The Gentleman and Cabinetmakers Director

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

 1754,Director, NewBook. The'Vergal'Angel, .'' The'Preface' of all ' The Director's',                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       1762

The Gentleman & Cabinet Makers Director

 

 The  New Book , CELEBRATING THOMAS CHIPPENDALE...250 YEARS OF INFLUENCE, BY: RENE BILODEAU AND ANSELM FRASER,can be ordered, by, E/mailing :  mill_works@bellsouth.net OR: josephhemingway@btconnect.com. Thank You. 

Thomas Chippendale, the only son of the local Joyner, John Chippendale, from Otley, West Yorkshire, Was born in 1718. while a child lived with his Mother & Father, Note: his mother,Mary Chippendale,(ne:Davis) died at the age of 29, So his father John, soon remarried, to a lady with 8 young children, This went against the quite life Thomas was used to, So his uncle William Chippendale, (The local Builder) offered young Chippendale a room at his house, in failsworth, just outside Otley. This proved a great benefit to young Thomas, for Architects and Contractors would call quite often to disuse jobs of work. And Thomas was not backward at getting forward. luckily this is how he landed his first job, at Nostel Priory, as a Woodcutter, this led to a more  prominent position as a joiner, while there he met York Cabinetmaker, Richard Wood, who offered Thomas his second Job. While in York Thomas would learn Designing. Its while working in York, Thomas hears of Mathias Darley in London. So to get forward again, he up stakes down to London, He was married in 1748 at: St George's Chapel, 19 May, Mayfair, London. To: Catherine Redshaw, There first dwelling  was at  Conduit Court, a paved passageway  Between 17-18 on the south side of Long Acre.

 As family life developed Note:he  had (11 children, 8 with: Catherine Redshaw, and 3 with: Elizabeth Davis who he married: 5, August  1777(a local spinster) so Thomas found himself moving to a larger house in: Somerset Court of the Strand, passing his former home in Conduit Court to his: MENTOR and rococo: TEACHER and dare I claim! His best friend?(At that Time?) Matthias Darly; The New Guy in Fashion? who called himself? 'Professor of Ornaments to the Academy of Great Britain, this was to upset? His MENTOR, Hobart Gravelot, a Frenchman,  who lead the Artistic Group at: St Martins Academy.  Darly: thomas chippendale Friend, in every meaning of the word for :Thomas commissioned 98 of the total 160 signed copper engraved plates in his new design book to: Matthias Darly, that confirm's without doubt.

Thomas Chippendale moved to 60, 61, 62 St. Martin´s Lane in 1754, where he had his workshop in the yard behind.

Also in 1754 Chippendale published his masterful collection, "Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director", a compilation of fashionable English furniture design. This work is Chippendale's enduring legacy, and shows his gift in adapting existing design styles to the fashion of the mid 18th century. So pervasive was the influence of the book that the name of Chippendale is often indiscriminately applied to mid-18th century furniture as a whole.

 

Note?There were many serious competitors in the 1750s to Chippendale, and we might start here with William Hallett, and his later partners William Vile and John Cobb. None of them  subscribed to the Director, so as to avoid,they had copied (as many of lesser status did) its attractive designs. They had sufficient ability  to survive by their own merits. senior partner, William Hallett (1707-81) had been successful with his accomplished with mahogany furniture, and by an advantageous marriage to an heiress had no need, . William Vile trained under Hallett, and in 1751, together with a Norfolk-born upholsterer, John Cobb, he set up in partnership near to Chippendale in St. Martin's Lane. Hallett acted as their financial backer and continued to support them for the rest of their lives. He outlived Vile, who died in 1767,and Cobb, died in 1778. Examples of oval beads on furniture attributed to Vile in the early 1750s show the hazards of crediting authorship without documentation. The mahogany table press made by Benjamin Goodison for the Earl of Leicester at Holkham in 1751 also has applied ovals on each side. There are indications that the freelance carver Sefferin Alken supplied them to several makers, including Vile. But the latter does seem to have made some furniture.

There were other able contenders for a patron's purse and interest-in particular, William and John Linnell, William Inca and John Mayhew, the carver Thomas Johnson (at least for his designs) and the French e'e'ninist resident in London, Pierre Langlois. We have noted that in the 1750s the Linnells secured one of their most important commissions, to provide the 4th Duke of Beaufort with a japanned bed, eight armchairs, two pairs of standing shelves and a commode en suite for the Chinese bedroom at Badminton House, Gloucestershire.

