Greater interest attaches for most English students of furniture to the more English of Chippendale's inventions, and especially to the less grand open-backed mahogany chairs. Much time need not be spent upon the upholstered French chairs with Louis xv. lines and stuffed backs and seats. They are charming enough, but not sufficiently distinctive to flatter British pride. The same, indeed, may be said of the Chinese chairs, which were certainly not intended to betray a Western parentage. These, however, with the other Chinese manifestations, we cannot possibly ignore. There are too many in the first edition to be passed over in silence. Moreover, they deal so much in those wonderfully varied frets, of which Chippendale also made such frequent use in other kinds of furniture, that for these alone they are worth noticing. We may console ourselves for their ostentatious Orientalism by reflecting that it, to a large extent, saw the light no nearer to the East than St. Martin's Lane.

The first point to be noticed is that Chippendale's Chinese chair ignores the cabriole legs. The legs are for the most part plain uprights, or uprights pierced and fretted, with a pierced bracket sometimes at the junctions of the legs and seat. Upon reflection it seems rather curious that the cabriole leg should be thus avoided. Though we have before now traced it back to the Venetian convex and concave curve, and from thence to the fashions of ancient Rome, there is another source from which it may have come. That source is Oriental. Both China and Japan dealt in something very like the cabriole leg. We have only to look at their stands for vases executed in lacquer, or at the representations of the same upon their porcelain, to find that the cabriole leg is not the sole perquisite of Europe. I question whether its popularity with the Dutch at the end of the seventeenth century had not at least something to do with its representations in the furniture and porcelain of the East.

However this may be, the cabriole leg is eschewed in Chippendale's Chinese chairs. There is perhaps another reason. On the whole, it is probable that the Chinese chair was a cheap chair. It was executed very often in beech-wood and painted, at least in the case of other makers, to imitate the colour of cane. The curved cabriole leg, or any other curve, as it requires more timber, would be a more expensive shape than the severe angulated patterns of which the Chinese manner was composed. There are, of course, instances showing a combination of French and Chinese, but even these will be found to have straight legs. The addition of the usual Cupid's-bow top of the back and curved arms forms the most ordinary admixture.

It is hardly necessary, or indeed possible, to describe the Chinese chair in its infinite variety of pattern. Sometimes the main outline of the back is plain rectangular. This severe outline may be varied at the top of the back by a piece in the centre, which is raised higher than the rest and partly curved. From this to the regular Cupid's-bow shape is a very easy transition, necessitating merely a couple of concave curves on each side instead of straight lines. The seats have either plain fronts or afford an opportunity for strap-work upon the solid, which is also extensively used to decorate the legs. Instead of the strap-work on the solid, the legs are often pierced so as to give an open fretted appearance, and in these cases there is generally a fretted open-work bracket, as I have already mentioned. When there are arms, they have often the curve which is found on Chippendale's English chair, and the space between the arm and the seat is filled in with a similar open-work pattern to that which forms the back.

Occasionally there is a suggestion of a terminal leg pierced, and reminiscent of Louis XIV. The leg-rails are as a rule designed plain, but in some cases there is a cross-piece from the two side-rails set well back under the seat, and this is in open work, as are also the side-rails to which it is attached. In another instance, all three rails are bow shaped and decorated, and of course the cross-piece is set back as before described, so as not to be endangered by the heels of the sitter. In all cases there is that fine sweeping concave curve of the chair-back, from its highest part to the bottom of the back legs, which is characteristic of this entire period, and differentiates it so much from the rigid upright backs of the old oak and the Charles II. epochs.