British Manufacturing Industries: Pottery, Glass and Silicates, Furniture and Woodwork.

The joiners put together panelling, chairs, couches, frames of tables, shelves, cupboards, and other complex pieces of furniture.

Upholstery.– Chairs and sofas required to be stuffed are then handed over to the upholsterer, and the seats and backs are stuffed with curled horsehair, carefully arranged so as not to wear into holes. A French edge is given to some stuffed seats by bringing the edges of several ridges of horsehair together, so inclined towards the upper edge, that each roll receives support from the others, which react on the pressure thus brought upon them, like springs. One would suppose that these edges were maintained by whalebone, like the stocks in which a past stiff-necked generation suffered so much. Where ribbon scrolls, tiny bunches of flowers, &c., are carved on the frames and top rails of chairs and sofa-frames, if these are to be polished only, the polishing is done before the upholstery. If parts are to be gilt, or the whole gilt, these operations are postponed till the upholstery is completed. So also when panelling, sideboards, bookcases, &c., are to be made up, the moulded lines which can only be conveniently hand-polished while in lengths, are treated thus before making up; and there remain only flat panels and surfaces, that can be evenly rubbed for the final polishing. In upholstered furniture, the coverings would be greased and stained, if polishing were done over or in connection with them; but in the case of gilt work, it must be left in most cases to the last, for fear of dimming or rubbing the gold during the processes of sewing, nailing, stuffing, &c.

I may remark here, that though arm-chairs, fauteuils, &c., are made in great London establishments, the manufacture of light chairs on a large scale is a special branch of the trade, and mostly carried on at High Wycombe, in the neighbourhood of which town there are extensive woods of beech, and where land and water carriage is at hand to convey these productions to London and elsewhere.

Cabinet-making.– It is by no means easy to lay down the exact technical boundary between what I have been describing as joinery, and what I am now about to call cabinet-making. They are considered, however, as distinct branches or rather, perhaps, different operations of the trade; and in such establishments as we are discussing, the cabinet makers and joiners have their own separate workshops and benches, and corresponding separate repositories for storing and drying their woods. Every kind of work is required in making costly cabinets, bookcases, sideboards, commodes, or by whatever name we choose to call the beautiful chests, cupboards, and other artistic receptacles, tables, consoles, brackets, &c., that go to complete the requirements of our modern reception rooms.

They are seldom made with the quaint or elaborate interior fittings, such as have been alluded to in older work, but every resource is brought to bear on the external decoration. Here we come to the arts brought to bear on the ornamentation of furniture.

Let us begin with carving. Sculpture is the highest or most beautiful kind of decoration that can be applied to furniture. It can only be executed by a trained artist. To go no farther back here than the Italian and French Renaissance furniture, generally made of walnut-wood, it is the spirited and graceful sculpture that makes its first great attraction. The Italian carving of this kind is the most graceful; while that of France by Bachelier and others, and much that was executed in England and Germany, being, if less graceful, always spirited and thoroughly decorative. As a general rule, sculpture so applied is conventional in design and treatment, that is, we rarely see it, (except, perhaps, occasionally in little ivory statuettes, and in bas-reliefs,) strictly imitative of nature, like perfect Greek sculpture. But neither should we find strict studies from nature on Greek furniture, if we had it, except with the same limitations. The furniture made by Greco-Roman artists, and discovered at Pompeii,6 bears witness to this assertion, such as a head, a bust, the claws of animals, sculptured on furniture generally ending in scrolls or leafwork. If a human figure is complete, it bears no real proportion to objects round it, and so on.

Excellent wood sculpture used to be executed in England, from the days of Grinling Gibbon to those of Adam and the Chippendales, suited to the furniture then in fashion. I wish I could say that our furniture makers of to-day could easily, or did generally, command such talents. Ingeniously carved representations of animals and game on sideboards we sometimes see, but game 'dead' in every sense. If, indeed, Messrs. Crace, Howard, Jackson and Graham, and other firms could persuade the Royal Academicians to model for them, those artists would have to give some material amount of time to the study of how they could so effectually modify their skill as to suit the requirements and opportunities of a piece of furniture, these being quite peculiar. The French are easily our masters in this respect, but even they sacrifice good qualities proper to this kind of sculpture, in a morbid search after the softness of nature.

