Thomas Chippendale

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Thomas Chippendales statue in Otley
Chippendale chairs

Thomas Chippendale (christened on 5 June . Jul / 16th June  1718 greg. In Otley near Leeds in West Yorkshire , Kingdom of Great Britain ; buried on 13. November 1779 in London ) was a cabinetmaker ( cabinet and chair maker ).

Life

Thomas Chippendale was baptized as the son of the carpenter John Chippendale on June 5, 1718 (July). The date of his birth, as well as his childhood and youth, is in the dark. It is believed that he studied and worked in his father's workshop and with Richard Wood in York. In the early 1740s he moved to London and worked here as a cabinet maker. From 1747 there is evidence of an order by Lord Burlington . It is assumed that Chippendale worked mainly in other or for other workshops until then.

Chippendale married Catherine Redshaw († 1772) for the first time in 1748. From this marriage 9 children - 5 sons and 4 daughters - were born. In 1753 he moved the workshop and salesrooms from Conduit Street in Long Acre to Covent Garden . In three rented buildings at St. Martin's Lane No. 60-62 he ran the factory until his death. The quarter around St. Martin-in-the-Fields was a preferred residence for carpenters and decorators in the 18th century. For the city expansions in north-west London they were close to the building work and could cooperate with larger orders.

In 1754 Thomas Chippendale published a catalog of furniture designs under the title The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director . The designs shown here are considered contemporary English furniture fashion for the wealthier sections of English society. With these offers, he had met the taste of the aforementioned buyers and published this catalog two more times. The company not only produced furniture in the style we know today as Chippendale, but also advised its customers on interior decoration and color design. A fire that destroyed the workshop in 1755 provides information about the size of the company. In addition to the stocks, the tools of 22 carpenters were lost in the fire. Until 1766, Chippendale entered into a partnership with the wealthy Scottish merchant James Rannie . He becomes his business partner and invests in the company, which did not do particularly well during this period due to the consequences of the Seven Years' War on the European continent and the French and Indian wars in America. This led to numerous bank failures in Western and Central Europe and an acute financial crisis. The luxury goods market largely collapsed in Europe. Probably because of the shortage of money, Chippendale had to sell a great deal of its inventory for little money that year.

In 1760 he was accepted as a member of the Royal Society of Arts . He owed the choice to the influence of the "gentlemen architect" and compatriot Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby. In 1768 he traveled to Paris to expand business relationships and open up new markets. During those years, Paris was considered a leader in terms of fashion and artistic taste. For a large number of the English aristocracy , especially many Whigs , who oriented themselves to France, Paris with its high quality products continued to set the tone. On the other hand, negotiations began that were based on bilateral trade agreements and led to the opening of the French and English markets. A kind of luxury market had developed here that Chippendale hoped to open up. After Rannie's death in 1771, Chippendale chose his employee and son-in-law Thomas Haig as a new business partner.

It is believed that the design and manufacture of the furniture was largely in the hands of Thomas Chippendale. From 1776 Chippendale withdrew from the business. The eldest of the five sons, Thomas Chippendale the Younger (1749-1822), took over the business and ran it until it went bankrupt in 1804.

plant

For a long time, Thomas Chippendale's assessment overshadowed the contribution and work of many of his contemporaries, such as Matthias Lock , who was among the first to design and manufacture furniture in the Rococo style .

The work of the workshop of Thomas Chippendale originated in the reigns of George II. And George III. It includes the styles and fashions of the late, late Palladianism , Rococo , Chinoiserie and early Classicism , but also anticipates forms of the Gothic Revival .

In addition to his own designs, Chippendale also made furniture for the architects Robert Adam , such as in Brocket Hall , Hertfordshire or for Sir William Chambers in Melbourne House , Piccadilly in London .

A country chair in the Chippendale style with a carved “Gothic” tracery back

The French-inspired Rococo was late in finding its way into England. The starting point for this is Mayfair House , which was built from 1749 for Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield . Earlier publications, such as those by Abraham Swan in 1745 or by Thomas Lightoler in 1747, use the Rococo ornament , often without integrating it into the corresponding formal structures. The first works come from Matthias Lock , who published numerous publications on the Rococo style around 1740, long before Chippendale.

Significant for the uniqueness of the person Thomas Chippendale and the overrating of the scope of his work in the 19th and early 20th centuries were his publications. The valuation of the 19th century resulted in many of the qualitatively authoritative pieces of the time being associated with Chippendale. These attributions and the qualitative evaluation of Chippendale as the only carpenter of rank in England in the mid-18th century were corrected in the 1930s. A re-evaluation has resulted in far fewer pieces that can be safely attributed to his workshop.

The manufacture of furniture in England and particularly in London around 1750 was characterized by growing specialization. Both in the design process and in production, a division of labor within the company, as well as collaboration with the related trades of carvers , turners , chair makers and upholsterers , resulted in higher efficiency and productivity.

