28 
House & Garden 
ITALIAN SEATING FURNITURE and TABLES of the 18th CENTURY 
Leading Characteristics and Influences Which Distinguish Them—The 
Effect on Italian Designers of Contemporary Work in Other Countries 
Fig. 3. A strongly architec¬ 
tural influence is manifested 
in this Italian garden bench 
HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE 
Fig. 1. Italian walnut chairs 
of the early 18th Century ex¬ 
hibited national individuality 
E IGHTEENTH CENTURY Italian seat¬ 
ing furniture and tables displayed no 
less rich a variety of form and ingenuity of 
decoration than did the wall furniture of the 
same period. Chairs, more than any other 
articles of furniture, have always 
been peculiarly sensitive to even 
trifling variations of style, and 
the chairs of 18th Century Italy 
fully reflected all the mobiliary 
variations, both in form and in 
decoration, that affected the pecu¬ 
liarly receptive and sympathetic 
genius of Italian craftsmanship. 
As pointed out in the preceding 
paper on Italian wall furniture 
of the 18th Century, the fur¬ 
niture makers of this period, un¬ 
like their predecessors of the 
16th and 17th Centuries, showed 
no aptitude for originality of de¬ 
sign, but rather displayed a 
remarkable ingenuity for the 
adaptation of borrowed models 
and an unsurpassed facility for 
decoration, often of the most elaborate descrip¬ 
tion. It was not great and virile work, such 
as the performances of previous centuries. It 
was sometimes weak and insipidly banal; more 
frequently it was instinct with amiable and 
sunny urbanity; it was always unmistakably 
characteristic of the genial Italian temperament. 
While it is quite true, from the point of 
view of design, that most Italian furniture of 
the 18th Century must be classed as decadent 
or semi-decadent, its very playfulness and 
whimsicality rendered it companionable and 
appropriate for the boudoir and drawing room. 
In the 18th Century, though folk somewhat 
lacked the straightforward virility of an earlier 
day, their manners were vastly more elegant 
and agreeable. Furniture has always faith¬ 
fully reflected the social life of the period. 
Eighteenth Century Italian furniture was no 
exception to the rule, and though it may be 
accused of artificiality, it possessed an elegance 
and daintiness that suited it to the politer 
habits of the generation that used it. 
The procession of borrowed styles in Italian 
Fig. 2. In Italy walnut main¬ 
tained its vogue with compara¬ 
tively limited use of mahogany 
furniture of the 18th Century has already been 
explained. At the very beginning of the 18th 
Century the last traces of old Italian vigor and 
individuality were observable in the type of 
chair which closely corresponded with a well- 
known contemporary type belong¬ 
ing to the latter years of the Will¬ 
iam and Mary epoch in England 
—straight, tapered legs, shaped 
stretchers and high back, either 
carved or upholstered, with 
shaped top. This chair and its 
congeners possessed a combina¬ 
tion of dignity and grace com¬ 
mending them to modern usage 
In both the seating furniture and 
tables of this particular date, 
which all evince a general famih 
resemblance, there is enough va¬ 
riety of form and decorative pro¬ 
cess to stimulate interest and meet 
a diversity of tastes. 
The next well-defined chair 
type, which marks the advent of 
curvilinear dominance, has its 
Fig. 4. A reflection of Adam Fig. 5. Louis XVI influence Fig. 6. The square backed Fig. 7. Of the same stylistic 
and Louis XVI, an Italian is again evidenced by this type of 18th Century seating family is the cane seated 
oval back chair of the late late 18th Century armchair in furniture shores wide variety. walnut and gilt chair with 
18th Century paint and parcel gilt This armchair of walnut interlacing circle motif 
