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Thomas Chippendale: The Most Important Furniture Maker of All Time? Season 2, Episode 6.
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Is Thomas Chippendale the most important furniture maker to ever walk the Earth? After listening to this episode you may be convinced. The most influential person to Colonial American furniture design was actually an Englishman.
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Colonial Furniture Figures: Townsend and Goddard
00:01:06
Speaker
All right, here we are. Back at it. Buckle up. Season two, episode six. Well, you probably read the title by now, but we're going to be covering a very important person in terms of colonial furniture. Yeah, yeah. Persons of note. So last week we talked about really what colonial furniture was, what it became.
00:01:38
Speaker
And we mentioned in passing, you know, except for Chippendale, we did spend a bit of time on him because his style was so dominant and such a big part of colonial furniture.
00:01:56
Speaker
But we're going to start off this episode with a cabinet making family, a couple of families actually that were intertwined and a couple of people I never heard of, but wound up being like super important. It will start with the Townsend family like Pete Townsend Townsend and the Goddard family.
00:02:23
Speaker
So the Townsend's and the Goddard's, they're two Quaker families. They settle in the Quaker community of The Point, which is a neighborhood of Newport, Rhode Island. And they start applying their trade.
00:02:41
Speaker
Now we're talking about the first guy's job and his brother Christopher. Oh, I thought that was a typo. That's got to be John. This guy's name is Job. Or just Job.
00:02:56
Speaker
I don't know if it's Job. I mean, I knew somebody named Job, but he had an E on the end of it. And I don't know enough of my Bible to know if that's a biblical name. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, it sounds like it could be. Yeah. Yeah. Like Quaker, you know, makes me lean towards the other. Now the Quakers, they were an offshoot of the Puritans? Yeah.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, so they're essentially immigrants fleeing religious persecution in Europe, and they came over probably with very little. Just a tin of rolled oats.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, what's the deal with Quaker Oats? I should have done some research. Yeah, I mean they got a Quaker guy on the front. Yeah. I learned about that at some point. Quaker Oats? Yeah, I can't remember where it originated, but...
00:03:59
Speaker
But somebody's going to have to, the, the, the, the big drawback in doing our formatting like this is we're a little bit removed from the replies and things like that from our listeners. Cause now we're even a week further down the line into the future. Yeah. This'll be coming out like around, uh,
00:04:20
Speaker
Well, it'll be three weeks from now. It'll be, yeah, like Halloween, like maybe the week after Halloween, something like that. Wow. Wow. Um, so Job and Christopher, we're, we're talking about guys that were born 1700, 1699 and 1701. They're two years apart. Yep. So they probably get to, uh, the colonies when they're in their twenties. So, okay.
00:04:48
Speaker
Then we'll place them, you know, in in Rhode Island in their 20s, 1700s. Yeah, 30s. In fact, they didn't land in Rhode Island.
Geographic Connections and Personal Stories
00:05:00
Speaker
They landed, I think, was Christopher was he was originally in Long Island, New York. OK. We know a couple of Long Island guys. Yeah. Shout out. Yeah. Rob DeMarco and C.T. C.T. would work.
00:05:18
Speaker
out there on the island. I'm actually from the island. Yeah. Yeah. People don't. I never thought of it that way that Brooklyn and Queens are part of. Yeah. Yeah. I'm from Brooklyn. So part of Long Island. Anyway, we digress. You may may. Some Brooklynites may be aggravated by that. That lumping together. Offended by the fact that they're Long Islanders. Yeah. Oh man. It's funny, isn't it? Yeah.
00:05:48
Speaker
Well nowadays Brooklyn's so different. I mean Brooklyn is hipster central. It's true 99% of those people were born there So they make their way up to Newport and
00:06:05
Speaker
Their Newport is not the furniture building capital of New England at this point in time. It's Boston. Okay. And these guys are the first generation of the Townshends to get involved in cabinet making. Job's daughter marries John Goddard, who was his apprentice of the Goddard School. You know what?
00:06:31
Speaker
These names keep popping up. Yeah, it's those old... Those old names. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's a relationship there. Me neither. So John Goddard is an apprentice. So apparently he's younger. Well, you never know in those days. Not to be confused with John Gotti.
00:06:58
Speaker
And and thus begins the partnership of the Townsend and Goddard families So Job being the first guy he's the oldest brother There's only one piece that's got his name on it that survives it's in the it's in RISD Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and
00:07:24
Speaker
It's, well, no, it says, the only piece bearing jobs label is a desk bookcase at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. I mean, RISD is no slouch of a place to be displayed. Yeah. Other pieces attributed to him. Yeah, so not 100% confirmed.
00:07:41
Speaker
include a chest of drawers and a dressing table. Now, they have a hard time. When you're going back in time trying to figure these things out, if you've ever watched Antique's Roadshow, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Christopher's work was apparently much like that of his brother. No surprise there. And although no existing piece was definitely attributed to him until the late 20th century,
00:08:10
Speaker
A secretary he built in 1740, which had been moved to France in 1800. So we're trying to file this piece of furniture built in Providence around 1740. 60 years later, it gets moved over to France and then it gets discovered. Guess how much it sold for at auction? Well, I spoiled that. You guys guess.
00:08:37
Speaker
Three, two, one. Eight million dollars. So, you know, you see stuff on the Hantiques Roadshow, again, back into that, where there are pieces of furniture that are that old or almost that old, and they're worth 5,000, 10,000. So it shows you the importance of the town's in name, because that's what makes it worth money.
00:09:06
Speaker
It's the first generation of Townsend's building in Newport, Rhode Island, and it's the only piece attributed directly to Christopher. Eight million bucks.
