Four English designers - Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton
English furniture of the second half of the eighteenth century was dominated by four ‘giants’ Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton. In a resume of this size a brief look at the work of these men should be enough to show the very great heights to which English furniture rose in the period. But any further study must include examination and appreciation of the work of other extremely fine designers and craftsmen of the time, such as Kent, Vile, Cobb, Ince, Mayhew and Linnell, not to mention the creative work of a number of gifted and imaginative architects.
Thomas Chippendale was born in Yorkshire in 1718. By 1748 he was in London in business as a cabinet-maker, and five years later he moved to a house in St Martin’s Lane, which he occupied until his death in 1779. St Martin’s Lane was an astute choice, for two of the country’s top painters lived there, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir James Thornhill, the patron of Hogarth. In 1754 Chippendale produced a book of furniture
designs called The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director.
It was not the first work to contain designs for furniture, as de Vries and Ducerceau (see pages 27 and 30) among others had produced design books, but it was the first to consist entirely of drawings of furniture by a furniture-maker, and it was an instant success. It was reprinted the next year and again in a larger edition from 1759 to 1762, and it had a decisive effect on English styles for at least a decade.
At this time English furniture-makers were dabbling with Rococo designs and also with Chinese and Gothic styles. Chippendale adopted all three and modelled them in a sharply individual manner. He adorned his
furniture with exquisite fretwork in the Chinese taste, employing it for the edges of tables, doors of cabinets, canopies of beds. He also designed Chippendale four-poster bed in the Chinese style, with pagoda top, now at Badminton House, Gloucestershire. This style of furniture was popular in the mid 18th century and sometimes executed chairs in the Gothic taste, with ecclesiastical-type splat-backs and top rails. He decorated some pieces after the French manner with Rococo motifs, combining shell ornaments with his own ideas. Principal pieces in his Rococo style were chests of drawers, sofas, china
cabinets, writing tables, dressing tables and bureau-bookcases. They were made chiefly of mahogany of the best grain and figure, which looked marvellous after waxing and polishing. The styles he devised were often
such that the ordinary country carpenter could emulate with little difficulty, even if without the exquisite refinement of the master craftsman. This is why there is so much furniture today which is described in sales and shops alike as Country Chippendale. It was copied in his time and it has also been ever since.
Chippendale himself appears to have made very little furniture, and only a few pieces can safely be ascribed to his hand, through bills made out by him to purchasers. The Chippendale armchair in the Gothic taste
owner of Nostell Priory was billed by Chippendale for a table for 72 10s. Chippendale ceased to hold the centre of the stage after the advent of Adam in the decade 1760 to 1770, but, quick to see which way the wind was blowing, he accepted commissions from Adam to make furniture in the Neoclassical style, which Adam was pioneering in architecture and furniture.
Robert Adam was born in Scotland in 1728, the son of an architect. He and his three brothers studied under their father at Edinburgh. Then in 1753 Robert went to Italy to continue his training, and he fell under the
spell of the new Italian ideas which derived directly from the recent discoveries at the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. He got to know Piranesi who by his etchings had done so much to popularize the Classical Revival. Adam grasped the importance of relating interiors to exteriors of buildings, and when he returned to Britain in 1758 he had already formulated a whole series of new ideas of architecture and schemes of interior decoration. We are not concerned here with his architectural ideas (see Architecture in the all-colour paperbacks series), but in decoration he based his modes on ancient Roman motifs, such as strings of flowers, formal shell ornaments, palm leaves and disciplined scrolls of foliage. He produced a vast number of drawings, many of which are now in the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. They included a whole range of items of furniture, which were only part of the whole interior of a house.
Adam was commissioned both to design and build new houses and decorate them, and to redecorate existing ones. Among his important works were remodelling Harewood House and Nostell Priory in Yorkshire and Syon House and Osterley Park in Middlesex. At Osterley he commissioned Linnell to make furniture, including a pair of bow-front commodes in the Neo-classical style. Occasionally, Adam furniture was painted to fit into the general colour schemes of his rooms, some of which were executed by such distinguished artists as Angelica Kauffmann and Cipriani.
Adam chairs had new forms, straight tapered turned legs, fluted, reeded or plain. Backs were often oval within a plain wood frame, the wood being mahogany or beechwood. The
influence of French ideas was here and there evident, although nothing displaced the predominance of Adam’s own individuality. One of the finest emulators of his ideas was George Hepplewhite.
