Queen Anne, pious, solid and dull, would certainly have been horrified to learn that her name would pass into popular history because of a shapely leg. The leg in question was not, of course, her own, but the sinuously curved cabriole support which first found its way under English chairs, tables and chests during her short reign, 1702 - 1714. In fact the Queen Anne style was anything but English in its origins, and was only the first of a series of styles that mark the "golden age" of British furniture from the opening of the 18th century to the death of King George IV in 1830.

Before Anne, even the finest English furniture was seldom more than a pale reflection of its more highly polished Continental progenitors. From Louis XIV's newly built Versailles came a passion for silvered or gilt furniture, often elaborately carved in the Baroque manner, and when Louis' francophile cousins Charles II and James II were replaced by the Dutch William and Mary, London was swept with a Low Country love of walnut and marquetry. Even the 17th century fashion for chairs with caned seats and backs had a foreign origin - caning arrived with Charles III's Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza.

England opened the 18th century with a gratifying defeat of the French (thanks largely to Marlborough's tenacity and the strongest navy in Europe) and English furniture-makers began to look for inspiration not across the Channel, but across the world to the distant and almost mystical lands of the Orient. The English East India Company, granted a Royal Charter by Elizabeth in 1799, had created a fashion for "Indian" goods of all types. Porcelain, silks and fine lacquer became the emblem of wealth and refined taste. Large lacquer screens, shipped from the Coromandel coast of India when Chinese ports were closed to the English, were especially sought after, used for protection from drafts in grand rooms, or cut up to form elaborate chests, cabinets and mirror frames. True Oriental lacquer could not be made in Europe - the necessary lac, a tree sap, hardened on a long sea journey, rendering it useless - but English craftsmen had long since mastered the art of japanning, imitating lacquer in resinous paint and gold powder. Among the glories of Queen Anne furniture are large bureau-bookcases with slant fronts and mirrored doors, in black or the rarer scarlet "japan" (see fig. 1).

The flamboyance of lacquer was only a small part of the oriental influence on the developing English (and after the union with Scotland in 1707, British) furniture style. Some elements of Eastern design were so thoroughly assimilated that it is difficult to believe that they ever spoke with a foreign accent. The concave backs of chairs, so accommodating to the human anatomy, owe their comfortable posture to Ming ancestors, while we still open the drawers on our chests with Chinese post-and-ball handles hung from bat-shaped backplates. The cabriole leg itself is Chinese, and the claw-and-ball which ends it is that of an Imperial Dragon clutching the Pearl of Wisdom. Even the prosaically named pie-crust table was descended from the poetic cloud-shaped tray.

When Anne died in 1714, she was succeeded by a distant German cousin whose main recommendation to the British public was his Protestant faith. King George I thought so little of his British crown that he never even bothered to learn English, so it is not surprising that Early Georgian style was set not at the Court, but in the country houses of the aristocracy and landed gentry who really ruled the nation. There was no sudden break with the simple lines and delicate proportions of the Queen Anne style. Instead, there was a growing trend toward increased ornamentation (shells at the knees of legs, claw-and ball instead of simple pad feet, leafwork on knees and the backs of chairs and herringbone banding on the fronts of chests) and thicker, more voluptuous lines(see fig. 2). The upper middle classes were prospering, the Empire was expanding, and even the French seemed to be behaving themselves for the time being.

One of the crucial events in the history of British furniture passed almost unnoticed. In 1709, a bitterly cold winter devastated the walnut trees throughout northern Europe. Walnut was not native to Britain, having been introduced by the Romans (its name comes from the Celtic "wealh nutt," meaning "foreign nut"). At first, the decimation of the trees posed no problem for cabinet-makers: they routinely aged their logs for five to eight years before using them anyway. By 1720, however, the shortage of walnut was becoming critical, and in that year, the French prohibited its export. British cabinet-makers found themselves without their preferred cabinet wood.

The dilemma was quickly resolved with the introduction of mahogany from the Caribbean. Mahogany had been known since Elizabethan times as first-rate wood for shipbuilding - dense, available in extremely large sections and resistant to rot and woodworm damage. These qualities proved to be equally desirable for furniture use, especially when coupled with its wonderful suitability for carving and its wide range of figures, or patterns, in the grain. Supplies of the wood were readily available from Jamaica ( which the British had owned since 1655) and the Spanish islands of Cuba and Santo Domingo.

