148 
House Garden 
For It’s There 
That Life’s Botherments 
Have a Way of Slipping Away 
A ll the change—all the soothing solace your 
tired nerves seek, is always there awaiting 
you. 
No room reservations, no packing of grips. No 
wearisome trains. Only a lifting of a latch and 
you are transported to the Ever-Ever Land v here 
flowers and fragrance rule. 
Eagerly you slip into your garden smock. At once 
you find yourself humming a dear old long for¬ 
gotten song. 
You happily go up and down the walks, meeting 
and greeting all your flower friends. 
Some you chide a wee bit, others you chuck under 
the chin. A leaf you pick off here and there, or 
snip a spent bloom. 
Then an armful of flowers, and two hours have 
sped away. Two joy-filled, rest-giving hours. 
Life’s hurry-worries have all slipped away. And 
you go back to your work, zestfully. 
For such are the joys of those who have their own 
glass gardens, one of our greenhouses. 
Even so little as $1,500 buys the material for one 
I 5 feet wide and 3 3 long. 
To our catalog you are welcome. 
Or we will, on your invitation, be glad to call. 
ford.. & finrnhamC. 
Builders of Greenhouses and Conservatories 
Eastern Factory Western Factory Canadian Factory 
Irvington, N. Y. Des Plaines, Ill. St. Catharines, Ont. 
Irvington New York Philadelphia Chicago 
New York 30 E. 42nd St. Land Title Bldg. Cont. Bank Bldg. 
Boston-11 Cleveland Denver Kansas City 
Little Bldg. 407 Ulmer Bldg. 1247 So. Emerson St. Commerce Bldg. 
.St. Lotii.s Toronto Buffalo 
704 E. Carrie Ave. Harbor Commission Bldg. White Bldg. 
FURNITURE for CORNERS 
{Continued from page 146 ) 
French craftsmen set their wits to dis¬ 
cover a substitute of Chinese lacquer. 
This, in 1748, four glazers, the brothers 
Martin, succeeded in doing, to the great 
joy of the French ebenistes, and their in¬ 
vention, Vernis Martin, came into vogue. 
I have never seen an authentic corner 
bookcase of the Louis XV period. Book¬ 
cases did not come into being much before 
1700, and only when the fashion for such 
smaller formats as the octavos, duodeci¬ 
mos, etc., made publishers put forth small 
books to take the place of the more cum¬ 
bersome folios of earlier days. Authentic 
Louis XV bookcases of even the “un¬ 
cover” sort are extremely rare. 
By 1750 corner cupboards (then called 
“corner-shelves with a cupboard” or 
merely “corners”) were plentifully to be 
found in the houses of every person of 
taste. De Felice notes that in a single 
order Madame de Pompadour commis¬ 
sioned Lazare Luvaux to supply the Cha¬ 
teau de Crecy with thirty of them in ma¬ 
hogany! High “corners” were used in the 
salles d manger, lower ones in the apart¬ 
ments, the anterooms being favorite 
places chosen for them. 
The cupboard was not the only tall cor¬ 
ner piece of Louis XV’s reign. A passion 
for bric-a-brac running all the way from 
silver-mounted shells to naturalistic 
flowers in Vincennes porcelain (of which 
D’Argenson records Madame de Pompa¬ 
dour ordered eight hundred thousand!) 
no longer could be denied shelves in cab¬ 
inets for their safe display. So it was that 
corner shelves for these art toys found 
place in the boudoirs of the period. 
FRENCH TRIANGULAR TABLES 
The triangular Louis XV tables were 
not, all of them, designed for corners, 
though some of them appear to have been, 
such as the triangular toilet tables having 
castors (castors were rarely in use in this 
period) to enable them to be moved out 
into the dressing room quickly, and 
easily replaced in a corner. The small 
triangular Louis XV walnut tables were 
designed for the card game called tri 
(ombre), just as the pentagonal ones were 
designed for the five-handed card game 
called reversi. The tri-tables undoubtedly 
found corner places in many instances 
when not in use. As for corner chairs, 
they do not appear to have occupied a 
place in the period. 
