International studio (80.1925)

mceRHACionAL

Each development in style was paralleled in
the Colonies, but with a restraint in form and a
naive craftsmanship that was peculiar to our own
people. This brings us to the end of the First
Period at 1725. It has given us our quaint pieces
of oak and pine and our most treasured pieces in
walnut with herringbone inlays, figured woods and
some of the choicest forms as a basis for modern
living room and dining room furniture. In addi-
tion to this the modern executive office can be
made more human and a better place for a man
to spend his business hours by turning to simple
paneling of pine, desks based on early oak and
pine paneled chests and a ship's cupboard for his
books and catalogs.

The Second Period—1725 to 1790. The Italian
influence of the Renaissance had spread through
France into England and our Colonies. Our sea-
ports and our planters were prospering. The
origin of the style was classical but of the volup-
tuous Roman type. Rococo carvings, elaborate
and splendid, were deemed desirable. George II
in his long reign from 1727 to 1760 inspired the
Chippendales to change from the simple Dutch
forms to claw and bah feet, hoofs of goats, ics-
toons of flowers and fruit: luxury, variety, nov-
elty; gilt, lacquer and Chinese ornament. Tins
was not an age of design in which the modern
builder can experiment with economy. Rooms
and furniture were lavishly done in certain great
houses of Virginia and Charleston. Philadelphia
cabinetmakers copied these styles in mahogany.
Our Revolution came in the heart of it all. The
French styles and painted panels were added when
the romantic Laurens went to France from
Charleston, Jefferson from Virginia and Franklin
from Philadelphia. New England was more con-
servative and held more nearly to the forms she
had learned to love, until the Third Period came
with its appeal of classic refinement and delicacy.
It was this Second Period of Rococo that had the
strongest influence on our people a hundred years
later when a new prosperity followed the Civil
War. The first Pullman cars! Our life insurance
buildings were filled with carvings in mahogany.
Our mansard houses harbored walnut sideboards
with realistic carvings of fruit and dead crows
hanging on their fronts for ornament. It was a
hideous jumble of what the cabinetmakers of that
industrial era thought was elegant in this Second
Period, combined with a collector's mania for all
knickknacks and styles of every age exemplified
in Queen Victoria's saving of everything for the
sake of sentiment. There is not much that appeals
to the heart in the sophisticated elegance of the
Second Period, nevertheless it will always offer

an outlet for the display of wealth and luxury and,
when rooms arc done with faithful adherence to
its best traditions, there is no denying the atmo-
sphere of richness, master craftsmanship and
elegance that surrounds them.

The Third Period—1790 to 1825. Classic re-
finement in details of design, of houses and furni-
ture. A return to sincerity and purity of line that
seems to be a more logical sequence to the First
Period than to the Second. In fact, a home built
today that combines rooms and furniture of the
late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—that
is, the latter of the First Period and the first part
of the Third Period—has greater unity and charm
than any other combination. The causes of this
comparatively sudden change to classicism are
definite. Forty years before, two English archi-
tects had gone to Athens and made the first
measured drawings of Grecian architecture. The
influence of these was profound. Architects and
designers studied them with a new delight and
found immediate inspiration. The brothers Adam,
Hepplewhite and Sheraton produced those choicest
of all designs in furniture with instant success
because they had gone to the purest sources for
their design. The interest in the fountain head of
beauty was so great that from 1800 to 1804 Lord
Elgin brought to England some of the finest
sculptures and architectural details of the Par-
thenon and Erechtheum, where they are preserved
to this day. Here, then, is the inspiration for the
classic enthusiasm of the early days of our Re-
public. Washington had been elected president
the year before the date set for the beginning of
the Third Period. Hepplewhite arm chairs were
made for Mount Vernon which now we call
"Washington chairs." Mirrors with thin project-
ing tops, cut in the Flame of Freedom design,
with eagles of gilt that have been named "Wash-
ington Mirrors." Mclntire in New England de-
signed the exquisite classic details of the mansions
of Marblehead and Salem. Secretaries, side-
boards, bureaus and chairs innumerable—all char-
acterized by delicate mouldings and inlays, finely
modeled and minute in scale. Mahogany was the
important wood at this time, with inlays of satin-
wood and sycamore, holly and ebony. There
were delicate painted furniture and mirrors with
painted panels of glass, often with some design
symbolical of freedom.

The present trend toward quamtness and
charm in design of exteriors and interiors in
domestic architecture is due to the liberating
influence of a return to tradition. We are freed
from the deadening influence of a particular style
of individuals as in the days of Mansard and

four seventy-Jour

MARCH I925