Léon Arnoux

“ It is the province of the carpenter to put together simple woodwork; that which is an actual part of architecture, such as boxes, chests, benches, seats, shelves, and so forth as require only good material and neatness of hand in execution. The joiner and cabinet maker include this amount of skill as a foundation for their accomplishments, as a sculptor can block out a statue and a painter grind his colours, work, however, which in ordinary practice is handed over to assistants or apprentices. ”

“ These artists remembered that windows are openings in a building, through which light has to pass, and they did not, therefore, like many of the later imitators, render them opaque by masses of intense shadow, which perfectly obscure the colour of the glass upon which the picture is painted, and render the passage of light through it simply impossible. ”

“ Again, mortises, tenons, dovetails, and joinery of all sorts, no longer demand from hand-work the accuracy, neatness, and perfection of former days. These operations are done for him. Occasionally he supplements the work of the engine. Like a player who only plays music occasionally, we cannot expect him to retain all the fineness of his hand in perfection.
Is the modern workman, then, the equal of those of sixty years since, whose productions stand so well to this day, because of this perfection of manual dexterity? ”

“ If workmanship is affected by altered conditions of the manufacture, so also is design, that union of effective and suitable decoration with the required convenience of each piece of furniture, which may be called style.
The artist, as regards his productions or style, is fashioned partly by what he thinks and loves, partly by his materials and his tools. With some materials he can do little, for want of tools and appliances. As regards material, wood remains what it always has been, but the steam-engine supplies an absolutely new set of tools. ”

“ Many works of great masters, such as the chest of Cypselus, and the chairs of the great statues of ivory and gold, were prepared for celebrated shrines and temples in the cities of Greece. It was but the excessive wealth of great patricians in Rome and Constantinople that led to their becoming collectors, whether of sculpture, painting, or sumptuous silver plate. The chief object of rich and accomplished men in most ages of luxury and refinement has been, to make the house, its walls, ceilings, floors, and necessary or useful furniture, costly and beautiful. ”

“ The workman artist, therefore, though his productions may not be thought suitable for the Academy walls, is a child of the same school, as that which brings forth such portents as Phidias, Praxiteles, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo, not to speak of our Royal Academicians.
Artists who are "specialists," like Giovanni da Udine, will continue to do special things only, but those admirably. Where the arts flourish, there will be a large school that includes half a nation, artists of all ranges of education, refinement, and knowledge. ”

“ If we did not then succeed in making soft china like that of Sèvres, or hard porcelain as good as the Dresden, we soon became the masters of the market as regards earthenware—a position that we are not likely to lose for many years to come. Amongst the circumstances which combine to make our position particularly strong, it is enough to mention our independence as regards the supply of the raw materials, and the abundance of our clays and fuel, of a better quality than those at the disposal of our competitors. ”

“ Art is conventional in connection with architecture and furniture, because in most instances this is all that would be proper or look well. A good modeller, draughtsman, or carver, would become conventional just as occasion required, but with no abstract desire for ugliness or the grotesque. That artists should be generally well educated and good scholars, and that the profession should possess knowledge and refinement, is of more importance than most people suppose. This kind of refinement lay at the root of the universality of accomplishments of the sixteenth century artists. ”

“ If not probable, it is however not impossible, that the first man, taking in his hand a lump of soft clay, should have tried to give it a defined shape, in which case the art of pottery would be as ancient as the human race. It may have been anterior to the use of fire, for a sound and useful pottery may be made with clay hardened in the sun, as still practised in Egypt and India. At all events, it existed previous to the working of the first metal, as one can hardly understand how bronze could have been melted, without the assistance of vessels made of fired clay carefully selected. ”

“ Sculpture is the highest or most beautiful kind of decoration that can be applied to furniture. It can only be executed by a trained artist. To go no farther back here than the Italian and French Renaissance furniture, generally made of walnut-wood, it is the spirited and graceful sculpture that makes its first great attraction. ”

“ In smaller London houses, and in the furniture which we find in the trade generally, the workmanship is inferior, relatively, to that of the former period.
The introduction of machinery, however, is a fact, and its effects on manual skill must be accepted as a necessity. Nor must we pass over the further fact, that if the modern joiner is not the equal of the journeymen of Chippendale, he can do more. He has powers at command, and can carry into execution quantities, beyond the reach of half-a-dozen, perhaps a score of his predecessors. ”

