VI
CHIPPENDALE AND REVOLUTION
AMONG the pieces for which George Washington wrote, when forwarding his well-known order for furniture to London in 1755, two years before his marriage, were "a Mahogany bedstead with carved and fluted pillars and yellow silk and worsted damask hangings; window curtains to match; six mahogany chairs with gothic arched backs and seats of yellow silk and worsted damask, an elbow chair, a fine, neat mahogany serpentine dressing table with mirrors and brass trimmings, and a pair of fine carved and gilt scones." His order was well placed and well timed. Thomas Chippendale was then at work in London.
Furniture making was now reaching the highest point of its greatness. Chippendale, working in London since 1740, had wrought a transformation. Taking what he found, he was making over all ideas of furniture and breathing into his models strength, grace, and elaboration, producing a type satisfactory, and beautiful in proportion, which was to give his name to the period from about 1750 to 1780. In 1754 he had published The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director, to follow with later editions in 1759 and 1762, which extended his influence widely, not only at home, but in the American colonies as well.
Chippendale did not stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries, but his plates were the best in their class, and his greatness was due to the cleverness of his adaptation and the refinement of borrowed designs. Deriving richly from other influences already at work, he took what he found, and made it better, without neglecting the Dutch influence, so basic in English furniture at the time. He adopted the Gothic and Chinese motifs with striking effect, intermingling the two when occasion arose. He used oriental motifs often expressing a real meaning, as evidenced in the pagoda, the lattice and the trellis, to which he frequently resorted. He related himself, too, at times, to the Greek and Roman, as well as the French. His work is particularly remarked for his use of the cabriole leg, the introduction of which, however, is not to be credited to him, introduced as it was, into England by the Dutch, though lightened by the French and made sturdier by the English before reaching its most beautiful expression in the Chippendale shape.
The Chippendale period is sometimes designated by the claw-and-ball foot. This foot was shown first in Jacques Androuet's Book of Designs, published in France, 1550, the leg and claw-and-ball foot illustrated by him showing the acanthus leaf carving at the top. This, too, was a type borrowed from the Chinese design representing the serpent's claw holding a pearl. Chippendale used carving profusely, and worked constantly in mahogany, and produced marvels in his veneered surfaces of this satiny wood. Mahogany came into use as the most popular wood during this period in England, although it was used as early as 1710.
His furniture, fitting well into the scheme
