Chats on Old Furniture Part 16

1765. Manwaring's designs published.

1770. Ince and Mayhew's designs published.

1788. Heppelwhite's designs published.

In the popular conception of the furniture of the three Georges the honours are divided between Chippendale and Sheraton. Up till recently all that was not Chippendale was Sheraton, and all that was not Sheraton must be Chippendale. The one is represented by the straight-legged mahogany chairs or cabriole legs with claw-and-ball feet and the backs elaborately carved; the other with finely tapered legs, built on elegant lines, and of satinwood, having marquetry decoration or painted panels.

This is the rough generalisation that obtained in the earlier days of the craze for collecting eighteenth-century furniture. Heppelwhite and Adam (more often than not alluded to as Adams), are now added to the list, and auction catalogues attempt to differentiate accordingly. But these four names do not represent a quarter of the well-known makers who were producing good furniture in the days between the South Sea Bubble in 1720 and the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

In this chapter it will be impossible to give more than a pa.s.sing allusion to the less-known makers of the eighteenth century, but to those who wish to pursue the matter in more detailed manner the Bibliography annexed (p. 19) gives ample material for a closer study of the period.

The four brothers Adam, sons of a well-known Scottish architect, were exponents of the cla.s.sic style. Robert Adam was the architect of the fine houses in the Adelphi, and he designed the screen and gateway at the entrance to the Admiralty in 1758. James is credited with the designing of interior decorations and furniture. Carriages, sedan-chairs, and even plate were amongst the artistic objects to which these brothers gave their stamp. The cla.s.sical capitals, mouldings and niches, the sh.e.l.l flutings and the light garlands in the Adam style, are welcome sights in many otherwise dreary streets in London. Robert, the eldest brother, lived from 1728 to 1792, and during that time exercised a great influence on English art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHERATON ARMCHAIR; MAHOGANY, ABOUT 1780.

ADAM ARMCHAIR; MAHOGANY, ABOUT 1790.

ARMCHAIR OF WALNUT, SHIELD-BACK CARVED WITH THREE OSTRICH FEATHERS.

IN HEPPELWHITE STYLE. LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAIR OF WALNUT, SHIELD-BACK; IN THE STYLE OF HEPPELWHITE.

LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

(_Victoria and Albert Museum._)]

In 1790, a set of designs of English furniture were published by A.

Heppelwhite. In these chairs with pierced backs, bookcases with fancifully framed gla.s.s doors, and mahogany bureaux, the influence of Chippendale is evident, but the robustness of the master and the individuality of his style become transformed into a lighter and more elegant fashion, to which French _finesse_ and the Adam spirit have contributed their influence.

In the ill.u.s.tration (p. 243) various types of chairs of the period are given. A chair termed the "ladder-back" was in use in France at the same time. In Chardin's celebrated picture of "_Le jeu de l'oye_," showing the interior of a parlour of the middle eighteenth century, a chair of this type is shown.

The Heppelwhite settee ill.u.s.trated as the headpiece to this chapter shows the delicate fluting in the woodwork, and the elaborated turned legs which were beginning to be fashionable at the close of the eighteenth century. The two chairs by Heppelwhite & Co., ill.u.s.trated (p.

243), are typical examples of the elegance of the style which has an individuality of its own--a fact that collectors are beginning to recognise.

The shield-back chair with wheat-ear and openwork decoration, and legs in which the lathe has been freely used, are characteristic types. The elegance of the legs in Heppelwhite chairs is especially noticeable. The designers departed from Chippendale with results exquisitely symmetrical, and of most graceful ornamentation.

Hogarth, in his biting satires on the absurdities of Kent, the architect, painter, sculptor, and ornamental gardener, whose claims to be any one of the four rest on slender foundations, did not prevent fashionable ladies consulting him for designs for furniture, picture frames, chairs, tables, for cradles, for silver plate, and even for the construction of a barge. It is recorded by Walpole that two great ladies who implored him to design birthday gowns for them were decked out in incongruous devices: "the one he dressed in a petticoat decorated in columns of the five orders, and the other like a bronze, in a copper-coloured satin, with ornaments of gold."

