Named after British designer and cabinet maker Thomas Chippendale who
published his furniture designs in "The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's
Director" in 1754. The Chippendale style can be classified into three
types: French influence, Chinese influence and Gothic influence. In
the United States, the Chippendale style was a more elaborate
development of the Queen Anne style with cabriole legs, ball-and-claw
foot, and broken pediment scroll top on tall case pieces.
http://www.connectedlines.com/styleguide/
The development of the Chippendale style was largely stimulated by the
increased use of mahogany due to its strength. Chairs of the period
tended to have cabriole legs finished with ball and claw feet, and
backs with carved out splats. Chests of the period usually have
straight or ogee bracket legs, and asymmetrical surface carvings,
pediments and finials. Straight square legs and elaborate,
architecturally detailed cornices, friezes and columns are also
indicative of the style.
New furniture forms of the period include pedestal-base tables,
Pembroke tables, tea and card tables, and combination desk/ bookcases.
http://www.christies.com/departments/glossary.asp?did=5&sby=c
Colonial American furniture tended to be more conservative and less
ornate than English and European furniture of the same style period.
The American Chippendale style originated in the middle to late 18th
century. The style is generally associated with the American Rococo
reflected in its richly carved, ornamented surfaces.
Unique block-front chests from Newport, Rhode Island and magnificent
highboys and chairs from Philadelphia represent the best American
Chippendale furniture.
http://www.statton.com/styles.htm
American cabinet makers modeled their furniture on English designs but
adapted them to available resources and Colonial tastes.
The result was variation - individuality. So marked was this
variation, that today not only can we separate English from American
antique furniture but we can trace most American examples to the
section of the country--northern, middle, or southern--in which they
were made; often to the city--Boston, Hartford, New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston--and on occasion actually to the
shop of the man who made them.
American examples tend to be more forthright in design, more
straightforward in construction, smaller in size, quieter in taste,
and more utilitarian in the practicalities.
Several scholars have remarked on the generally smaller size of
American furniture, and given as the reason for it the smaller size of
the American home. "...another physical characteristic equally
central: that while English antique furniture tends to be broad and
horizontal [perhaps the broader size led naturally towards the
horrizontal], American furniture tends to be vertical. Slender, lean,
thin, tallish, these are the adjectives that generally describe it.
This American tendency to be tall and slender, combined as it is with
less carving than the English liked - indeed, less ornament of any
sort-- makes for a quite distinctive and non-English character.
"Americans use the term Chippendale to mean Early Georgian furniture
with Dutch characteristics [shell carving, cabriole legs,
claw-and-ball feet, the Cupid's bow top rail], and to include the
mid-eighteenth-c. Georgian Gothic, Chinese, and French Louis XV
features that occur in Chippendale's drawings, as well as the flowing
rococo carving and embellishment in which he specialized. American
furniture based on this design reached its most elaborate development
in Philadelphia between 1760 and 1776, under superb cabinet makers
such as Affleck, Folwell, Randolph, and Savery."
American Chippendale tends toward more functional form.
"American Chippendale often offers little curvature, considerable
restraint in ornament, and crisp rather than flowing forms, a far cry
from this rococo flights of fancy. In puritanical districts such as
New England where adornment never had been smiled upon,
Chippendale-style furniture was often so simplified as to appear
succinct, so straight and strict as to seem prim."
American 'Chippendale', however, did constitute a new style in
America, the most elaborate and luxurious up to that time. The style
continued till 1785, or thereafter.
"In England secretaries and chests of drawers with cabinet tops
generally had glass doors. In America the doors were more often of
wood, attractively panelled. Cabriole legs were always used on
highboys and lowboys, while low-standing cabinet pieces were given
either the short cabriole or a bracket foot, the bracket straight or
orgee. Both cabriole and square, straight legs were used on tables,
and the apron of smallish tables, like the apron of cabinet pieces,
was variously treated: plain, curved, or carved with a band of
ornament. Tripod tables became quite popular, elaborate examples
carrying acanthus carving on the legs and pedestal."
http://www.noteaccess.com/APPROACHES/DecorativeAA/FAmerican.htm
Search strategies: Chippendale furniture; English Chippendale;
American Chippendale
Nellie Bly |
,
0 Comments
)