00:09:22
Speaker
So again, you got Job and Christopher. Five of Job's sons become cabinet makers. Man. Yeah, yeah. Just five. You know, people had a lot of kids back then. I was gonna say, man, it doesn't say all of his sons, it's just five of his sons. How many daughters did he have and how many other sons? My God. And, you know, I have some notes here that kind of go through who was who. You had,
00:09:51
Speaker
Job Edward Townsend Jr. He has a couple of pieces. Edmund Townsend, Thomas Townsend. Interesting note about Thomas. He was banished to Massachusetts by the British and later became an innkeeper. He hung up the tool belt.
00:10:17
Speaker
old Tommy. So Tommy Townsend didn't continue in the, in the trade. He was a troublemaker. And Robert, the fifth son, he died in 18 Oh five. So he didn't, he didn't have too long, but he left the cabinet making business. Uh, that was taken over by job. The second job, Edward Townsend.
00:10:42
Speaker
So it looks like job Edward was probably the oldest. He was the junior and he was the most prolific
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like he was probably born right around the time of immigration by job number
Trades and Craftsmanship: Past vs. Present
00:11:00
Speaker
one. Yeah, job the first, because yeah, his birth date is 726. And it says, the second generation of Newport cabinet makers from these families are perhaps the best known.
00:11:15
Speaker
So I would consider that the third generation. They're not including the first because it's John Townsend. He's the big name here, John Townsend. Oh, he's the son of Christopher. Okay. So we're getting to Christopher's kids. Gotcha.
00:11:35
Speaker
Those first five were jobs kids. Christopher's kid, John, is the big name. Yeah, that's the name I know, John Townsend. Yeah. There's actually a YouTube channel. It's like John Townsend, something or another.
00:11:53
Speaker
I don't know how I ended up getting these videos suggested, but it's like these historical reenactor people. And I think they have a website where they sell all this BS. Yes. Sorry if you if you're into this stuff. Sorry if you're if you're into dressing up like a 18th century actor. Yeah. But he like they do
00:12:14
Speaker
The cooking videos is what I started watching, like they do these recipes from the... Ah, yeah, yeah. And they like cook it over and open fire. I've seen that guy. It's pretty cool. Yeah, he wears, you know, these goofy get ups. Yes. But it's Townsend's. John Townsend's is like the name of the whole thing.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, so John, the son of Christopher, he goes on to great import. Now, it's a little bit weird because John has an apprentice who marries Job's daughter. John Goddard was the son of Daniel Goddard.
00:12:59
Speaker
and the apprentice of Job Townsend. He married Job's daughter, Hannah Townsend. They're not straying too far from the pumpkin patch. Like, listen, you want to come apprentice under me, you get to also marry my daughter. But instead of staying for 21 years, for 14 years or whatever it is, you got to stay for 16 years.
00:13:22
Speaker
When I was writing all this down, I was trying to like map it out of my head. We need one of those charts like they have on the, um, the PBS show, uh, with the Henry Lewis Gates, uh, finding your roots because I can't really follow it in my head. All these people marrying it. Um,
00:13:44
Speaker
21 members of successive generations of these two intermarried families worked as cabinet makers over a period of 120 years.
00:13:57
Speaker
selling their products, not only in New England, but also in coastal trade and in the West Indies. So you got 21 cabinet makers spilling out of the job and Christopher Townes in line. Yeah, that's some good blood. And then, yeah, mixed in with the Goddard. Yeah. There was some kissing cousins there. Some heavy hitters.
00:14:28
Speaker
but it goes to show you, um, that's something that doesn't happen. You're lucky if you could find like your son to go into your line of work. Yeah. I think the rejection of the sort of family, uh, business thing is maybe
00:14:47
Speaker
I don't know. It's a much bigger thing now where you don't want to do what the generation before you did. But it was it was an expected way of life. And probably, you know, for the for the young kids, there was no choice. You know, you started work and maybe, maybe if you weren't needed, you'd get to select some other course for yourself.
00:15:09
Speaker
But chances are you were expected to and just did what your dad did. Well, yeah. And by that, by the point that you were ready to go off on your own, you already had this set of skills where it's like, I'm going to go start over. Right. So what are you going to do? You know, I'm a cabinet maker now. Should I learn how to be a printer?
00:15:28
Speaker
and go do a 14 year apprenticeship on paid. You know, that's the thing that you have to kind of consider. What was life like back then? What was life like in early 1700, mid 1700s in the colonies in Rhode Island? Well, and you talk about just the whole idea of having a craft and the pride that comes with it. You know, it's not as much of a thing now.
00:15:58
Speaker
No, definitely. I mean, we don't experience it much because we make furniture. But there's definitely a bit of condescension to people who work with their hands. Yeah, and more people worked in a trade, we'll call it, then.
00:16:17
Speaker
Then do now like back then there weren't many jobs that were like no like the jobs you see now where you work out an office and you you know You're pushing paper and answer and phone calls and you know having zoom meetings Back then it was you were a furniture maker or a farmer or a banker or a doctor or they were they were all trades that required I don't know
00:16:45
Speaker
Maybe it's just because I identify with this that maybe I'm a little biased, but yeah, now it's not like that. And more people work in jobs that aren't like that. Right back then, that's what everyone did. Everyone had a trade, a vocation. Yeah, a livelihood.
00:17:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's a way of life. As the colonies begin to grow and prosper, you get that mercantile class that develops.
Newport Furniture Design Innovations
00:17:17
Speaker
And in my readings, I kind of came across what is sort of reverse feelings, you know, like they were looked upon as people don't do anything. Right. You know, they're just buying and selling. And there was a certain amount of contempt for them from the people who were actually the doers, the makers.
00:17:39
Speaker
the people who created something from nothing. Whereas the mercantile class, they just kind of shifted stuff around. Right. And they got rich. It's the one percenters. Basterds. Well, you and me and our brethren. Getting dirty every day. That's right.
00:18:07
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about the furniture that the Goddard and Townsend family did and what was so important about their design work. Now we already discussed last week that Newport, Rhode Island was
00:18:25
Speaker
the center of American design where we broke away from the European influence and they kind of worked independently and we mentioned that they had
00:18:40
Speaker
native born cabinet makers. And now we see why. For 120 years, they had 20 members of the Goddard Townsend family. So they basically dominated that area. Yeah, a little bit of eugenics going on. I mean, we know they did good work. We don't know how healthy they were.
00:19:10
Speaker
From all that intermarrying So the thing that they developed that is so Identifiable is the block and shell motif It's probably one of the few things and there's a nice shell yeah from the Rhode Island Furniture archive it's not a great link
00:19:37
Speaker
as far as like the furniture. We looked at some things last week that had that shell motif and we're probably, I'm hoping that my links will improve and there'll be some better examples. Tried to go through there as we were, as I was editing it.
00:19:59
Speaker
So, but everyone knows that block and shell, all the furniture folks, and even people who are not real furniture nerds know this thing. Oh yeah, we've all seen it, especially on that Queen Anne. Yeah. So this is where it comes from.
00:20:16
Speaker
This is the guy that and the family and the furniture making crew that make this a thing. And it's become squarely identified with the Newport, Rhode Island school design.
00:20:34
Speaker
So, you know, it's that alternating concave and convex curve like a scallop show. There you go. That's the best way to describe it. Yeah. I didn't say it in the first episode, but if you sign up for the Patreon, we give this outline with every week so you can actually go and click all these links. And that's cool. So if you want to listen along, you can actually examine these pieces as we as we do.
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, and the links will lead you to other links because these are, for the most part, great pages with a lot of information that I had to, you know, wean away from the written stuff that we're going through now. Yeah, I mean if it says Yale.edu, that's part of, you know, like doing good research. You gotta get strong source material.
00:21:28
Speaker
So I'm pretty confident in all this stuff. Like they say, do your own research.
00:21:36
Speaker
I can't verify these sources. I saw a YouTube video on this once. I can't vouch for its legitimacy. Those are actual words of a conversation we had yesterday. This is a split screen deal over here. Yeah, you're really going to town on this. You are CEO of technology.
00:21:58
Speaker
Um, there was a, I don't know if you ever heard of the village voice newspaper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was really big. Um, in my youth in, in New York, it was like the art of newspaper would come out Wednesdays, but you could go to the news stand on Tuesday night and it would hit the stands and it was free.
00:22:18
Speaker
And in the back it had all of the musicians wanted, had like who's playing where and everything. Well, they had this comic strip that was running and it's where Matt Groening began. Oh yeah. Yeah. With that rabbit, that crazy rabbit thing. He started in, in the village voice, but there was a comic that was
00:22:41
Speaker
I can't remember the title of it, but it was basically overheard on the subway. Oh yeah. That's what we were talking about with the research and the YouTube made me think of that because it would just be verbatim over heard on the subway.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah. That's been ripped off by like every college newspaper. Right. Right. This is so that that was the where it began. And we just gave you a little taste of that. Oh yeah. I mean everybody everybody is listening to us on a podcast listens to stuff on the Internet. So they've heard their own version of crazy. Oh yeah. That's for sure. Hopefully this isn't crazy talk a little bit but.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. So getting back to this block and shell. Now, just because it's got a block and shell motif doesn't mean it was Goddard and Townsend. It was super influential. And there are a couple of minor names compared to Townsend and Goddard. Benjamin Baker and Grindel Rawson. Big enough to not disappear into the Black Hall of History.
00:23:57
Speaker
But these were also a couple of guys in Providence copping this design. They did the ball and claw foot. Open space between the talent and the ball. That was another one of their things. Well, talk about a pain in the ass. My God. Think about the time. But, you know,
00:24:22
Speaker
the stuff that we've kind of gotten away from is you know you and I take a piece from start to finish if we don't know how to do something we got to learn how to do it right back then you know there was a job was in his little corner of the workshop and his whole thing might be carving the ball and claw foot yeah
00:24:41
Speaker
And they had an apprentice who was, you know, for seven years carving this shell.
Auction and Legacy of Townsend and Goddard
00:24:47
Speaker
It's like a piece would go over to his bench and it would get the carving and then we'll go back to the next guy who was, you know, making the doors. Yeah, they didn't, you know, start at 40 like you and 30 like me. You know, they were they were 14. Seven. Yeah. By the time they were 40, they were dead. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's true.
00:25:06
Speaker
Unless you're a disc, bro. We all lived to be like 80 in the 1600s So It gives you you know, it's it's for me. It's fun to think about you know, the what it was like what was going on then We could go on the Townsend website get some some of those clothes. Yeah old-timey tools
00:25:32
Speaker
take us a year to make something then. They come repossess our homes. It costs us $25,000 in reproduction gear. Yeah. As far as showing how important these guys were, a single mahogany secretary bookcase made by Christopher Townsend, who was John's father.
00:25:56
Speaker
He made it in 1740. It's sold at auction in New York for $8.25 million. Okay, we discussed that. John Goddard made a famous six-shell desk bookcase for Providence merchant, Nicholas Brown.
00:26:13
Speaker
And it sold at the by the Brown family in 1989 for 12.1 million. Wow. That was yeah, that was the record for a piece of American furniture. And then we have a picture. There's that. Oh, no, that's that thing. That's that thing. I wish I had a picture of that. I might be able to find it.
