Thomas Chippendale

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The beautiful Harewood House, situated halfway between Harrogate and Leeds in Yorkshire, is the home of Earl of Harewood, grandson of King George V. It is also home to an outstanding collection of furniture by Thomas Chippendale who was commissioned to make it specially for the new mansion when it was built in the latter half of the 18th century.

Chippendale is probably the best known of all furniture makers and his work commands the highest prices. Therefore the collection at Harewood House is both important and valuable.

Chippendale's Life

• Born in Otley, Yorkshire, in 1718, the son of a carpenter
• Married Catherine Redshaw in 1748 in London
• About five years later he moved his workshop to St Martin's Lane, London and remained there for for the rest of his life
• In 1754 Chippendale published Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, his masterpiece on English furniture.
• Chippendale had two partners, first upholsterer James Rannie and then, after Rannie's death, Thomas Haig, his clerk.
• His first wife Catherine died in 1772, and he married Elizabeth Davis three years later
• Thomas Chippendale died in 1779 and his son, also called Thomas, continued the business.

Chippendale's Work

• Chippendale's designs covered a wide range of styles includine Rococo, Gothic and Chinese
• In the 1760's his work was influenced by the Neoclassical style of the architect Robert Adam, who designed Harewood House.
• The furniture in Harewood House is particularly distinctive because throught the house's historic accounts books, it can be attributed definitively to Chippendale. Without those documents attribution is much more difficult as his designs were extensively copied.
• Even pieces definitely attributed to Chippendale were possibly not made by him but by one of the craftsmen he employed.

Chippendale and Harewood House
He worked at the house from 1767 to 1777 furnishing the entire house from the magnificent state rooms to the humbler servants' quarters. Not only did he provide the furniture, he also supplied wallpaper, upholstery, carpets and other soft furnishings so creating the design of complete rooms.

The State Bed
Although over the last 230 years or so, some pieces of furniture have left the mansion, it still contains an outstanding collection including the magnificent State Bed, made for use by visiting Royalty. Amazingly this had been packed away in boxes and stored in the loft of a stableblock for 150 years. When it was discovered, greatly decayed, in the 1970s, most of the gilding had vanished and only a small amount of the original drapery had survived. A grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund was provided for the bed's restoration, a project that took two years to complete and included specially woven fabric, to the same pattern as the original, to replace the drapery.

The Diana and Minerva Commode
This is another of the outstanding pieces of Chippendale furniture on display at Harewood House. Exquisitely inlaid with ebony and ivory, it was designed to go between two windows in the State Dressing Room. It was for show only and never intended for use.

A Pair of Looking Glasses
Dating from 1773, these two looking glasses are set in highly ornate frames featuring finely carved scrolls of leaves, swags of flowers, cherubs and urns. By the mid 19th century, tastes had changed and the State Bedroom was turned into a sitting room. Not only was the State Bed dismantled but so were these two mirrors. The decoration around the frame was removed and also stored in the loft of of the stableblock until its rediscovery in the 1970s when the mirrors and frames were restored.

These pieces are just a tiny sample of Harewood House's unique collection of the work of Thomas Chippendale. If you want to see the collection for yourself, the house opens for the summer on 12th March 2003.

Copyright © Carol Fisher. All Rights Reserved.