HIS WORK AND HIS INFLUENCE

He starts his book, The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director stating that the furniture that is showed is ‘‘calculated to improve and refine the present taste’’ and ‘‘suited to the fancy and circumstances of persons in all degrees of life’’. His work was recognized for being a monument of design. However, as he confesses ‘’I frankly confess, than in executing many of the drawings, my pencil has but faintly copied out those images that my fancy suggested, and had they not been published till I could have pronounced them perfect, perhaps they had never seen the light’’. Chippendale was an ambitious designer. He had fears and wanted that all his designs resembled the complexity of an ideal wonderful world. With his pencil and his ideas he was able to illustrate and bring to light his ambitions. He was very different from the craftsman who could produce ornate but proportioned furniture. He was more... He was the man who worked with Robert Adam on the furnishing of Harewood House in Yorkshire. He was the designer that was commissioned for his good taste by prestigious clients and who inspired his generation. Many of the designs show the strength and vigour characteristics he gave to his furniture. He did not only concentrated in rococo. His furniture ranged from French chairs, to mirror frames and to Chinese taste designs.

Chippendale observed the models of the 18th century and was able to redimension them with elegance, ranging from the Queen Anne furniture models to French fashion. His chairs showed the symmetry and proportion of a master design. The Ribbon back chairs were one of his triumphs, ‘’the carved ornament builds up a flow and freedom that accentuates the beauty of it’’. And he went beyond to blur the boundaries between art, design and architecture.... His interest in Chinese decoration took him to share with William Chambers multiple discussions about Chinese decoration and architecture. In Europe, a taste for Chinese culture had begun in the seventeenth century with lacquer cabinets and screens that laterly would be used by Eileen Gray. There was an admiration for porcelain and fabrics of the East and this became known as the Chinese Chippendale style. It was a style that was present in bookcases and chinese cabinets with carved legs of tables and Chinese chairs. Chippendale elaborated objects that for his time were extravagant. However, some documents suggest that his admiration for Chinese culture was only occasional.

He also experimented with Gothic style in a villa at Strawberry Hill. Chippendale wanted to be eccentric and in this house, owned by Horace Walpole, he reflects a least successful eccentric Gothic influence. His models with Gothic style went from Gothic chairs to Gothic bookcases and they give the idea that he never captured the ideas of the Old Gothic style.

As we can see, Chippendale knew that to be an artist meant to be eccentric. His works go beyond established boundaries. His business Chippendale, Haig and Co. was continued until 1976. He was a designer that liked ornament. His delicate carvings, the wealth expressed by the ribbons and interlaced embellishment, the complexity of his rococo extravagances and the beauty of his chairs, as well as his settes that were formed by two or three chair backs, with adjustments of proportion, give an idea of a harmonious design composition. His bookcases, long cases for clocks, desks, tables, clothes presses, chests sideboards, mirrors, etc... suggest that Chippendale´s design was ambitious. His designs and his book founded a school of taste that was continued by his son, Thomas Chippendale Junior.