Identifier: handbookoforname1900meye (find matches)
Title: Handbook of ornament; a grammar of art, industrial and architectural designing in all its branches, for practical as well as theoretical use
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Meyer, Franz Sales, 1849-
Subjects: Decoration and ornament Art objects
Publisher: New York, B. Hessling
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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in churches and monasteries, but seldom inprivate houses. Where they do occur, they show the hand of thecarpenter rather than that of the skilled cabinet-maker. The car-dinal feature of Romanesque furniture is practicability; that the slowmoving, serious spirit of that time paid but little regard to elegancewas only natural: men had their virtues and their vices, but theywere free from affections of the nerves (Georg Hirth). Cabinets be-came more common in the Gothic period; and although the matched-board-work and the simple carving generally give the products ofthis time a certain rude appearance; still the architectural dispositionof the members, and the bands and mounts, are effective. Later Gothicled to all kinds of extravagances, one of which is the lavish use ofgeometrical tracery, called flamboyant from its flame-like character.The revolutionary process, which marks the transition from Gothic toRenascence, finds striking expression in the group of Cabinets. Geor? 446 FUENITURE.
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Plate 253. The Cabinet. The Cabinet. 447 Hirth, whom we quoted above, describes the revival of decorationin the transition period, in the following words: In their (woodcarvers, cabinet-makers, and others) hands the prismatic bead wastransformed into the living vine, the stone leaf-work of the minsterwas metamorphosed into lifelike flowers and rich sweeping branches,wrested with astounding skill from an immense variety of materials.In contrast to the lofty and imaginative but severe creations of theGothic masons this developement of art in the sphere of ornamentseems to me like a picturesque revolution, like the song of theGerman lark in the rosy dawn of a new day of humanity. Thechimes of spring rang from the Lower Rhine to our snow - cappedgiant peaks, a loud cry for the All-mother Nature, for freedom ofheart and imagination. And then what childlike naivete, what devout,blissful hopefulness in these modest men! In truth, the more westrive in vain to imitate them, the more we ought t

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