CHIOS, an island on the west coast of Asia Minor, called by the Greeks Chios (Χίος ᾽σ τὴ Χίο) and by the Turks Saki Adasi; the soft pronunciation of Χ before ι in modern Greek, approximating to sh, caused Χίο to be Italianized as Scio. It forms, with the islands of Psara, Nikaria, Leros, Calymnus and Cos, a sanjak of the Archipelago vilayet. Chios is about 30 m. long from N. to S., and from 8 to 15 m. broad; pop. 64,000. It well deserves the epithet “craggy” (παιπαλόεσσα) of the Homeric hymn. Its figs were noted in ancient times, but wine and gum mastic have always been the most important products. The climate is healthy; oranges, olives and even palms grow freely. The wine grown on the N.W. coast, in the district called by Strabo Ariusia, was known as vinum Arvisium. Early in the 7th century B.C. Glaucus of Chios discovered the process of welding iron (κόλλησις: see J.G. Frazer’s Pausanias, note on x. 16. 1, vol. v. pp. 313-314), and the iron stand of a large crater whose parts were all connected by this process was constructed by him, and preserved as one of the most interesting relics of antiquity at Delphi. The long line of Chian sculptors (see [Greek Art]) in marble bears witness to the fame of Chian art. In literature the chief glory of Chios was the school of epic poets called Homeridae, who helped to create a received text of Homer and gave the island the reputation of being the poet’s birthplace. The chief town, Chios (pop. 16,000), is on the E. coast. A theatre and a temple of Athena Poliuchus existed in the ancient city. About 6 m. N. of the city there is a curious monument of antiquity, commonly called “the school of Homer”; it is a very ancient sanctuary of Cybele, with an altar and a figure of the goddess with her two lions, cut out of the native rock on the summit of a hill. On the west coast there is a monastery of great wealth with a church founded by Constantine IX. Monomachus (1042-1054). Starting from the city and encompassing the island, one passes in succession the promontory Posidium; Cape Phanae, the southern extremity of Chios, with a harbour and a temple of Apollo; Notium, probably the south-western point of the island; Laii, opposite the city of Chios, where the island is narrowest; the town Bolissus (now Volisso), the home of the Homerid poets; Melaena, the north-western point; the wine-growing district Ariusia; Cardamyle (now Cardhamili); the north-eastern promontory was probably named Phlium, and the mountains that cross the northern part of the island Pelinaeus or Pellenaeus.
The history of Chios is very obscure. According to Pherecydes, the original inhabitants were Leleges, while according to other accounts Thessalian Pelasgi possessed the island before it became an Ionian state. The name Aethalia, common to Chios and Lemnos in very early times, suggests the original existence of a homogeneous population in these and other neighbouring islands. Oenopion, a mythical hero, son of Dionysus or of Rhadamanthus, was an early king of Chios. His successor in the fourth generation, Hector, united the island to the Ionian confederacy (Pausan. vii. 4), though Strabo (xiv. p. 633) implies an actual conquest by Ionian settlers. The regal government was at a later time exchanged for an oligarchy or a democracy. The names of two tyrants, Amphiclus and Polytecnus, are mentioned. The products of the island were largely exported on the ships of Miletus, with which city Chios formed a close mercantile alliance in opposition to the rival league of Phocaea and Samos. Similar commercial considerations determined the Chians in their attitude towards the Persian conquerors: in 546 they submitted to Cyrus as eagerly as Phocaea resisted him; during the Ionian revolt their fleet of 100 sail joined the Milesians in offering a desperate opposition at Lade (494). The island was subsequently punished with great rigour by the Persians. The Chian ships, under the tyrant Strattis, served in the Persian fleet at Salamis. After its liberation in 479 Chios joined the Delian League and long remained a firm ally of the Athenians, who allowed it to retain full autonomy. But in 413 the island revolted, and was not recaptured. After the Peloponnesian War it took the first opportunity to renew the Athenian alliance, but in 357 again seceded. As a member of the Delian League it had regained its prosperity, being able to equip a fleet of 50 or 60 sail. Moreover, it was reputed one of the best-governed states in Greece, for although it was governed alternately by oligarchs and democrats neither party persecuted the other severely. It was not till late in the 4th century that civil dissension became a danger to the state, leaving it a prey to Idrieus, the dynast of Caria (346), and to the Persian admiral Memnon (333). During the Hellenistic age Chios maintained itself in a virtually independent position. It supported the Romans in their Eastern wars, and was made a “free and allied state.” Under Roman and Byzantine rule industry and commerce were undisturbed, its chief export at this time being the Arvisian wine, which had become very popular. After temporary occupations by the Seljuk Turks (1089-1092) and by the Venetians (1124-1125, 1172, 1204-1225), it was given in fief to the Genoese family of Zaccaria, and in 1346 passed definitely into the hands of a Genoese maona, or trading company, which was organized in 1362 under the name of “the Giustiniani.” This mercantile brotherhood, formerly a privileged class, alone exploited the mastic trade; at the same time the Greeks were allowed to retain their rights of self-government and continued to exercise their industries. In 1415 the Genoese became tributary to the Ottomans. In spite of occasional secessions which brought severe punishment upon the island (1453, 1479), the/# rule of the Giustiniani was not abolished till 1566. Under the Ottoman government the prosperity of Chios was hardly affected. But the island underwent severe periods of suffering after its capture and reconquest from the Florentines (1595) and the Venetians (1694-1695), which greatly reduced the number of the Latins. Worst of all were the massacres of 1822, which followed upon an attack by some Greek insurgents executed against the will of the natives. In 1881 Chios was visited by a very severe earthquake in which over 5600 persons lost their lives and more than half the villages were seriously damaged. The island has now recovered its prosperity. There is a harbour at Castro, and steam flour-mills, foundries and tanneries have been established. Rich antimony and calamine mines are worked by a French undertaking, and good marble is quarried by an Italian company.
