AN ANCIENT CRAFT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23015, 19 October 1936, Page 16

AN ANCIENT CRAFT

THE FURNITURE MAKER To-day such names as Chippendale, Heppelwhite, and Sheraton are as familiar as those of Reynolds and Romney (says the Cape Times). Yet these master designers, who must have come into such close contact with the fashionable world of their day. remain almost figures of legend. If a film producer desired to make any of them the object of a screen story he would have to draw upon his imagination for details. No portrait is known to exist. We owe it to Heppelwhite that household furniture became less cumbersome and more elegant, and in respect of handling and polishing more labour saving. He broke with ihe massive forms of the earlier Georgian period, with its wealth of carved detail, pleasing enough to the eye, but difficult to clean and keep free from dust.

He is credited with having invented the well-known heart-shaped and shield-shaped backs, which continue to be reproduced in large quantities by present-day chair designers, as well as the devices with which such backs were filled—the Prince of Wales’s feathers, the wheat-ear, and others. Such claims are open to dispute. The cabinet-makers of those days freely appropriated each other’s designs, and included them in their owt. manuals without acknowledgment of any kind. It is sufficient that it was with the Heppelwhite style these features became associated in the public mind. Heppelwhite’s classic “ Guide ” was, oddly enough, not published till two years after his death. The credit of publication belongs to his capable wife. Women qualified to run their husband’s business were not sc common in those days as now. The widow Heppelwhite, however, promptly took control of the Cripplegate business, ran it successfully, and prepared her late husband’s designs’for the press. She herself probably supplied much of the information in the “ Guide.” The instructions on suitable upholstery and furniture arrangement betray a feminine touch. “Mahogany chairs," we are told. “ should have seats of horsehair, plain, striped, or chequered. If cane seats are preferred the cushion cases should match the window curtains.” In an age when scientific colour schemes are unknown this last sentence has quite a prophetic ring.