“ In the old Persian pottery we find a real earthenware taking a precedence of several centuries over our own. There is little doubt that it can be connected with the early Arabian, Assyrian, and Egyptian, by the similitude of the processes common to all. I have no room to explain how it is that, being an earthenware, it is so much richer in colour than the modern ware made on this side of Europe. ”

“ At the present time, its annual consumption by our Staffordshire potters alone represents a very large sum of money. There are several ways of preparing gold for pottery purposes; the oldest consists in grinding gold leaves on a slab, adding to it gum water, honey, or any other mucilaginous liquid. This laborious process surpasses all others; it has a very artistic effect when used thin, in the Chinese fashion, and, when laid thick, as we find it in the Old Sèvres ware, it answers beautifully for chasing; the only drawback is the expense. ”

“ Whether the "art of furnishing" or the desire to have what people require for use in their houses more becoming and beautiful, be a rising influence or not, it is certain that the "fancy" or ornamental furniture trade is of large and increasing importance, corresponding to the increased size and cost of modern London and country houses, compared with those built during the reigns of William III. and George IV. Every tradesman who has the pretension to repair chimney-pots, to whitewash, or paint house-fronts, ceilings, or offices, writes up the word "decorator," on his shop-front. ”

“ If the wood is thoroughly dry, the mortises and tenons fitting perfectly, and the glue good, the different parts are so wedded together that the whole structure becomes one piece, as if nature had made a vegetable growth in that fashion, all the fibres of which have continuous and perfect contact with each other. ”

“ We miss in the great English houses one of the most costly and beautiful elements in the adornment of furniture, and that is, the fine moulded and chiselled bronze work, always gilt, which enters so largely into the decoration of fine old French marquetry. The English furniture makers of a century ago were not so behindhand, and old carriages had door-handles, and furniture had mounts of gilt bronze. ”

“ The furniture makers have made extraordinary exertions in this direction. How will it be in the coming years?
Some critics are of opinion that "art manufacture" is a delusion, and that, if our academicians were equal to the ancient Greeks, we should not find that rich buyers would care about the shapes of their chairs (if comfortable) , the colours of their walls, and so forth—a singular delusion. If Phidias, Michael Angelo, and Raphael exhibited at Burlington House, their pupils and followers would overflow with good work in various degrees of elaboration. ”

“ If a human figure is complete, it bears no real proportion to objects round it, and so on.
Excellent wood sculpture used to be executed in England, from the days of Grinling Gibbon to those of Adam and the Chippendales, suited to the furniture then in fashion. I wish I could say that our furniture makers of to-day could easily, or did generally, command such talents. Ingeniously carved representations of animals and game on sideboards we sometimes see, but game 'dead' in every sense. ”

“ Up to a recent date, painting on pottery was not considered as the high road to fortune, and artists preferred to try their chance in oil or water-colour painting, fully aware that they would have to fight against an army of competitors, and to be satisfied with very small incomes, unless, by their, then problematic, genius, they could cut their way to the front. ”

“ As my readers must now understand, there is in all clays, pure as they may be, a certain amount of oxide of iron, which, during the firing process, forms silicate of protoxide or peroxide, according to the chemical composition of the atmosphere of the oven in which they stand. On the Continent, to make hard porcelain successfully, the fire must be reductive; while here, on the contrary, it is oxidizing; and it is to the formation of a small quantity of silicate of peroxide of iron disseminated in the mass, that the creamy colour of our Parian is due. ”

“ To what extent the introduction of printing on pottery has hindered the progress of art education in Staffordshire, is a question on which people may entertain different opinions; but we might ask, what amount of artistic work we might not do, if at the present time we had some hundreds of artisans trained from their early years to that style of painting? However that may be, the process of transferring printed patterns to biscuit ware was considered a great step, and one which contributed largely to the extension of the earthenware trade. ”

“ To induce talented men to devote their time to the decoration of pottery, is perhaps the greatest difficulty met with by our leading manufacturers. As long as the making of the ware only was concerned, they had to call for the assistance of practical men, such as potters, chemists, or engineers, the number of whom is fortunately great in England, and whose services can be secured by money. ”