Hepplewhite is something of a mystery. His beginnings are unknown and his date of birth unrecorded. He learned the trade of cabinet-making in Lancashire and set up in business in London. He was active from about 1775 to his death in 1786. Two years after his death his widow published a book of his drawings of furniture styles called The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, and it was this which made him famous. It was the first book of its kind since Chippendale’s Director. It had nearly 300 illustrations, a great many of which reveal the influence of Adam. Much of the furniture is designed to be made of mahogany, with satinwood inlay, or marquetry in the French manner.
Many of Hepplewhite’s designs were not unlike those of Chippendale’s later years. These were less classical than Adam styles, and curves abounded, especially in chests of drawers’ fronts and feet, cabinets, and chair
backs. It is for chair backs in fact that Hepplewhite is best known, although
Tnis bow-fronted satinwood commode, one of a pair made in the Adam manner by Linnell in about 1770, is at Osterley Park, Middlesex
Two designs for chairs with shield-backs, from The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, published by Hepplewhite’s widow in 1788
Armchair designed in the Adam style for the drawing room at Saltram House, Devonshire, in about 1770. The ornament beneath the front seat rail is an unusual form of English decoration
he might well have wished otherwise, for his solid piece are very beautiful indeed. Many different chair backs figure in the book, the most popular being the shield-back with < variety of splats inside. One favourite
inside pattern rang( incorporated Prince of Wales ostrich feathers. The chair: have square or turned legs, the former sometimes with spade feet.
The variety of Hepplewhite pieces was extensive: ward. robes, with or without oval door panels of satinwood, with or without three or four drawers underneath; chests of drawers sideboards in many shapes and sizes,
bow-fronted, straight or serpentine; sofas with upholstered backs and sides, of with backs formed by three or four splat-backs joined in a row; card tables with fine inlay or marquetry; Pembroke tables, with rectilinear flaps with rounded ends or serpentine edged flaps, inlaid or banded in satinwood. Not one piece of furniture, however, exists that can be ascribed definitely tc Hepplewhite as the maker, and in his own time he enjoyed no fame. And yet, if comparisons are permissible, Hepplewhite furniture is finer and more graceful than Chippendale.
The last of the giants was Thomas Sheraton, a man of violent opinions and with little tolerance of other mortals, who lost his reason in the last years of his life. He was born at Stockton-on-Tees in 1751. He studied as a draughtsman-designer and journeyman cabinet-maker. For a while he made a precarious living, supplying designs to other cabinet-makers. He does not appear to have had either shop or workshop in London, nor is there any furniture that can be attributed to him.
Between 1791 and 1794 Sheraton published a book of furniture designs, in sections. It was full of advice and also of criticism. He considered that Chippendale styles were antiquated and that Hepplewhite styles had
‘caught the decline.’ There is no doubt, however, about the very high quality of his own designs, which were in many respects more original. This is abundantly evident from the many pieces of furniture that were made
according to his designs in his time and afterwards. Sheraton preferred delicate furniture, which was light in colour, including painted pieces, and he specified that many items were best made in satinwood or other light tropical woods. His designs are straighter than Hepplewhite’s
and so closer to Adam. They had a strong influence on furniture at the end of the century, not only in England but also abroad.
Sheraton designed a number of intricate pieces, some of them for women, such as small graceful cylinder-top desks, dressing tables, work tables and games tables. The mahogany used was often brought into relief by light inlay or banding in satinwood. In particular, his chairs were favoured in most large houses. The backs were straight rather than curved, square rather than oval, and often in-filled with classical motifs. A series of six designs illustrates this theme.
One piece of furniture with which Sheraton is associated, but which he did not invent, was the Carlton House table. It is an unusual and very fine article, especially if made in satinwood.
Sheraton spent the last years of his life writing about furniture, not overlooking opportunities of criticizing both predecessors and contemporaries alike, with sustained impatience. The increasing instability of mind which in the end rendered him insane is reflected in his last works. Despite his very great skill and originality and his high reputation he died impoverished in 1806. And with him died the last major individual influence in English furniture history.
Serpentine-fronted Hepplewhite style sideboard of the late 18th century