Old English Furniture

When I first began, in a small way, to collect a few pieces of old English furniture, the present craze was almost in its infancy. There were, of course, a host of distinguished collectors, but the vast army of small bargain hunters had not sprung into being. Most people were then content to furnish according to the house furnisher's taste, and you did not hear every couple setting up housekeeping chatter about old oak and Chippendale. The modern movement is undoubtedly a change in the right direction, for despite the fact that it has created a demand for and brought into existence a vast array of bad imitations of the work of the eighteenth century masters, these copies are an improvement on what went before. It does violence to one's feelings to see the twelve by ten drawing-room in a suburban villa furnished with "old carved oak" (made in Belgium or the Midlands) backed by an "art" wall-paper, or to see cottage chairs of the Chippendale period in the drawing-rooms of the wealthy; but at least these things- show a hankering after improvement. It is not every one who has instinctive feeling for what is beautiful in design and correct in form not every one who is born with a sensitiveness which is outraged when a beautiful piece of furniture is insulted by being placed in unsympathetic surroundings, and I am not at all sure that the vast majority are not much to be congratulated on the circumstance. The modest collector, who has scraped up a little knowledge and is the easy prey of the modern manufacturer, often forgets, if he ever knew, that the furniture of the great makers was intended for certain styles of rooms. The oak-panelled rooms and tapestry-hung walls took their dignified solid oak and exquisite walnut-wood work, and the painted rooms of a later period show up the dainty work of Sheraton, Adams, and Hepplewhite. Divorced from their proper surroundings, you miss half the effect which the designer saw. I do not suggest that there are not a fair number of people who have this inborn knowledge which enables them to detect at once the false from the genuine, and approximately date every piece of furniture. I am not prepared to say that I am one of them, but I wish here to express my thanks firstly, to Mrs. C. W. Wyllie, whose intuitive knowledge exceeds that of any one I have met, and who has come to my assistance in the writing of this book; secondly, to Mr. James Orrock for allowing me to include certain photographs of examples in his fine collection; and thirdly, to Mr. S. E. Letts, who has also lent photographs, and whose knowledge of Chippendale furniture is, I imagine, unrivalled in England. I am particularly glad to include specimens of Mr. Orrock's collection, because I do not think it is sufficiently widely known how much he has done to uphold the merits of English furniture, to insist on its undoubted superiority in workmanship to French furniture, and to arouse a feeling of national pride in the work of the best makers. He gathered round him an almost priceless collection, and though it has now been dispersed under the hammer, there was at one time no better education for the would-be collector than a visit to his house under the owner's intelligent guidance.

And now to go back for a moment. When some years ago I first began buying a little furniture, one of the charms of acquiring old things was that, apart from their aesthetic value, they were very much cheaper than their modern equivalents. A beautiful Sheraton chest of drawers, with dressing- table fittings, did not cost more than a japanned deal atrocity. Chairs could be acquired from half a crown upwards. A bureau was the cheapest form of writing- table in existence, and those fine old wardrobes and tall chests of drawers stood neglected in dark corners of dealers' shops. Now all is changed ; the genuine antique is hard to find. It is either on its way to America or its price is prohibitive to those of moderate means. There is one direction though in which the enthusiast, with a little knowledge, can do real service. I take a little credit to myself that I have saved sundry beautiful pieces from the rubbish heap. Few people are courageous enough to buy a much dilapidated article which appears to be tottering on broken legs to the wood heap, but I have been occasionally marvelously repaid for so daring. I have for long had the services of an extremely skilful and intelligent workman at my command, and nothing in my possession gives me greater pleasure than a little Stuart cabinet which he took in hand when it was in the last stages of decrepitude, and to which he devoted three weeks of careful work. It is one of the curious things about the poor collector that he will reluctantly pass by a table or cabinet offered to him in perfect condition for, say 25 pounds considering that the price is beyond him; but if he can buy it for, say 10 pounds, he will cheerfully pay another 15 pounds for having it restored. Restoration is often difficult, but it saves many a gem from a terrible fate. I have been over factories in the Midlands and elsewhere and seen in full swing the horrid work of transforming genuine but faulty pieces of furniture. Beautiful square pianos are transmogrified into secretaries; carved chests are cut up into cupboards ; chairs are taken to pieces, and bits of the old wood are put into half a dozen new imitations. The clever ignoramus is then allowed to scrape a genuine leg with his pocket-knife, and goes away quite satisfied about the antiquity of the wood, and hugging himself with the thought that he has secured a bargain, although nine-tenths of the chair are new. This same clever ignoramus is responsible for much. It is for his delectation that fine and whole pieces of china are broken up and then rivetted together; he then snaps up greedily a thing which he would not have touched in the first instance. The little knowledge about old furniture, which every one has nowadays, so far from alarming the dealer in frauds has made him rub his hands. No fool is so easily imposed upon as the clever fool.

One more point, and that is that it is a mistake to suppose that the finest furniture cannot be made nowadays. A piece of furniture is beautiful in itself, not by reason of its age; and the most finished workmanship can be put into anything at the present day. The great difficulty lies in the fact that the public will not pay for the best work. Masters and men alike are afraid of spending too long over a given task: they know it does not pay. The best work is necessarily very costly, and I know, when I have had a skilled workman repairing things for me, my chief difficulty has been to make him take long enough over the task. He has felt that he had not enough work to show if he devoted a day to some tiny but all important detail.

Lastly, I would say that I have bought furniture in all parts of the country from Dundee to Penzance, but there is really no occasion for the Londoner to go wandering. London is the happiest hunting-ground in the world, and those who are able to add anything rare and beautiful to their household treasures, will find the possession of it a constant joy. You never tire of the really good thing as you do of something emanating from a bad period. Above all, do not sell anything. A bad financial crisis may be weathered, but the treasure which you parted with in an evil hour becomes yearly more difficult to acquire again. Buying good furniture is a sound investment, for its value constantly increases, but do not regard a hobby in this light. You only get an aesthetic dividend, and the time comes when you would as soon sell your chief gems of furniture as a mother would sell her children.

My chief object in this book is to point out what admirable taste and fitness the great masters showed, in the different periods, in constructing furniture which was at once beautiful and perfectly adapted to people's requirements, and to show the collector of moderate means what is worth buying.