Christopher Gilbert: The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale

"Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) is the best known designer of English furniture and certainly the most influential. Not only was he active in a period of abundant patronage but his ideas were made widely accessible through his publication The Gentleman & Cabinet Maker's Directory which was a model for a wide range of furniture makers and made his name a household word. Chippendale's furniture adorns some of the finest English houses - Petworth, Harewood, Burton Constable, to name but a few - but his accounts show the enormous range of furniture he produced from a humble `neat mahogany Nursing Chair wt carved Knees & stuffed seat' to the magnificent large Gerandoles with Looking Glasses, Treble branches and antique Ornaments, exceeding richly carved and highly finished in Burnished Gold'. Nor did he simply design furniture, there are numerous references to fine silk tassels', beli pulis, wallpapers, curtains and covers; for example, in 1773 he advised Lady Knatchbull `Serge is most commonly usd but as the room is hung with India paper, perhaps you might Chuse some sort of Cotton - suppose a green Stripe Cotton which ... is fashionable'."