Piranesi’s 1761 Antichita Romane

The death of James Rannie in 1766 came on the cusp of arguably the most productive time for the firm of Chippendale & Rannie, with the association with Robert Adam ramping up and commissions including the enormous job at Harewood in the offing.

It is interesting to consider the nature of the relationship between Adam and Chippendale, with Adam imbued with an appreciation of classical antiquity derived from his grand tour and intimate association with Giovanni Batista Piranesi.

Robert Adam’s grand tour and in particular his time in Rome and the adjacent campagna wrought a sea change from his earlier work, including Dumfries House, and he proved an adept student of Piranesi, introducing design elements with archeological accuracy. These then too were adopted by Chippendale, with neoclassicism displacing the relatively short-lived phenomenon of the rococo as what, between the 1740’s to the 1760’s, was counted as ‘modern taste’.

Plate XXX from 1762 edition of Director– neoclassical above, and rococo below

Well- sort of displaced. One looks at the 1762 edition of The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director and finds very many plates from the two earlier editions, and based on this evidence, it appears that at least at the time of issuance, the rococo was alive and well. One does though find an increasing number of swags and festoons drawn from classical motifs amongst the rocaille, ‘Gothick’, and Chinoiserie.  Of course, it would be simplistic to assume that, like any other design innovation, the popularity of neoclassicism was not gradual in its ascent. It is worth noting that, in Chippendale and Rannie’s first great commission, that of Dumfries House in 1759, what was supplied was entirely in the rococo manner of the 1754 edition of the Director and just a short 3 years before the emergent neoclassicism of the 1762 edition.

I’ve already noted that the furniture inside Dumfries House is a bit at odds with the overall design of the house, an uneasy mixture of Burlingtonian Palladianism and the restrained rococo of the interior plasterwork, and one must assume that the Adam brothers had not much to do with fitting out the house.

This was all to change, of course, following the return of Robert Adam from his grand tour, for it was not just the antiquarianism of Piranesi, but three years of constant tutelage by Charles-Louis Clerisseau as drawing master and bear-leader that gave Adam a style and manner of architectural output that served and informed his prodigious output for the next 30 years.

Lyre and caduceus from Piranesi’s il Camp Marzio dell’Antica Roma, circa 1750

Lyre-back chair by Thos Chippendale, Nostell Priory, to an Adam design

This year is Chippendale’s tercentenary, and the naturally tendentious focus is on his design and output, but the importance of the overarching influence of Robert Adam, and by extension that of Clerisseau and particularly Piranesi might be, but should never be, overlooked. While much has been made of Chippendale’s skill and draughtsmanship in furniture design, very little output, save the Dumfries House commission, follows his patterns. Very much more was executed by Chippendale’s workshop- but to the designs of Robert Adam. The lyre back library chair from Nostell Priory is illustrated by both the late Christopher Gilbert and Adam Bowett as an example of Chippendale’s work in a neoclassical idiom, but it is also illustrated in Eileen Harris’ The Furniture of Robert Adam. That it is more firmly in Adam’s oeuvre than perhaps that of Thomas Chippendale is given weight by an examination of the design inspiration. An engraving of a lyre and caduceus in Piranesi’s Il Campo Marzo dell ’Antica Roma links not just with the splat of chairs executed by Chippendale for Nostell Priory, but also to a similar chair executed by John Linnell for Osterley Park- both major Adam commissions.

Lyre-back chair at Osterley Park, by John Linnell to an Adam design

Something that Christopher Gilbert accepted as a given is the mastery of draughtsmanship Chippendale possessed, and was particularly complimentary of how they were transferred to print in the 1754 edition of the Director when engraved by Matthias Darly. The uniformly good quality is very much marred, in his view, in subsequent editions by engravings of variable quality. It might just be that, particularly in the case of the 1762 edition of the Director, not just the engravings but the drawings from which they are derived have a hodgepodge effect, reflecting as they do not just innovative designs but those that were popular with the workshop’s customers, without regard to current fashion.

Robert Adam, design for demilune commode for Lady Derby, circa 1774, as illustrated in Eileen Harris, The Furniture of Robert Adam

The discordance between design and movables noted at Dumfries House is something of a general occurrence. Eileen Harris in writing about Adam designed furniture puts this down to the typical brief of the architect- designing exterior elevations and those of some interior walls- while the furnishing of the interior footprint was left to the client. She points out that the preponderance of furniture designed by Adam were the likes of pier mirrors and pier tables. Given their placement adjacent to and concordant with interior walls and architectural elements, these types of pieces then have an inherent character that puts them more in the brief of the architect.

