Craftsmen from all over Britain and America copied the designs he published and this propagated the 'Chippendale style' far beyond the bounds of his own workshop. A French translation of the descriptions of the designs were advertised in 1763. Copies of it are very rare, whereas others among the most famous designers, like William Kent before him and Robert Adam a little later, were chiefly concerned with the furnishing of the stately homes of the nobility, Chippendale's aim was to make good furniture in the latest styles 'suited to the fancy and circumstances of persons in all degrees of life'. In this respect, The Director must be seen as a great achievement.
While many of its designs are elaborate and fanciful in the extreme, The Director is an unparalleled guide to mid 18th century handmade furniture, both as regards to style and and the kinds of objects used by the well-heeled. For whatever Chippendale's assertions about 'persons in all degrees of life', these pieces could only have been bought by the wealthier classes. While Chippendale emphasized in his preface that he could undertake to make any of the designs in the book in his workshop, many of them were actually carried out in pruned down, plainer form, as often for economic reasons as from choice.
The French taste is, in The Director, subtly translated into an unmistakably English form. The Rococo was still having its day, and Chippendale succeeded in giving it as much heady exuberance as any Englishman dared: there were ribbon-backed chairs, mirrors and girandoles carved with asymmetrical leaves and curlicues, and surmounted by phoenixes' cabriole-legged sofas and commodes bordered with acanthus and shell decoration. Unlike truly French fitted and non fitted furniture of the period, many of Chippendale's designs were most suitably executed in mahogany, with decoration carved in the wood rather than applied in the form of metal mounts. He recommended japanning for a number of the designs, particularly for the lighter furniture intended for ladies rooms. Gilding, too, he suggested for smaller items such as stands, firescreens, chandeliers and brackets.
He provides designs for furniture in the 'Gothick' taste and, more exuberant than ever, in the Chinese, both of which were the rage at this time. Of these, the Gothick (spelt that way to distinguish it from medieval Gothic) was a style of considerable dignity and grandeur, yet in its way it was as frivolous as the Chinese. Its most famous enthusiast was Horace Walpole to whose Gothick villa, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, the fashionable multitudes flocked. Gothick had little academic basis, but made use of the clustered columns and pointed arches and even, sometimes, rose windows of medieval stonework in the shapes of chair backs and the legs of tables, chairs and other furniture. Gothic tracery was carved in mahogany on cupboard doors or the sides of desks, while medieval turrets and pinnacles surmounted bookcases. Sometimes Gothick decoration was married, most incongruously, to Chinese and even then the style undoubtedly worked. Of all historical pastiches, mid 18th century Gothick was one of the most elegant and exciting.
The Chinese taste, when executed with restraint, also had much charm. Its unusual manifestations on furniture were geometric trellis work, known as Chinese railing, in the backs and sides of chairs, fret-cut patterns in friezes and borders, and pagodas surmounting beds, cabinets and bookcases. Eighteenth century chinoiserie was very much part of the international Rococo style - a frolicsome search for the fantastic and exotic rather than a serious copying of Chinese originals. Like the Gothick, it had little basis in either history or geography.
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