A curious piece of mechanism has been invented, and is in use in most large London furniture workshops, for carving by steam. Besides boring out and cutting away superfluous material, there is an engine for making mechanical sculpture in bas-relief, or the round. The wood is fixed on a metal table, which is moved to and fro and up and down, so as to come in contact with a revolving cutter held above it. The wood is then shaped and cut, according as it is elevated or moved. There are three or four cutters, and one piece of wood may be placed under each. Under the middle cutter, replaced by a dummy tool that does not really cut, the workman places his cast or model, and makes the dummy cutter pass over every undulation of its surface. The two or three cutters on either side cut the corresponding blocks exactly to the same depths and undulations as are followed by the blunt tool. It is a copying machine. That such copies, though they may pass muster, will ever have the charm of original carving, the reader shall not be asked to believe.

Certain elaborate methods of decorating and finishing woodwork must now be described, viz. those known as inlaying and marquetry. These two processes are distinct, but marquetry furniture has often portions decorated with inlaying, as also carved ornaments and decorations of beaten, cast, or chiselled metal-work. This last addition is not generally of the same importance in our modern English woodwork that it was a century ago, and I will describe the former methods first.

Inlaying means the insertion of pieces of more costly wood, stone, small discs, or carved pieces of ivory, into a less valuable material. The process is as old as any manufacture in wood working of which we possess records. Beautiful plates or blocks of ivory can be seen in the Assyrian gallery of the British museum, found at Nineveh by Mr. Layard. They are deeply cut with lotus and other leaf decorations, figures and hieroglyphics, and most of them have an Egyptian character. The ivory figures, too, have been inlaid and filled up with vitrified material. Remains of these decorations are still discernible, and the thickness of many of these pieces of ivory shows that they have been sunk bodily into woodwork of a solid character.

No such work as this can be pointed out in our London workshops, but patterns and arabesques, both of wood and ivory, are occasionally let into solid beds of wood so deeply, as to be actually mortised into the main body of the structure. This is done both by our own makers and by the French cabinet maker, Henri Fourdinois, a prize piece of whose make was bought for the South Kensington museum. It is not uncommon to insert pieces of lapis lazuli, bloodstone, and precious marbles into centres of carved woodwork, and I may call attention to the use of plates, medallions and cameos of Wedgwood, or Sèvres ware, which were frequently inlaid by Chippendale, and by the great French furniture makers, or ébénistes, of the last century. These are used in the modern satin-wood furniture of Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and I have lately seen a coarser material used, viz. bas-reliefs in stoneware, imitations of the gris de Flandres, by Messrs. Doulton. These last, however, may be said to be rather panels set in frames, than pieces let into cavities in wood.

Veneering and Marquetry.– An effective method of ornamenting woodwork by the application to the surface of other woods is what is known as veneering and marquetry. The surface is in both cases covered with a thin layer of other woods, fastened on with glue and by strong pressure. Some of the panelling, table tops, and other joiner's work already described, is clothed with a thin slice of more valuable wood. This is called veneering. Woods such as ebony, tuya, satin-wood, palm, hare-wood, and a number more, are only to be had in small scantlings, logs a few feet long, and six or seven inches wide. Other woods, of which the grain is most beautifully marked, are cut from roots, wens, and other excrescences of the trees, to which they belong, and are only found occasionally, and in lumps of no great size. The contortions of the grain, which make them so valuable and beautiful, are owing to peculiar conditions of growth. In all these cases an inch plank of wood has to be cut into very thin slices, twelve being cut with a saw, or from eighteen to twenty-two if it is cut with a knife, as in that case no material is wasted by the opening made by a saw. These slices are laid on the surface of well-seasoned wood, and in the workshops of our great manufacturers will be seen a metal table or bed, prepared expressly for the process of veneering.