Walnut did not go completely out of fashion after 1720. Its warm color and softer appearance were considered advantages in pieces for private apartments, such as bedrooms. But for public rooms - the library, the parlour, the hall - mahogany became the wood of first choice. Its structural strength made possible larger, more architectural bookcases, and chairs were less dependent on the use of cross-stretchers to brace their legs As the century progressed, the central splats of chair backs gradually lost their solid "fiddle" shapes, and grew elaborately pierced and interlaced in patterns not feasible with the softer walnut. Even chests responded to the more fluid lines possible with mahogany, and developed serpentine (curved) fronts flanked by carved columns or flat pilasters.

One description of early Georgian furniture, no longer much used but still wonderfully apt, is "decorated Queen Anne." The bulk of furniture produced between 1715 and 1760 falls into that category. But there existed at the same time, a more specialized, highly formal style: the Palladian. Named after the Italian late-Renaissance architect, Andrea Palladio, whose works around Venice had been particularly admired by British gentlemen on the obligatory Grand Tour, the style united the pedant's love of classicism with the snob's love of ostentation. Its adherents, chiefly drawn from the very wealthiest peers in Britain, threw up the great county houses which still dazzle us today - Houghton Hall, Holkham, Stouthead. Into these "Roman" piles their owners stuffed some of the most pompous, grandiloquent furniture ever made (see fig. 3). Although encrusted with classical motifs, their general form was drawn from the Italian Baroque. Roman lions stare from the frieze of a kneehole desk, and Roman eagles glow with gilded splendor under heavy marble slabs.

By the middle of the 18th century, a reaction set in against the increasingly old-fashioned Queen Anne types and the pretensions of the Palladians. A circle of designers, centered at Slaughter's Coffee House in London, looked back across the Channel for inspiration, and noted with approval the witty, romantic and ( to its detractors ) frivolous style of the French Rococo. The heart of the Rococo was the curved line. William Hogarth, a leader of the circle at Slaughter's, wrote an entire book about the "S Curve," the serpentine line he called "The Line of Beauty." French love of asymmetry, C- and S-scrolls, natural elements used in unnatural ways, and anything that reeked of the exotic began to influence the more advanced British furniture designers(see fig. 4). At first, so fantastic a style was limited to carver's pieces - mirrors, wall sconces, candlestands, etc. - whose function made no real structural demands. But in 1754, backed by many of the same aristocrats who had previously pledged devotion to Palladio and ancient Rome, a Yorkshire cabinet-maker newly settled in London proved that the "French Taste" could be applied to virtually any form of furniture. Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director was an instant and durable success. Its 160 engraved plates were both a trade catalogue for Chippendale's firm and a manifesto of the new style. In fact, the book gave his name to the style itself. British Rococo furniture is Chippendale furniture. There is a slight irony in the fact that Chippendale was neither the finest maker in London ( that would be William Nile, the Royal maker to King George II) not the most successful ( probably the firm of Ince and Mayhew, which lasted will into the 19th century). But it is Chippendale's name which has eclipsed all of his contemporaries.

The British added several twists of their own to the already complicated French Rococo. One was the almost literal interpretation of Chinese design elements, such as the geometric railings which became British fretwork, both open and "blind". Gothic, which in France was synonymous with barbaric, found an influential British champion in Horace Walpole, one of the most literate and well-connected connoisseurs of the day, who in 1749 began creating a "Gothick" villa at Strawberry Hill, outside London. Soon, pointed arches, quatrefoils and cusps were everywhere. Even Aesop's fables provided inspiration for British designers in the mid-18th century, with at least one mirror known to illustrate the story of the fox and the grapes. Gilt-wood, full of flashing light and shadow, was favored for mirror frames, candlestands and console tables, while mahogany ( whose strength and adaptability to elaborate carving was never more appreciated) continued to rule as king of cabinet woods (see fig. 5).

