‘A Master Cabinet-Maker is a very profitable trade; especially if he serves the Quality himself’
Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (1747)

Thomas Chippendale (1718 - 1779) was baptised on 5 June 1718 at Otley, a small market town in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, the only child of John Chippendale (1690 - 1768), joiner, and his first wife Mary (1693 - 1729), daughter of Thomas Drake, stonemason of Otley. His father re-married and had seven more children. Many of Thomas Chippendale’s relatives followed woodworking trades, like his second cousin William who made the sturdy oak chest for the village school at Burnt Yates in 1770. So young Thomas probably served a family apprenticeship and received an elementary education at Otley Grammar School. A chronology of Chippendale's life is available on this site.

As a young man Chippendale was almost certainly employed by Richard Wood, joiner and cabinet maker of York, who later ordered eight subscription copies of the Director. One of his apprentices, William Benson, reappears as foreman in Chippendale’s London workshop, and in 1771, while working at Nostell Priory, Chippendale asked his former master to supply six locks and to silver a looking glass.³ In later life he probably came to regard York, rather than Otley, as his natural base in Yorkshire, although a deed dated 28 July 1770, in which ‘Thomas Chippendale of St Martin’s Lane, London , Cabinet Maker’ assisted one of his kinsmen over the conveyancing of property in Otley, shows that he maintained links with his birthplace.

The earliest trustworthy evidence of Chippendale’s presence in London is his marriage licence recording this event at St George’s Chapel, Mayfair: ‘19 May 1748 Thomas Chippendale and Catherine Redshaw of St Martin-in-the-Fields’. Nothing is known about his wife’s background, but it seems that he missed the chance to improve his circumstances through a judicious marriage. Their eldest child Thomas was baptised at St Paul’s, Covent Garden in April 1749 and she subsequently bore another four boys and four girls. In 1749 Chippendale rented a modest house in Conduit Court, an enclave off Longacre on the fringe of a fashionable furniture making district. At mid-summer 1752 he moved to more respectable premises in Somerset Court, off the Strand, adjoining the Earl of Northumberland’s great mansion. At this time it is likely that he was making small amounts of furniture for established firms on a sub-contracted basis rather than dealing directly with clients. He may also have served the furniture and upholder’s trade as a freelance designer.

During 1753 Chippendale was busy producing drawings for his ambitious publication The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director and so needed a smart address from which to launch it and contrive an opportunity to dedicate it to the Earl of Northumberland. Matthias Darly, who engraved most of the plates and who may also have been Chippendale’s drawing master, shared the house for several months in 1753. Press notices soliciting subscriptions give the author’s address as ‘Northumberland Court’ (an alternative name). A payment in Lord Burlington’s private account book ‘13 October 1747 to Chippendale in full £6 - 16 - 0d’, raises the possibility that he was ‘one of the Persons of Distinction’ and ‘eminent Taste’ who, Chippendale claimed, encouraged him to publish a volume of designs. But it would be misleading to suppose that he normally moved in such exalted circles. His social status at this time was that of a tradesman, glimpsed in a picturesque chinoiserie invitation ticket to a convivial gathering which he designed in 1753 for a fellow cabinet maker Caesar Crouch; its stylish affinities with several rococo furniture maker’s trade cards, also engraved by Darly, suggests that Chippendale was in demand as an author of ornamental compositions.

The year 1754 proved momentous: Chippendale moved to spacious premises in the fashionable paved thoroughfare of St Martin’s Lane (later numbered 60, 61 and 62) which the firm occupied for the next sixty years; he formed a partnership with James Rannie who injected capital into the business; and he brought out the first edition of his highly influential furniture pattern book The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, copies of which, as the dual appeal of the title intended, were acquired by the nobility, gentry and many fellow tradesmen.