Supposing the object to be veneered to be a large surface – a number of panels, or the top of a table of ebony, for instance – the substance of the table may be Honduras mahogany. The wood has been carefully seasoned, and the top grooved, tongued, and firmly glued up to the required form. The ebony surface is also carefully fitted together and glued on paper, the surface being left rough, so that the glue may have a firm hold on the fibre of the grain. A corresponding roughness is produced on the upper surface of the mahogany, which is then laid on the metal bed. Glue, perfectly fluid and hot, is now rapidly brushed over the entire surface, and the thin veneer top is laid upon it, and firmly pressed down by several workmen, who then carefully go over the whole with hammers having broad, flat heads; the object of this being to flatten any apparent thicknesses of glue or bubbles of air which would interfere with the perfect contact of the two surfaces of wood. The whole is then placed under a caul or frame that touches it all over, and a number of strong bars are screwed down till the greater part of the glue has been pressed out. The complete union of the surfaces of the woods is effected not so much by the quantity of glue as by the absolute exclusion of the air, and this can only be done by pressure. The whole metal bed or frame in which the veneering is performed is heated by steam, or by gas-burners, where steam cannot be applied. The wood is left for twenty-four or thirty hours, till the glue has been completely set and hardened. The caul or frame is then removed, the paper used to keep the thin veneer together before gluing is scraped off, and the work of finishing and French polishing takes place. French polish, or careful wax polish, has the effect of keeping out air and damp, which latter might soften the glue and disintegrate the surface veneer. It is to be observed, that such wood as the finest French or Italian walnut is often veneered on mahogany, for it lasts better in this condition than if it was solid; large surfaces and thicknesses of walnut being difficult to procure without faults. Walnut veneers are applied in greater thicknesses than ebony; and if the surfaces to which they are applied are curved, cauls, or shaped pieces of wood made to fit them, are screwed down and held by numerous wooden vices, as in the method already described.

Marquetry is the application of veneer made of different woods, ivory, &c., composed like a mosaic or painting executed in coloured woods. This kind of decoration is of ancient use, was much in vogue during the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was carried to a great pitch of perfection in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth. It is still practised, and the process may be seen in full activity in the workshops of our modern furniture makers. In cutting out the forms required for marquetry decoration, one, two, or more thicknesses of thin wood are gummed or pasted together, according to the pattern required. In many fine pieces of marquetry there are, as in the case of a cabinet or table, portions of the surface entirely occupied by quiet reticulated patterns. As in these cases the same pattern often recurs, several thicknesses of wood can be laid together, and are then firmly fixed in a vice, having pasted over them a piece of paper on which the pattern is drawn. A small hole is bored where it will not interfere with the design, and the end of a thin watch-spring saw is passed through, and then re-attached to the frame that strains it out in working order. With this in his hand, the workman carefully traces the outlines of his drawing, which the tenuity of the saw-blade allows the tool to follow into every curve and angle. The thicknesses are then separated with the blade of a knife, and the slices become alternately pattern and ground, so that a set of patterns and a set of matrices of each wood are ready for use, and can be applied either on different parts of the same, or on two separate pieces of furniture. If a flower or other ornament is required which will not be repeated, two thicknesses only will be cut together. It is necessary that the same action of the saw should cut out the pattern and the ground in the two woods required, so that they may fit exactly.

