The double chair, or settee, remains to be noticed. This, by a process of refinement and elimination, had no doubt been evolved from the old-time settle. It was also called a love-seat, and was constructed in such form as to allow for the pose of social gallantry, simpering, and the plying of the snuff-box and fan, inseparable from the manners of the period. These double seats were usually found in the drawing-rooms of the rich, and simple ones are not as a rule met with. Fig. 43 is a settee of the type of William and Mary; the tied stretchers beneath and the inverted bowl turnery on the legs are characteristic features. Fig. 44 is a fine late Queen Anne specimen with a marquetried back, claw-and-ball feet, and an insistent decoration of the escallop-shell. Fig. 45 is another fine settee of the same period with a full back and claw-and-ball feet. Both these specimens have beautifully shaped arms and feet, and the back feet being also slightly shaped at the base, suggest the latter part of the period.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, tapestries, as forms of wall decoration, had been replaced either by wainscoting or, more generally, by wall-papers. Needlework was a popular occupation amongst the women, who made hangings for their bedsteads and windows and covers for their chairs, stools and couches. Mary, the Queen of William III., set an example as an industrious needlewoman. It was at this time that the gay chintzes and printed cottons, of which so many admirable and inexpensive reproductions can be purchased at the present day, came into vogue. Like so many of the decorative ideas of the time, they were introduced into England by the Dutch, who in their turn borrowed them from the East. They were extremely Oriental in design, depicting trees, birds and flowers, all more or less related to nature. This was, of course, the period when everything Oriental was the fashion,[4] when Chinese porcelain and red and black lacquer were desired by many and acquired by some; and the gay Oriental chintzes contributed fittingly to the scheme of decoration, as well as affording a protection for the cherished needlework coverings of the furniture. The modern reproductions are no less indispensable in any house in which the old furniture of this period has a place. Some firms print them by hand from the old blocks, and from such firms they should be purchased. Chintzes appear to have been first produced in England by a foreign settlement in Richmond, Surrey, early in the eighteenth century. The English workmen afterwards greatly simplified the designs, and in Queen Anne's time they were largely the fashion.