When lnce and Mayhew had established the outline of a business, they decided, in 1759, to issue designs 'in weekly numbers'. They imitated Chippendale's Director both in the intended number of plates (160) and in the use of Matthew Darly as engraver. Unfortunately they underestimated the amount of work required, and they had to compete with the build-up by Chippendale to his third edition; the venture foundered in the autumn of 1760 after the appearance of Part 21. The astute Robert Sayer, one of the most successful eighteenth- century print-sellers, not averse to plagiarism when it suited him, then issued about 90 of the engravings in a large folio titled Universal System of Household Furniture.

It was dedicated to George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, for whom the firm were later to work at Blenheim Palace. Rococo with Gothic and Chinese overtones, formed the main style of the designs. Some were unashamedly copied from the 1754 edition of the Director, but explanatory notes were printed in both English and French.

As one of the most accomplished carvers generation, if the suites of engravings of the late of his 1750s

bearing his name are any guide Thomas Johnson (1714-c 1778) was teaching carving, drawing and modelling. He had already published several suites of engravings in a flamboyant rococo style in the 1750s, and his name is associated with a small range of highly mannered furniture. Not least in this connection is a set of four candlesticks, c 1758, which correspond closely to a 1756 design in his One Hundred and Flfty New designs (which was freely adapted by Chippendale in the 1762 edition of the

Director, Plate CX1V). Two are now at the Philadelphia

Museums one at the Victoria and Albert Museum and

one at Temple Newsam House, Leeds. They have lobed tops supported on an irregular shaft of clustered columns, entwined by a pair of dolphins mounted on an intermediate triangular base of piled rockwork. Made

for George, 1st Lord Lyttelton, of Hagley Hall, Worcestershire,

they are in the vanguard of all rococo furniture of the 1750s.

to his real abilities, Many of Johnson's designs, unlike those were, however, marred by an excess of blurring the structural outlines. Circular and oval mirrors were also given in every pattern-book, with carved squirrels perched on the crestings and long-beaked birds, rush fronds, bulrushes central heads of Apollo and floral sprays. Among the most attractive mirrors are the overmantel examples, in which a rectangle would be surrounded by a froth of exuberant carving, with paintings often incorporated in an upper or lower stage, and brackets provided to display oriental porcelain. A lively imagination was a first requirement for a carver, and in those . examples which incorporated depictions of architecture and ruins Chippendale urged that the ornament 'must be carved very bold, like that of Mattius Lock,

Ornament ?  which shows chippendale worked with Lock around 1740.

The French e'be'niste Pierre Langlois, born in Paris about 1738,  settled in London by the late 1750s and is known only by furniture completed within a very

short period of time. His trade-card recorded 'all sorts of fine Cabinets and Commodes made and inlaid in the Politest manner with Brass and Tortoiseshell . . .' His first known commission was for the 4th Duke of Bedford in 1759, and suggests that by that year his reputation was established in London.

Commodes were Pierre Langlois's speciality. He created them in bold serpentine form in the early 1760s, with doors or drawers, and decorated with coloured marquetry of flowers and musical instruments set against light-coloured herringbone-pattern backgrounds.

The tops, inlaid with brass or marquetry, were set on deal carcases. The inexpensive deal was used in chamfered panels at the back, and painted black to hide its cheapness. The corner ormolu mounts, wreathing down the curved legs and terminating in a scroll foot and volute, were presumably imported from France- some examples have a crown 'C' mark, showing that tax has been paid-or were cast from French examples.