When all the portions of the design are cut out, they are pasted on paper, and can be fitted together like mosaic. A little sawdust from the woods used, and a very small quantity of glue, join the edges and fill up the fine openings made by the saw; and in this way the whole surface of the marquetry is laid down on paper. In the case of flowers, heads, architectural or other designs, some slight additions, either of lines to indicate stalks, leaf-fibre, or the features of the face, are made with a graver, and stained; or gradations of a brown colour are given, in the case of white or light-tinted wood, by partial burning. It was formerly the custom to burn with a hot iron, but a more delicate tint is given by using hot sand, and this is the best method of tinting beech, lime, holly, box, maple, or other woods which are nearly white. There remains nothing but to rough the surface of the furniture, and to lay down the marquetry on it, precisely as in the case of plain veneering. When the glue is dry and hard, the pressure is taken off, the paper which is on the outer surface is scraped away, and the whole rubbed down to a fine surface and French polished. The most beautiful work of this description was made in France by Riesener and David, during the reigns of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. Besides graceful and delicate design, which these artists (for such they were) thoroughly understood, the beauty of their work owes much to their charming feeling for colour. Both used light woods, such as maple, holly, box, lime, &c., and laid brown woods, such as laburnum and walnut, on this light ground. Sometimes architectural compositions in the manner of Pannini, a favourite Roman painter of the day, were designed over the doors or flaps of secrétaires and cabinets, or busts, medallions, baskets of roses, &c. The charm of the work is the grace and repose with which these simple decorations are laid on. Compare some of the work of Riesener and David, on the cabinet doors in the collection of Sir Richard Wallace, with the glaring contrasts, the gaudy, often discordant colouring, and the crowded compositions of modern marquetry, at least of most of it. There is a tenderness of treatment, a grace and harmony of colour and arrangement throughout the former, which is wholly wanting, and which no lapse of time will add to the latter. Though these criticisms are not meant to be applied to the products of the leading houses now under review, the reader who has taken an observant stroll amongst the furniture of Sir Richard Wallace, at Bethnal Green, will find abundant contrasts as he walks along the streets of London.

In order to illustrate my remarks on the processes of colouring woods by burning or etching, I may point to a large writing bureau, or secrétaire, belonging to Sir Richard Wallace, made by Riesener, in 1769 (and signed), for Stanislaus, king of Poland. It is decorated partly with reticulated pattern work, partly with the royal cipher in medallions, and with other medallions containing emblematic figures, such as a carrier pigeon, a cock, the emblem of vigilance, or the head of a girl placing her finger on her lips, an emblem of silence. All these medallion figures are broadly drawn, the very slightest and most delicate tint only being added to represent shading, while the drawing is a single line lightly pencilled.

The materials used in the best marquetry are lime, holly, box, maple, beech, poplar, for white; pear, laburnum, palm (cut across the grain), lignum vitæ, walnut, teak, partridge-wood, for brown; wood called in the trade fustic, satin-wood, for yellow; tulip, purple-wood, amboyna, mahogany, thuya, log-wood, cam-wood, and varieties of these woods, for red; ebony for black, or stained wood. Greens and blues are also stained with metallic dyes. The finest of the old work may be called studies in brown and white, and the red woods are used sparingly; the dyed woods still more so, nor can they be said ever to be really effective.

As an example of great mechanical skill in a modern piece of very difficult execution, I might call attention to Messrs. Jackson and Graham's elaborate cabinet of marquetry, in patterns of Oriental character, after designs by the late Mr. Owen Jones (sent to the Vienna Exhibition by Messrs. Jackson and Graham). It had an architectural front, with detached columns and groups of architectural mouldings, some of them put together with the lines of moulding in woods of contrasted hue, an element of ornamentation that took from the unity and completeness of cap or corona mouldings. The little columns of an inch and a half diameter were entirely covered with reticulated pattern in different woods. As the shafts were tapering, so the reticulated patterns had to be graduated in size from top to bottom. This was a feat of most difficult execution, nor was it the only difficulty in this portion of the design. The marquetry in the instance of these columns had to be wrapped round each circular shaft; and each edge, therefore, of every portion of pattern and groundwork had to be sawn out with bevelled edges, so that when rolled, the inner edges might meet and the outer edges remain in contact, which would not be so, were they not bevelled: the contrary would happen in that case, and the outer edges would start in sunder. These columns were two feet and some inches high, and the little reticulations of pattern recurred many dozens of times. The conditions of which I speak had to be carefully observed in the case of each. The pattern, too, was graduated, as above stated, so that they had to be sawn out by separate cuttings – a most laborious and costly operation.

