Gillows of Lancaster and London as a design source for American chairs

Magazine Antiques, June, 1999 by Susan Stuart

The English furniture-making firm founded by Robert Gillow I (1704-1772) in Lancaster about 1728 or 1729, and with a London shop from 1770, appears to have had a larger role in the transmission of chair design from England to America than has previously been realized. This article will first examine the similarities between designs and chairs made by Gillows and a number of chairs and chair designs made in the United States during the Federal period.(1) Then it will explore the ways the designs may have been transmitted.

The American chair in Plate VII, one of a set of four, is clearly related to one of Gillows' most striking chair designs of the 1780s, the "Chinea," or Chinese, pattern first made in 1780 and illustrated in two slightly different versions in the firm's records ([ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VIII OMITTED] and [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]).(2) The American chairs differ from the Gillows designs in only a few details, but it is these differences that indicate their American manufacture, particularly the distinctive inlay pattern in the tablet on the crest rail, which ties the chairs to a group of furniture convincingly ascribed to New York City.(3) The design is not recorded in any published pattern books, such as those of George Hepplewhite (d. 1786) or Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806), so the American chairs must have been based either on a Gillows chair or on a drawing of one.(4) The firm's archives suggest that the Chinea chair could be made with a folding seat and without stretchers.(5) A set of four English chairs in the so-called stick-back style, which is linked by family tradition to Rear Admiral Edward Boscawen (1711-1761), also have folding seats, which would have enabled them to be easily used, packed, and stored on board ship.(6) This is one way the Chinea chair pattern could have crossed the Atlantic.(7)

Oval-back chairs such as the one in Hate IX were not popular in the United States, except in Baltimore, although a few were also made in New York City and in Salem, Massachusetts. The chair illustrated is very similar to a Gillows design of 1786 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. The latter, made for a dressing room, was to be japanned or painted gray, reflecting the 1780s fashion

for coordinating the colors of furniture with the fabrics in a room. As the Gillows firm informed Stephen Tempest (1756-1822) of Broughton Hall, near Skipton, Yorkshire, for whom the chair was made:

Should be glad to have a swatch the same as the window curtains in the dressing room that we may paint the chairs suitable to match them or the trimmings.... Armed chairs are most approved of for dressing rooms.(8)

Gillows had introduced the open oval-back style about 1780, when a sample chair was sent from London to the Lancaster showroom as a model from which Lancashire customers could order.(9) In keeping with other Lancaster furniture, the "little figure in the back" would have been painted (10) or in-laid in the oval, as it is on the Baltimore version of the style. Like the drawing for the Gillows chair, the Baltimore chair has arms that terminate several inches behind the front legs, and the legs themselves may be what Gillows called "term legs,"(11) that is a tapered leg with a type of spade foot.

Fan-back chairs are first mentioned in the Gillows archives in the mid-1740s. A set of twenty-four made in 1774 for Williams Hasell (or Hazel) of Penrith, Cumberland (now Cumbria),(12) strongly resembles the chair made nearly twenty years later by Curley Sharp for John Carter in Virginia [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED].(13) The same design appears in the Gillows colored sketchbook compiled in the late eighteenth century, and light fan-back chairs with arched "hollow" crest rails were sketched in the early 1780s, when they were considered "suitable for the London market."(14)

The similarities between the Gillows and Sharp chairs extend to a number of details, such as back legs that are square in section to the top of the seat; canted corners on the back legs; and a narrow scratch bead on the corners of the front legs, which has a slimming effect. Although the Gillows chairs made for Hasell were upholstered over the rails, many chairs, especially those made for export, had drop-in seats like the Virginia one.

The Philadelphia side chair in Figure 3 appears to be based on Plate XIII in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (London, 1754). However, the design has been so simplified that it more closely resembles the Gillows drawing in Plate X. Richard Gillow I (1734-1811) was a subscriber to the Director in 1754, and like so many cabinetmakers on both sides of the Atlantic he offered to make furniture to its designs as well as his own.(15) Indeed, the Gillows drawing is probably an adaptation of Chippendale's design. Whatever the ultimate source, it seems more likely that the Philadelphia maker copied a Gillows chair than Chippendale's original design.

The chair in Plate XIII, dating from about 1800 to 1815 and attributed to Langley Boardman of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is similar to a number of other American examples: a pair of two-seat settees with a New Hampshire history;(16) a set of two arm- and twelve side chairs believed to be from Massachusetts, stamped by either the owner or maker, J. S. Davis;(17) and a chair dated 1817, stamped "R MACKLE BOSTON MASS."(18) They all resemble a set of two arm- and six side chairs stamped "GILLOWS*LANCASTER" [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XII OMITTED] that were probably made during the 1790s, judging by their similarity to the late eighteenth-century drawing in Plate XI.(19) Although lacking on the Gillows chair in the drawing, carved motifs such as the rosette found on all four corners of the New Hampshire chair back do appear on other Gillows chairs of the 1780s.(20)