Heppelwhite learned the lesson of Hogarth, that "the line of beauty is a curve," and straight lines were studiously avoided in his designs. Of the varieties of chairs that he made, many have the Prince of Wales's feathers either carved upon them in the centre of the open-work back or j.a.panned upon the splat, a method of decoration largely employed in France, which has not always stood the test of time, for when examples are found they often want restoration. Of satin-wood, with paintings upon the panels, Heppelwhite produced some good examples, and when he attempted greater elaboration his style in pieces of involved design and intricacy of detail became less original, and came into contact with Sheraton. His painted furniture commands high prices, and the name of Heppelwhite will stand as high as Chippendale or Sheraton for graceful interpretations of the spirit which invested the late eighteenth century.

Before dealing with Sheraton in detail, the names of some lesser known makers contemporary with him may be mentioned. Matthias Lock, together with a cabinetmaker named Copeland, published in 1752 designs of furniture which derived their inspiration from the brothers Adam, which cla.s.sic feeling later, in conjunction with the Egyptian and Pompeian spirit, dominated the style of the First Empire. Josiah Wedgewood, with his Etruscan vases, and Flaxman, his designer, filled with the new cla.s.sic spirit, are examples in the world of pottery of the influences which were transmitted through the French Revolution to all forms of art when men cast about in every direction to find new ideas for design.

Ince and Mayhew, two other furniture designers, published a book in 1770, and Johnson outdid Chippendale's florid styles in a series of designs he brought out, which, with their twisted abortions, look almost like a parody of Thomas Chippendale's worst features. There is a "Chairmaker's Guide," by Manwaring and others in 1766, which contains designs mainly adapted from all that was being produced at the time. It is not easy to tell the difference between chairs made by Manwaring and those made by Chippendale, as he certainly stands next to the great master in producing types which have outlived ephemeral tastes, and taken their stand as fine artistic creations.

Among other names are those of Shearer, Darly, and Gillow, all of whom were notable designers and makers of furniture in the period immediately preceding the nineteenth century.

Thomas Sheraton, contemporary with William Blake the dreamer, shares with him the unfortunate posthumous honour of reaching sensational prices in auction rooms. There is much in common between the two men.

Sheraton was born in 1751 at Stockton-on-Tees, and came to London to starve. Baptist preacher, cabinetmaker, author, teacher of drawing, he pa.s.sed his life in poverty, and died in distressed circ.u.mstances. He was, before he brought out his book of designs, the author of several religious works. Often without capital to pursue his cabinetmaking he fell back on his apt.i.tude for drawing, and gave lessons in design. He paid young Black, who afterwards became Lord Provost of Edinburgh, half a guinea a week as workman in his cabinetmaker's shop in Soho. In a pathetic picture of those days the Lord Provost, in his _Memoirs_, tells how Sheraton and his wife and child had only two cups and saucers and the child had a mug, and when the writer took tea with them the wife's cup and saucer were given up to the guest, and she drank her tea from a common mug. This reads like Blake's struggles when he had not money enough to procure copper-plates on which to engrave his wonderful visions.

That the styles of Chippendale and Sheraton represent two distinct schools is borne out by what Sheraton himself thought of his great predecessor. Speaking in his own book of Chippendale's previous work he says: "As for the designs themselves they are wholly antiquated, and laid aside, though possessed of great merit according to the times in which they were executed." From this it would appear that the Chippendale style, at the time of Sheraton's "Cabinetmaker's and Upholsterer's Drawing Book," published in 1793, had gone out of fashion.

The woods mostly employed by Sheraton were satinwood, tulip-wood, rosewood, and apple-wood, and occasionally mahogany. In place of carved scrollwork he used marquetry, and on the cabinets and larger pieces panels were painted by Cipriani and Angelica Kauffman. There is a fine example of the latter's work in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Sheraton borrowed largely from the French style under Louis XVI., when the lines had become severer; he came, too, under the influence of the Adam designs. He commonly used turned legs, and often turned backs, in his chairs. His later examples had a hollowed or spoon back to fit the body of the sitter. When he used mahogany he realised the beauty of effect the dark wood would give to inlay of lighter coloured woods, or even of bra.s.s. The splats and bal.u.s.ters, and even the legs of some of his chairs, are inlaid with delicate marquetry work.

