The almost fabulous prices which within the last quarter of a century have been given for genuine examples of the best kinds of French furniture of the different styles reviewed in this chapter, have caused a great demand for copies and reproductions, and I now propose to add some notes about these. They may be roughly divided into three classes : 1. Those made to deceive the purchaser and to be passed off as genuine; 2. Those which are ordinary reproductions of furniture of the style; and, 3, Reproductions by the first ebenistes or cabinet makers and bronze artists of Paris, made not for the purpose of deception, but produced either in the execution of orders from wealthy amateurs, who want exact replicas of the finest specimens, which, being national property, cannot be purchased; or else as tours de force for the purpose of exhibition, or for sale to those who, unwilling or unable to pay several thousand pounds for a bureau or a commode of the epoch, are yet willing to give some two or three hundred pounds for a well-made piece of the best workmanship, correct in every detail as to design and faithfully reproduced from the original.

In the chapter on "faked " furniture I have said something about the first-named kind of reproduction, and in the last chapter of this book, containing some hints and cautions to the collector, I have added some remarks. With regard to the second class, they might again be subdivided into good, bad, and indifferent. If the reader wishes to have decorative furniture of the style he prefers, he must use his discretion in endeavouring to select that which is least pretentious, the nearest to the original, and that which is most free from the meretricious showy splendour which renders the cheaper kinds of imitations of good old French furniture so objectionable. It is quite possible to purchase for very moderate sums, good honest furniture with the graceful lines and curves of the Louis XV style, or the simpler modesty of the more severe Marie Antoinette period, but the selection should be made from those not too generously mounted or too lavishly inlaid.

It is about the third class that I feel I may be doing my reader some service in offering advice. Some of the reproductions of Boulle's work, of the cabinets and tables by Riesener, David Roentgen, Pasquier, Carlin, Leleu, Cressent, and others (a fairly complete list of whom has been given in my "History of Furniture"), are really works of art. If the reader has the means to buy, and the kind of house which will accommodate such beautiful specimens of the cabinet-maker's art, I would recommend them as an excellent investment of capital. They have been made by such masters as I have named earlier in this chapter, and neither pains nor expense have been spared to produce the best results. As time goes on and highly-skilled labour becomes more and more costly, such pieces as I am referring to will acquire a much greater value, especially as, if carefully preserved, they are allowed to acquire the improved tone that time gives to well gilt bronze and fine marqueterie.

Many of these rich pieces are only suitable for large mansions, since they have been copied from the originals intended for the salons of the kings, or their ministers and favourites, but some are of smaller and more modest proportion's, and are excellent and most desirable acquisitions. They can only be found in the hands of the chief dealers, as they are necessarily costly, but they can be obtained at a fair price, and to my mind are much cheaper than the commoner copies produced in great quantities and sold for small sums.