Let us indulge in a shopping spree for furniture to fill our townhouse or country house. Perhaps a yellow striped damask sofa for the drawing room.
If you are Sir Richard Colt Hoare, the fabulously wealthy scion of the Hoare banking family, you simply drop Chippendale a note and schedule Thomas Chippendale the younger to set up his workshop in the stable block of your house at Stourhead in Wiltshire. His workers will run you up whole rooms full of made to order furniture. Each piece is custom designed for you and you alone. The work Thomas Chippendale the younger produced for Stourhead House from 1795 to 1820 is outstanding. The furniture in the library and picture gallery is celebrated.
A mystery titled the The Grenadillo Box, written by former Sotheby's London employee Janet Gleeson, gives the reader a glimpse of the inside Thomas Chippendale's workshop.
Suppose you are wealthy, but of more modest means than the Hoare family. You might order a piece or two at a time from the large workshop of a well know furniture-maker like Gillow or George Seddon. The furniture would be worked on by a number of craftsmen each with a different specialty and would be of the highest quality. The next step down would be to look at warehouses that have show rooms of ready-made furniture produced by small time furniture makers working from their home. The pieces would be of exceptional quality by today's standards, but the piece would not be a masterpiece of the furniture-maker's art. One or two skilled workers who would be competent, but not at the top of their craft would have carried out all the work. The ready-made stock of a warehouse would be the closest experience to a modern day furniture store. If you are of very modest means you might have a joiner make you up a simple piece or look at second hand shops or flea markets for furniture.
George Seddon (b c. 1727; d 1801) was the founder of the largest firm of furniture-makers
in London in the 18th century. He became a freeman of the Joiners' Company,
London, in 1751 and set up shop in Aldersgate Street in 1753. His workshop there
was described by London visitor Sophie v. La Roche in 1786:
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George Seddon's Shop |
You might want to follow the latest fad in furnishings or visit the homes of the great and let their choices guide yours. For ideas you might look through one of the many design books published at the time like Thomas Sheraton's 1791, Cabinet Maker's and Upholsterer's Drawing Book or Thomas Hope's 1807, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration.
The Neoclassical Period of furniture took its design characteristics from the classic Greek and Roman forms discovered by archaeologists in the eighteenth century. A new lightness of form predominated early neoclassical furniture. Such motifs as acanthus leaves, shells, architectural pediments, classical figures, fluted or square tapered legs, festoons and swags, caryatid supports and paterae were incorporated in this furniture design. For the decoration of Napoleon's home Malmaison in late 1799 Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine developed an appealing blend of the classical and the warlike that began the neoclassical fad. Thomas Hope (1769-1831) brought the new style to London when he opened the rooms on the first floor of his Duchess Street house containing his collection of Classical antiquities and vases, contemporary art and furniture to selected members of the public in 1804. Hope presented his vision to the public at large in his 1807 book, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration.
Horace Walpole's villa Strawberry Hill
at Twickenham popularized the Gothic Revival style.
Walpole leased the property in 1747 then bought it in 1749. Following his purchase, Strawberry Hill was remodeled in Gothic style.
Horace Walpole's friend Richard Bentley designed a lantern
for the entrance hall. Craftsman William Hallet (1707-1781) carried out the design in 1753. The architecturally influential country house
Fonthill Abbey in SW Wiltshire built 1796-1807 by James Wyatt for William Beckford marked the beginning of the Gothic Fad.
Others rapidly embraced the new fad. Braziers Park situated within
the Chiltern Hills is one of the many estates remodeled in the Gothic style. Of course Gothic revival homes must be furnished with
Gothic Revival furniture.
Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747 - 1825), who accompanied Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt, recording his travels in Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte (1802), illustrated from his own drawings (it was published in English in the same year as Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt). This was followed by the publication of Description d'Egypte, the monumental engravings series by the L'Egypte et les savants a 175 persons Institut de France contigent which accompanied Napoleon to Egypt(1809-28), which revealed the wonders of the Pyramids and the Sphinx to Europeans. Between them the books and interest in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign set off Egyptomania. One of the first major buildings influenced by this style was
Bullock's Museum or the Egyptian Hall.
Thomas Chippendale the Younger made furniture in the Egyptian taste for Stourhead in Wiltshire, and
Thomas Hope designed a special Egyptian room
in his house, Deepdene, to contain his collection of Egyptian antiquities.
The Prince Regent's decoration of the Brighton Pavilion set a trend. The Pavilion was redecorated in the period 1801 through 1815 in the "Chinoiserie" - or Chinese influence style. Rattan, bamboo and lacquer became the new fad. English furniture manufacturers wanted to reflect this style and so cane seating became more widely recognized. During the Regency period many "faux" bamboo chairs were made, some with finely crafted cane seats.
The wide ranging exotic tastes of the Prince Regent (later George IV) left their
mark on English furniture as the Regency style of the period 1800-30. Regency Style marks the last phase of the
neoclassical style but embraces a number of different influences: including Greek, Roman, Chinese, and rococo.
The design of Regency pieces was far less refined that the pure neoclassical style but possesses an exotic exuberance
that has continued to be connected to English style rooms. Regency pieces tend to have such features as caning insets,
lacquering of isolated parts, and brass galleries. We tend to think of the quintessential English Country room as a
mixture of mahogany furniture, floral chintz fabric, striped damask fabric, blue and white china, with some lacquer
and bamboo pieces thrown in.
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