Passing to the Louis X\T period, we 
find the corner cupboard relieved of its 
serpentine front line, although it may not 
always be absolutely flat. Fine workman¬ 
ship continues in these pieces, their panels 
have marketry decoration. Glass fronts 
are introduced; the vitrine, indeed, was an 
invention of this reign. In these corner 
vitrines the small ohjets d’art could at last 
be both safely housed and clearly seen. 
The discoveries at Herculaneum and 
Pompeii, which from at least 1760 on¬ 
wards fired the imagination of the French, 
ultimately brought about a “return to 
antiquity” which, though not immedi¬ 
ately affecting French furniture, finally 
blossomed in the style of the Empire 
period. The changes were tremendous. 
Perhaps the most characteristic corner 
piece of the Empire period is to be found 
in the lavabo, which consisted of a wash 
basin set in a tripod with a place below the 
basin for a ewer. To this ancestrj^ we 
appear to owe many of the monstrosities 
that have descended upon us, pieces whose 
convenience is shamelessly asserted but 
which, when I am forced to come in con¬ 
tact with them, I find to be far too AtJie- 
nienne for toleration on the part of any 
laving male. 
French fashions naturally affected Eng¬ 
lish furniture forms. It was during the 
latter William and Mary period that the 
corner cupboard came into vogue in Eng¬ 
land. We find it then divided in two sec¬ 
tions, with or without a drawer between 
them, and the lower cupboard and the 
top shelves closed in by a single door or by 
a pair of narrow ones. The Queen Anne 
period found corner cupboards popular 
and hanging corner cupboards and hang¬ 
ing corner shelves come into vogue. The 
popularity of corner pieces in France 
spread to England. The circular front 
appears in some of the English pieces. 
From about 1725 onward mahogany be¬ 
gan to be used by English cabinet makers 
in corner furniture. 
IN THE CHIPPENDALE MANNER 
The corner jiieces of the period marked 
by Chippendale’s influence followed the 
general lines of the Chippendale style. 
Among these pieces are to be found the 
candle-stands designed to be placed in 
the mantel corner. The Chippendale style 
straight-topped corner cupboards with 
cornice and frieze had their lower sections 
enclosed with wood doors, the upper sec¬ 
tions with glass doors, either single doors 
or double ones. More often than not a 
drawer was placed between the upper 
and lower divisions. The corner pieces 
having a pediment top followed the 
swan-neck scroll lines. In Chippendale 
corner cupboards with both top and 
bottom doors unglazed, such doors were 
often ornamented with carving. 
With the advent of the style designed 
by the Brothers Adam the curved struc¬ 
tural lines of the Chippendale style gave 
place to the rectilinear, and this rectilinear 
contour is found in the Heppelwhite cor¬ 
ner pieces. In the Heppelwhite corner 
cupboards we have paneled doors below, 
and glazed doors above, the glazing 
usually following rectilinear design. 
Likewise the characteristic features of 
Sheraton design are quickly discerned in 
the Sheraton corner pieces. Sheraton 
cupboards were topped with swan-neck 
pediments and vase finials and the lines 
of the tracery of their glazing added a 
new interest to these pieces. Slender 
legs were also added to some of the cup¬ 
boards. Sheraton also designed corner 
pieces of other sorts, as did Chippendale 
and Heppelwhite. 
In America, corner pieces came early 
into the history of furniture. I do not 
know that there were anj' indigenous in¬ 
ventions in this respect, but we certainly 
have pieces antedating the i8th Century, 
such as the three-cornered stool of ash 
in the collections of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, whose date is, perhaps, 
1650. Then we have the later corner 
pieces, chairs, tables, cupboards, etc., 
some following English designs, such as 
the roundabout chairs, and some of more 
characteristic American development. 
Nearly all of the Colonial American cor¬ 
ner cupboards are of the “architectural”, 
or built-in sort, and the Colonial house 
of 18th Century America would not have 
been thought complete without one of 
these and without one or more of the 
hanging corner shelves so dear to the 
housewife of the Republic’s cradle years. 
Indeed, corner shelving had so entrenched 
itself in American affections that when the 
more pretentious corner cupboard had to 
be given up, we flew to the consolation 
of that historic object of mid-Victorian 
utility and post-hlcKinley scorn—the 
what-not. Would that some tender poet 
might rise to sing its memories, for now 
that it is no more, we repent our ridicule 
and would ask forgiveness for all the 
opprobrium we placed upon its shelves 
