WE have never given the "other" Georgian designers and makers of furniture enough credit or enough blame. The very fact of their being classed together anonymously as the "others" is proof in itself that in popular esteem they have not had their just deserts. Chippendale, the Brothers Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton stand forth preeminently, and to their names fame has attached all the glory of making the eighteenth century the greatest in the annals of English furniture development.

Great they assuredly were, and entitled to all the honour paid them, but it need not detract from their repute to remember, at the same time, that they were debtors in many ways to their contemporaries, or those who had preceded them by only a few years. Their contemporaries, these "others," were less original, less enterprising, less great - at any rate, the turnings of Fortune's wheel never brought them uppermost in public notice so that their achievements would be blazoned to posterity - but, none the less, they exerted a very real influence, for better or worse, and left a distinct impression on the forms of English furniture in their day.

The influence and motifs the lesser lights introduced were amplified and developed by the greater men whose names we are accustomed to associate inseparably with the representative eighteenth century modes. In some cases the "others" wrought so well that the best of their performances compare favourably with the work done by the men of greater fame, while in many instances, quite on the contrary, the articles they produced were so atrociously bad that they served as foils to emphasise the excellence of what was put forth by those whom we ordinarily regard as the masters of design and execution in the world of furniture.

Sir William Chambers

Sir William Chambers, the scion of an old Scottish family, was born in 1726 in Sweden, where his grandfather had settled owing to a financial connexion with the military undertakings of Charles XII. His son, Sir William's father, unsuccessful in collecting the bad debts due him, returned to England in 1728 and there the lad was educated.

In early manhood, travels in the employ of the Swedish East India Company took him to China, where he remained for some time to study the manners, customs, and numerous forms of decorative art of the people. He was so deeply impressed with all he saw that he sketched and noted the characteristics of buildings, furniture and gardens, and after his return to England he published a large folio, embellished with numerous engravings, containing the fruit of his travels. This publication, however, was not issued till 1757, when he had abandoned all mercantile and seafaring pursuits and devoted himself wholly for a number of years to the practice of architecture.

His book gave a great impetus to the vogue for things Chinese and "laid the foundation for a taste which has never been wholly eradicated." In publishing such a book Chambers, nevertheless, did not wish to be regarded as promoting "a taste so much inferior to the antique." Indeed, he looked upon the whole thing rather as an amusing diversion than as a serious venture. Chinese buildings he considered as "toys in architecture, and as toys are sometimes, on account of their oddity, prettiness or neatness of workmanship, admitted into the cabinets of the curious, so may Chinese buildings be sometimes allowed a place among compositions of a nobler kind."

To accompany the architectural designs in his book he adds designs of "furniture taken from such models as appeared to me most beautiful and reasonable. Some are pretty and may be useful to our cabinet-makers." It has been suggested that Chippendale had access to Chambers's drawings while preparing the Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director and that Chambers, notwithstanding the difference in the dates of publication - Chippendale's book appeared in 1754 and Chambers's, as already stated, not till 1757 - was the "real originator of the Chinese style." Be that as it may, his influence in favour of the Chinese taste was much broader and more potent than Chippendale's, for he treated the whole aspect of Chinese interior decoration exhaustively. We may, therefore, very properly regard him as the real fautor and sponsor of the Chinese vogue in England. An Oriental taste, evidenced by a fondness for lacquer and porcelain, had flourished for many years, but Chambers was the first to treat the subject broadly and constructively and give it a solid, rational basis and fitting dignity.

In view of this connexion and the favour that Oriental things have enjoyed in greater or less degree ever since, it is interesting to remember that Sir William Chambers was one of our very earliest writers on interior decoration.

Like Chippendale, Chambers was a master of the art of adaptation and showed great good taste and judgment in shaping the materials with which he worked to his own well-ordered, constructive purposes. In publishing his book of Chinese designs Chambers seems not to have expected it to be taken very seriously. When his friends tried to dissuade him from launching it upon the public, for fear he might hurt his reputation as an architect, he replied that he could not see why, as a traveller, he could not give a relation of the things he had seen worthy of notice. The bent of fashion, however, was set Eastward and the book put forth at a venture was destined to have a powerful effect upon English furniture design.

Although Chambers's chief claim to distinction rests upon his architectural work, his achievements as an interior decorator and furniture designer are far too important to be overlooked. He was among the first to treat the art of interior decoration and designing as one congruous whole and give it a worthy place alongside of other decorative and applied arts. In this respect he was a conspicuous forerunner of the Brothers Adam. It was from the decorative side of his work that he exercised such a powerful influence upon furniture design, and being appointed Royal Architect and Comptroller of the Royal Works by George III, he was in a position to make the weight of his views felt. He naturally controlled not a little of the furniture that went into the houses of his designing, and his architectural feeling is plainly traceable in many of Chippendale's best cabinets and bookcases, so much so, in fact, that many consider his agency a powerful factor in forming the Chippendale style.

In view, therefore, of the strong all-round influence exerted upon furniture design by Sir William Chambers, it would be a mistake to regard him from the furniture student's outlook merely as a great exponent of the Chinese taste. He was, before all else, a classicist in design, and his touch upon the form of furniture in this direction is clearly discernible, not only in the work of Chippendale but in that of the men who came after him.

By his painstaking care and interest in the veriest minutiae of household equipment, as well as in the larger architectural aspects, he set a fashion for the Brothers Adam which brought them great and lasting success. The trouble Chambers "took to teach the decorative artists and artificers, who were employed by him, effected an enormous improvement" 1 His drawings for interior decoration schemes, preserved in the South Kensington Museum, show a sane and skilful adaptation to English needs of ideas born of foreign travel and Argus-eyed observation.

From what has been said, it will be seen how important a man Sir William Chambers was and to what an extent English designers and furniture-makers are indebted to him. He was a fruitful source of inspiration not only for those who indulged in the Chinese taste and what was good in it - and there is a great deal of good in it - but he set a pace for the Adelphi, he left a strong impress upon Chippendale's work and, last of all, his work in all probability supplied Hepplewhite and Sheraton with some of their musical trophy and cherub motifs for painting and inlay.

1Clouston: Chippendale.