It was Walpole himself who most clearly foresaw the death of the Rococo. After a trip to Paris at the end of the Seven Years' War, he noted the coming fashion for all things á la Grecque and gleefully wrote a friend that, "No fashion is meant to last longer than a lover." British fashion had found a new favorite as early as 1760, in the person of a young Scottish architect named Robert Adam. Adam returned from his Grand Tour in 1758, loaded with drawings of classical Roman temples, villas and the curious Roman houses mistakenly called grottos. It was thought that the Romans had deliberately built these underground as a sort of folly, but in fact, the grottos had simply been buried over the course of the centuries. Their fabulous wall decorations in fresco or stucco inspired Adam to emulate the "grotesque" style of ornament, full of arabesques, scrollwork, sphinxes and putti, or cherubs. The Adam style of the 1770's and 1780's was, like Palladianism, a "high style," strictly for the wealthy. Its emphasis on linear patterns ushered in an age of painted, inlaid and low-relief ornaments, of clear geometric forms such as the oval, circle and variations on the square, and of pale woods such as golden, liquid-grained satinwood from the West Indies. Cabinet-makers such as Chippendale or the great John Cobb worked to Adam designs, or at least in the Adam manner, to create some of the finest furniture ever made. For many, such Adam innovations as the half-round commode or the oval-back chair mark the very apogee of British elegance.

Not everyone appreciated Adam's work. Walpole, always with something to say, complained of "Mr. Adam's gingerbread and snippets of embroiders," but for conservative patrons and clients there were alternatives. One, based on the French Louis XV/XVI "Transitional" style of the 1770's, retained the curves of the Rococo, but slowed them down and drew them out. Other, even more conservative pieces, retained the old early Georgian formulas and use of dark-toned mahogany, augmenting them with an assortment of classical motifs.

The "domestic Adam" tradition is epitomized by the second of the great British furniturepattern-books, George Hepplewhite's 1788 The Cabinetmaker and Upholsterer's Guide. Hepplewhite himself had died in 1786( the book was brought out by his impecunious widow), and the designs reflect the middle-marker taste of the previous two decades. Hepplewhite, in fact, was not a practicing cabinet-maker, but earned his living selling such designs to lesser London cabinet shops. They were Adam translated down. The curves of the French Transitional style are still much in evidence ( the British equivalent is often called French Hepplewhite) and there is an emphasis on practical pieces such as washstands, dressing tables and bedside cupboards meant to conceal a chamber pot. New types, such as the two-flap Pembroke table, also appeared (see fig. 6).

Pembrokes, on slender legs with casters for greater mobility, were to become an important part of furnishing schemes in the latter 18th century, used for informal dining, card games, or as an occasional writing table. Hepplewhite's name is most closely associated with chairs featuring oval or shield-shaped backs (see fig. 7), often centering a Prince of Wales feather or other similarly delicate ornament. Clearly in evidence also are a whole range of Neo-classical features such as oval or rectangular panels of highly figured wood on table tops or cabinet doors, inlaid or painted huskwork or floral swags, and ribbon-ties mirror frames. It is, above all else, a pretty style.

Thomas Sheraton was more severe. Sheraton, younger than Hepplewhite, began to publish his famous Drawing Book in 1791, only three years after the appearance of Hepplewhite's Guide. Sheraton's designs are fully rectilinear; shield and oval chair backs are replaced by combinations of rectangles or squares, and all traces of the cabriole leg are banished in favor of round or square tapering legs, either fluted ( channeled in) or reeded ( ridged out). Sheraton's designs acknowledge both the austerity of wartime - Britain battled Napoleon for almost two decades - and the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Caning, inexpensive and practical, returned to favor for chair seats, and there was a new vogue for japanned decoration - this time Neo-classical, not chinoiserie - which could be executed on cheap native woods such as beech or pine. As the population began to shift from rural areas to the urban centers of London, Birmingham and Manchester, furniture became smaller in scale to accommodate townhouses and city flats. At the same time, there was a fascination with "mechanical" furniture. At the press of a button, tables suddenly opened to reveal writing compartments, and dressing tables featured a whole range of lift-up and fold-out mirrors and candlestands. As British metalworking improved, due to a French embargo of their superior products and a wartime necessity for "hard" materials, brass inlay became popular, and even modest pieces began to feature brass and gilt-brass mounts.Until the end of the Napoleonic conflict in 1815, British cabinet-makers found themselves alternately glutted with imported, exotic timbers, including rosewood ( from Brazil), amboyna ( from the East Indies) and thuja ( from North Africa), or forced to fall back on native woods such as oak and yew(see fig. 8). A particular timber's availability depended on whether British ships were actively fighting the French, or free to resume commercial trade.

