THOMAS CHIPPENDALE has been called "The Most Famous of English Cabinet-Makers." This title to distinction few will dispute. There can be no doubt, at any rate, that, either by a favouring combination of circumstances or the force of his personality, or both, the sound of his name has become so familiarly associated with tables and chairs and chests, and all other sorts of household equipment, that many people attribute everything produced by cabinet-makers during the eighteenth century to his pervading and versatile genius.

It was Whistler's just boast that he "carried on the tradition." He worked in the manner of the great masters before him, his own individuality being sufficiently strong to add all the "originality" that was needed. Such was also the case with another great master of art - Thomas Chippendale. He did not find it necessary to invent, but, basing his work upon the authentic forms of the mobiliary craft, he added to every style, from which he drew, the noble English qualities of sturdiness accompanied with grace, wonderful craftsmanship, and homelike character.

With his astounding versatility it might be said that he commandeered existing styles and wrought each to his own use. Beginning his labours in the Early Georgian period, he subtracted from the current style the heaviness derived from the Dutch and, preserving all its excellent qualities, gave it grace and charm. At the opposite pole it seems he could be as florid as any of the craftsmen of Louis Quinze and yet, if that work be examined in connexion with his, it will be found that in some way he has eliminated its "flightiness" and has given it dignity and rest. If anything could be more exotic to Western art than that of China it has still to be discovered, and yet, Thomas Chippendale took of its features and made furniture which accompanied other English pieces without undue incongruity. He drew upon the Gothic - and his drafts were honoured. He was not of course always equally successful - no man is - but his failures were few and his achievements glorious. As a carver he was without a peer.

Classic art would seem to be the farthest removed from his sympathies - he was a lover of the flowing line - and yet some of the bookcases, desks and wardrobes pictured in his own book are classic in their severe simplicity, and when old age was approaching with its perhaps fabled inability to change, he took up, with the verve of youth, the commissions of the classicist Robert Adam and carried out his designs. He who had depended upon carving for his ornament, in this connexion with Adam did inlaying which through all the years was credited to Hepplewhite until documentary evidence proved it the work of the crowning glory of English Furniture makers - Thomas Chippendale. Besides his skill and taste as a cabinet-maker, and his fortunate judgment in adapting varied and sundry styles to the needs and wishes of his British patrons, Chippendale was a good business man and thoroughly understood the art of advertising as then practised, the art, at least, of making himself liked, and attracting a large and fashionable clientele - and an habitual clientele, at that - to his shop in St. Martin's Lane. The belles and beaux, as well as the great lords and haughty, swelling dowagers, were wont to gather there of a morning, and were sure of getting what they sought, no matter whether it was furniture or gossip.

Chippendale always made his patrons thoroughly welcome and comfortable, and his shop became, to all intents, a kind of club where all the Court chit-chat and scandal of the metropolis were retailed amid the engaging settings of chairs "in the Gothick taste," "Chinese Sophas," Louis Quinze secretaries, and the like.

It was Chippendale who first injected the element of personality into cabinet-making, and attached his name inseparably to the output of his workrooms. This he succeeded in doing, partly through his clever faculty of advertising his wares, in creating a vogue for his productions, partly by being the first to publish any considerable and reliable book of furniture designs - a book, by the way, that had the advantage of a long list of subscribers. Before his time, the work of the cabinet-maker as an individual craftsman received little attention beyond a limited circle of customers. What was made was set down as belonging to a certain style, and the joiner's name was not heard, or, if heard, was instantly forgotten as of no moment. From Chippendale's time onward, however, it became the fashion for popular and prosperous cabinet-makers to publish books of their designs, and call the special styles they had originated or fostered after their own names.

The materials for Chippendale's biography are extremely scarce, but we do know that he was born early in the eighteenth century, and that he was the son of Thomas Chippendale, a wood-carver and cabinet-maker of some repute in Worcester. It has even been suggested that the father was responsible for several of the forms that afterward became characteristic of his son's production, but of that we can only make conjectures. By 1727, both the father and the son had established themselves in London. In 1749, Thomas the second, "The Chippendale," opened a shop in Conduit Street, Long Acre.

Thence he removed, in 1753, to No. 60 St. Martin's Lane, which, with the three adjoining houses, he continued to occupy for the rest of his life. This was the shop that became a fashionable lounging-place, and here were manufactured and retailed both furniture and gossip. It was in 1754, not long after his removal to the house in St. Martin's Lane, that Chippendale published the book by which not a little of his reputation was gained, and on which it continued to rest, "The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Directory." After wielding a tremendous influence upon the mo-biliary art of his time, Chippendale died at a ripe old age, in 1779, and was buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.