A notable feature in the ornament of woodwork and in metal mountings of this time, is a fluted pilaster with quills or husks filling the flutings some distance from the base, or starting from both base and top and leaving an interval of the hollow fluting plain and free.  An example of this will be seen in the next woodcut of a cabinet in the Jones collection, which has also the familiar “Louis Seize” riband surmounting the two oval Sevres china plaques.  When the flutings are in oak, in rich mahogany, or painted white, these husks are gilt, and the effect is chaste and pleasing.  Variation was introduced into the gilding of frames by mixing silver with some portion of the gold so as to produce two tints, red gold and green gold; the latter would be used for wreaths and accessories, while the former, or ordinary gilding, was applied to the general surface.  The legs of tables are generally fluted, as noticed above, tapering towards the feet, and are relieved from a stilted appearance by being connected by a stretcher.

[Illustration:  Marqueterie Cabinet.  With Plaques of Sevres China (In the Jones Collection, South Kensington Museum.)]

[Illustration:  Writing Table.  Made by Riesener for Marie Antoinette.  Collection “Mobilier National.” (From a-pen and ink drawing by H. Evans.) Period:  Late Louis XV.]

There occurs in M. Williamson’s valuable contribution to the literature of our subject ("Les Meubles d’Art du Mobilier National,”) an interesting illustration of the gradual alterations which we are noticing as having taken place in the design of furniture.  This is a small writing table, some 3 ft. 6 in. long, made during the reign of Louis XV., but quite in the Marie Antoinette style, the legs tapering and fluted, the frieze having in the centre a plaque of bronze dore, the subject being a group of cupids, representing the triumph of Poetry, and on each side a scroll with a head and foliage (the only ornament characteristic of Louis Quinze style) connecting leg and frieze.  M. Williamson quotes verbatim the memorandum of which this was the subject.  It was made for the Trianon and the date is just one year after Marie Antoinette’s marriage:—­“Memoire des ouvrages faits et livres, par les ordres de Monsieur le Chevalier de Fontanieu, pour le garde meuble du Roy par Riesener, ebeniste a l’arsenal Paris,” savoir Sept. 21, 1771; and then follows a fully detailed description of the table, with its price, which was 6,000 francs, or L240.  There is a full page illustration of this table.

The maker of this piece of furniture was the same Riesener whose masterpiece is the magnificent Bureau du Roi which we have already alluded to in the Louvre.  This celebrated ebeniste continued to work for Marie Antoinette for about twenty years, until she quitted Versailles, and he probably lived quite to the end of the century, for during the Revolution we find that he served on the Special Commission appointed by the National Convention to decide which works of Art should be retained and which should be sold, out of the mass of treasure confiscated after the deposition and execution of the King.