Due to the stronger division of labor, the larger series, the changed processes in procurement and sales, the demands on the commercial management of the company increased, especially with the long payment terms of the English gentry.

places

The following attribution is based on Christopher Gilbert's 1978 study of the work of Thomas Chippendale's workshop. Some of the most significant orders from Thomas Chippendale's workshop were the manufacture of furniture for:

Publications

A Design for a State Bed from the Director , 1762

Many of Chippendale's aristocratic clients lived in York . These regional contacts can also be found in the numbers for the Director's pre-orders . They point to the good relations with the aristocratic group of people from his former home even after he moved from Yorkshire to the metropolis of London.

  • 1754 1st edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director . This was created in collaboration with James Rannie, Chippendale & Rannie . The volume of the edition was 333 ordered copies.
  • 1755 2nd edition.

This example was followed by u. a. In 1759 Ince & Mayhew and published the General System of useful and Ornamental Furniture .

  • 1762 3rd revised and expanded edition. It contains the first stylistic echoes of the incipient classicism . A fourth edition with revised and expanded drafts was not completed and remained unpublished. Drawings of these are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The editions in French are often seen as evidence of the innovative, export-oriented and increasingly dominant role in the foreign trade and manufacturing of the Kingdom of Great Britain from the second half of the 18th century. In contrast, simultaneous tendencies on the continent are often seen as a sign of the dominance of French culture. Both arguments are understandable. France and in particular the market for luxury goods in Paris were important for trade and craft in the age of the beginning industrialization for all of Europe. Innovations found their way to Paris and from there their further dissemination. It seems inappropriate to view these developments as a single track.

Thomas Chippendale recognized early on the opportunities that lay in the dissemination of his designs in the form of master books. Due to the liberal economic and trade structure of England and the advanced division of labor in the metropolitan area of ​​London, he took advantage of the opportunities offered more than was possible in many parts of Europe with a traditional guild system.

Many copies show the direct influence that drafts of the Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director's editions had on other manufacturers in England as well as in North America.

revival

Due to the spread of the publications, furniture in the style of “Chippendale” was made in Dublin as well as in Philadelphia , Lisbon , Copenhagen and Hamburg . Catherine II and Louis XVI. owned the French editions of the Director . His designs became more and more popular from the middle of the 19th century and formed the starting point for talking about furniture in the “Chippendale” style. Dealers differentiated between "Chinese Chippendale", "Gothic Chippendale", or "Irish Chippendale". Most of these design variants had little in common with his original designs except for the name Chippendale.

With the shock of industrialization and the developing mass art of the 19th century, Chippendale henceforth embodied the true tradition of the English artisan. His statue was placed next to that of Inigo Jones on the facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum . A statue and plaque were also placed in his honor at the grammar school in his hometown.

Varia

  • A Chippendale dresser plays a central role in the short story The Pastor's Joy by Roald Dahl .
  • The name also found inspiration for two Disney characters - a croissant and a bureau (English: Chip 'n Dale).
  • Chippendale furniture is still considered an interesting investment, for example a padouk cabinet was sold at auction in 2008 for 2,729,250 English pounds.

literature

  • Lindsay Boynton, Nicholas Goodison: The Furniture of Thomas Chippendale at Nostell Priory - I. In: The Burlington Magazine , 1969.
  • Lindsay Boynton, Nicholas Goodison: The Furniture of Thomas Chippendale at Nostell Priory - II. In: The Burlington Magazine , 1969.
  • Lindsay Boynton: Sir Richard Worsley and the Firm of Chippendale . In: The Burlington Magazine , 1968.
  • Herbert Cescinsky: Thomas Chippendale; The Evidence of His Work . In: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs , 1916.
  • Anthony Coleridge: Chippendale at Leeds . In: The Burlington Magazine , 1968.
  • RS Clouston: Laydon House, Bucks, the Seat of Sir Edmund Verney, Bart . Part I. In: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs , 1904.
  • Ralph Edwards, Margaret Jourdain: Georgian Cabinet-Makers. Country Life Limited, London 1946 (1955).
  • Christopher Gilbert: The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale . Tabard Press, New York 1978.
  • Fiske Kimbal, Edna Donnell: Creators of the Chippendale Style . In: Metropolitan Museum Studies , 1929.
  • John Lowe: Furniture by Thomas Chippendale . Franz Schneekluth Verlag, Darmstadt [no year]
  • James Parker: Rococo and Formal Order in English Furniture . In: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin , 1957.
  • Chippendale, Thomas . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 6 : Châtelet - Constantine . London 1910, p. 237 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Joan Fawcett: Thomas Chippendale , Notes and Queries , Volume 194, 1949, pp. 405-410.

Web links

Commons : Thomas Chippendale  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Chippendale, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British furniture designer and manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH baptized June 16, 1718
PLACE OF BIRTH Otley , West Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH buried November 13, 1779
Place of death London