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's something else. So I wonder what it would be worth nowadays. Yeah, I mean that was 32 years ago. Yeah, yeah. But the distinction is it's an American piece of furniture. Right. And something from Newport is distinctly American.
00:27:00
Speaker
This caught us. A lot of times I'll be doing this research in the shop while Jeff's working and I'll find something interesting and I'll have to share it with him. And this was one of those things. Between 1756 and 1800, John Townsend signed his name to a bit more than 30 pieces of furniture.
00:27:24
Speaker
So you're looking at 44 years of furniture making and we could attribute, you know, 30, 32 pieces of furniture to them. We don't know if more of that was, you know, lost to history. I'd have to guess, yeah.
00:27:43
Speaker
You know, he was, you know, maybe the shop in total was putting out more work and maybe just pieces he built were numbering in the low 30s. Yeah, maybe, you know, I'm sure there may be some slip by that he didn't sign. You know, because we
00:28:06
Speaker
Before we have a branding iron now, which we've used a couple times. It's actually it's way more difficult to use than you'd expect You think you just yeah, it's not like branding a piece of leather or something No, and it's a me. It's a complicated brand But like I would tend to sign stuff before that but a lot of stuff left the shop with no mark at all So oh yeah a hundred years from now if it's still around which hopefully it is
00:28:32
Speaker
There's nothing to identify it as a green street. That's right. And you know, some things had to have slipped through the cracks with, you know, right in 44 years.
00:28:41
Speaker
Now, again, I'm taking this from the Yale archive, so it must mean something. And it says that his signatures document a remarkable body of work. So I guess that was a lot of output and secures him a special place in the history of American cabinet making. And we know that from our earlier research,
00:29:06
Speaker
one piece by great-great-great-great-great grandpa Nick. A lot of this stuff just is lost in history. And it kind of points to the fact that
00:29:24
Speaker
He knew what he was doing. I wrote, his habit of adding the date suggests an acute historical awareness and a determination to document his legacy. Not bad.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, so you see more, as we were talking last episode, more of this movement towards the identity of the maker. Yeah, yeah. And he may have only signed his best stuff, like us. We don't always get to make everything that we want. Because they also note, without exception,
00:30:09
Speaker
All the signed pieces are of the highest quality. So he may have only signed what he thought was his best stuff. Yeah. The stupid melamine tree that, you know, we still haven't paid for it. Still haven't paid for it. And when you listen to this three weeks from now, we probably still haven't. That's right. Yeah, there's no we didn't sign that.
00:30:31
Speaker
All right. Let me go through a couple of quotes that describe Townsend, John Townsend in particular. He's, of course, one of the most prominent of the cabinet makers from that area. A perfectionist who adhered to tradition. He delegated little and was constitutionally incapable of cutting corners, either by stinting on the rich mahogany he favored
00:31:01
Speaker
or dispensing with such labor intensive construction features as cross brace supports and tenon brackets. My man. Yeah. Yeah. Labor intensive refinements are evident in the interiors as well as the exteriors of every documented piece. So he's he's finishing and fitting these pieces out, you know, top to bottom, inside and out.
00:31:30
Speaker
And his style and his attention to detail are really evident in everything that he signed. Let's see what I got here.
00:31:55
Speaker
So up till Townsend got it, you got Boston, kind of reigning Supreme. And these are the guys that bring Providence to prominence. Is that a tongue twister? Yeah. Yeah. They, you know, they did something different, a little bit different. Um, when you think of furniture, that picture right there of this period, again,
00:32:23
Speaker
That's that's what you have in your mind, isn't it? That's, you know, undeniably Queen Anne. I write the bonnet top high chest, the most fashionable and enduringly popular piece of 18th century case furniture was developed in Boston. Newport took this innovation and made it all together, richer and more memorable by adding a shell motif to the blocking.
00:32:54
Speaker
The shell, so evident in Townsend's work, became the signature feature, the emblem of Newport furniture. So there you go. Yeah, so it's got the Cabrio legs with the ball and claw foot. See, the pediment's actually closed on that one. Yeah, yeah. Which is unique. I haven't actually seen that before. Me either. I can remember. It's really a nice, well-balanced piece, of course. We're talking about it like...
00:33:24
Speaker
We could do that. Yeah. Like the cooking McDonald's talking about fine dining. It's a little humbling, isn't it? Yeah. It's just remarkable. Yeah. Again, the flame finial. Yeah. Yeah. Even these, you see, he has these panels up here, these raised panels that make the drawers rather than having a completely flat
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, really nice touch. I will say, though, this spacing over here needs a little adjustment on this. Well, it may have it may have sagged a little in the last 270 years. Yeah, hopefully there's not a lot of restoration work done to like straighten it out. But yeah, you could see some of the bottom drawers are not quite in alignment. And, you know, we don't know how well it operates.
00:34:23
Speaker
But it's it's certainly gorgeous. Oh, yeah. So that's Newport right there. That's where they they take the Boston piece, refine it. And that's all down to Townsend and Goddard. Oh.
00:34:47
Speaker
Now we're getting to the late mid-1700s. And this is again how time and place affect furniture making. The British occupy Newport in 1777. People are still trying to make a living. The revolution's going on, but it doesn't mean that time and place stopped.
00:35:14
Speaker
And the city's bankrupted. They called this the golden age of Newport furniture making and it's basically ended.
Thomas Chippendale's Influence on Furniture
00:35:26
Speaker
Industry in general declines.
00:35:31
Speaker
And although Pembroke tables and Townsend making some really nice pieces of block and shell furniture after the war, it's sometimes said that with the federal style that comes in, John Townsend's heart was no longer in his work. So he develops this whole design aesthetic
00:36:02
Speaker
You could see how passionate he is about it. We went over his bark ethic. And then he becomes passé. Yeah, I mean, a revolution happened. I mean, war tore through the colonies and I mean, you could see how that may make you lose your drive a little bit. Yeah. So this is the end of an era. The revolution of cars.