The property consisted of three houses opposite Old Slaughter’s Coffee House, a venue for some of the most interesting avant garde artists and designers of this period. Other furniture makers operating in St Martin’s Lane at this time included John Channon, William Hallett, William Vile and John Cobb. No 60 became Chippendale’s dwelling, No 61 the shop, and Rannie lived at No 62. A covered passageway led to a yard and extensive workshops at the back including a chair room, cabinet maker’s shops, veneering, carpet, glass and feather rooms, a large upholsterer’s shop, various timber stores, workrooms and a counting house. They named their new establishment ‘The Cabinet and Upholstery Warehouse’ and adopted a chair as their shop sign - presumably the stylish armchair featured on their trade card. Leading cabinet makers considered it undignified to advertise in this way, preferring to attract patronage through personal recommendation. The fact that only a single copy of the card survives suggests that it was used for only a short time and never served as a maker’s label. No partnership agreement with Rannie has been traced, but their formal association evidently dates from about August 1754 when a joint lease on the St Martin’s Lane property was signed. He was a wealthy Scottish merchant with shipping interests and capital to invest. Although described in his will as an ‘upholder and Cabinet maker’ it is unlikely he possessed craft skills. He and his book-keeper Thomas Haig probably looked after the accounting side of the business. The anonymous painting of an unidentified Cabinet Maker’s Office (ill. 1) suggests the interior of Chippendale’s counting house at 60 - 62 St Martin’s Lane.

The Sun Fire Insurance ledgers reveal that in March 1755 the partners’ premises, utensils and stock in trade were covered for £3,700, which was just as well because that April a fire destroyed their cabinet workshop with the loss of twenty two tool chests. They were paid £847 in compensation and organised a public appeal on behalf of their journeymen whose tools, being personal property, were uninsured. Since the fire only gutted the cabinet shop it is likely that Chippendale’s workforce numbered between 40 and 50 artisans - cabinet makers, upholsterers, carvers, gilders, chairmakers, polishers, packers etc. It is clear from the prefatory notes to plates in the Director that Chippendale possessed a sound practical knowledge of timbers and craftsmanship, but it would be absurd to imagine him, at this stage in his career, working on the bench. He was responsible for design, quality control, subcontracting, dealing with customers and, with the assistance of foremen, general workshop management. A workforce of up to 50 placed the firm in a similar footing to other leading London furniture makers for which comparable evidence survives, such as the Linnells, Paul Saunders and Ince and Mayhew. His establishment never attained the size of Seddons who in 1786 were reported to employ 400 hands.⁴ The names of his specialist carvers or marqueteurs, who must surely have been some of the most accomplished in London, are not known.

James Rannie died in January 1766. His will confirms he was a man of substance. Press notices announced the dissolution of the partnership and that ‘Trade will for the future be carried out by Mr Chippendale on his own account’. This misfortune caused severe financial strain because Rannie’s executors were intent on withdrawing his capital and insisted on holding an auction sale on the premises of ‘The entire genuine Stock in Trade of Mr Chippendale and his late Partner’ including ‘a great Variety of fine Mahogany and Tulip Wood furniture... Pattern chairs and 'Curious Cabinet Work', carpets, fine feathers etc. The advertisements usefully describe the range of furniture displayed in the warerooms. It was obviously in the best interests of the executors to avoid forcing bankruptcy. However, Chippendale’s financial difficulties are alluded to in his letter to Sir Rowland Winn, exhibited here. In December 1766 he had written to this client, with whom he and his son had continuous difficulties in obtaining payment, ‘I am in great Need at present on Account of the Death of my late partner, his effects being taken out of trade’. On other occasions he claimed ‘I could hardly keep myself out of jail’, or ‘I have not a single Guinea to pay my men with tomorrow’ and feared being driven out of his mind with money worries.

Chippendale struggled on until 1771 when the desperate financial situation resulted in Rannie’s book- keeper Thomas Haig, who had stayed with the firm, being taken into partnership, apparently borrowing £2,000 from his late master’s widow. The rescue also required financial backing from another executor Henry Ferguson who, although not directly involved in the day-to-day management, became a third partner. The business thus became Chippendale, Haig and Co. This arrangement established a measure of financial stability and credit-worthiness, although there were frequent cash flow problems largely caused by the failure of many clients to settle their accounts on time. This may well have had an impact on the quality of the furniture supplied to these clients; examples of cost cutting and uneven work can sometimes be found.

