re havoc amongst the aristocracy, with so much
misery and distress throughout the country. It was an event of great
importance, whether we consider the religion, the politics, or the manners
and customs of a people, as affecting the changes in the style of the
decoration of their homes. The horrors of the Revolution are matters of
common knowledge to every schoolboy, and there is no need to dwell either
upon them or their consequences, which are so thoroughly apparent. The
confiscation of the property of those who had fled the country was added
to the general dislocation of everything connected with the work of the
industrial arts.

Nevertheless it should be borne in mind that amongst the anarchy and
disorder of this terrible time in France, the National Convention had
sufficient foresight to appoint a Commission, composed of competent men in
different branches of Art, to determine what State property in artistic
objects should be sold, and what was of sufficient historical interest to
be retained as a national possession. Riesener, the celebrated _ebeniste_,
whose work we have described in the chapter on Louis Seize furniture, and
David, the famous painter of the time, both served on this Commission, of
which they must have been valuable members.

There is a passage quoted by Mr. C. Perkins, the American translator of
Dr. Falke's German work "Kunst im Hause," which gives us the keynote to
the great change which took place in the fashion of furniture about the
time of the Revolution. In an article on "Art," says this democratic
French writer, as early as 1790, when the great storm cloud was already
threatening to burst, "We have changed everything; freedom, now
consolidated in France, has restored the pure taste of the antique!
Farewell to your marqueterie and Boule, your ribbons, festoons, and
rosettes of gilded bronze; the hour has come when objects must be made to
harmonize with circumstances."

Thus it is hardly too much to say that designs were governed by the
politics and philosophy of the day; and one finds in furniture of this
period the reproduction of ancient Greek forms for chairs and couches;
ladies' work tables are fashioned somewhat after the old drawings of
sacrificial altars; and the classical tripod is a favourite support. The
mountings represent antique Roman fasces with an axe in the centre;
trophies of lances, surmounted by a Phrygian cap of liberty; winged
figures, emblematical of freedom; and ant