Ornament for its own sake was scrupulously eschewed by Sheraton. The essential supports and uprights and stretcher-rails and other component parts of a piece of furniture were only decorated as portions of a preconceived whole. The legs were tapered, the plain surfaces were inlaid with marquetry, but nothing meaningless was added. In France Sheraton's style was termed "_Louis Seize a l'Anglaise_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _By permission of Messrs. Hampton &. Sons._

OLD ENGLISH SECReTAIRE.

Rosewood and satinwood. Drop-down front.]

It was the firm of Heppelwhite that first introduced the painted furniture into England, and under Sheraton it developed into an emulation of the fine work done by Watteau and Greuze in the days of Marie Antoinette.

Among the varied pieces that Sheraton produced are a number of ingenious inventions in furniture, such as the library-steps he made for George III. to rise perpendicularly from the top of a table frame, and when folded up to be concealed within it. His bureau-bookcases and writing-cabinets have sliding flaps and secret drawers and devices intended to make them serve a number of purposes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _By permission of Messrs. Harold G. Lancaster & Co._

SHIELD-BACK CHAIR. MAHOGANY.

LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.]

On the front of his chairs is frequently found the inverted bell flower, and another of his favourite forms of decoration is the acanthus ornament, which he puts to graceful use.

The influence of his work, and of that of Heppelwhite & Co., was lasting, and much of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century cabinetmaking owes its origin to their designs. The old English secretaire ill.u.s.trated (p. 250), of rose and satinwood, with drawer above and fall-down front, having cupboard beneath with doors finely inlaid with plaques of old lac, is of the date when Heppelwhite was successfully introducing this cla.s.s of French work into England. It is especially interesting to note that the drawer-handles are mounted with old Battersea enamel.

The difficulty of definitely p.r.o.nouncing as to the maker of many of the pieces of furniture of the late eighteenth century is recognised by experts. The chair ill.u.s.trated (p. 251) cannot be a.s.signed to any particular designer, though its genuine old feeling is indisputable. In the fine collection of old furniture of this period at the Victoria and Albert Museum will be found many examples of chairs with no other t.i.tle a.s.signed to them than "late eighteenth century." This fact speaks for itself. A great and growing school had followed the precepts of Chippendale and Heppelwhite and Sheraton. This glorious period of little more than half a century might have been developed into a new Renaissance in furniture. Unfortunately, the early days of the nineteenth century and the dreary Early Victorian period, both before and after the great Exhibition of 1851, display the most tasteless inept.i.tude in nearly every branch of art. From the days of Elizabeth down to the last of the Georges, English craftsmen, under various influences, have produced domestic furniture of great beauty. It is impossible to feel any interest in the Windsor chair, the saddle-bag couch, or the red mahogany cheffoniere. The specimens of misapplied work shown at the Bethnal Green Museum, relics of the English exhibits at the first Exhibition, are unworthy of great traditions.

The awakened interest shown by all cla.s.ses in old furniture will do much to carry the designers back to the best periods in order to study the inheritance the masters have left, and it is to be hoped that the message of the old craftsmen dead and gone will not fall on deaf ears.

RECENT SALE PRICES.[1]

s. d.

Chairs, wheel back, set of seven (including armchair), Adam, carved, mahogany. Good condition. Brady & Sons, Perth, September 1, 1902 27 2 6

Mirror, Adam, in gilt frame, Corinthian pillar sides, ornamental gla.s.s panel at top, surmounted by a carved wood eagle figure. Gudgeon & Sons, Winchester, November 11, 1903 7 10 0

Mantelpiece, Adam, carved wood, with Corinthian column supports, carved and figures and festoons. France & Sons, December 16, 1903 20 0 0

Mirrors, pair, oval, Adam, carved and gilt wood frame.

Christie, March 18, 1904 46 4 0

Cabinet or enclosed buffet, Adam, on Empire lines, veneered on oak with grained Spanish mahogany, in the frieze is a long drawer, and below a cupboard, the whole on square feet, doors inlaid, handles, &c., of ormolu, 3 ft. 9 in.

wide. Flashman & Co., Dover, April 26, 1904 15 0 0

Side-tables, pair hare-wood, by Adam, with rounded corners, on square-shaped tapering legs, the sides and borders inlaid with marquetry, in coloured woods, 53 in. wide.