00:36:32
Speaker
There's rough times in the colonies, especially Providence. It's bankrupted. Yeah. Newport. I'm sorry.
00:36:45
Speaker
And a new style comes into vogue post-revolution. And poor God, he's just not into it. But the name continues on. I mean, we know that there were 120 years of that line. But the guy who started it all kind of like, eh, F it. He hung up his hat.
00:37:10
Speaker
You feel like that some days. You know when I felt like that when we started getting all every design that came in was white painted shaker. Oh my God. You're like beating them off with a stick. You know, I can't take it anymore.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah. They're still out there. They're just not calling us. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God. Yeah. So who's next in the big... That's our boy, Thomas Chippendale. Right. Thomas Chippendale. This was a great quote. Some experts consider him Britain's greatest cabinet maker.
00:37:56
Speaker
ever the Shakespeare of English furniture makers. Well, that's funny that, you know, we're talking about American furniture and Thomas Chippendale is like the influencer of, you know, American furniture. Yeah. Yeah. That was I was thinking that very same thing. This guy, his impact was so far and wide that you you can't, you know, avoid it.
00:38:25
Speaker
I'll read this quote from Robert Copley, Christie's international head of furniture. Take it for what you will.
00:38:37
Speaker
Thomas Chippendale is without question Britain's greatest cabinet maker. He excelled in every style he worked in from the whimsical Rococo and the fashion for all things Chinese in his early career to the neoclassical with its straight lines derived from the ancient world.
00:38:56
Speaker
His reputation spread far beyond the shores of his homeland, indeed, and his genius is reflected in the number of beautifully designed and executed pieces of furniture that survive in excellent condition nearly 250 years after his death." Yeah, that kind of puts a little exclamation point on what some people think of Chippendale. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's quite a
00:39:28
Speaker
Quite a reputation to live up to. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to get into just why Chippendale, the British cabinet maker, is so important to American furniture design. We don't know much about his early life. They say he was probably trained by his father, who was not like a super skilled craftsman. He worked as a mason.
00:39:56
Speaker
And they think he may have apprentice with somebody named Robert Wood. So he doesn't have a really deeply entrenched background. This is a little tidbit. We know he was married twice and had 12 kids. Damn.
00:40:17
Speaker
grow Thomas. Yeah. So in, so we're in the 17 fifties now in 1754 he's working in London.
00:40:28
Speaker
And he's got a pretty big company. He's got 50 journeyman cabinet makers. Wow. And I got the pull from several states to get that money. So he's working in London and tell everybody what the esteemed name of Chippendale's Furniture Shop was. The Cabinet and Upholstery Warehouse. Can't think of a more
00:40:58
Speaker
I don't know. Unassuming, more unassuming name than that. Now that sounds like a place we'd see on highway 36 selling furniture from China. This Sunday at the cabinet and upholstery warehouse, 25% off all cabinets, 0% financing free delivery. Yeah. Well, what happens that year changes furniture making history though.
00:41:30
Speaker
On the screen, we have an actual, I guess you call it a screenshot from the pages of what they call the trade catalog. We would probably call it a book. Chippendale publishes The Gentleman and Cabinet Makers Director.
00:41:53
Speaker
And he's the first to do such a thing. And it really launches his career. Everything we know about Chippendale basically happens post-publishing of the director. Yep. I mean, these undeniably Chippendale, these ribbon motifs here in the top of these two things. So what is the gentleman and cabinet maker's director?
00:42:21
Speaker
It's 160 plans for furniture that could be built for clients and it was intended for other cabinet makers to copy. Wow. So what the going rate was for that back in the day? I'll tell you exactly what the going rate was. Three cents. No. Three shillings.
00:42:48
Speaker
funny. You should ask Chippendale, the astute businessman.
00:42:55
Speaker
he was trying to promote the trade. So it wasn't like he was sort of like secreting away his stuff. His intention in publishing the director was to sign up 400 subscribers, 400 cabinet shops, and he would give them a discounted free publishing price.
00:43:21
Speaker
and they'd get the 160 plates as it would be called for 1.14 shillings.
00:43:31
Speaker
Or if you wanted it unbound, 1.1 shilling. And I did a little digging. That's about $5 in today's money. It seems awfully cheap, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. A subscriber would have to pay 50% down. And if you wanted to book, when it was published, you'd get a discount. And the idea was that a bookshop would mark it up.
00:44:01
Speaker
So I saw a video on this and I can't vouch for its accuracy.
00:44:07
Speaker
I was going to say just the fact that 50 percent down makes me think that it that maybe that conversion is off. Yeah. I had to go to like websites where it would it would say like, you know, what's a shilling of 1750 worth in today's money kind of thing. And so that might not be accurate. That that five dollars. You know, I would think there's got to be another zero or so attached to that.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you got to put a down payment, then it's got to be a large sum. Right. Right. You know, pay it off for five bucks. You just get 10 of them. Exactly. So he puts together this book with 160 of his designs, which in and of itself is quite a feat. Yeah. I'd be lucky if I could come up with 16 original designs. And, um,
00:45:00
Speaker
It's intended for others to copy. So he's thinking ahead. You know what it made me think of? Remember when Apple and IBM came out like the PC versus Apple? How old do you think I am? Well, before there was the iPod, which kind of saved Apple. Yeah.
00:45:26
Speaker
They were dying a slow death. The only people using Mac computers were like artists and graphics companies because the software was designed in such a way that it was better suited for that. And the machines were a lot more expensive.
