For the Periods before 1700

* Henry Shaw, Specimens of Ancient Furniture, 1836. Has fine steel-engraved plates and an admirable introduction by Sir S. Meyrick, but contains nothing later than 1700. Price perhaps £3. Out of print.

Fred Roe, Ancient Coffers and Cupboards. An exhaustive treatise upon early church chests, ar-moires, etc., beautifully illustrated with photographs and drawings by the author. Contains nothing later than the end of the fifteenth century. Published by Methuen and Co., 1903. Price £3, 3s.

*J. Hungerford Pollen, Catalogue of Furniture and Woodwork in the South Kensington Museum. Treats of all countries, and would be invaluable if it had been kept up to date. Published 1874, 21s.

* The introduction is reprinted as one of the South Kensington Handbooks on 'Furniture.' A few woodcuts in the cheaper form, to which good full-page etchings are added in the large-paper edition. Cheap paper edition, Is.

* By the same, Catalogue of the Special Loan Exhibition of English Furniture at Bethnal Green, 1896. Is to be had at the bookstall of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Is. 6d.

* F. Litchfield, History of Furniture. Covers the entire ground, and necessarily dismisses English furniture in a few chapters. Contains useful information and numerous illustrations.

Parker's Glossary of Gothic Architecture, three vols., gives an excellent article upon early church chests, and is invaluable for all casual architectural reference in the Gothic periods. About £3.

Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire du Mobilier, three vols., profusely illustrated, and useful for comparative study in the Gothic periods. A somewhat expensive work.

* E. de Champeaux, Le Meuble, two volumes in a cheap French series on the various arts ('Biblio-theque del'enseignement des Beaux-Arts,'Quantin), deals with the whole history of French furniture, has numerous though rather small illustrations, and is extremely useful for comparative study.

*W. Bliss Sanders, Half-timbered Houses and Carved Oakwork, 1883. A thin folio, has a useful introduction and good drawings of English furniture not later than 1700. Price about 30s.

*J. W. Hurrell, Measured Drawings of Old English Oak Furniture. A very useful collection of measured plans and elevations, with full details of old oak furniture of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mostly to be found in Lancashire and Staffordshire. A recently published work. Batsford, £2, 2S.

* W. Small, a similar work on Scottish Woodwork of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Quaritch, 1878, with many details full size, is of interest. A thin folio, out of print; price about £1, 15s. for a second edition dated 1898.

E. Chancellor, a large quarto of outline drawings of furniture, chiefly from specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This contains a good many chairs, and supplements Mr. Hurrell's book, which chiefly deals with tables, cabinets, and chests. Batsford, £I, 5s.

Richardson's Studies from Old English Mansions contains many lithographic reproductions of old oak furniture. An expensively produced work, out of print.

For the Eighteenth Century Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, three editions, 1754, 1759, 1762. This is the only book of designs published by Chippendale, and the sole documentary evidence as to his style. A fine folio, with many copperplate engravings in line. Rare, price about £12.

Robert Manwaring, The Cabinet and Chair Makers Real Friend and Companion, thin octavo, 1765. By the same, The Chair-Maker's Guide, octavo.

*Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste, .. by a Society of Upholsterers,Cabinetmakers, etc' In four parts, each entitled ' Upwards of One Hundred New and Genteel Designs, being all the most Approved Patterns of Household Furniture.' Of this work the first twenty-eight plates reproduce the plates of chairs in Manwaring's Chair-Maker's Guide. On the whole the designs resemble Chippendale's. These three works with which Manwaring had to do are much less expensive productions than Chippendale's folio. Rare.

Ince and Mayhew, The Universal System of Household Furniture, undated. A fine folio addressed to a French and English public. Designs of furniture in the style of Chippendale. Rare.

Thomas Shearer, Cabinetmaker's London Book of Prices, 1788. Plates by Shearer and Heppel-white.

A. Heppelwhite, The Cabinetmaker and Upholsterers Guide or Repository of Designs for every Article of Household Furniture. A fine quarto, three editions, 1788, 1789, 1794. All rare, costing £8 to £12.

Thomas Sheraton, Designs for Furniture, undated. 84 large folio plates. The Cabinetmaker and Upholsterer' s Drawing-Book, 1791, with Accompaniment and Appendix within the next two years. This book, a quarto with 111 plates, contains Sheraton's best work. Second edition, 1793-6, 119 plates; third, 1802, 122 plates. All expensive, from £ 10 to £12.

*A reprint of the third edition, undated, has been published by Mr. B. T. Batsford.

The Cabinet Dictionary: an Explanation of all Terms used in the Cabinet, Chair, and Upholstery Branches, one volume in fifteen parts, 1803.

The Cabinetmaker and General Artists Encyclopedia, a folio to be completed in 125 parts, but only 30 were published, 1804. This contains much general information, but shows Sheraton at his worst as a furniture designer. Very crude coloured plates.

*Many designs of Chippendale, Heppelwhite, and Sheraton have been well reproduced in a volume by J. Munro Bell, without any letterpress, 1900. About £2.

J. Aldam Heaton, in an expensive folio publication, gives reproductions of 'Furniture and Decoration' of the eighteenth century in general. He includes Chippendale, Heppelwhite, Adam, and Sheraton, and has made a good selection from their designs. His introductory remarks are useful.

* T. A. Strange has published at 12s. 6d. a volume replete with many hundreds of designs borrowed from all sources of 'English Furniture and Woodwork during the Eighteenth Century.' This book, if it had been properly edited, would be an invaluable encyclopaedia of furniture, though the drawings are often on a very small scale. As it is, the number of its plates renders it very useful. The same author has published a companion book on French furniture.

* K. Warren Clouston, in The Chippendale Period in English Furniture, 2. quarto volume with many excellent illustrations from line drawings published by Messrs. Debenham and Freebody, treats the whole period of the eighteenth century. A most useful work.

* Francis Clary Morse, Furniture of the Olden Time. Treats of American furniture of the eighteenth century. A useful, well-arranged handbook, profusely illustrated from photographs. Mac-millan, 1903, 12s. 6d.

Miss Singleton, Furniture of our Forefathers. Similar in object to the foregoing, but in two large octavo volumes. Illustrated with photographs and line drawings of American furniture of the eighteenth century. Gives much information about prices from old inventories. Batsford, 1901; £3,15s.

An asterisk is attached to those books which are at once most useful and most within the reach of the student. The Victoria and Albert Museum special catalogue of books referring to furniture will be found of great utility. Hitherto no book has been published to cover the whole field of English furniture at any length, but Mr. Percy Macquoid's A History of English Furniture, now being published, bids fair to do so for all except the earliest period, with which Mr. Fred Roe has dealt. It is to be completed in twenty parts, 7s. 6d. each, of which five already constitute the first volume, entitled The Age of Oak. The illustrations are very numerous and good. Lawrence and Bullen.

A few small and cheap recently published works are Eighteenth Century Furniture, by Miss Constance Simon. Lawrence and Bullen. 25s.

Chats on Old Furniture, by Arthur Hayden. T. Fisher Unwin.

Various articles upon the English Furniture-Makers of the eighteenth century which have appeared or are appearing in the Connoisseur Magazine and the Burlington Magazine, by R. Scott Clouston.