THE AGE OF ELEGANCE.*
WIIEN such an authority as Miss Jourdain writes a book on decoration and furniture of the later eighteenth century, and Messrs. Batsford publish it at a price of three guineas, we expect an important and finely produced volume such as that before us. The treatment of interior architectural details and contemporary furniture as being intimately related is no more than common sense, but only in the latest and best books on "the Periods" has this connexion been adequately recognized. In his introduction Professor Richard- son gives a useful critical survey of the rise, decline and fall of Good Taste," which he considers reached its culmination in 1790, and he is not afraid to praise Henry Holland, "who in many opinions is considered the leading master of decoration of the late eighteenth century ; the work at Carlton House alone entitles him to the first rank" ; or to belittle Sir John Soane, in whose work he perceives brutality and freakishness and whose reputation he dismisses as "somewhat mediocre." Miss Jourdain treats of a period with which architects and designers to-day are obviously in close general sympathy, and her beautiful illustrations—mostly from subjects not too well known—are an inspiration in the clean, graceful handling of decorative construction.
There are, of course, plenty of instances in which there is elaboration and richness almost to excess, and there are engaging " Egyptian " conceits of the Regency period that are perhaps objects of curiosity rather than sources of inspire_ tion. Fig. 339, for example, shows an armchair reputed to have belonged to Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, that might almost have come out of Tutankhamen's tomb—the sides being formed by just such grotesquely elongated creatures with emphatic tails curled stiffly over their backs as have recently ficrured so prominently in Lord Camarvon's photographs. 0 The measured drawings of staircases, panelling, fireplaces and the like, together with the fine photographs of plaques, plaster enrichments and metal work, make the book secure of a high place in the rapidly lengthening list of authorities "indispensable to architects and designers" to which Messrs. Datsford have already made so many notable additions.
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