File:An historical guide to French interiors, furniture, decoration, woodwork, and allied arts during the last half of the seventeenth century, the whole of the eighteenth century, and the earlier part of (14595290979).jpg

Identifier: historicalguidet1900stra (find matches)
Title: Designs for Girandoles, from An historical guide to French interiors, furniture, decoration, woodwork, & allied arts during the last half of the seventeenth century, the whole of the eighteenth century, and the earlier part of the nineteenth
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Strange, Thomas Arthur
Subjects: Decoration and ornament Furniture Interior decoration
Publisher: London : McCorquodale, New York, Scribner
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Regency. NICHOLAS PINEAU. 229 Early 18th Century.
Text Appearing After Image:
Designs for Girandoles. 230 Regency. NICHOLAS PINEAU. Early 18th Century.
On pages 228 and 229 will be found some Girandoles by Nicholas Pineau. The frames are very elaborate, which was partly due to the rarity of glass. Although somewhat in general use in the palaces, etc., glass was still of sufficient importance to merit good surroundings. These girandoles were probably made in soft wood and gilt, and the gilding has the merit of softening down features of a design that might otherwise become obtrusive, as in these designs the grotesques, the mascarons, shells, feathers, etc. It is curious that in my "English Furniture, etc., during the 18th Century," I have shown some designs by Batty and Thomas Langley (page 67) in which the same features are represented as in these designs, the grotesques, for instance. Knowing that the Langleys only reproduced other people's designs, I have wondered where they obtained their ideas. These designs appear to give the solution. The mascaron was a head or mask placed in a central position, as over the centre of a doorway or in the centre of a pediment, etc., and was much used during this and earlier periods. It was a grotesque, sometimes laughing, sometimes merely making a grimace.
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