The shaped underframing is a feature only found in farmhouse varieties.
COUNTRY-MADE OAK SETTEE IN CHINESE CHIPPENDALE STYLE.
(By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin.)
The adjacent chair, with its tall back with curved splat and its cabriole legs, marks the transition between William and Mary and Queen Anne. The top rail indicates by its clumsy joinery the touch of the immature country cabinet-maker. It is an attempt to approach a fine model with insufficiency of skill by the maker. The use of the cabriole leg either in chairs or in dressers in homely furniture has always proved a stumbling-block to the minor craftsman. The delicacy of balance required in order to preserve the harmony of the whole has proved too subtle a problem for him to handle, and to the practised eye these farmhouse pieces at once proclaim their origin.
The broad splat and the straight square front and the bold cabriole leg of the Queen Anne type in walnut were often copied in oak. The example of the chair with the later tapestry covering, illustrated p. [213], is a case where the local cabinet-maker has faithfully copied detail for detail from some fine original in walnut. His is in oak for more strenuous usage. The adjacent arm-chair is of the Queen Anne style, with a shaped front that is very rarely found in such pieces. The maker here has not been so successful in catching the bold lines of his original. There is a sense of something lacking in the curves of the back. The touches of his own that he has added in the arms, reverting to an earlier Jacobean type, reveal the unpractised hand.
Country Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton.—A word in passing may be said in regard to the unique character of furniture of these types. It is obvious that factory-made furniture turned out by the hundred pieces can offer nothing personal, whatever its merits or demerits of design or workmanship. It is this personal note, the love of a craftsman in his creation, that appeals to the collector, whether it be of Persian rugs or of old brass candlesticks. It is absent in art produced in a wholesale manner. Blunderingly as the village craftsmen went to work, they often stumbled into great things, and they always produced original results.
Prior to the publication of the design-books of the great eighteenth-century masters of cabinet-making, the furniture of certain localities began to assume a character of its own, the result of long tradition, and designs such as the dragon found in Welsh carving became established. The term "unique" is peculiarly appropriate to furniture of this calibre, for rarely are two pieces found to be exactly alike. Not only did different makers add novel features, but the same craftsman apparently did not repeat himself.
The permutations of form governing furniture are illimitable, associated as they are with so many details of construction. To take the chair—the leg, its shape, and the design of its turning; the style and character of the work on the stretcher; the form of the seat; the decoration and formation of the front; the back, its length, and the variety of splats and panels; and the top rail with its variations—these are only the salient features in which differences appear. Such modifications of design and piquant touches of personal character appeal to the collector, who loves the foibles and fanciful moods of the native craftsman, be he ever so humble.
Chippendale published his "Director" in 1754, and it became a working guide to all ambitious craftsmen. Ince and Mayhew, cabinet-makers of Broad Street, Golden Square, had issued "Household Furniture" in 1748, and Hepplewhite & Co. followed later with the "Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Guide" in 1788, where the delicacies of ornament were related to the chaster classic models, and in 1794 came Sheraton with his "Drawing Book," rich with subtle suggestiveness. A rough generalisation shows the Chippendale school holding sway from 1730 to 1780, the Hepplewhite school from 1775 to 1795, and the Sheraton school from 1790 to 1805: and behind all, the strong influence of the Brothers Adam in their classic revival. What had previously been tradition came very speedily into line with current modes. Fashion, as we have shown, had a slow and impermanent effect upon village ideals. But the output of these great illustrated volumes, with working drawings, undoubtedly had a wide-reaching influence. The last quarter of the eighteenth century saw an intense outburst of interest in the arts of interior decoration. A great amount of finely designed and beautifully executed furniture belongs to those days, and the echo of the splendid achievements in mahogany and in satinwood is seen in the farmhouse and cottage furniture, which came singularly close upon the heels of fashion.