April, rg11 
AMERICAN HOMES AND 
GARDENS 
127 
Fig. |—A Sofa sold for $230 
Furniture of Our Forefathers 
By Esther Singleton 
Late Georgian — Part Ill. 
OUGHLY speaking, furniture and all 
' forms of Decorative Art in which the 
curve predominated lasted from the be- 
ginning until the middle of the century, 
when the straight line asserted itself and 
triumphed. In the last days of Louis 
XV the reaction is already visible. Indeed, 
indications of the coming Louis XVI style begin between 
1745 and 1750. The discoveries made in Pompeii and 
Herculaneum are responsible for the enthusiasm that the 
straight line and regular forms of Greek art exerted in 
certain masters of Decorative Art. 
Among the precursors of the Louis XVI style and whose 
works are a mixture of the Louis XV and Louis XVI styles 
are Lucotte, Watelet, J. B. Pierre, Dumont, Roubo, 
Charles de Wailly, Choffart and Neufforge. In the last 
particularly do we meet with the coming style; and, among 
the designs of Delafosse (1731), one of the chief expo- 
nents of the Louis XVI style, we find 
many reminiscences of the Louis XV style. 
The lovers of the Classic in England 
were only too ready to welcome the re- 
action from the rococo and to stimulate 
the new taste for the straight line, mortu- 
ary urn, and arabesque ornamentation. 
The early Louis XVI was known in Eng- 
land as the Adam style, which is, how- 
ever, unfair to a great many others who 
made war on the Gothic, Chinese, and 
rococo taste. Numerous books on archi- 
tecture, ornamentation and decorative de- 
sign, as well as cabinet work, were issued 
between 1765 and 1771; and it is notice- 
able that the names of many Italians 
appear in this list. The artists that the 
Adam brothers employed to work for 
them—Angelica Kauffman and her hus- 
band, Antonio Zucchi, Cipriani and Per- 
golesi—had also great influence. The 
last, whom they brought from Italy, is 
thought by Mr. Heaton to be the ‘‘unac- 
knowledged author of most of the beau- 
tiful details of Adam’s book.” The Adam 
brothers never made furniture—they were 
architects and designers; and it was largely 
owing to their high social position that 
their influence was so great. 
When Chippendale published his fa- 
mous book of designs, the Louis KV 
style was on the wane. The very year 
Fig. 2—A clock sold for $250 
of its publication—1754—-Robert Adam went to Dal- 
matia to study the ruins of the Emperor Diocletian’s pal- 
ace; and, on his return to England in 1762 became royal 
architect. His brother, James, was identified with him 
in all his work. As the nobility and gentry not only patron- 
ized the Adam brothers, but received them socially, these 
architects and designers of furniture belong to a different 
class from that of Chippendale, Heppelwhite and Sheraton. 
They themselves said: “If we have any claim to approba- 
tion, we found it on this alone: That we flatter ourselves 
we have been able to seize with some degree of success 
the beautiful spirit of antiquity, and to transfuse it, with 
novelty and variety, through all our numerous works.” 
An English critic has aptly written: ‘‘Whatever were 
the architectural defects of their works, the brothers 
formed a style which was marked by a fine sense of pro- 
portion, and a very elegant taste in the selection and dis- 
position of niches, lunettes, reliefs, festoons, and other 
classical ornaments. It was their custom 
to design furniture in character with their 
apartments, and their works of this kind 
are still highly prized. Among them may 
be specially mentioned their sideboards, 
with elegant urn-shaped knife boxes; but 
they also designed bookcases and com- 
modes, brackets and pedestals, clock cases 
and candelabra, mirror frames and con- 
sole tables of singular and original merit, 
adapting classical forms to modern uses 
with a success unrivalled by any other de- 
signer of furniture in England.” 
Among the ornaments the Adam 
brothers used were lozenge-shaped panels, 
octagons, ovals, hexagons, circles, 
wreaths, fans, husks, medallions, draped 
medallions, medallions with figures, goats, 
the ram’s head, eagle-headed grotesques, 
grifins, sea-horses, the patera, the ro- 
sette, caryatids, and all other classical 
and mythological subjects. 
Very much simpler than the furniture 
de luxe of the Adam brothers is that ap- 
pearing in the book published in 1788 by 
the firm of A. Heppelwhite & Co., cabi- 
net makers, called The Cabinet Maker 
and Upholsterer’s Guide, or Repository 
of Designs for Every Article of House- 
hold Furniture in the Newest and Most 
Approved Taste. In some respects the 
patterns shown here are more character- 
