A History of Furniture: With Chapters on Tapestry, Oriental Embroidery and Leather Work (Classic Reprint)

His son, anxious for his fathers fame, has given additional value to the text by the brilliant illustrations with which he has adorned it. M. Jacquemart was born in 1808, and died on the 1j.th October, 185. A Parisian by birth, he witnessed the reward and development of the taste for art which has become the feature of the present generation. Those who date from the beginning of the century can remember the scanty materials of which the furniture of their fathers was composed; the nakedness of a vestibule, the frigid aspect of a dining-room, the tasteless symmetry of a drawing-room. How and by what teaching have imagination and capability replaced routine and ignorance? At the end of the last century the reign ofT error had annihilated the fortunes and dispersed the personal property of the French aristocracy. Lovers of works of art, then more numerous in England than in any country of Europe, had secured the greater part of the riches of the monarchy, but by the side, or following the steps of the foreigners whose gains have been to us an irreparable loss, the work of preservation which was destined to precede the re-awakening of taste was patiently carried on, often not without danger. The two men who first took the lead, and for their unwearied efforts specially deserve our gratitude, are Alexandre Lenoir and du Sommerard, for theM useum ofF rench Monuments and the Hotel Cluny have been the schools which have preserved to us the models, and furnished us with the means of instruction.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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