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Updated: July 7, 2025
The original owner could, of course, have owned finer pieces such as a butterfly table, a maple or cherry highboy, a high-post bed with hangings of crewel-work, a small curly maple and mahogany sideboard, various chests of drawers and light stands made of cherry and neatly ornamented with inlay.
Dainty and delicate, wrought of silver and gold, with an inlay of copper, I would not have exchanged it for the Koh-i-noor; and when I had slipped it on my finger its tiny eye of blue enamel looked up at me so friendly and companionable that I felt the glamour of the old-world superstition stealing over me, too.
Although not strictly within the period treated of in this chapter, it is convenient to observe that much later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one finds the Spanish cabinet maker ornamenting his productions with an inlay of ivory let into tortoiseshell, representing episodes in the history of Don Quichotte, and the National pastime of bull-fighting.
So subtly waving is the curving outline of this furniture that one scarcely knows where it begins or ends, and it is the same with the decorations exquisitely delicate waving traceries of vines and flora, gold on gold, inlay, or paint in delicate tones.
The choice of wood, the carving, the inlay, all show the highest ideals. There was much beautiful marquetry used; in fact it is a marked characteristic of much of the furniture of William and Mary. After she died in 1694, the white jasmine flower and green leaves were not used so much, and the sea-weed pattern and acanthus became more popular.
The shape and the gilt mounts of a secretaire of walnutwood with inlay of ebony and ivory, and some other furniture which, with the other specimens just described, may be seen in the Bethnal Green Museum, all manifest the influence of the French school, when the bombe-fronted commodes and curved lines of chair and table came into fashion.
That taught a school Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Another fanaticism delayed my friendship with two men, who are now my friends and in certain matters my chief instructors.
The object of the gardener has been to develop to the utmost possible degree their natural tendency to rugged line and massings of foliage that spiny sombre-green foliage which Japanese art is never weary of imitating in metal inlay or golden lacquer. The pine is a symbolic tree in this land of symbolism.
But as always, the curse of over-elaboration to please perverted minds, was resorted to by cabinet-makers who copied mosaics with their inlaying, and invented that form known as pietra-dura polished bits of marble, agates, pebbles and lapis lazuli. Ivory was carved and used as bas-reliefs and ivory and tortoise shell, brass and mother-of-pearl used as inlay.
The inlay used was often oval in shape, sometimes only a line and sometimes panels of different woods or matched veneer. The handles used were round or oval. He made sofas and settees with either chair-back backs or all upholstered with the frame showing and the covering tacked on with brass tacks close together.
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