Taste in the last decade of the 18th century was dominated by one man, King George III's elder son, the Prince of Wales ( the future Regent and later King George IV), was unquestionable the most artistic British Royal since Charles I was beheaded in 1649. Only three British sovereigns had ever shown much of a taste for art. The first two, Edward II and Charles I, were put to death. The third, George IV, only suffered to have his carriage stoned by an angry mob and his debts discussed in Parliament. Clearly, a passion for art is dangerous in the Royal family.

In 1783, the Prince was given a London house of his own, and for the next three decades Carlton House became the visual symbol of advanced design. The Prince's architect, Henry Holland, rebuilt and refinished it in a combination of French Neo-classicism, chinoiserie, and even Gothic, but his most lasting contribution was in the form of a rigidly archaeological style, based on drawings he had commissioned of actual Greek and Roman furniture. The mid-18th century excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii were beginning to bear strange fruit. Chairs and even tables with X-frame supports ( in the Roman manner) began to appear (see fig. 9), sometimes of iron ( in the Roman manner). The Greeks had marble furniture, so the London congnoscenti would, too - or at least furniture carved and painted to look like marble. And when Greek vases and gravestones were noticed depicting young women in high-waisted gowns, seated on chairs with concave bar backs and sabre legs, British ladies put women in high-waisted gowns, and British chairs grew concave bat backs and sabre legs. Lest anyone miss the learned reference, they were named klismos chairs, from the Greek word for chair.

If the Prince had sponsored the style, it reached its greatest, or perhaps most absurd, expression in the work to two British designers of the early 19th century. One, Thomas Hope, was un unimaginably wealthy dilettante, and the other, George Smith, was a practicing cabinet-maker and designer. Hope's particular fancy was to design his London townhouse as a series of classical rooms, each depicting a different ancient culture. To display his Egyptian statues, funeral vases and papyrus strips, he built an Egyptian hall, filled with his idea of Egyptian furniture. That it bore almost no resemblance to the real thing was inconsequential - who would know? Or care? For his Greek vases, a room with Greek couches. And for his dining room, why not tow massive pedestals, modeled, he claimed, on a Roman pedestal he had seen at the Villa Borghese in Rome itself. An equally massive serving table seemed called for, and it could be made classical by carving winged representations of Aristotle as its legs (see fig. 10) . Hope's eccentric designs were so popular that they began to inspire poor imitations, and in 1807 he published Household Furniture and Decoration, not only illustrating his furniture, but giving measured diagrams as well. If people were going to imitate his work, he felt, they might as well get it right.

Within a year, George Smith brought out his version of this fanatically classical style, in the Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1808. There is no question that Smith was riding Hope's coattails, but he had no use for Hope's pedantry. Smith's designs made no pretense of archaeological accuracy, but are simply free assemblages of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and even Persian ornaments that were in vogue, fueled by the formation of the British Museum and its collection. Smith, for example, could skillfully combine the klismos form with lotus-flower decoration to the back, and add arms formed as Middle Eastern ceremonial vessels known as rhytons.

This unlikely combination of elements is called Regency, after the Prince. In 1810, an aged George II ( he was crowned in 1760, at the height of the Rococo) was finally declared insane. A reluctant Parliament had no choice but to declare his wayward son Regent, to rule in his father's place.

The Regency lasted politically from 1811 to the accession of George IV in his own right in 1820, but the term is applied loosely to the entire first quarter of the 19th century. It is the equivalent of the colder Empire style in France.

The Regent made one last gift to the style named after him: a sort of manic orientalism. In the first years of the new century, the Prince began to augment his seaside cottage at Brighton, on the Channel coast. For the next two decades, he indulged every artistic whim at Brighton, which gradually grew "hindoo" domes, Chinese wallpapers, bamboo and faux-bamboo furniture, and even sets of klismos chairs, as the fancy struck him. It is this almost freeform "Indian" taste, expressed in a renewed use of lacquer and gilt, which contributes so much to the charm of the Regency style.

The opening decades of the 19th century witnessed the introduction of virtually every modern wood-working machine. The replacement of the tool by the machine, essentially the triumph of the Industrial Revolution, marked the end of the great days of cabinetry. By the death of George IV in 1830, bench-made pieces, crafted by a worker rather than an assembly line, were coming to an end. The idea that machinery could generate its own valid style was not understood until well into the 20th century, and however superficially charming the Victorian era might seem in retrospect, it is hard not to mourn the closing of the golden age of British furniture.