00:45:46
Speaker
But what Gates did was he made the PC, he made his, what do you call his software? Windows. He made Windows available to all the other computers. So whether it was Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Gateway, Dell, he said, license my stuff. And that's what it made me think of.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yeah. He was looking at this bigger picture. Yeah. Well, it's no wonder you see so much influence in in the States from a guy in London because he was selling these. They could take it and and they didn't even have to copy it exactly because they, you know, they were injecting their own style and materials and everything into it.
00:46:31
Speaker
So it's no shock that he was such a big influence in the US because he was putting all this out there for other people to see. It's not like you had to go to London and study under him to learn how to build Chippendale furniture. Well, you could just buy the director and the gentleman in the cabinet makers director and know how to make 160 pieces of Chippendale furniture.
00:46:51
Speaker
That's a great title, right? Yeah. Because. But not as good as the furniture and the cabinet and upholstery warehouse. Apparently he sought out some advice before naming his book.
00:47:12
Speaker
this is Tommy. You have to do something about this name. Yeah, I forgot. Forgot what? Oh, you know, not just cabinet makers bought the book like architects bought it.
00:47:31
Speaker
Rich folks bought it, you know, people in new nobility. Yeah, and I'm sure they would commission people to build. You know, they might have this book and they might go to the local guy and say, can you build me something like this? Because, you know, it's seen as this sort of highfalutin, you know, it's the hottest trend in Europe. So yeah, we want to have the same thing here. I'm a mercantile and I want to be, you know, live lavishly.
00:47:58
Speaker
So it makes you wonder, I mean, obviously it's a success because we know Chippendale's name and we know everything that follows. Does the book or do the designs propel Chippendale forward? Like, does the access to these designs mean you have to think that it would?
00:48:27
Speaker
I mean, maybe they work hand in hand. You know, I guess you can't, you know, take them in a vacuum, either one. But if he doesn't publish the book, what happens? Yeah, I mean, you look at guys like Maloof, same thing. He gets a photographer, puts out this book. He's he's rubbing elbows with all these, you know, rich folks. And what happens, he blows up. Yeah, yeah. So it's sort of and, you know,
00:48:56
Speaker
The difference is that this Chippendale stuff is crazy hardcore. He is really doing it. The Maloof stuff is, I don't know, maybe I'm in the minority, but I'm not a huge fan of the Maloof stuff. To me, it's not that. It's nothing super special. It's nice in its own right, but it's nothing like this. Comparing what was going on to what Chippendale was doing, he's really in a whole different league than most of the other people.
00:49:23
Speaker
Um, that's what I take from it that in, in last week's episode, we mentioned he didn't invent really
00:49:33
Speaker
and any of this stuff from whole cloth, but he took these elements and really refined them and really gave it a language its own. And he's trained 50 guys to do it. Right. So he's got a whole crew of 50 people who are able to create this, you know, highly intricate and revolutionary kind of furniture. And for those that follow along and can see the visual,
00:50:05
Speaker
Check out a piece of Chippendale furniture. Check out this girl and tell me you're going to make it. Especially this one. Come on. The profile. Yeah. Just the different heights and depths and.
00:50:24
Speaker
Yep. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. So you got to have your act together to grab this book and then reproduce one of these pieces. Yeah, in 1759. Uh-huh.
00:50:39
Speaker
So so in the book what what is the gentleman and cabinet makers director it's got household furniture chairs sofa beds commodes now commode not like what we think of a commode yes totally confuse me yeah it's like i had to look it up it's it's like a piece of furniture with drawers
00:51:02
Speaker
shelves. It's not until becomes part of like American slang that it refers to like, you know, a toilet, clothes, presses, clocks, writing tables, bookcases. Now, I'm wondering, like, did Gustav Stickley read this book? Because he goes and publishes The Craftsman, which is it's the same exact thing.
00:51:27
Speaker
My thought exactly. It's the same exact thing. And the drawings are not that far off. We have a couple of those books, you know, with excerpts from them, you know, because later publishers have subdivided the book. He went even crazier, and instead of doing a one-shot deal, he did a, I guess it was monthly, or maybe even more frequent than that, but it was a regular publication, and there's, I don't even know how many issues, but he was a little smart.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great, great point. One of the preeminent, you know, American furniture makers to follow is definitely influenced by this. And even though he's working in a completely different style,
00:52:14
Speaker
Only difference, Gustave Stickley was putting it in the hands of regular people. He was going for the regular Joe, like not a professional furniture maker. It was more for, you know, he wanted regular people to make their own furniture. That was the whole idea was, yeah, you know, hey, we should, this shouldn't be a crazy, you know, endeavor to get a nice piece of furniture. You can make it yourself. Yeah, yeah. So he's,
00:52:41
Speaker
Got all of these designs and it's in all three of Chippendale's styles, with the fourth being the English. We touched on it last week.
00:53:00
Speaker
English was sort of like the deep carvings. That's what most people think of, you know, the Chippendale thing being French Rococo or Rococo. I'm not sure. Is that going to be this week's Jacobean? No, no. I think it's Rococo. I've always heard Rococo.
00:53:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's in the style of Louis XV, so that's again drawn straight out of Europe. Gothic. Quattrofoils, in which we looked up a bit of that when we were doing some church work.
00:53:36
Speaker
fretwork, which also appears in the Chinese style where he introduces lacquer, you know, and a lot of that stuff was black, and latticework, fretwork. So
00:53:53
Speaker
The director is marketed to cabinet makers. 308 people initially subscribed. So he nearly... Almost hits his goal. Yeah. Mostly craftsmen, but also architects, some sculptors, and members of the nobility.
