In finding a place for the console in the modern house, it is well to remember its original use. Under a long mirror in the drawing-room was where it was generally placed, the tables being used in pairs to effect a studied balance. It can be advantageously placed in the hallway, where its dignity will add to the character of the entrance and at the same time take up but little room. In dining-rooms consoles are arranged to serve as sideboards. The type of console will naturally determine the type of mirror or decoration suitable to hang above it, all of which the furniture-collector should bear in mind. CHAPTER XXIII SÈVRES PORCELAIN There is no continental porcelain better known by name to every one than the French porcelain of Sèvres. Nevertheless, fewer chance collectors and lovers of old china appear to know as much about it as they do about old Worcester, Derby, Chelsea, or Dresden. Over fifty marks for Sèvres, nearly two hundred and fifty marks of painters, decorators, and gilders of the Sèvres manufactory, as well as over thirty-five of the marks of some of the modelers are known. The principal marks of fabrication from 1753 to the present number some thirty-five. From this it will be seen that Sèvres forms a group in the history of ceramic art that requires some study to master its _minutiæ_ and the _indicia_ that will enable the collector to pass intelligent judgment on pieces that come to his notice. While it is true that the collecting of Sèvres can hardly be a “poor man’s hobby,” it also is true that knowing something about even a single piece in one’s general collection of old china, or of less specialized antiques and curios, justifies giving attention to the ramifications of the particular phase of the subject that may, for the moment, more definitely apply to the piece in hand. Thus if one possesses a bit of modern Sèvres of fine quality, the interest of that possession cannot but be intensified by a knowledge of earlier examples of the fabrique to which it is allied. Fatal improvements have often marked the progress of the arts. It was so with that of the Royal Porcelain of Sèvres. The early pieces were of soft paste, but in 1804 the director, Monsieur Brogniart, was so pleased with the introduction of the hard paste instead that he utterly banished the soft paste, going so far as to destroy the secret formula for its making, and burying alive, as one might say, all the soft-paste material then on hand in the Parc de Versailles! Poor, deluded mortal! Probably he died unaware of having murdered the Sèvres porcelain of the finest type! Thus one begins to understand why the examples of the pâte tendre of the year 1753 through to the change for the hard pâte are so rare and so highly prized.