With all that, the cabinetmaker that was to furnish more Adam domestic interiors than anyone else was Thomas Chippendale. This does not mean that Adam and Chippendale had what could be termed a relationship of collegial exclusivity, as a number of Adam interiors exist furnished by other workshops. Arguably one of the best Adam interiors, the Etruscan room at Osterley Park, was completed by John Linnell. It has even been suggested that Robert Adam was not a hearty proponent of Chippendale, owing to the workshop’s slow completion of commissions. It might be, as well, that between the architect and designer there was a stylistic divergence that perhaps made each wary of the other. The abundance of surface decoration in furniture to an Adam design, wrought in at times composition material applied to vernacular woods, and then elaborately painted to appear of a piece with wall and plaster treatments was certainly at odds with the preference the Chippendale workshop had for carved details wrought in exotic woods. Indeed, even the marquetry furniture at Harewood, frequently regarded as the most masterful of the suites created by the Chippendale workshop, though of a neoclassical and not rococo style, are at odds with the interiors created by Adam.

The Derby commode, as executed to an Adam design in painted decoration, at Chappell & McCullar

I don’t think anyone would argue that in his day, Adam was much, much more a style setter than was Thomas Chippendale. Adam, though, had very shortly after his death detractors who found much more if not originality than authenticity in what became the Greek revival movement in the very late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, and the stripped-down neoclassicism of Sir John Soane. So much was written at that time of Adam’s work, particularly his late work, as thin and delicately attenuated, with his passion for movement in surface decoration characterized by one early Victorian pundit as ‘frippery’.

C. 1754 trade card for Chippendale & Rannie, as reprinted in Bowett & Lomax

While it might be argued that the 1754 publication of Chippendale’s Director… was as a promotion of his cabinetmaking business a bit of commercial puffery- albeit an expensive one- that it coincided with the move to much, much larger premises bang in the middle of fashionable St Martin’s Lane begs a singular question- how was Thomas Chippendale able to afford to do both these things at once? It is generally agreed that the capital invested at this point by James Rannie, his business partner, made both possible.

Rannie was an established man of business, or at least with established connections, in Edinburgh and the adjacent port town of Leith. But what was it that drew Rannie to Chippendale and induced him to invest, or gamble really, so heavily on the cabinetmaker’s prospects?

Dumfries House, courtesy Country Life images

Christopher Gilbert concluded that Rannie was convinced the publication of the Director would vault Chippendale to fame and financial success, but it is apparent that the publication and move to St Martin’s Lane happened almost simultaneously. Unless Rannie was possessed of second sight, it seems unlikely the Director was the sole motivating factor. In any event, Rannie was hardly a sleeping partner, and the firm became Chippendale & Rannie, with the larger premises in St Martin’s Lane leased in both their names.

‘Exploded’ plans of the main rooms at Dumfries House, from the Bute archives and reprinted in Simon Green ‘Dumfries House

While Chippendale made use of his Yorkshire roots for commissions, Rannie apparently was sufficiently well connected in Scotland to acquire trade for the business. Interestingly, one of the most significant from this period was what might be termed a walk-in, in the person of William Crichton Dalrymple, the 5^th Earl of Dumfries. He visited the premises of Chippendale and Rannie in early 1759, with the object to furnish his new home nearing completion in the southwest of Scotland. Presumably time was of the essence and it appears at his visit Lord Dumfries was possessed of ‘exploded’ plans of the house, and purchased items from Chippendale and Rannie that were either already completed or were part of the business’s standard stock in trade that could be completed quickly. With the exploded plans- showing both the footprint and adjacent walls of the interior- it would have been a relatively easy matter for the firm to superimpose the furniture pieces needed- including side tables and wall mirrors- and determine size, appropriateness, and placement. Lord Dumfries’ considerable furniture order was quickly filled and shipped by Chippendale from London to Scotland in late May, 1759.

The Drawing Room, Dumfries House- much of a muchness, courtesy of Country Life images

For furniture historians, this particular commission is of importance in that it marks the most significant number of pieces known to have been produced by the workshop directly from patterns contained in the Director. Further, the pieces and their placement have remained largely unchanged and in many cases in situ from the time of their arrival providing an unequaled opportunity for the study of this earlier, rococo period of Chippendale’s production. As a bit of a sidebar, although Lord Dumfries’ use of a plan to determine what to buy and where to put it might have been expedient, the final result was, in my view, not as effective as it might have been. Though the furniture pieces individually are beautifully designed, exquisitely wrought, and wonderfully proportioned in themselves, the overall effect, particularly in the drawing room and small parlour, is of a bit too much furniture and of too large a scale for the spaces intended.