Authorities.—Strabo xiv. pp. 632 f.; Athenaeus vi. 265-266; Herodotus i. 160-165, vi. 15-31; Thucydides viii. 14-61; Corpus Inscr. Atticarum, iv. (2), pp. 9, 10; H. Houssaye in Revue des deux mondes, xlvi. (1876), pp. 1 ff.; T. Bent in Historical Review (1889), pp. 467-480; Fustel de Coulanges, L’Île de Chio (ed. Jullian, Paris, 1893); for coinage, B.V. Head, Historia numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 513-515, and NUMISMATICS: Greek.
(E. GR.; M. O. B. C.)
CHIPPENDALE, THOMAS (d. 1779), the most famous of English cabinetmakers. The materials for the biography of Chippendale are exceedingly scanty, but he is known to have been the son of Thomas Chippendale I., and is believed to have been the father of Thomas Chippendale III. His father was a cabinet-maker and wood-carver of considerable repute in Worcester towards the beginning of the 18th century, and possibly he originated some of the forms which became characteristic of his son’s work. Thus a set of chairs and settees was made, apparently at Worcester, for the family of Bury of Knateshill, at a period when the great cabinetmaker could have been no more than a boy, which are practically identical with much of the work that was being turned out of the family factory as late as the ’sixties of the 18th century. Side by side with the Queen Anne or early Georgian feeling of the first quarter of the 18th century we find the interlaced splats and various other details which marked the Chippendale style. By 1727 the elder Chippendale and his son had removed to London, and at the end of 1749 the younger man—his father was probably then dead—established himself in Conduit Street, Long Acre, whence in 1753 he removed to No. 60 St Martin’s Lane, which with the addition of the adjoining three houses remained his factory for the rest of his life. In 1755 his workshops were burned down; in 1760 he was elected a member of the Society of Arts; in 1766 his partnership with James Ranni was dissolved by the latter’s death.
It has always been exceedingly difficult to distinguish the work executed in Chippendale’s factory and under his own eye from that of the many copyists and adapters who throughout the second half of the 18th century—the golden age of English furniture—plundered remorselessly. Apart from his published designs, many of which were probably never made up, we have to depend upon the very few instances in which his original accounts enable us to earmark work which was unquestionably his. For Claydon House, the seat of the Verneys in Buckinghamshire, he executed much decorative work, and the best judges are satisfied that the Chinese bedroom there was designed by him. At Harewood House, the seat of the earl of Harewood in Yorkshire, we are on firmer ground. The house was furnished between 1765 and 1771, and both Robert Adam and Chippendale were employed upon it. Indeed, there is unmistakable evidence to show that certain work, so closely characteristic of the Adams that it might have been assigned to them without hesitation, was actually produced by Chippendale. This may be another of the many indications that Chippendale was himself an imitator, or it may be that Adam, as architect, prescribed designs which Chippendale’s cabinetmakers and carvers executed. Chippendale’s bills for this Adam work are still preserved. Stourhead, the famous house of the Hoares in Wiltshire, contains much undoubted Chippendale furniture, which may, however, be the work of Thomas Chippendale III.; at Rowton Castle, Shropshire, Chippendale’s bills as well as his works still exist.
Our other main source of information is The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, which was published by Thomas Chippendale in 1754. This book, the most important collection of furniture designs issued up to that time in England, contains one hundred and sixty engraved plates, and the list of subscribers indicates that the author had acquired a large and distinguished body of customers. The book is of folio size; there was a second edition in 1759, and a third in 1762.
