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Updated: May 17, 2025
The gay designs of the printed cottons that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the dainty French toiles de Jouy that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our service.
Whether the chairs and tables were beautiful or not is a matter of taste, but they were well made and seasoned; so, like the herbaceous stuff, they were hardy. The next generation decided that they were ugly. New chairs and tables were bought, and the Chippendale "stuff" was sent up into the maids' bedrooms, and down to the men's. It drifted into the farmhouses and cottages on the estate.
If I had only filled my barns with Jacobean and Stuart oak and walnut, William and Mary, and Queen Ann marquetry, and Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite mahogany, instead of wheat for an unsympathetic British public, and at the end of my time at Aldington offered a few of the least interesting specimens for sale by auction, I might still have carried away a houseful of treasures which would have cost me less than nothing.
The urn-shaped knife boxes which were so often placed on either side were chiefly of mahogany, sometimes inlaid with satinwood and often with those rare shell-like ornaments which became so popular in the days of Chippendale and Sheraton. The compartments in which were placed the table knives prevented either blades or handles from being rubbed.
Undoubtedly, with our ingenious modern appliances, we could make as good furniture as was made in Chippendale and Sheraton's day, with far less expenditure of effort; but the demon of competition in trade will not allow it. We must use all material, perfect or imperfect; we cannot afford to select. We must cover knots and imperfections with composition and pass them on.
A soft waxen glow irradiated the place as he proceeded and then Angela saw old Chippendale chairs, a Heppelwhite writing-table, a Flemish strong box containing used and unused drawings, the green stained fish-net studded with bits of looking glass in imitation of scales, a square, gold-framed mirror over the mantel, and one of Eugene's drawings the three engines in the gray, lowering weather, standing large and impressive upon an easel.
It always had great clearness of edge and cut, and a wonderful feeling for light and shade. In what is called "Irish Chippendale," which was furniture made in Ireland after the style of Chippendale, the carving was in low relief and the edges fairly smoothed off, which made it much less interesting.
"That," the shopman answered, the pride of knowledge shining in his eyes, "is Chinese Chippendale." Another anachronism which has appeared lately, and sad to say in some of the shops that should know better, is painted Adam furniture with pictures on it of the famous actresses of the eighteenth century.
Miss Todd explored, and carried some of the dusty chairs out into the light of day. She was enough of a connoisseur to see at a glance that they were Chippendale, and extremely valuable. She had the rest of the furniture moved out and cleaned, then sent for a dealer in antiques to ask his opinion about it. He said it made his mouth water.
The Chippendale chairs had gone, and had been replaced by four stout kitchen ones. The bits of rare china were fewer but the portrait of the famous Timothy La Sarthe, by Holbein, still frowned from his place of honor above the chimneypiece. All the La Sarthes had been christened Timothy since that time. The affair of the governess seemed to be troubling Miss Roberta.
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