This, however, is less than justice. It is not for nothing that Chippendale's name is remembered before those of his contemporaries. His book was the best of its class, even if it was not the fountainhead which inspired the rest. We have seen that when the same decorative ideas were so broadcast it was hardly likely that from Chippendale should emanate all the good. After all, the contribution of each individual artist to the sum of advancement is generally small. What were these new ideas? Impalpable enough! It is not a question of an entire change of shape in furniture from that of a previous generation. That, we have seen, is a thing which seldom or never occurs in the evolution of furniture. If we are to sum up what Chippendale did, it amounts to this : that he took the main shapes as he found them, somewhat plain and severe; he left them decidedly better proportioned, lighter, more decorative, yet not less useful than they were. The ideas reduce themselves to a matter of artistic 'feeling,' a sense of proportion which recognises, for instance, that the breadth of a chair splat is too great or too little for the empty spaces on each side of it. It seems a small affair, this; but such affairs make all the difference between the ugly and the beautiful.

For the most part, the artist is a clever thief who takes his notions from whencesoever he can. 'Je prends mon bien partout ou je le trouve,' might Shakespeare and Chippendale each say in their respective degrees. This is not to be a mere plagiarist, as Manwaring is accused of plagiarising Chippendale. The cleverness alone excuses the theft; even exalts it from the category of thefts entirely, if the plumes which the daw borrows are found to be so skilfully dyed and arranged as to make a something which is better than the original. Chippendale was, at his best, well equal to the task. Mr. Heaton suggests several sources for his borrowings. The table-leg with an eagle or dog's-claw foot, and ornamented at the top with acanthus foliage in low relief, he finds in Jacques Androuet, called du Cerceau, who published a book of designs in 1550. The carver's foliage for mirrors in Androuet's second book is so exactly, he asserts, like what Chippendale produced, that ' he must have had a copy.' Chippendale's fluttering ribands for chair-backs he traces to the book which Berain brought out in connection with Chauveau and Le Moine in 1710. His clock-cases he borrowed, says Mr. Heaton, from Marot, who published his book of designs at Amsterdam in 1712; whilst in J. C. Erassmus's work (Nuremberg, 1659) may be found the exact prototype of the highly ornamental mirror-frames of either Lock, Johnson, or Chippendale. From Meissonier, the great French designer of the most extravagant rococo work, Chippendale is also said to have borrowed much - and all these contentions are capable of more or less support.

This merely proves that there is nothing new under the sun. The cabriole leg became fashionable at the end of the seventeenth century, but its double curve is found to all intents and purposes the same upon German or Flemish furniture, and on some oak furniture which is presumably English - heavy long oak tables, for instance - which date as early as 1620. Where did these earlier carvers find it? The answer, of course, is that the cabriole leg is as old as the Romans and Saxons. Classical tripods and tables with legs shaped like those of animals are practically also cabriole legs, and the smooth cabriole leg of Roman, of Saxon times, and of 1700 is merely a debasement in which the foot is the only animal-shaped part remaining.

Plate CXXVIII. Book Case, Mahogany

CXXVIII. Bookcase, mahogany. Messrs. Waring.

It matters little, except to students, whence you take your idea: it matters much what use you make of it, and Chippendale at his best made better things from what he borrowed. Unquestionably his merits shine forth most in chairs, and they, together with little fretted tables, not very elaborate bookcases and screens represent, it is said, what from his hand actually remains. It will be remembered that the William 111., Queen Anne, and early Georgian chair has been described as one in which turned work gives way to flatter forms. Foot-rails tend to disappear, especially that elaborate front-stretcher which is so conspicuous a feature of the Charles 11. period. Backs become very open, and cease to be of the rigid straight up-and-down shape inseparable from the old oak period and the one immediately succeeding. The lines of the chair are now suited to human anatomy. The old stock-in-trade of crowns and cherubs and S-curves disappears, and in their place appears the scallop-shell common on the summits of chair-backs and the tops of legs. The splat is sometimes very severely straight when viewed from the front, and then assumes various versions of a vase or fiddle or baluster shape.

Plate CXIII, Fret Pattern Table And Chair, Mahogany Chippendale

CXII. Table and Chair, fret pattern, mahogany. Chippendale. Messrs. Waring.

Very important to notice is it that the splat no longer terminates on a cross-rail, but comes down to the back of the seat. I have referred also to an almost invariable shape which occurs in the lower part of the uprights of the chair-back, namely, the straight piece which appears above the seat and alters to a concave curve, an angular outside shoulder dividing the two.

It will be found that in Chippendale's chairs much of the old style remains. As a rule, in the early eighteenth-century chair the junction of the top of the back with the sides is a round one, though there are exceptions to the rule. Chippendale uses this rounded end of the back to a considerable extent. Out of about seventy different designs for chairs taken as they come, perhaps twenty may be described as rounded at the end, but nearly forty have that decided bow shape in the upper cross-piece of the back which is associated with his name. Divested of extraneous ornament, it consists of a convex outer curve in the centre with a concave curve on each side of it. At the extreme ends there is a little upward twist which may be said to correspond to the horns of the Cupid's-bow shape. This form, to which he was obviously so partial, we should be inclined to assign to him as one of his contributions to the general stock, did we not find that it, or something very nearly approaching to it, occurs before his time.

There are instances of very decidedly early chairs of a plain description with bow-shaped upper back-rails, which preclude our ascribing the form to Chippendale. Short of that, he deserves the full credit of having varied and adorned the shape with infinite grace, and the Cupid's-bow back may be accepted as one of his chief characteristics.

Of his riband-back chairs there are various opinions. He himself set great store by them, and was obviously quite untroubled by any doubts as to whether fluttering riband shapes are suited to woodwork. 'Several sets,' he says, 'have been made which have given entire satisfaction.' 'If I may speak without vanity,' they 'are the best I have ever seen (or perhaps have ever been made).' Mr. J. A. Heaton, on the other hand, affirms that 'the riband is almost the worst type of ornament which the Chippendale chair ever carried.' This opinion is sound from the point of view of absolute purism and utilitarian self-restriction in ornament, but with the beautiful examples of Chippendale before us - such as that superb arm-chair lent by Colonel Lyons to the Victoria and Albert Museum (Plate xcv.) - it is impossible to be hampered by any such limitations. Once we begin to listen to the objections of the purist, we must throw over a large part of the decoration of the Renaissance and of later French decoration also. We must condemn the birds and fruit and flowers of Grin-ling Gibbons, and, to be quite consistent, throw over all the shapes of pottery and porcelain which are borrowed from the worker in metal and so unsuited to be 'thrown' upon the potter's wheel.

Plate XCIV. I - Riband Back Chair, Walnut, Chippendale (?)

XCIV. (1) Chair, riband-back, walnut. Chippendale (?). Edgar Willett, Esq.

(2) Chair, walnut. Chippendale. W. R. Phelips, Esq.

Plate XCV. Riband-Back Arm-Chair, Mahogany, Chippendale

xcv. Armchair, riband-back, mahogany. Chippendale. The seat-cover is Italian. Seventeenth century. Lieutenant-Colonel G. B. C. Lyons.

Far too much which derives its beauty from the free use of ornament founded on all kinds of different materials has been given to the world for us to condemn the fluttering mahogany ribands of Chippendale. It is a matter of the taste of each individual designer. If by such means he produces a beautiful chair, let us not look askance at ribands. When an inferior designer uses them badly then we may express a wish that he had been less floridly ambitious.