In the rather bombastic introduction Chippendale says that he has been encouraged to produce the book “by persons of distinction and taste, who have regretted that an art capable of so much perfection and refinement should be executed with so little propriety and elegance.” He has some severe remarks upon critics, from which we may assume that he had already suffered at their hands. Perhaps, indeed, Chippendale may have been hinted at in the caustic remarks of Isaac Ware, surveyor to the king, who bewailed that it was the misfortune of the world in his day “to see an unmeaning scrawl of C’s inverted and looped together, taking the place of Greek and Roman elegance even in our most expensive decorations. It is called French, and let them have the praise of it! The Gothic shaft and Chinese bell are not beyond nor below it in poorness of imitation.” It is the more likely that these barbs were intended for Chippendale, since he was guilty not only of many essays in Gothic, but of a vast amount of work in the Chinese fashion, as well as in the flamboyant style of Louis XV. The Director contains examples of each of the manners which aroused the scorn of the king’s surveyor. Chippendale has even shared with Sir William Chambers the obloquy of introducing the Chinese style, but he appears to have done nothing worse than “conquer,” as Alexandre Dumas used to call it, the ideas of other people. Nor would it be fair to the man who, whatever his occasional extravagances and absurdities, was yet a great designer and a great transmuter, to pretend that all his Chinese designs were contemptible. Many of them, with their geometrical lattice-work and carved tracery, are distinctly elegant and effective. Occasionally we find in one piece of furniture a combination of the three styles which Chippendale most affected at different periods—Louis XV., Chinese and Gothic—and it cannot honestly be said that the result is as incongruous as might have been expected. Some of his most elegant and attractive work is derived directly from the French, and we cannot doubt that the inspiration of his famous ribbon-backed chair came directly from some of the more artistic performances in rococo.
The primary characteristic of his work is solidity, but it is a solidity which rarely becomes heaviness. Even in his most lightsome efforts, such as the ribbon-backed chair, construction is always the first consideration. It is here perhaps that he differs most materially from his great successor Sheraton, whose ideas of construction were eccentric in the extreme. It is indeed in the chair that Chippendale is seen at his best and most characteristic. From his hand, or his pencil, we have a great variety of chairs, which, although differing extensively in detail, may be roughly arranged in three or four groups, which it would sometimes be rash to attempt to date. He introduced the cabriole leg, which, despite its antiquity, came immediately from Holland; the claw and ball foot of ancient Oriental use; the straight, square, uncompromising early Georgian leg; the carved lattice-work Chinese leg; the pseudo-Chinese leg; the fretwork leg, which was supposed to be in the best Gothic taste; the inelegant rococo leg with the curled or hoofed foot; and even occasionally the spade foot, which is supposed to be characteristic of the somewhat later style of Hepplewhite. His chair-backs were very various. His efforts in Gothic were sometimes highly successful; often they took the form of the tracery of a church window, or even of an ovalled rose window. His Chinese backs were distinctly geometrical, and from them he would seem to have derived some of the inspiration for the frets of the glazed book-cases and cabinets which were among his most agreeable work. The most attractive feature of Chippendale’s most artistic chairs—those which, originally derived from Louis Quinze models, were deprived of their rococo extravagances—is the back, which, speaking generally, is the most elegant and pleasing thing that has ever been done in furniture. He took the old solid or slightly pierced back, and cut it up into a light openwork design exquisitely carved—for Chippendale was a carver before everything—in a vast variety of designs ranging from the elaborate and extremely elegant, if much criticized, ribbon back, to a comparatively plain but highly effective splat. His armchairs, however, often had solid or stuffed backs. Next to his chairs Chippendale was most successful with settees, which almost invariably took the shape of two or three conjoined chairs, the arms, backs and legs identical with those which he used for single seats. He was likewise a prolific designer and maker of book-cases, cabinets and escritoires with doors glazed with fretwork divisions. Some of those which he executed in the style which in his day passed for Gothic are exceedingly handsome and effective. We have, too, from his hand many cases for long clocks, and a great number of tables, some of them with a remarkable degree of Gallic grace. He was especially successful in designing small tables with fretwork galleries for the display of china. His mirrors, which were often in the Chinese taste or extravagantly rococo, are remarkable and characteristic. In his day the cabinetmaker still had opportunities for designing and constructing the four-post bedstead, and some of Chippendale’s most graceful work was lavished upon the woodwork of the lighter, more refined and less monumental four-poster, which, thanks in some degree to his initiative, took the place of the massive Tudor and the funereally hung Jacobean bed. From an organ case to a washhand-stand, indeed, no piece of domestic furniture came amiss to this astonishing man, and if sometimes he was extravagant, grotesque or even puerile, his level of achievement is on the whole exceedingly high.