CHAIR (in. Mid. Eng. _choere_, through O. Fr. _chaëre_ or _chaiere_, from Lat. _cathedra_, later _caledra_, Gr. [Greek: kathedra], seat, cf. "cathedral"; the modern Fr. form _chaise_, a chair, has been adopted in English with a particular meaning as a form of carriage; _chaire_ in French is still used of a professorial or ecclesiastical "chair," or _cathedra_), a movable seat, usually with four legs, for a single person, the most varied and familiar article of domestic furniture. The chair is of extreme antiquity, although for many centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an appanage of state and dignity rather than an article of ordinary use. "The chair" is still extensively used as the emblem of authority in the House of Commons and in public meetings. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that it became common anywhere. The chest, the bench and the stool were until then the ordinary seats of everyday life, and the number of chairs which have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited; most of such examples are of ecclesiastical or seigneurial origin. Our knowledge of the chairs of remote antiquity is derived almost entirely from monuments, sculpture and paintings. A few actual examples exist in the British Museum, in the Egyptian museum at Cairo, and elsewhere. In ancient Egypt they appear to have been of great richness and splendour. Fashioned of ebony and ivory, or of carved and gilded wood, they were covered with costly stuffs and supported upon representations of the legs of beasts of the chase or the figures of captives. An arm-chair in fine preservation found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is astonishingly similar, even in small details, to that "Empire" style which followed Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. The earliest monuments of Nineveh represent a chair without a back but with tastefully carved legs ending in lions' claws or bulls' hoofs; others are supported by figures in the nature of caryatides or by animals. The earliest known form of Greek chair, going back to five or six centuries before Christ, had a back but stood straight up, front and back. On the frieze of the Parthenon Zeus occupies a square seat with a bar-back and thick turned legs; it is ornamented with winged sphinxes and the feet of beasts. The characteristic Roman chairs were of marble, also adorned with sphinxes; the curule chair was originally very similar in form to the modern folding chair, but eventually received a good deal of ornament. Entry: CHAIR
MARQUETRY (Fr. _marqueterie_, from _marqueter_, to inlay, literally to mark, _marquer_), an inlay of ornamental woods, ivory, bone, brass and other metals, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, &c., in which shaped pieces of different materials or tints are combined to form a design. It is a later development of the ornamental inlays of wood known by the name of Intarsia, and though in the main the latter was a true inlay of one or more colours upon a darker or lighter ground, while marquetry is composed of pieces of quite thin wood or other material of equal thickness laid down upon a matrix with glue, there are examples of Intarsia in which this mode of manufacture was evidently followed. For instance, the backs of the stalls in the cathedral of Ferrara show the perspective lines of some of the subjects traced upon the ground where the marquetry has fallen off, but none of the sinkings in the surface which would be there if the panels had been executed as true inlays. In the endeavour to gain greater relief, shading and tinting the wood were resorted to, the shading being generally produced by scorching, either with a hot iron or hot sand, and the tinting by chemical washes and even by the use of actual colour, but the result is usually hardly commensurate with the labour expended. A combination of tortoise-shell and metal, the one forming the ground and the other the pattern upon it, which may be classed as marquetry also appears in the 17th century. The subjects of the _intarsiatori_ are generally arabesques or panels with elaborate perspectives, either of buildings or cupboards with different articles upon the shelves seen through half-open doors, which themselves are frequently of lattice-work delineated with extraordinary perfection, though figure subjects occur also. The later _marqueteurs_ used a freer form of design for the most part, and scrolls and bunches of flowers appear in profusion, while if architectural forms occur they are generally in the shape of ruins amid landscape. The greater portion of the examples in England are importations, either from Holland (in which country very fine work was produced during the latter half of the 16th and 17th centuries) or from France. The reputation of the Dutch _marqueteurs_ was so great that Colbert engaged two, named Pierre Gole and Vordt, for the Gobelins at the beginning of the 17th century. Jean Macé of Blois, the first Frenchman known to have practised the art, who was at work in Paris from 1644 (when he was lodged in the Louvre), or earlier, till 1672, as a sculptor and painter, learnt it in the Netherlands. His title was "menuisier et faiseur de cabinets