Thomas Chippendale junior, who became a first class cabinet maker and designer in his own right, played an increasingly important part in the enterprise, enabling his father to retire, perhaps on the grounds of ill health, about mid-summer 1776 when his father took a modest house in Lob’s Fields (now Derry Street), Kensington. Chippendale’s first wife having died in 1772 he remarried in August 1777 Elizabeth Davis at Fulham parish church. She was illiterate, marking her cross on documents. A daughter Elizabeth was born four months later, followed by John in 1779 and Charles posthumously in 1780. So Thomas Chippendale had twelve children altogether, only four of whom were alive in 1784. During his last illness in 1779 Chippendale moved to Hoxton where he died of consumption and was buried on 13 November at St Martins-in-the- Fields. His son paid four guineas for his Hoxton lodgings, five guineas to the physicians who attended him and £24 funeral expenses. No obituary appeared. He had lived quite simply for the probate inventory of his house contents were valued at only £28.

Prior to the publication of the Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director in 1754 no cabinet maker, regarded by Society as mere tradesmen, had shown the audacity to issue a collection of designs comparable in scale to the lavish volumes produced by professional architects. The large folio contained 161 plates illustrating ‘Elegant and Useful Designs of Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste’. It was prefaced by an explanation of the Five Orders, the Rules of Perspective, and extensive notes. The ‘Modern Taste’ is today termed rococo, a spirited curvilinear style incorporating naturalistic ornament. It is not known where Chippendale received his artistic education and how he learned the principles of rococo composition; maybe he was taught by Matthias Darly who was an engraver and a professional drawing master. Chippendale’s eloquent drawings for the Director eventually came into the possession of Lord Foley and most were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1920. ⁶ Some had been pirated beforehand and a group of six are owned by the Chippendale Society and are included in the exhibition; others are at the Victoria and Albert Museum amongst the designs of Matthias Lock, a carver by trade. It was at one time believed that Lock and his associate Henry Copland ‘ghosted’ the Director designs, but there is now ample evidence that Chippendale was himself a fluent and accomplished draughtsman.

A series of notices, from March 1753 onwards, appeared in London and provincial newspapers, inviting the public to order subscription copies of the Director for £1-14-0d bound, representing a saving of 8/- on the full price. Analysis of the 308 names in the subscription list shows that it includes 49 members of the nobility and gentry but the others were nearly all practising tradesmen, plus a scattering of professional men, academics and booksellers. A second edition with trifling corrections appeared in 1755 and a third revised and enlarged edition containing 200 plates was published in parts between 1759 and 1762. A French edition appeared at this time. Catherine the Great and Louis XV both acquired copies. The first edition had been dedicated to Hugh, Earl of Northumberland who repaid the compliment by patronising the firm. Most copies of the second edition are dedicated to HRH Prince William Henry who also ordered furniture between 1764 and 1766.⁷

Publication of the Director clearly had a stimulating effect on Chippendale’s career because all known commissions (with the exception of Lord Burlington’s) date from after its appearance. It was also highly influential in disseminating his designs throughout Britain, Europe and the Colonies. In fact until his first documented furniture was identified by Percy Macquoid in 1906 Chippendale’s illustrious reputation was based entirely on his celebrated pattern book. He also contributed a dozen or so unsigned designs to a modest anthology Genteel Household Furniture first published by the enterprising print seller Robert Sayer in 1760.

