size. It is squarely made, straight (classic) in
line, equally balanced, heavily ponderous and magnificent. Over its
surface, masses of decoration immobile as stone carving, are evenly
dispersed, and contribute a grandiose air to all this furniture.

There was impressive gallantry to the Louis XIV style, a ceremonious
masculine gallantry, while Louis XV furniture--the period dominated by
women when "poetry and sculpture sang of love" and life revolved about
the boudoir--shows a type entirely _intime_, sinuously, lightly,
gracefully, coquettishly feminine, bending and courtesying, with no
fixed outline, no equal balance of proportions. Louis XV was the
period when outline and decoration were merged in one and the _shell_
which figured in Louis XIV merely as an ornament, gave its form (in a
curved outline) and its name "rococo" (Italian for shell) to the
style.

As a reaction from this we get the Louis XVI period, again masculine
in its straight rigidity of line, its perfectly poised proportions,
the directness of its appeal to the eye, a "reflection of the more
serious mental attitude of the nation." Louis XVI had an aristocratic
sobriety and was masculine in a light, alert, mental way, if one can
so express it, which stimulates the imagination, in direct contrast to
the material and literal type of Louis XIV which, as we have said, was
masculine in its ponderous magnificence, and unyielding
over-ornamentation.

So much for _outline_. Now for the _decoration_ of the three periods.

Remember that the Louis XIV, XV and XVI periods took their ideas for
decoration from the Greeks, via Italy, and the extreme Orient. A
national touch was added by means of their Sevres porcelain medallions
set into furniture, and the finely chiselled bronzes known as ormoulu,
a superior alloy of metals of a rich gold colour. The subjects for
these chiselled bronzes were taken from Greek and Roman mythology;
gods, goddesses, and cupids the insignia of which were torches,
quivers, arrows, and tridents. There were, also, wreaths, garlands,
festoons and draperies, as well as rosettes, ribbons, bow-knots,
medallion heads, and the shell and acanthus leaf. One finds these in
various combinations or as individual motives on the furniture of
the Louis.

PLATE XIX

Shows the red-tiled entrance hall of a duplex apartment in New
York.

On the walls are two Italian mirrors (Louis XVI), a side table
(console) of the same epoch