Vol. 159 / No. 1372
Vol. 159 / No. 1372
NEXT YEAR IS the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of
Thomas Chippendale, an event that will be marked in his native county by an
exhibition at Leeds City Museum.1 The story of the study of Chippendale,
perhaps the only furniture designer and maker whose name is instantly
recognisable to a majority of the public, would be an interesting topic to
research as it would shed light on the development of furniture history as a
scholarly discipline in Britain. A turning-point was the foundation in 1964 of the
Furniture History Society (FHS), and the publication from 1965 of its journal,
Furniture History. Its 1968 volume was devoted to Chippendale (as its 2018
volume will be also). This included an article by Nicholas Goodison on archival
material at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, relating to the designer, which was
linked to a catalogue of the Chippendale furniture in the house, published as
two articles in this Magazine by the same author, with Lindsay Boynton.2 The
collaboration between the FHS and this Magazine was reinforced by the November
1969 issue, devoted entirely to articles by members of the Society. This was intended
to demonstrate that furniture studies should be part of professional art
history, and that the work of a leading furniture designer and craftsman
deserved all the academic rigour that was taken for granted in the study of
painters and sculptors. With the publication in 1978 of Christopher Gilbert’s
two-volume monograph on Chippendale, that ambition was amply fulfilled.3
The study of British furniture could have proceeded entirely
on such traditional monographic lines, but in fact that approach became
subsidiary to a broader study of the furniture trade in all its aspects. This
new direction owed a great deal to the publication by the FHS in 1986 of The
Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660–1840, edited by Geoffrey Beard and
Christopher Gilbert. Its fifty thousand entries, assembled largely on the basis
of information from the Society’s members, supply a brief history of each
maker, with notes on documentary and other sources. This is an invaluable
resource, but it has always been acknowledged that it represents only a
fraction of the information that could be drawn out of the documentary record.
To take just one example, the Dictionary contains the names of about five
hundred London furniture makers at work between 1660 and 1725, but in a recent
Ph.D. thesis Laurie Lindey was able to list twelve thousand names for the
period 1640–1720.4
For some years it has been clear that the way forward was
the establishment of a digital database to replace the Dictionary. This is now
being undertaken by the British and Irish Furniture Makers Online Project
(BIFMO). Announced last October, this is a collaboration between the FHS and
the Centre for Metropolitan History (CMH) at the Institute of Historical
Research, University of London. The first phase, due to go online on 30th September,
is an open-access searchable database of all the entries from the Dictionary,
together with the names from Lindey’s thesis. The project, which is being
overseen at the IHR by Lindey as a post-doctoral research fellow, working with
Mark Merry, acting director of the CMS, is highly ambitious. As well as
extending the coverage to Ireland, Scotland and Wales, it aims to include other
parts of the world from which British craftsmen originated or where local
makers were influenced by British practices or immigrants. It also plans to
extend the chronological range, initially to 1900 and eventually to the present
day. The cost of the project’s first five years of operation is estimated to be
£365,000, which will fund the post-doctoral research fellowship, additional
junior research scholars, technical costs and related events, such as study
days and conferences. Of this, £55,000 has already been pledged and the first
year of operation has been temporarily underwritten by the FHS. It is to be
hoped that funds can readily be found for a project that promises to reshape the
future of British furniture studies.5
At present, none of the twelve thousand names in Lindey’s thesis
can be associated with a known work. One of the many exciting possibilities
raised by BIFMO, which will be illustrated, is that it will allow the names of
makers to be linked to surviving furniture. For this to be achieved, catalogues
of furniture must themselves be digitised. In England, a lead has been set by
the National Trust, which in 2015 undertook a three-year Furniture Research
Project. Funded by the Royal Oak Foundation and the Paul Mellon Centre for
Studies in British Art, this is paying for additional staff to research and
catalogue the Trust’s collection of furniture – which, with some 55,000 items,
is the largest in the world in single ownership. Here again, funding will be
sought, as it would be deeply regrettable if the project were allowed to lapse
in 2018. Some eleven thousand furniture entries in the Trust’s online catalogue
have already been fully revised.6 Among them will be the entries on
Chippendale, in time for his three hundredth anniversary – an event that will,
thanks to digital technology, coincide with advances in furniture history that
may one day seem as significant as the launch of the FHS.
1 Thomas Chippendale: A Celebration of Craftsmanship and
Design 1718–2018, Leeds City Museum, 9th February–10th June 2018. For details
of the exhibition, and of other anniversary events, go to
www.chippendale300.co.uk.
2 L. Boynton and N. Goodison: ‘The furniture of Thomas
Chippendale at Nostell Priory – I and II’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 111 (1969),
pp.281–85 and pp.351–60.
3 Reviewed by Geoffrey de Bellaigue in this Magazine, 122
(1980), pp.440–42. Another significant event was the foundation in 1965 of the
Chippendale Society.
4 L. Lindey: ‘The London Furniture Trade 1640–1720’,
unpublished Ph.D. diss. (Institute of Historical Research, University of
London, 2015).
5 Potential donors are asked to contact Keith Nicholls at
the FHS: finance@furniturehistorysociety.
org.
6 www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk.