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Updated: June 5, 2025
The mahogany used by Chippendale, and in fact by all the eighteenth century cabinet-makers, was much more beautiful than is possible to get to-day, for the logs were old and well seasoned wood, allowed to dry by the true process of time, which leaves a wonderful depth of color quite impossible to find in young kiln-dried wood.
It was sold chiefly to other cabinet-makers and did not bring in many orders, as Chippendale's and Hepplewhite's did. His other books showed his decline, and his "Encyclopedia," on which he was working at the time of his death, had many subjects in it beside furniture and cabinet-making.
It is impossible to clearly define all of the work of the cabinet-makers of the mahogany or any other period, for reasons already stated. So one must be prepared to find Chippendale sofas which show the shapes originated by him and, also, at times, show Louis XVI legs and Louis XV outline.
Country cabinet-makers were as fine artists as those who catered to the urban taste but their public was satisfied with simple pieces and they wrought accordingly. Calcimined walls and near-antique furnishings are, naturally, not the only means of producing a homey effect. Their chief merit lies in the fact that they are effective, inexpensive, and easily changed.
The wages paid, according to his report, per month, to blacksmiths are $7.25; carpenters, $8.50; cabinet-makers, $9; glass-blowers, $9; plasterers, $6.25; plumbers, $6.25; machinists, $6; while other classes of skilled labor are paid from $7.25 to $9 per month, and common laborers receive $4 per month. In European houses the average wages paid to servants are from $5 to $6 a month, without board.
Our first impression was, that the greater part of the dwellers here were working people and very good people at that. We found more than half the inhabitants at work: laundresses bending over their tubs, cabinet-makers at their lathes, cobblers on their benches. The narrow rooms were full of people, and cheerful and energetic labor was in progress.
There were many other cabinet-makers of merit that space does not allow me to mention, but the great four who stood head and shoulders above them all were Chippendale, Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton.
Calamander and sandal woods, ivory and ebony, are also wrought into delicate forms by these people, who are excellent cabinet-makers, and who with a few rude tools turn out very admirable work, imitating any desired model which is furnished for the purpose with admirable fidelity and beauty.
Although, as I have said before, foreign influence was strong, the ideas were adapted and worked out by the great cabinet-makers of the Georgian period with a vigor and beauty that made a distinct English style, and often went far, far ahead of the originals. There were, so far as we know, three Thomas Chippendales: the second was the great one.
Our boss is a good fellow in the main, and I don't want to leave him; and, besides, there's another reason why I won't strike. 'And what's that? 'Because it won't succeed. You might as well try to stop the stream of the Hudson, as to keep up wages, while fifty or a hundred cabinet-makers are coming in every week from Germany, ready to work for twelve dollars a month.
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