EARLY ENGLISH FURNITURE AND WOODWORK.* - Tim two large leather-bound
volumes on Early English furni- ture and woodwork just published -by Messrs. Routledge command respect by virtue of their fine illustrations and the general excellence of their production, whilst to those familiar with the bibliography of old English and Oriental furniture the names of the authors, Mr. Herbert Cescinsky and Mr. Ernest Gribble will guarantee a most informing and read- able dissertation, the natural outcome of wide antiquarian knowledge joined to a discriminating enthusiasm.
The thoroughness of the book is immense and the roots and beginnings of fashions in furniture and finishings are very rightly sought for in the broad architectural evolution of the successive periods, through which again we get direct contact with general social history. The titles of the first few chapters will sufficiently indicate the wide foundations upon which the book has been built up and the refreshing way in which archaeology and connoisseurship are linked to the everyday life of the past and our common human interests. They are as follows : " The Dissolution of the Monasteries " ; " The Early Woodworker, his Life, Tools and Methods " ; " The Plan of the Early Tudor House " ; " The Development of the English Timber Roof " ; " Gothic Woodwork and Colour Decoration " ; " The English Staircase."
Another very tempting book has undoubtedly been added to the lengthening list of expensive authorities " that no architect can afford to be without." However, the collector of antique furniture is in an even more embarrassing situation, for the number of books recently published that are aimed at him is quite astonishing, though the work under review has most successfully achieved what few others have even attempted and as a history in the true sense it will find few serious rivals.
The period covered extends from the end of the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth—the great " oak age "
• Early English Furniture and Woodwork. By Herbert Cescinsky and Ernest Oribblo. London : EouUodge. (57 7s. set.'
so far as furniture is concerned—though we are glad that in the two delightful chapters on clocks and English lacquer work the authors have not scrupled to invade the eighteenth.. century, a period, however, that they promise to treat of in another book as generously conceived as this one.
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