Papier mache and lacquer work are also frequently found in small articles of furniture; and the collection of drawings by native artists attests the high skill in design and execution attained by Indian craftsmen.

Persia.

The Persians have from time immemorial been an artistic people, and their style of Art throughout successive conquests and generations has varied but little.

Major-General Murdoch Smith, R.E., the present Director of the branch of the South Kensington Museum in Edinburgh, who resided for some years in Persia, and had the assistance when there of M. Richard (a well-known French antiquarian), made a collection of objets d’art some years ago for the Science and Art Department, which is now in the Kensington Museum, but it contains comparatively little that can be actually termed furniture; and it is extremely difficult to meet with important specimens of ornamental wordwork of native workmanship.  Those in the Museum, and in other collections, are generally small ornamental articles.  The chief reason of this is, doubtless, that little timber is to be found in Persia, except in the Caspian provinces, where, as Mr. Benjamin has told us in “Persia and the Persians,” wood is abundant; and the Persian architect, taking advantage of his opportunity, has designed his houses with wooden piazzas—­not found elsewhere—­and with “beams, lintels, and eaves quaintly, sometimes elegantly, carved, and tinted with brilliant hues.”  Another feature of the decorative woodwork in this part of Persia is that produced by the large latticed windows, which are well adapted to the climate.

[Illustration:  Door of Carved Sandal Wood, from Travancore.  India Museum, South Kensington.  Period:  Probably Late XVIII.  Century.]

In the manufacture of textile fabrics—­notably, their famous carpets of Yezd and Ispahan, and their embroidered cloths in hammered and engraved metal work, and formerly in beautiful pottery and porcelain—­they have excelled:  and examples will be found in the South Kensington Museum.  It is difficult to find a representative specimen of Persian furniture except a box or a stool; and the illustration of a brass incense burner is, therefore, given to mark the method of design, which was adopted in a modified form by the Persians from their Arab conquerors.

[Illustration:  Incense Burner of Engraved Brass. (In the South Kensington Museum).]

This method of design has one or two special characteristics which are worth noticing.  One of these was the teaching of Mahomet forbidding animal representation in design—­a rule which in later work has been relaxed; another was the introduction of mathematics into Persia by the Saracens, which led to the adoption of geometrical patterns in design; and a third, the development of “Caligraphy” into a fine art, which has resulted in the introduction of a text, or motto, into so many of the Persian designs of decorative work.  The combination of these three characteristics have given us the “Arabesque” form of ornament, which, in artistic nomenclature, occurs so frequently.