Part 4 (1/2)
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[Illustration: Plate 40--_Pilaster strip frodalen Church, Breslau_]
In the State archives of Schleswig, in 1608, the na, court joiner; Jochim Rosenfeldt, carver; and others are noted
Also in 1609, with the addition of the painter Her; also the carver Hans Preuszen, and Adaen Koningh, joiner's workman, several carvers, and Herman Uhr, the painter, occur
In 1611 Herman Uhr and Klaus Barck work in the chapel, the first for 115 days, and the second for 178 days, and in 1612 several carvers and turners work for a long tis” a day, as well as Herest that the painter Herner, since his name is the only one which appears for four years consecutively, though the long period during which he worked in 1612 s which cover a portion of the exterior of the pew
[Illustration: Plate 41--_Panel froe 88_]
In South Germany one often meets with musical instruments which are inlaid with conventionalised floral forms They were produced in the 17th century in considerable quantities in Wurte, Bavaria, and on the Southern Shores of Lake Constance Nor et the extraordinarily elaborate ivory inlays on the stocks of arquebuses In the Wallace collection are many examples, and attention may be drawn to a jewel box made in 1630 by Conrad Cornier, arquebus mounter, which is decorated with most elaborate scrolls, leaves, and birds of ivory and reen in parts It is made of walnut, and hasThe German inlays on the whole rather run to arabesques and strapwork, or naturalistic vases of flowers, with butterflies and birds; one ures, but the work is generally harder and less successful than the Italian technique, with a larger and less intelligent use of scorched tints
In the latter part of the 17th century they oftenof one wood and the s which defined the panels and the carved ornaments added of another, or even of two others; the effect is not quite happy Tortoiseshell also appears, and ht to be greater artistry soon caused them to outstep ht about decadence The South Gerood deal with inlays, Peter Flotner's designs often serving as patterns; a little green and red appear mixed with the commoner colours The architectural forn by theh scarcely suitable to the object to which they are applied In German work the cabinets are often of the n, like the facade of a palace, made of ebony, or occasionally even of ivory, and inlaid with ivory, silver, gold and ena was the most celebrated place for such work The joiner, the woodcarver, the lapidary, and the goldss In the North of Germany tarsia was principally used on chests, cabinets, seats, and smaller objects of furniture; in South Gerer, it wasand the panels of doors The little castle of Volthurn, near Brixen, built by the bishop of that town in 1580-85 and decorated by Brixener artists and joiners (now belonging to Prince Lichtenstein), shows ”panelled walls with architectural features, coluabled doorith columns and pedie ornaments, flowers, and fruit, a hich modern Brixener joiners could with difficulty understand”; so says Von Falke Ebony and ivory work casburg and Nure soon exported their productions of this sort to all the world, and with this coins, black on white and white on black The latter is the better and more valued Hans Schieferstein's cabinet, now at Dresden, a work of this period, has an ingenious use of this mode of inlay It is made of ebony or veneered with that wood, and has inlays of brown cypress and of ivory The panel on the inside of the door is of the san as that on the outside, but hite becomes broas brown is black, and the black becomes white
[Illustration: Plate 42--_Lower panel of door, 1564--Tyrolese_
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In the Musee Cluny is a wire drawing bench ustus I, Elector of Saxony, as an aitudinal surfaces are covered with a double frieze ofa satirical tournament between the Papacy and Lutheranism, and the other a carousal of wildhis work, belohich he has placed his ra is a very fine cabinet, with many draithin, elaborately inlaid with arabesques on a light ground, with a few architectural for of the 17th century, and is a typical example To the few na, of Frissen, and Sixtus Loblein, of Landshut
In the lower Rhine and in Holland tarsia was used for great and ss, with good drawing of flowers, and sprigs of leaves with birds and beasts aht The doors ordered by the Swedish Cha-roo's Castle of Ulriksdal, near Stockholm, are said by Von Falke to be the finest examples extant of this kind of work, and to have been made in the 17th century by a Dutch craftsman The best period in Holland was the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century In the work of this period the handling is broad, and the composition often a little over-full, but the many different woods which Dutch commerce made available seduced the marqueteurs into too pictorial a treatreat that Colbert engaged two Dutch marqueteurs, Pierre Gole and Vordt, for the Gobelins at the beginning of the 17th century, and Jean Mace also learnt the craft by a long stay in Holland Here, as well as in France and Italy, rich chairs were comn such things becan ee, birds, etc, all in gay colours; ivory and mother-of-pearl were used occasionally for salient points, such as eyes
Examples of the use and misuse of these materials ton
[Illustration: Plate 43--_Top of card table in the Drawing-rooe 92_]
[Illustration: Plate 44--_Panelling froh Castle, now in Victoria and Albert Museuh not land which is certainly the production of native craftsmen, a few notable exah Castle, now at South Kensington, with inlays of holly and bog-oak, and the fine suite of furniture at Hardwick Hall, lish workmen who had been to Italy for some years Correspondence passed between her and Sir John Thynne on the subject of the craftsleat and Hardere the work of the sa table are particularly fine, and except for a certain clureat period of Italian marquetry The cradle of Ja Castle, near Wakefield, are some panels inlaid with flowers, etc, which local tradition says were executed by some of the ladies of the fa been done under their superintendence by local workh inlay are not uncommon in chest and bedstead, overmantel and cabinet from the Jacobean period onward S Mary Overie, Southwark, possesses a fine parish chest decorated with a good deal of Dutch-looking inlay in conjunction with carving, and a rather unusual piece of work may be seen at Glasobry Hall, where the treads and landings of the oak stairs are inlaid with es and a cartouche with a ram and date 1726 The use of satin wood cahteenth century, and was accompanied by a delicate inlay of other woods, which, however, scarcely went beyond the simplest orna became fashi+onable at nearly the same period
