WHAT does the upholsterer mean by ' Early English'? He sticks it into every advertisement; he attaches it to all objects, bookcases, coalscuttles, lace and duplex lamps; to all periods, but especially the decade and a half ruled over by Queen Anne, and that other decade and a half, a century later, governed by Napoleon I. Modern oak settles, carved by machinery; mahogany and other chairs made about 1835; everything that looks ecclesiastical; and all ugly colours - are now called ' Early English.' For instance, a ladder chair for library use, plain oak, is called 'superior'; the same thing defaced by a bit of machine 'carving,' of course unpainted, but heavily varnished, becomes ' Early English,' though in old England paint was everywhere and varnish not invented; a wall painted with an even tint of mud-colour - anything coloured dirty grey or drab - is therefore 'Early English;' and as upholsterers, not content with this abuse of terms, are now sending out advertisements stuffed with antiquarian lore worthy of Punch, let us examine the four or five distinct periods of English history in which domestic art took a definite form, and not gibber about superior fourteenth century table forks and twelfth century point lace - which I have actually seen advertised.

The 'Early English' period is, or was, supposed properly to cover Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman times in this country. On the question of furniture we can hardly divide the two. The Mediaeval period may be placed about 1200-1500; the Renascence, 1500-1600, though the loudness of its echo did not fail for fully a hundred years more. The Modern time must be defined as extending from 1700 to 1880, but for clearness' sake we will make a distinction between the Modern time (say up to 1850) and the present day.

The Meaning Of Furniture

In its natural and general sense, furniture (Fr. mobilier) means movables - property easily transported from place to place, as distinguished from a house and lands. On the habits and wants of a class depend the quantity and quality of the furniture; hence the folly of making up ideal objects and christening them after certain periods, without some knowledge of what was then invented.

It has been pointed out that the first articles which began to furnish and make home-like the stronghold of the settler were hutches or chests to contain small goods - clothes, money, linen, or whatever stores he possessed or convey them in case of flight or removal, for in primeval times there were neither shops nor banks, nor Pickford's vans. Such chests, being precious and durable, must have received decoration from very early times - in the very dawn of civilisation. In England chests with painted scenes on a gold ground date from about the eleventh century. Leather chests bound with iron hasps, and painted, also have a remote pedigree. In the twelfth century we seem to perceive a greater regard for elegance of form: wood turned by the lathe came into use, and the chests came to be distinguished by special names according to their size and function, as bahut, hutch (with varieties huceau, hucheau, huchel, arche, and buffet), bouge, coffer, coffret. The technical sense in which we speak of 'a rabbit hutch' and the 'Coffers of the State,' the 'Military Chest,' and the 'Chest at Chatham,' is a curious relic of the old habit of guarding valuables of all kinds.

The first requisite in ancient furniture was strength. Therefore the joints, hinges, and locks were made powerful enough to resist attacks, and with increasing skill in attack came increasing ingenuity in defence. How a lock can develop under the double pressure of necessity and the artistic sense we may see in such a museum as that of the late M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville.

How beauty waited on utility, and was inseparable from it, in old English work of any importance (as good art always is), nearly every museum of antiquities and every old cathedral can prove. The delicacy of the free-hand carving, the variety in ideas and in treatment, and the real mechanical excellence, are often wondrous, and a grave reproach to our own unconscientious workmen.

The mighty, well-seasoned oak safe, carved by the rude Leightons and Wattses of early England in designs which seemed to add new strength, not to weaken the tough fibre, is still admirable, still worthy. The carved geometric patterns, even when not supplemented by complicated iron mounts, represented bars crossed and re-crossed to redouble force. The mailed knights in Gothic arches, which we often see carved around old hutches, seemed to form a doughty outer barricade, and not adornment only. Such a choice of ornaments has been shown by Owen Jones to be the result, perhaps unconscious, of a fine sense of propriety in every race, however savage, which possesses any art at all. The paddles of the Tahiti or New Zealand islander, and the doorposts of his hut, are as eminent an example of natural good taste as many works of advanced civilisation.

As public security increased, people amassed more possessions, and cared more for them, Like dress, furniture is a kind of progressive chronicle; the art applied to it blossomed out with every pause, following each step onward. After tools and weapons, the hutch, bedstead, bench, and chair (a backed bench accommodating several persons - the 'quality' - hence an old church 'pew,' pulpit, professor's chair, and domestic seat) were the first decorated objects in furniture. The walls, the date, last of all the ceiling, were next furnished with decoration, which could be speedily supplied or removed, such as tapestry, canopies, and mats under the feet, and this decoration took very much the place of our literature, and our pictures. Asgrim is described in the 'Njalssaga' as ordering the board to be arranged and the tapestries hung up when he sees Flosi and his band approaching, to whom he chooses to be hospitable.

Along with the walls, in 'places of worship' held secure, such as the House of God and the house of a great lord, the windows were decorated as a matter of course, being part of the wall. Songs of love, legends of piety, lessons of wisdom, told with the wholesome naivete of a child, spoke to the heart from every available surface throughout the fresh, eager morning of art.