The Georgian period was one of disciplined designs and the published pattern books regulated the basic

The history and construction of 18th century American furniture is examined in this critical evaluation that looks at the topic both from an aesthetic and technical point of view

Published to coincide with the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Chippendale, England’s most famous cabinetmaker, this issue of the Bulletin addresses the history of Chippendale works at The Met. Morrison H. Heckscher recounts the designer’s meteoric rise from rural obscurity to the heights of the London luxury trade, crediting that remarkable success to the publication of the Chippendale Director, an instructive book on furniture design and ornament. The text analyzes the Museum’s rare collection of drawings by Chippendale, revealing a gifted and highly imaginative designer who mastered what today would be called branding. Illustrating a wide selection of the Director drawings alongside furniture inspired by the Director or actually made in Chippendale’s shop, this Bulletin features works of art that attest to the museum’s century-long infatuation with drawing, prints, books, and furniture in the Chippendale style.

The eighteenth century has been seen as a Golden Age of design and craftsmanship. This book goes well beyond these ideas and investigates the various developments in the infrastructure of the eighteenth-century furniture world.

English furniture of the eithteenth century has never been more admired or sought after than it is today. This is largely because it possesses a simplicity, a sober elegance and a practical usefulness which make it ideal for modern houses. Such furniture owes as much to good design as to the craftsman's skill, and that is why, in this book, the Victoria and Albert Museum has made an attempt to carry out--for the first time--a systematic survey of the great mass of eighteenth-century designs which has come down to us. The Museum is in a good position to embark upon such a venture, because it possessess one of the largest collections of English furniture designs in existence, a collection which includes copies of nearly all the relevant pattern books, some of them very rare, and a considerable number of original drawings, which tend to be rarer still, because they were all too often lost or destroyed, once they had served their purpose. --back cover.