Madame de Maintenon’s tables included two tables of violet wood each 2 feet, 8 inches long, by 2 feet wide. Their covers were black velvet trimmed with gold braid. She also had a little table of cherry, 2 feet, 3 inches long, and 17½ inches wide, with a drawer and compartments. It was inlaid with ebony in a design of lozenges and foliage and stood on four term-shaped pillars. The Duke of Orleans had a walnut table inlaid with ebony. It stood on four twisted legs and contained a drawer. The dimensions were 2 feet, 11 inches long, by 23 inches wide.
The console is somewhat squarer than that of the former period, and stands frequently with its back against a pier glass. The slab is of marble and sometimes of rich mosaic. The hind’s feet here give place to the termed legs, which are joined by straining-rails. Some of them have eight feet, that is to say, four double feet.
Another form of the console is shown on Plate XVI., No. 1, the leg of which appears also on Plate XVI. as No. 4. This is decorated with the ram’s head, heavy swags of flowers, the cartouche with the double L and the woman’s head. The curved scroll under the slab proclaims the advent of the new style.
Cabinets, desks and _armoires_ were sumptuous. A typical marquetry desk, 3 feet, 10 inches long, and 2 feet, 4 inches wide, inlaid with many coloured woods on a background of ebony, contained seven drawers and a door on which a _fleur-de-lis_ was represented. The drawers were furnished with gilt bronze key-plates. On the top of the desk, the design was a vase of flowers, foliage, birds and butterflies, all surrounded by a border of marquetry between two bands of violet wood and threads of white. Each desk stood on eight termed pillars with capitals and feet of gilt wood.
A marquetry cabinet inlaid with bright flowers on ebony and ornamented with bands of violet-wood and white was composed of two sections, each having three doors with gilt copper locks.
The Duchess of Orleans owned a cabinet of marquetry in two parts, containing three wings and three drawers of marquetry of copper and pewter on ebony, enriched with columns, pilasters, squares, bands and pyramids of lapis; in the centre of each of the three wings were masques of men and women in copper-gilt carrying on their heads baskets of flowers and fruits, also copper-gilt. The feet were four consoles; on the two central ones were two children of gilded wood, and on the straining-rail a little child holding a blue shield in a cartouche of gilded wood. The dimensions of the whole were 5 feet, 4 inches long, 18 inches deep, and 4 feet, 3 inches high.