Elegantly finished drawings intended for his clients which Chippendale produced free of charge (in contrast to architects) survive at Wilton, Nostell Priory, Harewood House and Burton Constable. Until quite recently it was thought that at houses where Robert Adam and Chippendale both worked the former regularly supplied Chippendale with drawings to execute. Such arrangements certainly existed between Adam and other leading cabinet makers but Chippendale is only known to have made furniture according to Adam’s design on one occasion when in 1765, he provided an opulent suite of armchairs and sofas, in a transitional neo-Classical style for the house of Sir Lawrence Dundas in Arlington Street, London. Adam in fact displayed great confidence in Chippendale’s ability to design and make appropriate furnishings for even his finest interiors and apparently recommended him to clients, although as a matter of courtesy he would expect to be consulted about proposals. In 1774 Chippendale wrote to Sir Rowland Winn: 'I have sent a small case containing a section of the Saloon with designs of the furniture which has been settled by Mr Adams and myself & he totally approves everything therein sketched'.⁸ The number of houses at which Chippendale collaborated with the most influential architects of the day is impressive: James Paine, the Adam brothers, John Carr of York, Sir William Chambers and James Wyatt (the latter two not without difficulty).

Information about Chippendale’s business can be gleaned from the firm’s surviving bills and from two important collections of letters associated with his Nostell Priory and Mersham-le-Hatch commissions. Modern research has identified over seventy clients, their patronage being documented in invoices, payments in account books and entries in bank ledgers. In many instances the relevant furniture has been dispersed long ago. However, substantially more accredited pieces from Chippendale’s workshop have been traced - about 600 items - than any of his London rivals.⁹

He therefore fulfils the essential requirement of any major artistic figure, having left a large body of high quality work (including designs) that displays a steady development from an early, through a middle to a late style.

His versatility is demonstrated by the fact that, in addition to furniture, he was willing to design and supply wallpapers (including, for the Gallery at Harewood for example, a paper ‘of the Antique Ornament with Palms &c on a fine paper with a pink ground’), carpets, fire grates, decorative ormolu, chimney pieces, complete room schemes and on one occasion devised needlework chair covers for Lady Knatchbull to embroider. (The exhibition includes a stool and ladder back chair covered with its original embroidery worked by Lady Fleming). He is known to have visited Paris in 1768 to keep abreast of fashionable taste and the following year was apprehended attempting to import 60 French chair frames illegally. As well as equipping State Apartments with luxurious ensembles the firm regularly supplied routine articles for the servants’ rooms and domestic offices. He offered a complete house furnishing service, undertook repairs, removals, hired out furniture, compiled inventories and was even prepared to direct and furnish funerals for respected customers. Lady Heathcote’s coffin furniture has been lent by the Chippendale Society.

Obviously Chippendale bought in certain items on behalf of his clients and the extent of his subcontracting to outworkers or specialists is not fully known. Clients might well present him with their own materials with which Chippendale had to work. William Weddell of Newby Hall, for example, provided him with Gobelins tapestry to make into seat covers. Likewise Edwin Lascelles at Harewood supplied him with green silk damask for the furnishings of the State Bed and Dressing Rooms and the Chinese lacquer to make the accompanying secretaire and commode. The way in which Chippendale was able to use off-cuts of this consignment of lacquer in order to make a twin secretaire for another client, Robert Child of Osterley, is still not fully explained.

Perhaps the most expensive activity in which Chippendale acted as an upholder or house furnisher was as a supplier of mirror glass. This was exclusively French, imported into England at great cost and cut in the special workshops for his clients’ bespoke frames and girandoles. By far the most expensive items in any Chippendale bill are those which refer to mirror glass for looking glasses in piers and overmantels: this was the age in which mirrors were infinitely more prestigious than paintings with which to cover the walls of a State Apartment. All of these varied commercial activities add enormously to the interest of the firm’s work.

It needs to be stressed that the term ‘Chippendale’ is now widely used as a convenient generic label to describe any high-quality furniture inspired by his Director designs. However, even if the piece corresponds exactly to one of his published pattern this does not amount to proof of authorship, because many practising cabinetmakers acquired copies of the Director in order to copy the engravings. The partners never employed a maker’s mark, so the only unambiguous way of establishing Chippendale’s authorship is to find his original bill, usually preserved among estate papers, or equivalent documentation.