Small parlour, Dumfries House- a welter of legs; courtesy Country Life images

It is surmised that Lord Dumfries must have had some knowledge of and exposure to James Rannie through connections in Edinburgh, and although Dumfries himself was not one of the Scottish subscribers to the Director, it is thought that he was otherwise sufficiently convinced of the fashionabilty and propriety of Chippendale and his designs from his connections with other cognoscenti in matters of taste. It is known that when designing his home Dumfries sought the opinion of the preeminent arbiter of taste Richard Boyle, 3^rd Earl of Burlington and it is perhaps through Lord Burlington that Chippendale was recommended. Perhaps. A bit of a conundrum here, as although there exists an early reference to Chippendale by Burlington, Burlington was a classicist and the leading exponent of Palladianism- very much at odds with the natural forms contained in the rococo design of the furniture Chippendale was then producing. The effect of the simultaneous and seemingly disparate influences of Rannie, Chippendale, Burlington, and Lord Dumfries’ architects the Adam brothers might be considered in a future post.

There is general agreement, though, that Dumfries House was the important commission of this period and Rannie played an important part in facilitating it- though precisely how and to what extent remains yet another subject for further study.

Though the how and the why and indeed the when of Rannie’s initial involvement with Chippendale remain open questions, it is apparent that he formed an integral part of the business. The years of Rannie’s direct involvement must have begun well before the publication of the Director in 1754, and it might be surmised that Chippendale’s efforts as a draughtsman were spurred on by the promise of Rannie’s financial help to assist in publication. Though of course the list of subscribers presumes some financial support from them, some named could be purely honorific. Bowett points out that the first edition of the Director was dedicated to the Duke of Northumberland, which dedication did not, it appears, ever result in any financial reward to Chippendale.

What is certain is that Rannie remained involved until his death in 1766. The firm of Chippendale & Rannie was busy, with important commissions including those for Sir Lawrence Dundas and Sir Rowland Winn at Nostell Priory, and also included the issuance of two further editions of the Director. Busy, but perhaps not all that profitable. It is worth noting that, with Rannie’s death in 1766, the settlement of his will required the recovery of his capital in Chippendale & Rannie. This necessitated the liquidation of a substantial amount of the firm’s assets, including timber stocks, leaving Chippendale so short of cash and supplies he was nearly unable to finish larger commissions, telling one customer he had to take smaller jobs for, his words, ‘ready money’, in preference to larger ones. One is left to wonder, moreover, whether Rannie himself had concerns about the ability of the firm to carry on without his business management. His preference was clearly to have his estate withdraw his capital rather than leaving it in place in a business that was, at least ostensibly, a going concern. It interesting that fellow Scot and Rannie protégé Thomas Haig did subsequently become a partner in the firm, which then became Chippendale & Haig, with £2,000 in capital borrowed, Christopher Gilbert tells us, from James Rannie’s widow. Presumably Haig then was, for purposes of financial management, the safe pair of hands that perhaps Thomas Chippendale was not.

Thomas Chippendale was born in Otley, a market town in one of the Yorkshire dales, the son of a joiner, and indeed, part of a larger family of joiners and sawyers, with generations of family of similar experience behind him, in the same local burgh. In fact, those with the same surname and relatives of the great man existed in the community well into the 20th century. That the family was well known and presumably well respected as sawyers and joiners might account, taking advantage of his connection with this area of the West Riding, for the significant Yorkshire commissions Thomas Chippendale was ultimately able to glean.

Mid Georgian mahogany bureau bookcase, attributable to Wright & Elwick

What’s interesting, though, is that Chippendale’s prominence occurred firstly not in his home country, but in London. What brought him there? – a tedious 200 mile journey, of course, but surprising as he was without known prospects. One assumes he had learned joinery and cabinetmaking to a journeyman’s level, but this is only a presumption, as no record of his employment with any of the established London workshops exists. Indeed, there is only a tenuous record of his working with any of the established workshops in Yorkshire, though some formidable cabinet makers were working in the area at the time. As an example, the redoubtable firm of Wright and Elwick in nearby Wakefield was well established and providing furniture for the quality at the time of Chippendale’s early maturity.

So what brought him to London and why remains a mystery for Chippendale scholars. That he was very much adept as a cabinetmaker when he reached London, without any evidence to the contrary, is accepted as a given. What is known is that his initial occupation, and that for the rest of his life, was in that hotbed of design innovation in the area nearabout St Martin’s Lane. Not only were some of the best, most fashionable established workshops-cum-ateliers along this vaunted street, but it was also home to au courant artistic production.

Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty, 1753

In the best example of the age of reason, it was the site of the St Martin’s Lane Academy- a loose agglomeration of artists that met in a coffee house and whose ad hoc function it became to not just teach but also to espouse contemporary ideas about proper artistic production. Indeed, the man considered the founder and for many years the prime mover in the St Martin’s Lane Academy was the doughty, thoroughly English artist William Hogarth. As well as vigorously producing his ‘modern moral subjects’ like ‘The Rake’s Progress’, Hogarth sought a cerebral link between morality, the natural order and aesthetics with the publication in 1753 of The Analysis of Beauty. With the ‘C’ scroll and the ‘S’ curve as central elements, Hogarth made English the fashion for rocaille decoration that was already the rage in France.

Title page to first edition of Chippendale’s Director…, 1754, courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum

In this kind of hothouse environment, Chippendale must have been exposed to Hogarth and his circle, which included the French émigré Hubert Gravelot, well-known as a drawing master and for executing designs in the rococo manner. However it happened, though, Chippendale was astonishingly well equipped to prepare the designs contained in his The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director in 1754. I have to say, I am not too happy with the last sentence, or indeed with the last paragraph and a half, as it gives very little idea of Chippendale until he emerged, fully formed as one might say, with the publication of the Director. While Chippendale says that he worked as a cabinetmaker while preparing the book, it would be surprising to find that, with the Director such an ambitious undertaking, he had much time for anything else. This assumes Chippendale’s shop and production was small, a safe assumption as nothing else is known of any commissions he completed until he later established, with the financial assistance of James Rannie, a large premises in a good situation on St Martin’s Lane. Indeed, for all Chippendale scholars, what Christopher Gilbert termed ‘the undiscovered years’ between his leaving Yorkshire and the publication of the Director are a frustratingly gaping chasm in our knowledge of the great man. While our biographical knowledge increases with Chippendale’s marriage in 1748, it is still fairly sparse and stops a long way from explaining how he was able to accomplish such an ambitious undertaking.

With the Chippendale tercentenary nearly over, it’s about time I put in my oar. For my gentle readers, all of whom are paragons of erudition, none will be surprised to find that, for the less cultured, if any name is familiar in the field of the decorative arts, that name has to be Chippendale. For myself, too, with my sainted grandmother from whom I doubtless acquired whatever appreciation I have for art and antiques, two of her proudest possessions were a pair of 19^th century luncheon plates she kept hung on the wall in a pattern that said on the reverse ‘Old English Chippendale’.

Georgian armchair, to a Chippendale design

What I mean to say in this context is that the name of Thomas Chippendale has over time been applied to virtually anything vaguely 18^th century in appearance not just in the English but also in the decorative arts of America. Why this has been so will be the subject, I can’t really say of any focused study, but certainly of my musings over the coming few days. If nothing else, these series of blog posts give me a happy excuse of revisiting the work of the late Christopher Gilbert, whose compendious The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, though originally published in 1978, is still regarded as the reigning authority, and characterized recently by the eminent furniture historian Adam Bowett as ‘magisterial’. Giving Dr Bowett his due, I will look at new Chippendale scholarship he’s compiled, contained in the catalog prepared for ‘Thomas Chippendale 1718-1779: A Celebration of British Craftsmanship and Design’.

It seemed appropriate at the time, though now seems mawkish, but Keith McCullar and I were excited to offer, nearly 20 years ago now, an armchair to a Chippendale design, and in our excitement, felt we were obliged to illustrate the pattern in Chippendale’s Gentleman’s and Cabinet-Maker’s Director in our trade cards. A bit jejune? Possibly, but now 20 years on, we still link our trade style with the master’s design. I will, though, try to be shall we say temperate in my remarks.

The highlight of my year, indeed for anyone in the accredited trade, is the running of the two fairs that cap the London season. Olympia is the elder of the two, with Masterpiece the grander, carrying on as it does the Grosvenor House fair of blessed memory. For those few of my gentle readers who are not in the know, the London season was, in earlier times, the general social hubbub of dances, levees, and teas involving coming of age young ladies of the upper crust and their families, culminating in their presentation to the reigning monarch. In a nod to changing times, Elizabeth II abolished these presentation courts in the late 1950’s, much no doubt to the consternation of debutantes in waiting, but then again, the abolition of this custom was inevitable. Even in England, the 20^th century was generally accorded the century of the common man, and it was the royal acknowledgment of that hegemonic ascendance that resulted in the throwing out of many aristocratic customs.

Still and all, vestiges of the London season survive, with the fairs arguably the most prominent survival, scheduled as they were at the tail end of the season, very late spring allowing thereby an opportunity for the great and the good still in London to browse and buy before they then decamped for the summer to country estates. While all this sounds like something from one of the earlier seasons of ‘Downton Abbey’, the fairs still operated this way and for this reason certainly in my living memory. The massive Olympia exhibition centre in the fair’s glory years was heaving with hundreds of dealers on two floors, who fought for premier stand placement to get their gear in front of the 50,000 punters who annually made their way into the show. Special trains were laid on to get one to Olympia- and they were crowded with fair-bound riders.

The Grosvenor House fair that was had its run overlap for a few days toward the end of the Olympia fair, allowing foreign visitors- mainly Americans- to make their way across the herring pond and take in both fairs at once. Grosvenor House for all its nearly 80 year history offered the ne plus ultra in the fine and decorative arts, all of it strictly vetted, and with a charity gala to kick it off that must for a few have seemed a fond reminder of the London season of an earlier day. Indeed, for very many years, the fair’s patroness was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Masterpiece sought to take the place of Grosvenor House, and in many respects it does, but the dealer mix is not what it was, and now, the fair markets itself as an emporium for luxury goods, with not just traditional fine and decorative arts, but also contemporary material, jewelry, expensive autos, and at one point, wine and wine futures. The rationale seems to have been to broaden the appeal of the fair, thereby increasing the footfall of well-heeled buyers, who then might become ‘cross-over’ buyers exposed to a wider variety of pretty things upon which to spend their money.

For 2018, it doesn’t appear things went all that well. For Olympia, over the last few years, the size of the fair has shrunk to about 25% of formerly, with it too introducing contemporary material, and the run of the fair has been reduced. And, in its outing just concluded the fair was linked with another event, The House & Garden Festival- a promotion of House & Garden magazine- all of which an effort to increase footfall that has seen a number of years of decline.

And the effect of all this effort? As The Antiques Trade Gazette has it, ‘a number of satisfied dealers, but also a sense of gloom’. While a few dealers felt that the linkup with the other event might have brought in a few new buyers, footfall was light, continuing the decline it sought to stanch, and of those dealers who sold well, a very many of them sold well at the very bottom price point levels- one dealer cited brisk sales in the £300 to £800 range. With a minimum cost to show in the low 5 figure range, one can’t imagine one could ever sell enough 3 figure items to even cover one’s cost.

Masterpiece ostensibly fared better, with sales of items in the 6 and 7 figures reported, bearing in mind of course that with the average run of stock priced at many times that of a typical Olympia offering, any reported sales would have an impressive price tag. The fair though has expanded over the years, with this year’s 160 dealers representing a high point- but with a few dealers former Olympia stalwarts, the increase possibly cannibalizing the older fair. As well, with the fair’s expansion, the cost of the stand has been made a little bit more affordable, attracting dealers of some different disciplines, most notably contemporary art. Indeed, one dealer in contemporary art, new to the fair, was quoted as saying the fair was nearly as frenetic as the art fairs they usually participate in. Good news, but moderated in my view with the knowledge that their participation was limited to sharing a stand with a dealer in traditional furniture and decorative arts. In former, more prosperous times, sharing a stand would never be allowed by fair organizers, simply because the organizer would seek to sell, and could sell, two stands, and not just one if sharing by two dealers were allowed.

So it appears the fairs this year did not perform shall we say robustly overall, and with Olympia’s future direction, even its very future, very much in question. Sad irony, as I read the article in The Antiques Trade Gazette about the recent Olympia, the adjacent article was a profile of a contemporary art dealer in our old stomping grounds of Islington, who spoke of the internet and particularly Instagram as a boon to his business. Though he works hard to properly exhibit the stock he represents, doubtless the internet and social media is the virtual foot in the omnipresent virtual door.

And of course it is this virtual omnipresence that however much dealers and fair organizers may dislike it that continues to scoop the guts out of the success of even the most venerable fair. While we might think of the presently unsettled state of the world, exacerbated it seems by the almost demented actions of certain people in the American capitol, it is the ability through the internet to offer even the casual browser any day and at any time day or night a virtual fair custom designed to the browser’s own preferences that will render at the least problematic the success of any actual non-virtual fair in times to come. If my gentle readers had hoped for any particular new insight into the fate of fairs and any real suggestions about a way forward, I’m sorry to disappoint. It has seemed to me for a good long while now the only hope for the trade is to try to soldier on, with the hope that, in the fulness of time, fairs will once more become a lively outing for more people. In the near term, however, as with the Islington dealer cited above, at best the fair has now become just another, albeit sadly less important, item in the dealer’s bag of tricks, and most prominently an adjunct to one’s online presence.