When this is understood and realized, it induces a wholesome suspicion of the richly-mounted and decorated furniture, which seems to spring into abundance as the fashion of the day creates the demand. Let the craze be for Chippendale, for satinwood, for First Empire or Queen Anne, and as genuine specimens of the richer kinds become unprocurable, every plain old battered hulk is pressed into the service for conversion into a saleable article.

Now there are many cases in which, to my mind, the restorations by making new the missing or damaged parts, the improvement of an old piece by the addition of suitable mounts, or even the alteration of a design so as to make the piece of furniture suitable for modern use, is quite legitimate and desirable, only one likes to know something of what has been done. The question of how far legitimate improvement and restoration may go, before it becomes illegitimate and fraudulent is rather a nice point, but it certainly is annoying and disappointing to buy as a genuine old specimen of Chippendale or Sheraton that which has been specially prepared for the unwary collector.

It is with the hope of preventing myreaders from some of these disappointments, that these notes are written, and having pointed out the most subtle form of " faking " furniture, I now propose to endeavour to assist the amateur to form a sound judgement as to the genuineness or reverse of the specimen offered to him.

What has already been written as to old and new carved work applies particularly to Chippendale furniture. No carving of the rococo style affected by Chippendale and his contemporary makers, can be spirited and vigorous, showing the signs of a master hand, unless the carver has had plenty of material to cut away. If, therefore, we examine a riband-pattern chair said to be by Chippendale, and notice that in order to obtain as much effect as possible out of a shallow mahogany frame, the work is cramped and flat, we may take it that, although the details be carefully carried out, and the chair may show signs of undoubted age, it is not one of Chippendale's. This applies also to his mirror frames, the carved cornices of his bookcases, cabinets and other work, but more emphatically to those rococo mirror frames generally associated with his name, so many of which one sees offered for sale, from the cheap and quite modern productions, of little or no artistic merit, to the more carefully and better made copies of some twenty-five or thirty years ago.

The old frames made in Chippendale's workshops show so much more variety in the different thicknesses or depths of the carved ornament; for instance, the head of a scroll may stand out five or six inches from the wall, while the centre of the same scroll has a projection of less than two inches; the limbs of the quaint Chinaman on the top and the curious stork-like birds at the sides, show this variety of relief, which gives a play and fancy to the design that cannot be produced by using less wood.

It stands to reason, of course, that the methods pursued by Chippendale necessitated a great deal more costly preparation; the wood to be made ready for the carver, must be glued up in different layers, or the whole frame would warp and buckle; then it must be obvious that there would be double the amount of work caused by having all this material to cut away, only leaving the full thickness where the design required a greater depth. This kind of carving, however, has its reward by giving a spirit to the work which can be obtained by no other means, and when such vigorous, spirited carving appeals to our artistic perception, when the signs of age approximating to that of Chippendale's time are apparent, by the examination of the old mahogany, if the furniture be of that wood, or by the appearance of the gilding if it be a frame of the kind, then we may feel satisfied that such a chair or such a frame is by Chippendale, or at least by a worthy pupil, and our opinion may be further confirmed by finding the design in his published "Director."

Another class of so-called Chippendale furniture should be viewed with scepticism, the kind that depends for its enrichment upon fret-cut ornament. Two or three veneers of mahogany, glued together, and pierced by a band-saw with a geometrical pattern, is a cheap form of ornamentation to pass muster as a characteristic decoration of Chippendale's furniture; it can be added to the plain mahogany fronts of chests of drawers, and to the friezes and legs of tables, but it should be critically examined.

Chippendale certainly did occasionally use fret-cut galleries to some of his tables, but the work of the saw was afterwards carefully finished by the carver, removing all trace of the machine-cut pattern, whereas in the modern fretwork one can generally detect the raw edge of the tool which cut through the veneers.

With regard to inlaid furniture, it may be noticed that as a rule the pieces of cabinet work " glorified " by new veneers, are of a much more ornate and decorative character than the absolutely genuine old specimens.

Sheraton and his contemporaries depended much more upon the beautiful markings of their well-chosen veneers, for the artistic effect of their inlaid furniture, than upon meretricious and abundant design of inlay. When, therefore, we see elaborate vases holding bouquets of flowers and standing on scroll-pattern pedestals, with a margin of running scroll-work, trophies of musical instruments, and the like, we may view them with the greatest suspicion. It has become so much more difficult to obtain veneers of rich figure, that the modern cabinet maker cannot produce the effect he desires without recourse to an inlaid design. With the large demand for marqueterie furniture of such a fashionable description as that of Sheraton's design, it becomes profitable to produce by machinery the inlaid patterns popularly supposed to be designed by him, and these can therefore be obtained by cabinet makers ready made, only requiring to be inserted into the rather poor veneer of satinwood or mahogany the timber merchant has supplied. In the same way the minor parts of marqueterie decoration, such as shells, paterae, stringings and bandings, may all be turned out by machinery, and although when these are introduced into the veneered piece of furniture of the kind and form affected by Sheraton, it becomes very decorative, still the ornamentation is meretricious and mechanical, and generally the constructive cabinet work is of a flimsy character.