We miss in the great English houses one of the most costly and beautiful elements in the adornment of furniture, and that is, the fine moulded and chiselled bronze work, always gilt, which enters so largely into the decoration of fine old French marquetry. The English furniture makers of a century ago were not so behindhand, and old carriages had door-handles, and furniture had mounts of gilt bronze. Probably the French were always superior to us in this kind of skill. They still produce good work of this class, cast and afterwards cleaned and tooled with the chisel, but it is not equal to the work of the same description by Gouthière, and the famous ciseleurs of Paris in the last century.

I must not pass over in silence a beautiful kind of furniture which was in fashion a century since, and has been revived by Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, and other firms, viz. satin-wood furniture. In the time of Chippendale, Sheraton, Lock, and other great cabinet makers, contemporaries of the French artists Riesener, Gouthière, and David, satin-wood was imported from India. It was made up by veneering, and was decorated with medallions, some of marquetry, some of Wedgwood ware, after the model of the French inlaying of Sèvres porcelain plaques, and in some instances painted with miniature scenes like the Vernis Martin, called after a French decorator of the name of Martin. Old examples of satin-wood furniture, such as tables, bookcases, chests of drawers, &c., are not uncommon, decorated in one or more of these methods. Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann were employed amongst many others in painting cameo medallions, busts, Cupids and so forth for satin-wood furniture. Messrs. Wright and Mansfield have executed much of this work, and sent a cabinet of large size to the Paris Exhibition of 1867, decorated with medallions, swags, ribbons, &c., partly in marquetry of coloured woods, partly in plates of Wedgwood ware. The piece is further set off by carved and gilt portions, not, however, sufficiently attractive to add greatly to the effect of the whole cabinet, which is gay, cheerful, of beautiful hue, and excellent workmanship. It is in the South Kensington Museum.

Allusion has been made to the furniture of Boulle. It began to be made somewhere about 1660, and was perhaps the earliest start taken in the more modern manufacture of sumptuous furniture. I have already called it a great advance and improvement, rather than an absolutely new invention, for pieces are found of a date too early to have been the actual work of Boulle. When the tortoiseshell is dark and rich in hue, the brass of a good golden yellow, and the designs carefully drawn, Boulle work seems to equal in splendour, though not in preciousness, the gold and silver furniture of the ancients, and the inlaid work of agates, crystals, amethysts, &c., with mounts of ivory and silver made in Florence in the sixteenth century.

Boulle work is made occasionally by French and other foreign houses, and by Wertheimer of Bond street, but it is costly, and the rich relieved portions, such as the hinge and lock mounts, the salient medallions, masks, &c., set in central points of the composition, are either copies or imitations of old work. They lack the freshness, vigour, and spirit of the old French metallurgy.

A spurious kind of Boulle is made with a composition in place of the tortoiseshell.

Parquet floors are made by Messrs. Howard as follows: Slices of oak, varied sometimes with mahogany, walnut, and imitation ebony, are laid out and put together on a board. If rings, circles or other figures are introduced, these portions, patterns, and cavities as well as angular pieces are cut in the machine. The thickness of these pieces is a quarter of an inch. They are then laid on three thicknesses of pine, the grain of each thickness being laid crosswise to the one below, so as to keep the wood above from warping and opening. These are glued together, and kept for twenty-four hours under an hydraulic press. It is, in fact, coarse marquetry, and the whole is laid down over a rough deal floor. Messrs. Howard also glue up their quarter inch hardwoods without a pine backing, and lay them down with glue and fine brads on old deal floors, a less expensive method, and which can be adopted without raising the level of an old floor.

It is remarkable that English cabinet makers should so rarely make these floors, or architects lay them down in rooms of modern houses. The French, Germans of all states, Swiss, Belgians, in short most continental nations have these floors, and Swiss and Belgian flooring is imported into England. That of the Belgian joiners is in large pieces four feet or so square, of seasoned wood, moderate in price, and easily laid down.