Although most of his identified clients appear to have run up substantial accounts with him, there is ample evidence that Chippendale was perfectly happy to supply relatively inexpensive ‘off the peg’ items to non-account customers. Thus Lady Irwin of Temple Newsam, although one of the wealthiest women in the country, bought a chic but plain ‘Hexagon Table of very fine yellow sattin wood on a neat pillar & Claw’ costing £4-14-6d in 1774. It was probably a whimsy since she does not appear to have shopped with the firm again until the 1790s. The table itself was probably a variation on a stock model also supplied to the Earl of Dumfries, Sir Laurence Dundas and Edwin Lascelles. A similar hexagonal table, in mahogany, can be seen in David Allan’s The Connoisseurs (ill. 2), together with some other remarkably familiar-looking ‘Chippendale’ pieces.

Indeed this painting evokes precisely those clients who preferred their furniture ‘neat’ as opposed to ‘Exceeding rich’. Either could be supplied by Chippendale equally well - the difference being not only one of price, but also of decorum - the sort of interior the furniture was intended for - and of individual taste. Both men and women of the professional classes and upwards were by now expected to take an interest in all aspects of decoration. The diaries and journals of Lady Shelburne and the Duchess of Northumberland testify to the increased power and discrimination of women in deciding which firms of upholders to patronise. Eva Garrick was probably not the only female client of Chippendale’s to give him a piece of her mind when things went wrong. Among men this trend towards increasing fastidiousness was to culminate in the obsessions of the Prince of Wales in the next generation. It is satirised at this slightly earlier date in Frederick elegantly furnishing a large house (ill. 3).

It would be misleading to claim that Chippendale towered head and shoulders above other fashionable London cabinet makers such as Vile and Cobb, Ince and Mayhew, Hallett, the Linnells or France and Bradburn. He certainly never enjoyed a monopoly of the most skilful craftsmen in the capital and their finest furniture was technically equal to Chippendale’s. His special claim for artistic fame is as a brilliantly original, innovative and influential designer who also made masterpieces of furniture. His celebrated pattern book even inspired a vigorous Chippendale Revival in Victorian days.

James Rannie’s connections must explain the partners’ early success in attracting Scottish patrons such as Lord Arniston (1757), the Duke of Atholl (1758), the Earl of Morton (c1759) and, outstandingly, the Earl of Dumfries (1759). Virtually all the furniture made by Chippendale for Dumfries House survives. It is of exceptional quality and forms easily the finest fully documented repertoire of his Director period work. A rococo girandole and an elegant armchair from Dumfries House together with a candlestand from Blair Castle represent this phase in Chippendale’s development. Interestingly Alexander Peter, a leading Edinburgh wright, simultaneously supplied Lord Dumfries with a sideboard table and set of bed cornices which exactly translate Director designs. Likewise the Duke of Atholl, having received his pair of candlestands from Chippendale, promptly had another four copied by a local man, John Thomson. The practice echoes the way in which British visitors to Paris might acquire a single item of French silver by one of the great orfevriers and have a complete set copied back home.

A smaller anthology of rococo pieces at Wilton features the magnificent ‘violin’ bookcase, regarded as one of Chippendale’s greatest masterpieces. Aske Hall also contains an important group of Director style mahogany furniture, much of it made for the London house of that most discriminating of Chippendale’s clients Sir Lawrence Dundas (ill. 4). The exhibition includes a pair of plain mahogany pedestals as well as an armchair from the celebrated suite, designed by Robert Adam and made by Chippendale, superimposing neo-Classical decorative motifs on a serpentine rococo frame. Yet more transitional furniture was supplied to Sir Robert Burdett of Foremark Hall and to Sir Rowland Winn of Nostell Priory (ill. 5). The former is represented in the exhibition by a fine newly-identified secretaire bookcase.

The furniture made for Nostell Priory, and for Sir Rowland’s London house, is impressively documented by letters, bills, estimates, memoranda, receipts and drawings which serve to illustrate how the firm programmed a major commission. Whether there was a special connection between Chippendale and his client on account of their being fellow-Yorkshiremen is not proven. The tenor of their correspondence is, on the one hand, that of an impatient and frustrated client, railing against Chippendale’s dilatoriness, often threatening to withdraw his custom with dire consequences to his reputation. Chippendale, on the other hand, seemed almost permanently desperate for payment and yet always remained obsequious. By this date he is always referred to as ‘Mr’ Chippendale - an important social nicety, implying that he was a distinctly superior tradesman.

