WE are deplorably timid, in our day, about the use of vigorous colour. So timid are we, indeed, and to such length do we carry our dread of committing some chromatic solecism that few of us attribute to colour, attained either by paint or through some other medium, its due importance as a valuable decorative resource for furniture, nor do we realise to what an extent it has been employed in this respect by preceding generations.

Even the most advanced modernists, while venturing many daring things in the field of colour combination, things that cause conservative-minded folk to stand aghast and gasp in sheer amazement, have essayed most of their flights and experiments with fabrics, mural decorations or furniture forms and have been extremely moderate, as a rule, in applying coloured decoration to the carcases or frames of cabinet-work or chairs.

The chapter on painted furniture has been included in the scheme of this volume for several reasons. In the first place, we are in danger of overlooking its significance in the past. In the second place, it has not been possible to treat it so fully as might be desired where it has been alluded to in previous chapters. Lastly, notwithstanding our reticence in colour, there are unmistakable evidences of a renewal of interest in the sundry sorts of furniture painting formerly practised, and the discriminating student of mobiliary art and history will more and more require a guide for this decorative phase.

The possibilities in the realm of colour decoration are almost without number. By its use we may achieve the highest refinement or sink to the lowest depths of crudity. The history of furniture can furnish examples of both extremes. A little colour may be made to serve as a foil to emphasise the effect of carving or some other form of ornamentation or, again, it may itself afford the chief claim to consideration as a decorative factor.

From the cradle to the grave we are surrounded by colour. We could not escape from it if we would and few of us would wish to if we could. Colour and colour combination have always been of paramount importance and the way we deal with them determines whether or not we possess that much-coveted and oft disputed quality - good taste. We may choose to surround ourselves with a late Whistlerian atmosphere of drab and sepia or we may be like the eccentric old gentleman who, in flat defiance of all accepted conventions of male attire, designed himself an eiderdown padded greatcoat of cerise samite quilted with bottle green; do what we may, we cannot escape from the colour problem. Colour and life are inseparable. One of the chief agents in conferring individuality, whether in furniture or in anything else, is the element of colour and the manner of its application. It behooves us, therefore, to view all painted or coloured furniture decoration with a discriminating eye so that we may rightly value the several kinds that have been practised from time to time.

Inasmuch, then, as colour fills so momentous a place in our lives, it is surely logical for us to wish to employ its varied hues to brighten the furniture that surrounds us, and this method of colour expression has always been recognised as legitimate. The tradition and decoration of painted furniture continued without break from a very early period down to the time when they were obscured and almost effaced during the dreadful mid-Victorian epoch, the trammels of whose deadly blighting influence and narrow, uninspired conventionalism we have not yet wholly shaken off. Our timidity of appreciation is evidence enough of this lingering constraint. Fortunately, however, we have well-nigh reached a normal condition again, and one of the surest signs of that normality is the renewed and widespread interest in colour in all our environment.

Since colour and its application are matters of so vastly important and universal consideration, we can readily understand how men came to embellish the furniture in their houses with designs and colours pleasing to the eye. Especially was this the case where the furniture - chest, cupboard or what you will - was severely simple in form and line and suggested the need of something to relieve its austerity of aspect. In the Middle Ages, however, at which period we begin to hear of painted furniture in Europe, such was the passion for gorgeous colour that even ornately carved chests or armoires were heavily overlaid with gilding and rich diaperwork picked out in scarlet and blue, chocolate and green, or bright with heraldic devices blazoned in all their proper tinctures.

If you would have a lively picture of a baronial hall or my lady's bower with its varied garniture, read the pages of Christine de Pisan or look at some monkish illumination. From those englamoured days, when primal traits of character and primary colours held the field together, to the second half of the eighteenth century, when Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton gave fresh impetus to the vogue for painted furniture, an impetus perceptibly felt on our side of the Atlantic, there has scarcely ever been a time - excepting the barren years of the nineteenth century - when the aid of pigment has not been employed to supplement the craft of the cabinet-maker or, perhaps, the simpler handiwork of the carpenter.

From the eleventh century onward to the Renaissance a popular vigorous sense of colour ensured the use of painted decoration in every place where it might by any possibility be introduced. In architecture we find the adornment of colour resorted to at every turn. From the missal on the altar or the robes of the clergy to the stones of the walls or the beams and timbers of the roof, colour blazed forth everywhere. Though dimmed by the dust of centuries, we can still discern the crimson and gold that once made the richly-carved string courses of St. Ouen's clerestory to glow vividly. In many English cathedrals and parish churches the removal of washes or plaster, put on by Puritan vandals, has disclosed a wealth of bright-hued diaperwork on the stones of inner walls, while many of the beautiful painted roofs have never been touched save by the brush of time. Ecclesiastical examples are cited because nearly all the enduring or important architecture was ecclesiastical in general character.