For the decoration of his splats he is fond of trefoil or kidney-shaped openings. These last are formed by the juxtaposition of two C-curves thus, CD, and are found in the upper and lower parts of splats. Often they constitute quite a large opening in the centre of the splat, and are filled in with other shapes. The edges are generally moulded with a raised C-curve. This shape is as frequent in Chippendale as the S-curve upon the oak furniture of a previous epoch.

Besides the C-curve of which he makes such ample use, Chippendale has no stint of acanthus leafage creeping delicately along the top of the back or twisting itself up the sides. It is used to disguise the harsh angles which are so noticeable in the chairs of the generation before, and to render interesting the broad surface of the upper parts of cabriole legs. In his more obviously French-inspired patterns there is much use of rocaille work. The four elements, the C-curve, the acanthus leaf, the rocaille with its scallop edgings, and the riband, constitute the main ornaments of those chairs which we have been considering, and which are neither Chinese nor Gothic in style. The two last must be considered apart.

The precise dating of furniture is nearly always, as we have seen, a difficult one, and the task with Chippendale is not amongst the least precarious. The Director is our only definite evidence of what is typically Chippendale, but there can be no doubt as to his having produced much furniture before he published his great book. The question is, how much or how little of the early eighteenth-century furniture came from his hand? It is easy for a writer to assign him a working life of thirty years or so before the publication of the Director, and allow him the orthodox early or transition period during which he may be supposed to have been responsible for some of the early Georgian vase or fiddle-backed chairs and settees. Then he might be allowed a middle period, and finally the date of the Director might be regarded as his epoch of culmination. Unfortunately, as to the first two portions of his life, we should be indulging in little more than guesswork. The Director itself will not always clear up doubts, for of the furniture represented therein, though some had no doubt been actually produced, of certain examples Chippendale remarks that he should have much pleasure in the execution of them. Little or no available evidence remains as to the exact date of any particular chair.

One is reproduced by Miss Singleton in The Furniture of our Forefathers (vol. i. p. 274), as to which she states, on the authority of Professor Silliman, that it belonged to a set of ten imported into America by Sir W. Burnet in 1727. Now this chair has a Cupid's-bow back of the usual Chippendale type, and a rather remarkably light open-work splat. Nothing short of absolute documentary proof of the strictest kind would induce the present writer to accept the date attributed to it. The chair is one which is least likely to have been made in the third decade of the eighteenth century, when those with the round tops and the jutting shoulder-angle on the upright, to which attention was particularly drawn, were in fashion. As Miss Singleton gives us nothing except Professor Silliman's account, it seems rash to accept such a date for so slender a type of chair.