THE BROCHURE SERIES |
| PLATE XXXV | CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS |
THE | ||
| 1900. | MAY | No. 5. |
CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS.
It is only within recent times that movablechairs have become common andindispensable. Seats of some kind musthave been used from the time when houseswere first built, but it is not until the civilizationof the last two or three centurieshad transformed the old ways of livingthat we begin to find them in common use.Representations of seats are found in thesculptures and paintings of Egypt, Greeceand Rome, and all through the middleages—many of them elaborate and luxurious—buttheir use was confined to thenoble and wealthy. In church furniturechairs are familiar throughout the middleages, but they were usually fixed parts ofthe building. The seats of the commonpeople were probably constructed of rudeblocks, or of single planks joined togetherwith little finish or skill.
In England, even so late as the sixteenthcentury, chairs as we know them were ofso rare occurrence as to be handed downfrom generation to generation, and of suchimportance as to be frequently mentionedin wills and deeds. Such chairs were ofthe rudest forms, ornamented, however,with embroideries and costly stuffs. In themiddle of the seventeenth century it wascustomary even at royal banquets for allbut the king and queen to be seated uponbenches without cushions. In the reign ofCharles I., however, with the encouragementof luxurious living, chairs becamemore common among the favored classes,and under the Commonwealth, with its levellingof class distinctions, their use wasextended. But in the latter period the revulsionagainst unnecessary ornament anddisplay simplified the models. With theRestoration there was a return to the oppositeextreme. The growing taste forease and luxury brought into requisitionthe richest fabrics obtainable, and we findstuffed seats and backs, with Turkish embroideriesand heavily brocaded velvets.Chairs were elaborately carved and gilded.French furniture was imported and copied,and the influence of Indian art, throughthe recent acquisition of Bombay, can beeasily traced. Of the simpler patterns,those made of turned spindles became commonat the beginning of the eighteenthcentury. Forms were borrowed andadapted from many sources, from France,Spain and Holland. In the time of Williamand Mary, under Dutch influence, theseats and backs were broadened, coloredinlay introduced, and the "cabriole" legscommonly employed, suggesting the formslater adopted