Perhaps the most celebrated piece at Nostell is the carved mahogany library table, delivered in 1766 at a cost of £72 - 10 - 0d and described by Chippendale as ‘the best work that can be done’. It should be contrasted with the superb marquetry library table made for Harewood six years later to see the complete the change in taste. Likewise the accompanying lyre back library chair, with its somewhat over-elaborate - maybe insecure - neo-Classical ornament should be contrasted with a similar model made for Brocket about five years later displaying a far more restrained and assured sense of design. Amongst many distinguished ensembles still in situ at Nostell is the exotic suite of green and gold japanned furniture in the Chinese taste made for the State Bed and Dressing Rooms which Chippendale’s men hung with hand-painted Chinese (or ‘India’) paper. Similarly they can be contrasted with pieces delivered for the lodging rooms at Harewood.

Chinoiserie remained immensely popular, especially for bedrooms, despite the rise of neo-Classicism: frequently, as at Nostell, the two styles were combined in quaint juxtaposition. Likewise japanning (painted decoration, not necessarily imitating lacquer) became the last word in chic: David and Eva Garrick, two of the most fashion-conscious people in London, chose it for their villa at Hampton. A bookcase has been lent by the Chippendale Society, and the toilet table from the Fairhaven Collection at Anglesey Abbey, the National Trust. Simple bedroom furniture, japanned in green and cream with husk flowers, and festive bed cornices, lent from Paxton House, Berwickshire, was not necessarily cheap. Lady Shelburne was horrified at Ince and Mayhew’s prices for ‘two pretty cases - although they are only deal and to be painted white he charges £50 for’.

Chippendale’s work for Sir Edward Knatchbull at Mersham-le-Hatch in Kent, another Adam house, is amply documented in letters and bills, although comparatively little furniture has been identified. The firm often equipped both London and country houses for clients. For example Lord Melbourne employed them on his palatial residence in Piccadilly and at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire (perhaps under pressure from his wife, another Yorkshirewoman). Superb looking-glasses, window cornices, bookcases, library and dining chairs survive, together with an outstanding pair of marquetry cabinets and a majestic inlaid dressing commode, now at Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire. This latter item, so closely related to the Diana and Minerva commode at Harewood, is reputed to have cost a staggering £140, making it by far the most expensive piece of cabinet furniture produced by Chippendale.

Other important houses are Newby Hall, Yorkshire, where the sumptuous Tapestry Room contains the only seat furniture by Chippendale to retain all its original upholstery and the only extant window curtains supplied by the firm. His client there, William Weddell was, together with his other patrons Sir Laurence Dundas and William Constable, a true connoisseur and man of the Enlightenment. The latter (ill. 6) with his sister Winifred, herself a Chippendale client) commissioned the firm to furnish the Saloon at Burton Constable in 1778 at a cost of over £1,000 and it remains one of the most perfectly preserved of Chippendale’s grand neo-Classical interiors. By contrast the depleted, but still extensive collection at Paxton House, Berwickshire, exemplifies Chippendale’s ability to cater for the needs of a client, Ninian Home, who preferred japanned or relatively plain mahogany furniture, described in a letter as ‘neat but substantially good’.

Chippendale’s most valuable commission, for Edwin Lascelles at Harewood House, is discussed at length by Caroline Storey. Despite recent sales it remains the pre-eminent Chippendale country house. At no other place can the full range of his activities from his late period be studied or enjoyed in such depth. The programme, continued by his son, was not complete until 1797.

