AS one reviews the successive changes that have taken place in the art of furnishing in the English styles, it will generally be found that under normal conditions the evolution from one style to another has been gradual. The characteristics and distinguishing features of the old forms became weaker, and those of the new style grew stronger by degrees until the first were lost in, or supplanted by, the last.

This accounts in many periods for the mixed objects called transition pieces which are so troublesome to the student of period styles. To make these freak pieces special objects of study is detrimental to a general understanding of those qualities which make for distinctive period limitations. It is advisable, therefore, to consider first always types of periods at the full flower of their expression rather than in the forms of the pieces just described. In no phase of applied art is this transition more clearly distinguishable than in the styles in furniture.

The English periods are less distinctly traceable, one to the other, than those of any other country. This is due to the fact that British conservatism adopted ideas less easily, assimilated them more slowly, and more naturally evolved its own expressions as different ideas dominated the period.

The Elizabethan and Stuart periods differed radically in the idea which they expressed, but in some ways the characteristics were identical. For example, the furniture was principally oak, carved when ornamented at all, rectangular in structure, uncomfortable and architecturally structural in its detail. The change that came about with the advent of the present style was not overwhelmingly sudden, but it was sure. Before considering these radical changes we will look for a moment to the causes which brought about this revolution in the household idea.

It will be remembered that in 1688 James II abandoned the English throne for a more congenial life in France, and that his prerogative as king was assumed by one William the Stadtholder, whose reasons for succession were that he was a grandson of Charles I and also a son-in-law of James II, whose daughter, Mary, he had married. This man William, although the ruler of the democratic Netherlands, is said to have been a man who never knew when he was beaten, and he came to England with the avowed intention of becoming an absolute dictator, notwithstanding the fact that his queen had the stronger claim to supreme authority.

Life in the Netherlands at that time was pronouncedly domestic. The ideals and practices of the country differed so decidedly from those of England that the needs of the people had produced a domestic type of furnishing not concerned with court ceremonial, but suitable for middle-class life and ordinary household use. Dutch forms and Dutch treatment were more democratic and more varied than those found during the Tudor or the Stuart dynasties in England. With the coming of William and Mary came shiploads of Dutch furniture and furnishings, as well as hordes of Dutch court officials, artists and craftsmen. This Dutch invasion is the reason for the rapidly changing forms of this period style.

To be sure, not all the people of England accepted Dutch social standards, but gradually people of influence did so, and the rigid adherence of the court to the methods of the mother country finally resulted in placing the stamp of Dutch influence upon all things made. It followed that the period forms of the era which had passed were almost eradicated.

Religious toleration had become a sufficiently fixed policy to make the church of practically no moment in determining the style.

This period, then, is the Dutch Domestic period filtered through English experience, and results in what is known as the Queen Anne period; though, in fact, Queen Anne herself had no more to do with the period than did the king of the Congo tribes, except that her tendencies as a gardener and seamstress influenced somewhat the naturalistic motifs, particularly in printed linens and embroidered tapestries. The great vogue of these tapestries was the natural outgrowth of her attitude and that of the ladies of the court to needlework.

As has been said, the change in period forms was almost revolutionary. We must remember that up to this time rectangular forms and straight-lined con-188 struction dominated the manufacture of English furniture. Flemish scrolls or curved forms were not used in construction in the Elizabethan period and only in a limited way in the Jacobean period. An occasional chair arm or back might suggest the curved line, but even this was dominated by straight ones. An important fact is that tables and chair legs were generally square or turned or twisted wood, generally straight. They were guilty of no shaping except in rare instances. The pediment and other classic structural motifs were unknown.

In short, curved-line construction appeared to be studiously avoided. How remarkable a change occurred in this respect with the advent of the Dutch influence! Formal, unrelenting sternness gave way before a more graceful shaping, as curves became the fashion. In Elizabethan days a chair could not be made comfortable no matter how much it was upholstered or cushioned, but in this new type the chair began to assume the lines which the human form demands for its comfort.

This idea alone is sufficient to mark a step forward in the development of furniture, though this development reached its culmination later. The proportions and quantities of material were lighter in the structure of the William and Mary period, but with Queen Anne the strength, size and scale increased again. In 1742 mahogany was introduced into England, and from then on it rapidly grew in favour until it well-nigh dominated the English expression and found its natural echo in our Colonial styles which have been so much admired and in some cases overrated.

When these details are compared with the cold, formal and primitive expressions of the Jacobean, with the flagrantly vulgar types sometimes seen in the period of Louis XIV or the Decadent products of the late Italian Renaissance, the Queen Anne forms give us a sense of relief, and the Colonial seems a step into the light. But, when considered from the standpoint of artistic and significant form based on subtlety in proportion, scale and treatment, not all Colonial pieces are as beautiful as they are sometimes believed to be.