00:54:13
Speaker
have to add this to the list of books to pick up because yeah I'm sure you can get it. It's amazing that we you know that these records still exist that we know they were sculptors that bought the subscription. You could probably see back here since last segment I got three books added to add to these yeah so maybe by the end of the season it'll be
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm definitely going to pick up a copy of that book. So he includes, he's not holding back. He includes all his styles of work and 160 plans in total. And this is it. Since the director was used by other cabinet makers, a lot of recognizably Chippendale furniture was built.
00:54:58
Speaker
Dublin, Philadelphia, Lisbon, which is Portugal, Copenhagen, Hamburg are just a few cities that produced quite a bit of Chippendale designs. Look at this, Evan. Wow. I mean that, to me, that doesn't scream Chippendale. It doesn't.
00:55:17
Speaker
They got a nice piece of glass on the top. Yeah. What a shame. This must be in an Italian grandma's house. We all know what that does. Is that plastic on the chair? It doesn't. But you know, it does mention that he got into the neoclassicism. So you could see that in total Greek influence here. It's like a piece of pottery.
00:55:45
Speaker
Yes. Yes. And it's kind of a take off on the block and shell motif there in the middle. Yeah. Um, yeah. Really, really interesting. Um, the guy was an artist. Absolutely. It
00:56:07
Speaker
It's just amazing. Interesting feat, you know, departing from the more compound curves, the Cabriolet, these are just sort of tapered with a little block foot, like a little bun foot at the bottom. Yeah, I mean, just look at the fans in the corner of the panels. Just all of this molding. You know, this could have just been a miter, but no, it's doubled up curve here on the side.
00:56:32
Speaker
Yeah. All this marquetry. I mean, insane. This would take us five years to build. Yeah. Because it would include a year of classes. Yeah. Yeah. The figure in the wood that's chosen. I mean, is this the beginning of veneer work as we know it? Yeah, maybe.
00:56:54
Speaker
this quadruple book match, whatever the hell you call that, in the corners. Right, right. They don't just leave it alone. It's really stunning. I would urge anybody who's listening only, especially this episode, and maybe it's going to be like this for this series of podcasts.
Comparison: Chippendale vs. Stickley
00:57:16
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully. I mean, we build furniture. So it's a visual art. You know, you have to see these things. Yeah. Head over to the YouTube because I'm going to have these. It'll be up over here. Yeah. You really want to check it out to to fully appreciate it because I didn't fully appreciate the the depth of his influence and artistry.
00:57:40
Speaker
You know, because you hear the name so often, it's just becomes a bit, you know, it gets watered down. Yeah. Oh, Chippendale, this Chippendale, that. Oh, it just becomes a style. You don't realize there was a guy behind all this that, you know, he pulled this out. So it's a huge success. Huge, insanely influential. As I mentioned, his work
00:58:08
Speaker
is now being produced all over the world. Um, and the rich especially are, are enamored of this and they really are looking for a whole rooms of Chippendale work because he does, you know, the, the book goes into that. Right. And I wrote down, think Downton Abbey, because as I'm going through, you know, all these pictures,
00:58:35
Speaker
I never watched it. But yeah, I know the it's like know the aesthetic that you're like the outside of these homes. Unfortunately, most of the links I had come across was just the outside of these like castles. But few interior shots, you know, 20 foot tall ceilings, you know, all look at the gilding on the wall wallpaper with gold. It's not even gilding. It's literal like pieces of gold plated metalwork.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. He, the clock is probably a Chippendale design. The chairs. Got a little chair up on top.
00:59:13
Speaker
And the other thing, you know, he talked about was the fabric and and and soft furnishings. He was he was into all of this. He would pick out gold leaf chair. Yeah. Look at how the fabric, the design and the fabric is set within the, you know, the framework of the chair and the wallpaper. Exactly. Nothing is, you know, left to chance. Um,
00:59:44
Speaker
I have to say, although I don't imagine myself building in this style, um, anytime in the near future, I become a bit of a Chippendale fanboy. Yeah. Uh, it it's after reading about it and seeing all this stuff, it's hard not to. So all the way from England, Chippendale becomes
01:00:09
Speaker
one of the preeminent figures in American furniture design during this period, during the early American and colonial, right? Yeah. Period. Yeah. And although, you know, he's not here in the U.S. producing furniture, he is the, you know, he is the guy. Yeah.
01:00:32
Speaker
His ideas are here. His plans are here. And he's the it dude. Wow. Very interesting.
01:00:44
Speaker
So that was that was pretty interesting. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I had I've never had heard of, you know, his his plans being published and all that. I mean, it really gives a lot of insight behind what I was going to hear, a lot of insight behind why. He was so influential.
01:01:05
Speaker
Right, so we could compare, you know, the two main figures I found, you have the, well, we'll call the Townsend and Goddard family in line, we'll call that one. Right. Or these native Rhode Islanders and then a Brit. Yeah.
01:01:32
Speaker
Uh, too tall? Well, no, I won't say too tall. They both drew from the same well.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, and you know that those guys in Newport were reading the Chippendale stuff. I'm sure they had to have been. Yeah, it'd be impossible to miss. It'd be like us, you know, ignoring everything we saw on the Internet. Right. We can't. We can't. Much as we might try to avoid some things, we can't. Yeah, like how many furniture publications were there in 1750?
01:02:07
Speaker
Yeah. His was the very first to ever occur. Right. So it might be interesting to find out if anything followed. You know, we don't know because, you know, we're not scholars. Right. Well, no, we will. We'll be semi scholars by the time this series is over. Yeah. I'm hoping that I can retain some of what I've been learning. If not, you just go back and listen to the podcast.
01:02:38
Speaker
If I could stay in the sound of my own voice. When we open the Green Street School, it's going to be a 101. It's just going to be a sit and listen to 48 episodes of the podcast. That's two credits. It's a two credit course. Yeah, you know, it's.
