18th century AD

Magazine Antiques, June, 2003

... English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious

Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, 1779-1781

The United Kingdom of Great Britain was formed as a nation in 1707 with the passage in Parliament of the Act of Union linking Scotland with England and Wales. From then until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 Great Britain was involved in a series of wars with France. Nonetheless, during that long century a sense of national identity was forged, aided by the fact that Britain was an island with the sea as its defense. Its people were not only unified under a Protestant ruler but also ready to take on the mission of spreading their beliefs among the heathen.

Despite its wars, Britain prospered mightily during the eighteenth century. Between 1720 and 1770 exports doubled in value, and agricultural and industrial production increased 60 percent. Colonial markets were the secret to this success, absorbing nearly four-fifths of Britain's exports by 1800. Living standards improved not only at the top but also among artisans and tradesmen. The country became distinguished in letters, music, and philosophy, and there were constant refinements in architecture, portraiture, cabinetmaking, and silversmithing. And Britons were urged to live both virtuously and aesthetically Jonathan Richardson, the propagandist for painting, in one of his Two Discourses (1719) entitled "An Argument in Behalf of the Science of a Connoisseur," called on his fellows to make Britain a worthy heir to Greece and Rome by cherishing "the dignity of their country and their profession."

Thanks to peace with France from 1713 to 1744, French fashions set the standard for grand English furnishings, helped by large numbers of foreign artists, especially Huguenot craftsmen working in London. The fanciful asymmetry of the French rococo style was considered the essence of beauty. William Hogarth in his Analysis of Beauty (1753) wrote: "The waving line... is a line more productive of beauty than any straight or circular line. "The serpentine line hath the power of super-adding grace to beauty."

Matthias Lock is credited with introducing the rococo style to English furniture in the pattern books he published beginning in 1740. Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1754) was the first pattern book solely devoted to furniture and the first to be published by a cabinetmaker Another significant event in furniture history was the Act of Parliament in 1721 that abolished nearly all import duties on wood from the British colonies in North America and the West Indies. This was intended to increase supplies for shipbuilding, but cabinetmakers took advantage of it to bring in mahogany which rapidly came to replace walnut. The dark reddish color of newly polished mahogany was preferred to the mellow brown of walnut Moreover, mahogany was strong, and the West Indian variety was hard, heavy and close grained, taking a lasting polish. It did not easily crack or warp and was not liable to attack by woodworm.

Prosperity generated ever more customers eager to rise in the world by displaying their taste in furnishings. The corollary was a thriving cabinetmaking trade in London. An anonymous writer in 1747 described their shops as "so richly set out that they look more like Palaces and their Stocks are of exceeding great Value." And standards were increasingly high. Cesar de Saussure, an astute Swiss visitor to England, wrote about 1725 that English craftsmen "work to perfection."

Wendell Garrett