After the death of Boulle his four sons carried on the making of this celebrated marquetry, but in a coarser and feebler style of design and of inferior workmanship. Other *šb*šnistes tried to imitate Boulle work, but their efforts were not very successful, and were only inferior imitations.

In Germany in the seventeenth century, the most prominent names as designers and makers of furniture are Philip Heinhofer, Baumgartner, and Hans Schwanhard. The former was the maker of the celebrated Pomeranian Cabinet (1611-1617) which is now in the Royal Museum at Berlin.

In this century, in Italy, Andrea Brustolone (1670-1732) was noted as a carver, gilder, and cabinet-maker who worked in the extravagant style of the Louis Quinze (LouisXV.),and in the first half of the eighteenth century (1700-77) Pifetti, a Piedmontese cabinet-maker, was honoured by the Italian Court, for which he executed many works in ivory carving and marquetry work in the style of Boulle. Many other cabinet-makers and carvers were employed to make furni-ture and to decorate the queen's palace at Turin, among whom may be mentioned the names of Galleti, the successor of Pifetti, and Maggiolino of Milan, who chiefly made a kind of marquetry in light woods. We are indebted to Mr. J. H. Pollen's handbook on furniture for some of these names, and a list of many others will be found at the end of his useful book.

The French Architect, Le Pantre

The French Architect, Le Pantre (1617-82), designed furniture and decoration in the heavy classical style of the Roman antique, mixed with shell-work, grotesques, and little Cupids or "putti," and also engraved and published a book of studies of Roman ornament from sketches that his master, Adam Phillipon, had made in Italy. He worked with Le Brun, the painter and director of the decoration at Versailles. Le Brun's own work was heavy and dull, although he aimed at grandeur and gorgeousness of effect. He was director of the Gobelins tapestry manufactory, and his style of work was in harmony with the pompous ideas of Louis the "Grand Monarch." Madame de Maintenon says in one of her letters to a friend, that Louis was so fond of symmetry and stateliness in his architecture, as in other things, that he would have you "perish in his symmetry," for he caused his doors and windows to be constructed in pairs opposite to one another, which gave to everybody who lived in his palaces their death of cold by draughts of air.

Much of the more artistic kind of furniture was imported from the Continent into England during the seventeenth century, and a feature of this period was the highly decorative silver furniture already noticed in the chapter on metal work.

In this century and early in the following one, the art of wood carving was greatly developed in England, chiefly owing to the genius of Grinling Gibbons and to the influence of Sir Christopher Wren, the style developed being a more or less realistic or baroque form of the Renaissance (Figs. 245, 246). Gibbons carried out some of his carvings to an astonishing degree of realism : bouquets of flowers, festoons of fruit and flowers, birds, figures, and drapery were executed by him in the highest possible relief, which looked detached from the ground, and yet they usually formed a part of the solid wood with the background. Ornament was carved with a singular crispness, and apparently without any hesitation on the part of the carver. Though we may condemn the florid looseness of the style of Gibbons, we must admire the dexterity of workmanship and general technical excellence imparted to everything he touched. Some of his best work may still be seen at Chatsworth, Petworth House in Sussex, Lyme Hall in Cheshire, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Trinity College Chapel at Oxford. Many of the old English halls and manor houses also contain examples of carving done either by Gibbons or his pupils and immediate successors, namely, Watson, Drevot, and Laurens.

Under the Regency of Philippe d'Orl*šans in France (1715-1723) decoration and ornament assumed a light and fanciful character, very naturalistic, but still having some classic details; of this style Claude Gillot is the chief exponent. Watteau, his pupil, made a great name as a painter of pastoral scenes, fˆtes galantes, and all kinds of light and daintily-treated subjects of a theatrical and artificial kind of composition. His colour was silvery and harmonious, and sometimes he decorated furniture with pastoral scenes.

The Rococo Style

The Rococo Style had begun under the Regency, if not earlier, and such men as Oppenort, the De Cottes, father and son, Fran*¡ois de Cuvilli*šs, the Italians Bernini and Borromini, and lastly the great apostle of the Rococo, Meissonier, were all designers of furniture or architects who belonged to the period of Louis XV., and who executed works that reflected the loose and unrestrained character of the times (1723-1774). Chinese and naturalistic elements were grafted on, or mixed with, the former Louis Quatorze, with an addition of still life that did duty for architectural form in objects of pottery and metal work, and a combination of shell work; all these elements made up the style known under the different names of rococo, rocaille, baroque, or Louis Quinze.

Furniture was made with curved and swelling panels to show to more advantage the marquetry, or paintings on gold grounds: these kinds of panels and friezes were known as "bomb*š".

It is said that the Italian architects, Bernini and Borro-mini, were the first to introduce the rococo style into France, but no designer went so far in the wildness of its vagaries as the French Meissonier. His ornament furnishes a perfect example of the want of balance and symmetry. He designed for furniture, woodwork, silver-smithery, and modelled decoration, all of which work illustrated the broken shell-shaped panels with frilled and scalloped edgings and curved mouldings.