“ The glass becomes softened by the heat, and the workman gives his pointel a rotary motion, somewhat similar to that which a housemaid gives to a mop when she trundles it; and as the glass softens, the opening gets larger and larger, until at last the softened mass instantaneously flashes out into a circular sheet, an operation which produces a very startling effect upon the eyes of anyone beholding it for the first time. ”

“ For the more expeditious preparation of the wares, it was necessary that each workman should devote the whole of his time to a special branch of his art. For this reason we have several classes of potters, called according to their avocation: throwers, turners, handlers, hollow and flat ware pressers, figure and ornament makers, tile makers, modellers, mould and sagger makers, besides those who are employed in the decoration of the goods. ”

“ A longer and less intense heat, technically called a "soaking," is the best for producing an even and pure yellow tint. If the temperature be allowed to rise too high, the oxide of silver, which alone can stain the glass, gets reduced wholly or in part, and when this happens to only a slight extent, it destroys the transparency of the stain; and when it happens to a great extent, it destroys its colour altogether, making the glass opaque. ”

“ Whatever may be the construction of the oven, the quantity of air mixed with the gas produced by the combustion of fuel causes the atmosphere to be reductive of oxidizing; which means that the different materials submitted to the heat would, in consequence of an abundance of carbon, have a tendency to be deprived of their oxygen and return to a metallic state, or that by firing in presence of an excess of air or carbonic acid, they would be kept in a high state of oxidation. ”

“ As soon as these particles are well fixed together and do not come off when the hand is passed over the surface of the wall, the ground is in a fit state for the commencement of the painting. The colour should be used with zinc white, and not with lead white, and, of course, they must be in the state of fine powder, and not ground up with oil or any such material. The artist can use his mixture of silicate of alumina and aluminate of potash of the strength already described; he may, when desirable, dilute it to a certain extent with water, but he should not do so too much. ”

“ When the tortoiseshell is dark and rich in hue, the brass of a good golden yellow, and the designs carefully drawn, Boulle work seems to equal in splendour, though not in preciousness, the gold and silver furniture of the ancients, and the inlaid work of agates, crystals, amethysts, &c., with mounts of ivory and silver made in Florence in the sixteenth century. ”

“ Every kind of work is required in making costly cabinets, bookcases, sideboards, commodes, or by whatever name we choose to call the beautiful chests, cupboards, and other artistic receptacles, tables, consoles, brackets, &c., that go to complete the requirements of our modern reception rooms.
They are seldom made with the quaint or elaborate interior fittings, such as have been alluded to in older work, but every resource is brought to bear on the external decoration. Here we come to the arts brought to bear on the ornamentation of furniture. ”

“ There is no royal process by which we can put a log of wood into one end of an engine, and find a chair, a table, or a cabinet at the other. What steam machinery does for us is to perform with certainty, and with immense rapidity, the simple operations of sawing, planing, boring, and turning. ”

“ This is particularly noticeable in the black Greek pottery, which, while possessing all its former appearance, can, however, be scratched by the nail or broken by a gentle pressure between the fingers. It is thus that we are indebted to the art of pottery for innumerable works of art, many of which have proved most useful in elucidating historical facts, and making us acquainted with the habits, dresses, and ceremonies of ancient peoples. ”

“ The reader may satisfy himself on this point any day by a walk in the Egyptian rooms and in the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum. In both these sections of that wonderful collection, there are remains of woodwork and of furniture, made of wood three or four thousand years old, such as stools, chairs, tables, head-rests or pillows, workmen's benches of Egyptian manufacture, fragments less complete of Nineveh make that have been portions of various utensils, and precious articles of sculptured and inlaid ivory that have been inserted into thrones and chariots. ”

“ Not very long ago, it was mentioned to me by a glass painter of note, that the workmen much prefer using the old stain made with silver and antimony, to that which is produced by using nitrate of silver. This really is a mistake on their part, for, when properly managed (and the knowledge of how to manage this stain can be acquired with very little trouble) , the nitrate of silver stain is by far the best, and produces much better tints, with less chance of what the men call sulphuring when the glass is fired. ”