The Age Of Rococo - England - Part 13

Chippendale's Director was followed by several other cabinet-maker's publications during the next few years. Among these were designs by Thomas Johnson, a carver and gilder who, in spite of affirming a fashionable Francophobia (on account of the Seven Years' War) did more than any other handmade furniture designer to promote the Rococo  - an essentially French style - in its most fanciful form. In 1755 he published designs for Twelve Girandoles and these were followed by a Collection of Designs, issued in monthly instalments from 1756 to 1758, and subsequently republished.
All of his engravings are for 'carver's pieces' - girandoles, brackets, looking glasses, kettle stands, console tables, candlestands and so on, and most of them were evidently intended to be gilded. They are highly elaborate confections owing a great deal to French fashions but with an unmistakably English flavour. Several, for instance, incorporate animals taken from Francis Barlow's illustrations of Aesop's Fables, and most of them lack the polished finesse of French designs. Johnson's publications were probably intended mainly for furniture makers and carvers rather than prospective clients, and a number of pieces have been found which correspond to his designs.

Between 1759 and 1762 The Universal System of Household Furniture appeared, issued in parts by William Ince and John Mayhew, cabinet-makers and upholsterers of Soho. Their book added very little to Chippendale's, except for some designs for 'Claw Tables', or tripod-based tea tables of a type popular for many years to come. Like Chippendale, the purveyed a mixture of French, Chinese and Gothic styles.

A few years later, in 1765, The Cabinet and Chairmaker's Real Friend and Companion, or the Whole System of Chairmaking made plain and easy was published by Robert Manwaring. This consisted of a hundred or so designs for non fitted furniture such as chairs, also in the French, Gothic and Chinese styles, and was followed a year later by The Chairmaker's Guide, a similar but larger work consisting of about 'two hundred New and Genteel Designs, both Decorative and Plain'.

One route to fame for a cabinet-maker was to publish a design book; another was to enjoy the patronage of royalty, and several of Chippendale's contemporaries gained prestige in this way. Among them was William Vile who, with his partner John Cobb, had premises close to Chippendale's in St Martin's Lane in the 1750s and 1760s.
He produced a number of pieces for the royal family in the 1760s - some of them are still at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. His characteristic furniture was of mahogany of grand proportions and notable for its superb carving in the Rococo manner. Vile's prices were notoriously high, but the quality of his cabinet work as well as the prestige of his clients sets him apart from most of his contemporaries.

After Vile's retirement in 1765 the business was carried on, most successfully, by his partner John Cobb 'perhaps one of the proudest men in England', according to an early 19th century writer. Cobb is known to have executed furniture of greater flamboyance than Vile's but of similarly impeccable workmanship. Several of his designs in the French manner have survived. Some have elaborate marquetry veneers, while others reply for their effect on the natural figure of the wood. A particularly French feature was his use of elaborate metal mounts, especially on the corners of commodes.

John Cobb has been credited with the invention of the type of drawing, writing and reading table which has an adjustable rising top. The artist Nathaniel Dance Holland is said to have painted Cobb's portrait in return for one of these tables - 'with upper and inward rising desks, so healthy for those who stand to write, read or draw'. and they are sometimes known as Cobb's tables. Whether Cobb actually invented such a table or merely popularized his variation of a well-established idea is open to question.