INDUSTRIES 



factory at Rouen in imitation of needlework 

 was represented by large pieces with birds and 

 flowers. Besides these there were also fire- 

 screens, chairs, and velvet carpets after the 

 manner of the velvet manufactory of Chaillot 

 with similar designs. Three of the carpets 



had been worked by Parisot's apprentices, 

 ' natives of England, ' as a note on the cata- 

 logue informs us. 



Another 17th-century factory of which no 

 information appears to exist was set up in Soho 

 Fields, the site of Soho Square. 8 



CABINET-MAKING AND WOOD-CARVING 



Horace Walpole mentions among the artists 

 in woodwork of the Tudor period Law- 

 rence Truber, a carver, and Humphrey Cooke, 

 master carpenter of the new buildings at the 

 Savoy. 1 Another workman in this art is met 

 with in the reign of Henry VIII, one William 

 Grene the king's coffer maker, 2 who received 

 6 i8x. ' for making of a coffer covered with 

 fustyan of Naples, and being full of drawers 

 and boxes lined with red and grene sarcynet 

 to put in stones of divers sorts'. There is 

 ample evidence that many foreign wood- 

 carvers and cabinet-makers were working in 

 London in the i6th century. In 1540 

 foreign joiners 3 are found in East Smithfield. 

 Ten years later the roll of the Dutch Church 4 

 records a large number of Flemish ' schryn- 

 makers ' and ' kistmakers ' living in the City, 

 South wark, and St. Giles. In 1567 in the 

 Ward of Bridge Without 5 alone there were 

 at least twenty-four foreign joiners and car- 

 penters, and many later instances might be 

 cited. Indeed in 1582-3 so serious had be- 

 come the competition of the strangers that the 

 Joiners' Company returned a list of 100 

 foreigners exercising this craft, and declared 6 : 



The Master and Wardens of the Companye of 

 Joyners never licensed nor admitted any of the 

 persons hereunder expressed to use their said trade, 

 yett they, dwelling somme in Westminster, somme 

 in Sainct Katherins, and somme in Sowthworke, do 

 use the sayd occupacion, and have joyned them- 

 selves togeather and have sued the joyners these 

 tenne yeres in the lawe and procured to be spent 

 above 400 only to thend to worck in London as 

 fullye as a freeman may doe, to the utter undoing 

 of a great number of freemen joyners, mere Eng- 

 lishemen, who are all sowayes [sic] ready for any 

 service for her Majestic, this Realme and Citie of 

 London. 



The greatest master of the school of Eng- 



8 J. H. Pollen, Anct. and Modern Furniture in tbt 

 South Kensington Museum (1874), Introd. cxxxix. 



1 Works (1798), iii, 87. 



N. H. Nicolas, Privy Purse Exp. of Hen. Vlll, 

 index, s.v. ' coffer', p. 311. 



'Kirk, Returns of Aliens, i, 22 et seq. 



* Ibid, i, 342 et seq. 



lish wood-carving was Grinling Gibbons, who 

 flourished in the latter part of the I7th and 

 in the early 1 8th century. He was of English 

 parentage but born in Holland, and was 

 brought by Evelyn under the notice of 

 Charles II, who gave him an appointment in 

 the Board of Works. He afterwards lived 

 in Belle Sauvage Court, Ludgate Hill. Here 

 he carved so delicately a pot of flowers for his 

 window sill, that the leaves shook with the 

 vibration caused by the coaches as they rum- 

 bled through the yard. His finest work is at 

 Petworth House, Sussex, but the choir stalls 

 at St. Paul's Cathedral afford an excellent 

 example of his style. He died on 3 August 

 1721 at his house in Bow Street, Covent 

 Garden. His followers built up a school of 

 architectural carvers whose beautiful work 

 abounds in old London buildings, such as the 

 court-room at Stationers' Hall, the vestry of the 

 church of St. Lawrence Jewry, &c., the traditions 

 of which continued down to the last century. 

 With the reign of William and Mary 

 marquetry furniture became the fashion in 

 the form of bandy-legged chairs, secretaires 

 or bureaux, long clock-cases, &c., that afforded 

 surfaces available for such decoration. This 

 art had not previously been practised in Eng- 

 land, specimens being procured by importation 

 chiefly from Italy. The leaves and other 

 figures composing the pattern were cut out of 

 dyed woods, shading being given by means of 

 hot sand. 7 George Ethrington was a London 

 maker of this work about the year 1665. 

 Many London cabinet-makers subsequently 

 engaged in this manufacture, and a national 

 style was developed. Another style of decora- 

 tion known as Boule (from its inventor Andr6 

 Charles Boule, born in 1642) shared with 

 marquetry the favour of the public. This 

 was a kind of veneered work usually composed 

 of tortoiseshell and thin brass. Sir William 

 Chambers, the celebrated architect (1725-96), 

 published a book of designs of Chinese furni- 

 ture, dresses, &c., in 1757, and largely em- 

 ployed the best artists in wood-carving for the 

 decoration of his interiors. John Wilton, one 



1 Ibid, i, 202 et seq. 

 * Ibid, ii, 312. 



7 Tomlinson, Cycl. (1866), ii, 133. 

 ' F. J. Britten, 014 Clocks, 320. 



'39 