Significance of Furniture Signatures
01:03:01
Speaker
Like I've got, especially in this episode, I feel like some enthusiasm and a little excitement. And I hope that some of that translates to our listeners. I know that our first season was really more like shooting the breeze, talking about tools, what's going on, taking listener calls, so to speak.
01:03:28
Speaker
And this is a real departure from that, but that's something we chose to do. We wanted to, I mean, this is kind of like what we do in the shop. We are always reaching and some things do not go as planned like our steam bending oak. We won't talk about that.
01:03:49
Speaker
But we prevail in the end. And I'm sure there are going to be some people that don't share our enthusiasm for this topic. We'll lose some listeners. I'm hoping that we're going to gain more listeners with this kind of spin on information and how to kind of
01:04:16
Speaker
and make it make learning a little bit enjoyable while people are going about their day because that's kind of how people listen to a podcast. Yeah, you know, they're working can be a little bit of background noise and that kind of thing.
01:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, hopefully it's incentivizing people to actually maybe revisit the episode, sit down and get this source material in front of them and look at the pictures and really dissect these pieces of furniture the way we are. It's inspiring. Yeah, because if you want to improve your design and your woodworking,
01:04:53
Speaker
It is. It's an act of pursuit. It doesn't just happen on its own. And you need to look at the past to learn these things. That's exactly it. I'm a bit shaded toward that direction because I have a degree in history. So I have a certain appreciation for history. And it's also interesting to think about
01:05:22
Speaker
all the other folks that did stuff that didn't put their name on things that are just lost to history. That's part of it. That's part of our combined history. We're all standing on the shoulders of the people who came before us.
01:05:37
Speaker
Um, uh, whether that's 20 years ago, 50, a hundred, 200. Um, and part of what I studied in, uh, historiography, the writing of history is like, what happens to all those stories that disappear? I mean, it, it, it, it,
01:05:59
Speaker
impacts what we see as the truth and what we think is a totality of knowledge.
01:06:11
Speaker
There may be some unknowns out there. Yeah, I mean, we're not talking about the guys who tried something different back then and now nobody knows who they were. Yeah, exactly. You know, there's some funky piece of furniture out there from 1740, guaranteed, that looked nothing like any of this stuff that other people were building, but people didn't like it and that guy died and now it's gone. That's right.
01:06:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, again, and it also be interesting to see, um, now that like furniture making is a thing now, like with, uh, Chippendale and Goddard. Um, and we saw what the, with, uh, grandpa Nick, um, the first to sign a piece. Now this is a thing. This is like the Beatles, you know, people didn't know you could make,
01:07:05
Speaker
millions from publishing pop music. After that, people were a lot less reluctant to sign away their royalties. So now I wonder if we're going to learn of more and more craftsmen because they signed their work, they dated their work.
Series Reflection and Appreciation
01:07:25
Speaker
And of course, it's going to be younger than as we go forward in time. Yeah, you saw like in the first the first set with early American, there's only a handful of names that you can even identify, you know, attribute to that period. And now as you get into this next one, you got your Townsend's, your Goddard's, your Chippendales.
01:07:43
Speaker
All these guys, I'm sure there's a ton of names in Newport, all those names in Newport. And as we get further, this list of names for each period is definitely going to get longer and longer. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be curious and interesting. Yeah.
01:07:59
Speaker
You know, I would never never think that we would be considered, you know, by anybody talking like this in the future. But by signing our work, I always think it's more of a novelty, like in 50 years time, somebody is going to rip out a kitchen or somebody is going to pull a piece of furniture up and go.
01:08:21
Speaker
Oh, Green Street Joyery, that's kinda curious. Yeah, I mean, I've done that myself. Ripping out old stuff, finding signatures from, you know...
01:08:31
Speaker
but you know what's cool? The internet. Yeah. Things are going to last forever in some regard. So it, it, we don't know if people will be around in 50 years, but maybe they, maybe we will, maybe society will survive. And in 70 years there will be archives and some will type in green street joinery. Yeah. Or Instagram will come up.
01:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, they'll say there was this thing called Instagram back in the 20 20s. Holy cow, man, they were primitive. Yeah, you're going like this, like they'll be typing. Oh, yeah, that's right. In their brain.
01:09:16
Speaker
Oh, man. So should we thank everybody? Yeah. So we'll thank the Gold Tier patrons, Adam Potass, Colin Lye, Corey Tye, David Murphy, David Shoemaker, Jerry Greenan, Keith Drennan and Manny Sirianni. I don't know why I keep messing up Manny's. Manny, Manny Sirianni. Yeah, Manny. Yeah. Too many mistakes. Getting tongue tied. Yeah.
01:09:37
Speaker
And now we want to plug vesting. Yeah, so vesting finishes save 10% with the Code American Craftsman. They're over at RPMCodingSolutions.com. That's their, you know, sort of like sister company where they sell the product. So they have hard wax oils, LED finishes, they have zero VOC lacquer, all kinds of cool stuff. Really nice finishes, so you can check them out.
01:10:04
Speaker
We're not just shills for the company. No, no, we use it. And, you know, to help the podcast, we are we are affiliates. We have to disclose that that, you know, we will get a little little slice, a little kickback. Yeah. Say it, you know. It's got to support the podcast. Yeah. I mean, that's you guys know how it works. But yeah, really, really nice finish.
01:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, we use it in the shop. So that's that's what we that's all we can say. You know, we don't use it because they're giving it to us or anything like that. Yeah, we use it because we prefer it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're buying the finish too. So. All right. So everybody have a great day. Yeah, we appreciate it. We'll see you for episode. It's going to be seven. Yeah. Season two, episode seven. See you next week.
01:11:13
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain