About the middle of the eighteenth century it was fashionable to decorate houses and gardens in “Chinese taste,” and furniture was designed for “Chinese temples” by various cabinet-makers. That the American colonies followed English fashions closely is shown by the advertisement in 1758 of Theophilus Hardenbrook, surveyor, who with unfettered fancy modestly announced that he “designs all sorts of Buildings, Pavilions, Summer Rooms, Seats for Gardens”; also “all sorts of rooms after the taste of the Arabian, Chinese, Persian, Gothic, Muscovite, Paladian, Roman, Vitruvian, and Egyptian.”
Illus. 173 and Illus. 174.—Chippendale Chairs.
Illustration [175] shows a Chippendale chair in “Chinese taste” owned by Harry Harkness Flagler, Esq., of Millbrook. The legs and stretchers are straight, like those of Chinese chairs, and the outline of the back is Chinese, but the delicate carving is English. A sofa and a chair in “Chinese taste” are shown in Illustration [211].
Illus. 175.—Chippendale Chair
in “Chinese Taste.”
Illustration [176] and Illustration [177] show two Chippendale chairs with backs of entirely different design from the splat-back chairs previously illustrated. Their form was probably suggested by that of the slat-back chair. Illustration [176] is one of a set of six, originally owned by Joseph Brown, one of the four famous brothers of Providence, whose dignified names, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, have been familiarly rhymed as “John and Josey, Nick and Mosey.” The six chairs are now owned by their kinswoman, Mrs. David Thomas Moore of Westbury, Long Island. Each slat is delicately carved, and the chairs represent the finest of this type of Chippendale chairs. Illustration [177] shows a chair owned by Charles R. Waters, Esq., of Salem, with carved slats in the back. Chairs with this back but with plain slats are not unusual.
Illus. 176.—Chippendale
Chair.
Hepplewhite’s designs were published in 1789, and his light and attractive furniture soon became fashionable, superseding that of Chippendale, which was pronounced “obsolete.” Hepplewhite’s aim was to produce a light effect, and to this he often sacrificed considerations of strength and durability.