[Illustration: Plate 45--_Cabinet with falling front, in the drawing-rooe 94_]
It was in France that the most wonderful achievements of the later marqueteurs were produced, which have nised by the public as well as by connoisseurs as an art manufacture, in conjunction with the wonderfully chiselled ors Mention is made of intarsia in France as early as the end of the fifteenth century, however In the inventory of Anne of Brittanny's effects (1498)coffret faict de musayeque de bois et d'ivoire,” and in a still earlier one of the Duke de Berry's, dated 1416, is neur, fait de poins de marqueterie” This is as early as the intarsias of Don manufacture In 1576 a certain Hans Kraus was called ”marqueteur du roi,” but the first Frenchman known to have practised the art is Jean Mace of Blois, as at work in Paris from 1644 or earlier to 1672 as sculptor and painter He is said to have been the first who brought intarsia into France, under the na been for some time in the Netherlands His title was ”menuisier et faiseur de Cabinets et tableaux en ed in the Louvre in 1644 (when Louis XIV was six years old), ”en honneur de la longue et belle pratique de son art dans les Pays Bas” His daughter married Pierre Boulle, who in 1619 was turner and joiner to the King, probably both to Louis XIII and Henry IV In 1621 Paul Boulle was born, and five years later Jacques The family was settled at Charenton-le-Pont, near Paris, the principal town of the Huguenots for eighty years Here, in 1649, Pierre Boulle was buried, the father of seven children The earlier seventeenth century designs show picturesque landscapes or broken ruins or figures, _motifs_ which recur a century later, as in the beautiful panel signed ”Follet”
in the Cabinet by Claude Charles Saunier in the Wallace collection The colours are occasionally stained, and ebony and ivory are favourite materials It is impossible to fix the exact time when copper and tortoiseshell came into use in France Some of the cabinets in which they appear are certainly of the period of Louis XIII It was probably imported either from Spain or Flanders; it became very fashi+onable about the middle of the seventeenth century, and ended by entirely absorbing the official orders of the Court of Louis XIV With this work the name of Boulle is indissolubly associated Pierre Boulle was lodged in the Louvre about 1642 In 1636 he is on the list for 400 livres annually Jean Boulle died in the Louvre in 1680 He was the father of Andre Charles probably, as born in November, 1642, and the nephew of Pierre Andre Charles Boulle in 1672 succeeded to the lodging of Jean Mace in the sa, and seven years later by a second brevet to the ”deement,” formerly occupied by Guillaume Petit ”to allow him to finish the works executed for His Majesty's service” It is told of him by a contemporary that the talented boy wanted to be a painter, but his father would not allow it, and insisted upon his keeping to handicraft He was a ranted apartilder, and chiseller,” and in the decree of Louis XIV, by which he was appointed the first art-joiner to the King, he is called ”architect, sculptor, and engraver” He had a passion for collecting drawings, paintings, and other works of art, and when his workshops were burnt his collection was valued at 60,000 livres This taste brought him into money difficulties, and in 1704 his creditors obtained a decree against hi had not extended the safeguard of the Palace of the Louvre to hiement with them He was a raver The Cabinet of the Dauphin was considered hiswere covered with , and the floor laid ood mosaic, in which the initials of the Dauphin and his ere intertwined The drawing made for it is now in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, but the work itself no longer exists On August 30th, 1720, his works were burnt, it was thought by a thief whohbour at the Louvre, had surprised soeance on the ”menuisiers,”
set fire to the ”ebenistes” Nearly everything he possessed was either burnt, lost, or stolen; models of the value of 37,000 livres, wood and tools worth 25,000, many pieces of furniture finished or in course of construction; works in s, paintings, and objects of art His total loss was estimated by experts at 383,780 livres, more than 1,000,000 of francs in the ht be expected This valuation was on an inventory drawn up shortly after, perhaps for the purpose of getting the King's help The number of undeniable productions of his hand is small, but objects which came from the studio after his death are tolerably plentiful since his four sons carried on the business, though not the inspiration; contemporaries characterised them as ”apes” Two commodes which were in Louis XVI's bedroom at Versailles are now in the Bibliotheque Mazarin, and a chest which was forgotten in the Custos to the museum of that city A cabinet is in the Mobilier National, and a pedestal is in the Grunes Gewolbe at Dresden Other genuine Boulles are in the Wallace collection, in the Rothschild collection, and at the Hotel Cluny A writing table, for which the reat collector of art treasures, had given 50,000 livres, appears to be lost M Luchet asks, with soine a financier, Jew or Christian, paying 100,000 francs for a new bureau? Old, it would be another thing--an object of art to sell”
Boulle was most careful over his materials He had 12,000 livres worth of wood in his stores, fir, oak, walnut, battens, Norwegian wood, all collected and kept long and carefully for the benefit of the work He also used real tortoiseshell, which, is replaced in the econos were always chiselled, cast quite roughly, so that the artist did nearly everything He was helped in this part of the work by Do tortoiseshell, may have been horn, mother-of-pearl, ivory, or wood; the motive, instead of brass, old; it is still known by the name of Boulle work Boulle hih his life
He died February 29th, 1732
[Illustration: Plate 46--_Cabinet belonging to Earl Granville Boulle work of about 1740_