This essay concludes by returning to Chippendale’s home town of Otley, where it began. Towards the end of his life Chippendale supplied furniture to the value of £551 to Denton Hall, his only commission within the boundaries of the old parish and only five miles from Harewood. Two exquisite satinwood side tables, stylistically related to a group of marquetry pieces nearby at Edwin Lascelles’ house, were recently repatriated from America. The architect once again was John Carr of York with whom Chippendale may by this date have enjoyed a special relationship. The cabinet maker is well remembered in his birthplace where the Chippendale Society, founded in 1963, owns an important collection of furniture and documents, usually on display at Temple Newsam House, Leeds. There is an annual dinner to mark his baptism and in 1986 a bronze statue was erected in the town (ill. 7).

Footnote 1: Adapted and expanded by James Lomax from a draft prepared by the late Christopher Gilbert. References to all the material discussed in this essay can be found in Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale (1978), passim. Sources for newly identified furniture or archives only are included here. Back to Text

Footnote 3: Christopher Gilbert, ‘New Light on the Furnishing of Nostell Priory’, Furniture History, XXVI (1990), p 55 Back to Text

Footnote 4: For a vivid account of Seddon’s workshops see Christopher Gilbert and Lucy Wood, ‘Sophie von la Roche at Seddon’s’, Furniture History, XXXIII (1997) pp 30 - 34 Back to Text

Footnote 6: A previously unrecorded drawing of a candlestand with the same provenance of the two most recently acquired by the Chippendale Society’s appeared in the London art trade in January 2000 (advertisement inside front cover, Burlington Magazine,January 2000). Back to Text

Footnote 7: The Duke’s ledgers reveal payments amounting to £134-15-6d. Kindly communicated to Christopher Gilbert by Jane Roberts. Back to Text

Footnote 8: Gilbert, op cit, Furniture History, XXVI (1990), pp 59-60 Back to Text

Footnote 9: Since the publication of The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale in 1978 the list of documented Chippendale furniture has grown but slowly. Newly identified furniture supplied to known clients include pieces associated with Sir Robert Burdett (Furniture History, XXX, 1997, pp 136 - 141; Dreweatts 21 May 1986 lots 41 - 59); William Constable (Christie’s 9 July 1992); Sir Laurence Dundas; Sir James Ibbetson (The Chippendale Society: catalogue of the collections (2000));and Sir Penistone Lamb (Furniture History, XXX, 1997, pp 143 - 149 and Christie’s 9 July 1998, lot 80). Newly identified furniture originally supplied to Edwin Lascelles at Harewood House include items sold at Christie’s 25 June 1987, lots 76 - 80, 4 July 1991, lot 22, and 9 July 1992, lots 48 - 55); other newly attributable furniture is shown in this exhibition. The extraordinary discovery of an impromptu sketch for a pelmet and window treatment for Sir William Robinson’s London house (and its associated wallpaper) throws vivid light on his house-furnishing activities (Country Life, 14 November 1985, p 1501). Archive material has disclosed a few new Chippendale houses notably Stowe, Luscombe, Newby Park, and Sherborne Castle (to be published). Chippendale’s hitherto unproven association with the group of black lacquer furniture at Osterley Park is surely vindicated by the evidence of the twin Harewood-Osterley secretaires, the former sold at Christie’s 3 July 1997, lot 80 lent to the exhibition by Leeds Museums and Galleries. Ham Court, Upton-upon-Severn, also emerges as a proven Chippendale house (Christie’s 19 June 1980, lot 140). Stylistic evidence, however flawed, is enough to affirm attributions to a small number of unprovenanced pieces Eg a secretaire bookcase, Sotheby’s 4 July 1997, lot 53; a commode Christie’s 5 December 1991, lot 130; a tripod table Christie’s 7 July 1994, lot 68; a pair of console tables Christie’s 7 July 1994, lot 157 etc Back to Text

The Chippendale Society: Catalogue of the Collections (2000) (available from The Chippendale Society, c/o Temple Newsam House, Leeds LS15 OAE)

Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director (Dover Reprint 1966)

Anthony Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture (1968)

C G Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale (1978)

Pat Kirkham, ‘The London Furniture Trade’, Furniture History XXIV (1988)

Mary Mauchline, Harewood House (1974 and 1992)

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