in age but in intrinsic beauty. I for one believe that much pleasure can be had from the possession of fine reproductions of certain things, consoles among them. Genuine antiques are the things we naturally strive for first of all, and consoles present a field that is, as yet, by no means prohibitive, even for the moderately filled purse. To be sure, the rare French consoles of the early Louis periods are not to be had at every turn (the war has rendered them still rarer), but there are English consoles and console tables and others by early American furniture-makers that are surely worth hunting out. Their appropriateness to the scheme of the small house commends their preservation and insures a revival of interest in their modern use. Virtually all of the eighteenth-century furniture-makers constructed console tables. Gilded furniture in all its gorgeousness found favor in England shortly before 1720, and the consoles and console tables were unusually well adapted to finish and decoration of the sort that suggested the magnificence of Louis XIV and, later on, the elegance and richness of Louis XV. During the Empire period some were elaborately decorated in white and gold. With the advent of the Napoleonic era, the console and the console table still held sway. Indeed, I do not think they have ever lost favor, and the last few years have seen a remarkable increase of interest in both furniture forms on the part of decorators and collectors of fine old furniture. Moreover, the console has not only interested but influenced many of our present-day architects. The console and the console table are by no means confined to the furniture-makers of France, Great Britain, and America. We find both forms in early eighteenth-century Italian furniture, and in Spain, Austria, Germany, and Russia one also comes across types of consoles that, dependent as they nearly always are on French models, still exhibit occasional variations in design that link them to the art traditions of the land of their manufacture.