1 MAY 1926, Page 19

* * * Messrs. Berm have just issued an Encyclopaedia

of Furniture f£2 2s.), compiled by Dr. Herman Schmitz of the Schloss Museum, Berlin, with an introduction by Mr. H. P. Shapland, editor of The Cabinet Maker. We cannot do better than quote from his introduction : " The various forms which furniture has taken direct the student not only along the

highways but into many fascinating by-paths of history." Here again we find history in an intimate aspect, the beds the Romans slept in, Spanish church benches from which may have issued the thunders of the Inquisition, cassone of the type in which the Borgias kept their compromising letters, lacquered secretaires, Koran desks, Chinese cabinets- The publishers have given us 820 pages of illustration.% reproduced with that sumptuousness we have learned to

expect from them.