File:The practical cabinet maker and furniture designer's assistant, with essays on history of furniture, taste in design, color and materials, with full explanation of the canons of good taste in (14783048795).jpg

Identifier: practicalcabinet00hodg (find matches)
Title: The practical cabinet maker and furniture designer's assistant, with essays on history of furniture, taste in design, color and materials, with full explanation of the canons of good taste in furniture ..
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Hodgson, Frederick Thomas, 1836-1919
Subjects: Cabinetwork Furniture making
Publisher: Chicago, F. J. Drake & Co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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director of the decoration at Versailles.Le Bruns own work was heavy and dull, although heaimed at grandeur and gorgeousness of effect. He wasdirector of the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, and hisstyle of work was in harmony with the pompous ideasof Louis the Grand Monarch. Madame de Main-tenon says in one of her letters to a friend, that Louiswas so fond of symmetry and stateliness in his archi-tecture, as in other things, that he would have youperish in his symmetry, for he caused his doors andwindows to be constructed in pairs opposite to oneanother, which gave to everybody who lived in hispalaces their death of cold by draughts of air. In this century and early in the following one, theart of wood carving was greatly developed in England,chiefly owing to the genius of Grinling Gibbons andto the influence of Sir Christopher Wren, the style de- 72~ THE PRACTICAL CABINET MAKER veloped being a more or less realistic or baroque formof the Renaissance (Figs. 44 and 45). Gibbons carried
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Figure 45 out some of his carvings to an astonishing degree ofrealism: bouquets of flowers, festoons of fruit andflowers, birds, figures, and drapery were executed byhim in the highest possible relief, which looked de- THE PRACTICAL CABINET MAKER 73 tached from the ground, and yet they usually formed apart of the solid wood with the background. Orna-ment was carved with a singular crispness, and ap-parently without any hesitation on the part of thecarver. Though we may condemn the florid loosenessof the style of Gibbons, we must admire the dexterityof workmanship and general technical excellence im-parted to everything he touched. Some of his bestwork may still be seen at Chatsworth, Petworth Housein Sussex, Lyme Hall in Cheshire, St. Pauls Cathedral,and Trinity College Chapel at Oxford. Under the Regency of Philippe dOrleans in France(1715-1723) decoration and ornament assumed a lightand fanciful character, very naturalistic, but still hav-ing some classic details; of this style Clau

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