for assimilating modes in furniture, Flemish cabinets were so greatly in
demand that Henry IV. determined to establish the industry in his own
dominions. He therefore sent French workmen to the Low Countries to acquire
the art of making cabinets, and especially those which were largely
constructed of ebony and ivory. Among these workmen were Jean Mace and
Pierre Boulle, a member of a family which was destined to acquire something
approaching immortality. Many of the Flemish cabinets so called, which were
in such high favour in France and also in England, were really _armoires_
consisting of two bodies superimposed, whereas the cabinet proper does not
reach to the floor. Pillared and fluted, with panelled sides, and front
elaborately carved with masks and human figures, these pieces which were
most often in oak were exceedingly harmonious and balanced. Long before
this, however, France had its own school of makers of cabinets, and some of
their carved work was of the most admirable character. At a somewhat later
date Andre Charles Boulle made many pieces to which the name of cabinet has
been more or less loosely given. They were usually of massive proportions
and of extreme elaboration of marquetry. The North Italian cabinets, and
especially those which were made or influenced by the Florentine school,
were grandiose and often gloomy. Conceived on a palatial scale, painted or
carved, or incrusted with marble and _pietra dura_, they were intended for
the adornment of galleries and lofty bare apartments where they were not
felt to be overpowering. These North Italian cabinets were often covered
with intarsia or marquetry, which by its subdued gaiety retrieved somewhat
their heavy stateliness of form. It is, however, often difficult to ascribe
a particular fashion of shape or of workmanship to a given country, since
the interchange of ideas and the imports of actual pieces caused a rapid
assimilation which destroyed frontiers. The close connexion of centuries
between Spain and the Netherlands, for instance, led to the production
north and south of work that was not definitely characteristic of either.
Spain, however, was more closely influenced than the Low Countries, and
contains to this day numbers of cabinets which are not easily to be
distinguished from the characteristic ebony, ivory and tortoise-shell work
of the craftsmen whose skill was so rapidly acquired by the emissaries of
Henry IV. The cabinets of southern Germany