et tableaux en marqueterie de bois"; but as early as 1576 a certain Hans Kraus had been called "marqueteur du roi." Jean Macé's daughter married Pierre Boulle, and the greatest of the family, André Charles Boulle (q.v.), succeeded to his lodging in the Louvre on his death in 1672. The members of this family are perhaps the best known of the French _marqueteurs_. Their greatest triumphs were gained in the marquetry of metal and tortoise-shell combined with beautifully chiselled ormulu mountings; but many foreign workmen found employment in France from the time of Colbert, and some of them rose to the highest eminence. The names of Roentgen, under whom the later German marquetry perhaps reached its highest point, Riesener and Oeben, testify to their nationality. A good deal of marquetry was executed in England in the later Stuart period, mainly upon long-case clocks, cabinets and chests of drawers, and it is often of real excellence. Marquetry in a shallower form was also extensively used in the latter part of the 18th century. The most beautiful examples of the art in Italy are mainly panels of choir stalls or sacristy cupboards, though marriage coffers were also often sumptuously decorated in this manner. With the increase in luxury and display in the 17th and 18th centuries in France and Germany cabinets and escritoires became objects upon which extraordinary talent and expenditure were lavished. In South Germany musical instruments, weapons and bride chests were often lavishly decorated with marquetry. The cabinets are of elaborate architectural design with inlays of ebony and ivory or with veneers of black and white, the design counterchanging so that one cutting produced several repeats of the same pattern in one colour or the other. In modern practice as many as four or even six thicknesses are put together and so cut. When all the parts have been cut and fitted together face downwards paper is glued over them to keep them in place and the ground and the veneer are carefully levelled and toothed so as to obtain a freshly worked surface. The ground is then well wetted with glue at a high temperature and the surfaces squeezed tightly together between frames called "cauls" till the glue is hard. There are several modes of ensuring the accurate fitting of the various parts, which is a matter of the first importance. Entry: MARQUETRY
_Cabinet in Furniture._--The artificer who constructs furniture is still called a "cabinet-maker," although the manufacture of cabinets, properly so called, is now a very occasional part of his work. Cabinets can be divided into a very large number of classes according to their shape, style, period and country of origin; but their usual characteristic is that they are supported upon a stand, and that they contain a series of drawers and pigeon-holes. The name is, however, now given to many pieces of furniture for the safe-keeping or exhibition of valuable objects, which really answer very little to the old conception of a cabinet. The cabinet represented an evolution brought about by the necessities of convenience, and it appealed to so many tastes and needs that it rapidly became universal in the houses of the gentle classes, and in great measure took the impress of the peoples who adopted it. It would appear to have originated in Italy, probably at the very beginning of the 16th century. In its rudimentary form it was little more than an oblong box, with or without feet, small enough to stand upon a table or chair, filled with drawers and closed with doors. In this early form its restricted dimensions permitted of its use only for the safeguard of jewels, precious stones and sometimes money. One of the earliest cabinets of which we have mention belonged to Francis I. of France, and is described as covered with gilt leather, tooled with mauresque work. As the Renaissance became general these early forms gave place to larger, more elaborate and more architectural efforts, until the cabinet became one of the most sumptuous of household adornments. It was natural that the countries which were earliest and most deeply touched by the Renaissance should excel in the designing of these noble and costly pieces of furniture. The cabinets of Italy, France and the Netherlands were especially rich and monumental. Those of Italy and Flanders are often of great magnificence and of real artistic skill, though like all other furniture their style was often grievously debased, and their details incongruous and bizarre. Flanders and Burgundy were, indeed, their lands of adoption, and Antwerp added to its renown as a metropolis of art by developing consummate skill in their manufacture and adornment. The cost and importance of the finer types have ensured the preservation of innumerable examples of all but the very earliest periods; and the student never ceases to be impressed by the extraordinary variety of the work of the 16th and 17th centuries, and very often of the 18th also. The basis of the cabinet has always been wood, carved, polished or inlaid; but lavish use has been made of ivory, tortoise-shell, and those cut and polished precious stones which the Italians call _pietra dura_. In the great Flemish period of the 17th century the