House and Garden 
the Cathedral 
of Auxerre in 
France,describ¬ 
ed by the monk¬ 
ish chroniclers 
as being of 
“marvelous del¬ 
icate workman¬ 
ship;” and so 
it is to France 
that we must 
look for the 
earliest achieve¬ 
ments in large 
*. ,<c .—{ schemes of dec- 
french, xiv. century orativewrought 
iron. 
The craft soon became general all over 
civilized Europe, each country stamping 
upon it the impress of its own national charac¬ 
ter. The south German Gothic, the Italian 
Classic, and the French passing through 
several phases culminating in the graceful 
rococo of the Louis XV. epoch. After a 
time these independent styles became greatly 
modified by the Renaissance and by each 
other. The German had carried the scheme 
of interlaced wrought iron bars in peculiar 
concentric forms varied by scrolls, to an 
extreme of exaggerated and intricate pattern, 
an intemperance of design 
which later became greatly sub¬ 
dued and modified by French 
and Italian influences, the lat¬ 
ter having little appreciation 
of the Gothic or of convention¬ 
alized acanthus and other leaf 
forms, confining itself chiefly 
to the trefoil, quatrefoil and 
cinquefoil patterns. 
In the Netherlands the Teu¬ 
tonic was the prevailing style, 
but little of it now remains 
to us excepting some frag¬ 
ments at Bruges and Brussels 
and especially the work at 
Antwerp of the Matsys family 
of Louvain. During the Span¬ 
ish occupation much wrought 
iron work was removed to the 
Peninsula and may still be 
found in Spain and Portugal. 
France, during the close of 
the seventeenth 
and commence¬ 
ment of the 
eighteenth cen¬ 
tury, being the 
premier nation 
both in wealth 
and social re¬ 
finement, gave 
the greatest op¬ 
portunity to the 
smith to display 
his art on a large 
scale with suit¬ 
able surround- 
ings. The best french, xvi. century 
examples under 
such conditions are the great screens and gates 
in the Place Royal at Nancy, constructed by 
Jean Lamour to the order of Stanislas of 
Poland and Lorraine. In the decoration 
of this square with gates and grilles a certain 
grandeur of dimension was necessary, for 
which at that time there was little precedent. 
Lamour, however, met the problem ad¬ 
mirably, combining in his work such grace of 
design and just appreciation of architectural 
proportion that they are at the same time 
highly ornamental in the mass and exquisite 
in detail. This work, with some in the 
Church of the Primate of Lor¬ 
raine, may rank as the highest 
achievement in French rococo. 
Almost contemporaneous with 
him were Fordrin — another 
exponent of the rococo style 
and responsible for the grace¬ 
ful grille at the Palais de jus¬ 
tice, Paris—and de Cuvilles. 
These three designers greatly 
influenced work of the period 
executed in Germany and Eng¬ 
land. 
Turning to the latter we find 
that the most important work 
executed in Great Britain was 
due to a Frenchman, Jean 
Titjou, probably introduced in¬ 
to England by Sir Christopher 
Wren. Titjou was the designer 
of the well-known gates and 
panels of Hampton Court, now 
at South Kensington. These 
FRENCH, XIV. CENTURY 