It was at this stage of his career, the early 1760s when he was turning forty years old, that Chippendale demonstrated the extent of his mature abilities and business acumen. The rising star in the architectural firmament was Robert Adam (1728-92), fresh back in 1758 from four years' training in Italy and bent on introducing English patrons to a refined form of the antique-classicism adapted in a linear and elegant way to a new style of decoration. Any furniture-maker who wanted to be in on the profitable vogue had to change his whole output from rococo, Gothic and Chinese, intermeshed as they were, to precise nee-classical shapes. This subject was addressed by Chippendale in the and edition of the Director (1762). The tide of opinion had been turning slowly throughout the 1750s, lacking focus and impetus, but accepting the archaeological designs found in the publications of Robert Wood and James Dawkins, Ruins of palmyra (1753) and the Ruins of Balbec (1757), and in Piranesi's etchings of the remains of ancient civilizations. James Stuart, William Chambers and Robert Adam had all returned from studying in Italy and embarked on neo-classical projects. How- ever, it has been suggested that, important as these books and events were, the percipient Chippendale had started to design furniture which revealed neoclassical precepts 'at least three years before Robert Adam's first essay in this style'. He 'experimented with fluted term legs, combined with rails treated as a Doric frieze; he used caryatid supports united to a Doric entablature and employed classical demi-figures on the open lower stage of a cabinet and stands (Christopher Gilbert, The Life and work of Thomas Chippendale, 1978.)

Elegant ovals were made to serve for looking glass shapers giranholes

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Shown below in full is the preface from "The Director":

PREFACE

Of all the arts which are either improved or ornamented by architecture, that of cabinet making is not only the most useful and ornamental, but capable of receiving as great assistance from it as any whatever. I have therefore prefixed to the following designs a short explanation of the five orders, with out an acquaintance with this science and some knowledge of the rules of perspective, the cabinetmaker cannot make the designs of his work intelligible, nor show, in a little compass, the whole conduct and effect of the piece. These, therefore, ought to be carefully studied by every one who would excel in this branch since they are the very soul and basis of his art.

The title page is already called the following work, THE GENTLEMAN AND CABINET MAKER'S DIRECTOR, as being calculated to assist the one in the choice, and the other in the execution of the designs, which are so contrived, that if no one drawing should singly answer the gentleman's taste, there will yet be found a variety of hints, sufficient to construct a new one.

I have been encouraged to begin and carry on this work not only by persons of distinction, but of eminent taste for performances of this sort, who have, upon many occasions, signified some surprise and regret, that an art capable of so much perfection and refinement, should be executed with so little propriety and elegance. How far the following sheets may remove a complaint, which I am afraid, is not all together groundless, the judicious reader will determine: I hope, however, the novelty, as well as the usefulness of the performance, will make some atonements for its faults and imperfections. I am sensible, that there are too many to be found in it; for I frankly confess, that in executing many of the drawings, my pencil has but faintly copied out those images that my fancy suggested; and had they not been published till I could have pronounced them perfect, perhaps they had never seen the light. Nevertheless, I was not upon that account afraid to let them go abroad, for I have been told, that greatest masters of every art have laboured under the same difficulty.

I am not afraid of the fate an author usually meets with on his first appearance from a set of critics who are never wanting to show their wit and malice on the performance of others: I shall repay their censures with contempt. Let them unmolested deal out their pointless abuse, and convince the world they have neither good nature to commend, judgment to correct, nor skill to execute what they find fault with.

The correction of the judicious and impartial I shall always receive with diffidence in my own abilities, and respect to theirs. But though the following designs were more perfect than my fondness for my own offspring could ever suppose them, I should yet be far from expecting the united approbation of all those whose sentiments have an undoubted claim to be regarded; for a thousand accidental circumstances may concur in dividing the opinions of the most improved judges, and the unprejudiced will find it difficult to disengage himself from a partial affection to some particular beauties, of which the general course of his studies, or the peculiar cast of his temper may have rendered him most sensible. The mind, when pronouncing judgment upon any work of taste and genius, is apt to decide of its merit according as those circumstances, which she most admires, either prevails, or are deficient.

Upon the whole, I have here given no design but what may be executed with advantage by the hands of a skilful workman, though some of the procession have been diligent enough to represent them {especially those after the gothic and Chinese manner} as so many specious drawings, impossible to be worked off by any mechanic whatsoever. I will not scruple to attribute this to malice, ignorance, and inability; and I am confident I can convince all noblemen, gentlemen, or others, who will honour me with their commands, that every design in this book can be improved, both as to beauty and enrichment, in the execution of it, by

                                                     THEIR MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT.

 

    ST, MARTIN'S LANE, FEB,27, 1762.

 

                                                                                                                              THOMAS CHIPPENDALE               

 

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