doors and drawers of cabinets were often painted with classical or mythological scenes. Many French and Florentine cabinets were also painted. In many classes the drawers and pigeon-holes are enclosed by folding doors, carved or inlaid, and often painted on the inner sides. Perhaps the most favourite type during a great part of the 16th and 17th centuries--a type which grew so common that it became cosmopolitan--was characterized by a conceit which acquired astonishing popularity. When the folding doors are opened there is disclosed in the centre of the cabinet a tiny but palatial interior. Floored with alternate squares of ebony and ivory to imitate a black and white marble pavement, adorned with Corinthian columns or pilasters, and surrounded by mirrors, the effect, if occasionally affected and artificial, is quite as often exquisite. Although cabinets have been produced in England in considerable variety, and sometimes of very elegant and graceful form, the foreign makers on the whole produced the most elaborate and monumental examples. As we have said, Italy and the Netherlands acquired especial distinction in this kind of work. In France, which has always enjoyed a peculiar genius for assimilating modes in furniture, Flemish cabinets were so greatly in demand that Henry IV. determined to establish the industry in his own dominions. He therefore sent French workmen to the Low Countries to acquire the art of making cabinets, and especially those which were largely constructed of ebony and ivory. Among these workmen were Jean Macé and Pierre Boulle, a member of a family which was destined to acquire something approaching immortality. Many of the Flemish cabinets so called, which were in such high favour in France and also in England, were really _armoires_ consisting of two bodies superimposed, whereas the cabinet proper does not reach to the floor. Pillared and fluted, with panelled sides, and front elaborately carved with masks and human figures, these pieces which were most often in oak were exceedingly harmonious and balanced. Long before this, however, France had its own school of makers of cabinets, and some of their carved work was of the most admirable character. At a somewhat later date André Charles Boulle made many pieces to which the name of cabinet has been more or less loosely given. They were usually of massive proportions and of extreme elaboration of marquetry. The North Italian cabinets, and especially those which were made or influenced by the Florentine school, were grandiose and often gloomy. Conceived on a palatial scale, painted or carved, or incrusted with marble and _pietra dura_, they were intended for the adornment of galleries and lofty bare apartments where they were not felt to be overpowering. These North Italian cabinets were often covered with intarsia or marquetry, which by its subdued gaiety retrieved somewhat their heavy stateliness of form. It is, however, often difficult to ascribe a particular fashion of shape or of workmanship to a given country, since the interchange of ideas and the imports of actual pieces caused a rapid assimilation which destroyed frontiers. The close connexion of centuries between Spain and the Netherlands, for instance, led to the production north and south of work that was not definitely characteristic of either. Spain, however, was more closely influenced than the Low Countries, and contains to this day numbers of cabinets which are not easily to be distinguished from the characteristic ebony, ivory and tortoise-shell work of the craftsmen whose skill was so rapidly acquired by the emissaries of Henry IV. The cabinets of southern Germany were much influenced by the models of northern Italy, but retained to a late date some of the characteristics of domestic Gothic work such as elaborately fashioned wrought-iron handles and polished steel hinges. Often, indeed, 17th-century South Germany work is a curious blend of Flemish and Italian ideas executed in oak and Hungarian ash. Such work, however interesting, necessarily lacks simplicity and repose. A curious little detail of Flemish and Italian, and sometimes of French later 17th-century cabinets, is that the interiors of the drawers are often lined with stamped gold or silver paper, or marbled ones somewhat similar to the "end papers" of old books. The great English cabinet-makers of the 18th century were very various in their cabinets, which did not always answer strictly to their name; but as a rule they will not bear comparison with the native work of the preceding century, which was most commonly executed in richly marked walnut, frequently enriched with excellent marquetry of woods. Mahogany was the dominating timber in English furniture from the accession of George II. almost to the time of the Napoleonic wars; but many cabinets were made in lacquer or in the bright-hued foreign woods which did so much to give lightness and grace to the British style. The glass-fronted cabinet for China or glass was in high favour in the Georgian period, and for pieces of that type, for which massiveness would have been inappropriate, satin and tulip woods, and other timbers with a handsome grain taking a high polish were much used. Entry: CABINET