Chippendale’s ornaments, and interior decorations, on the old French style, consisting of hall, glass & picture frames, chimney pieces, stands for china, clock and watch cases, girandoles, brackets, grates, lanterns, ornamental furniture, and various ornaments for carvers, modellers, &c. &c. &c.

JOHNSON, Thomas. CHIPPENDALE, Thomas   London: sold by John Weale,  [n.d., 1840].      4to, pp. [2] + 31 engraved plates; a crisp clean copy in contemporary quarter niger and paste boards, spine lettered gilt, skilfully rebacked, extremities rubbed Only 1 copy recorded in OCLC (New York Public Library); see Fleming and Honour, The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts, pp. 418-419 The designs are not in fact by Chippendale as the title suggests, but are the work of Thomas Johnson , later restrikes, with Johnson’s signature removed and Chippendale’s added (of the 31 plates, 19 are signed “T. Chippendale del. ”). The designs are mostly in Johnson’s exuberant rococo style, with sharp, spiky decoration, interspersed with chinoiserie and “gothick” motifs.Thomas Johnson (1714-c.1778), English Rococo furniture maker and designer was born in London and established himself as an independent craftsman by the later 1740s. “All the furnishings for which Johnson published design are of a type known at the time as ‘carvers’ pieces’. They include no case-furniture or seat-furniture. They are limited to such objects as girandoles, mirror frames, side- or console-tables, candle-stands, etc., all pieces which are decorative rather than useful and allow scope for the carver’s fantasy. Stylistically they owe much to France” (Fleming and Honour). 

Price: £950