Designers, makers, influencers: the contribution of William Halfpenny and Thomas Chippendale to the development English Chinoiserie furniture design

Abstract

The term Chinoiserie, i.e. the tendency to incorporate elements of Chinese culture into European art and architecture, redefined the concept of style in seventeenth-century France and influenced the aesthetic formation of European arts and design in the century that followed. The term became particularly popular in England, as it was also associated with the need for renewal after the excessive ornamentation, elaborate symbolism and intense theatricality of Baroque, as well as the aesthetic and ideological perfection of Classicism. As early as the first half of the eighteenth century, the architect and designer William Halfpenny (1723-1755) showed a keen interest and skill in the transition from classical design to the mysterious Chinese motifs, contributing thus to the stylistic formation of English Chinoiserie, especially in the field of architecture and by extension furniture design. His experimentally pioneering approach through his publications was the beginning of a new aesthetic and ideological era that had a catalytic effect on the shaping of the design concept, taste and construction techniques of the equally important English furniture designer, Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779). This research aims to highlight the establishment of Chinese culture and aesthetics, known as Chinoiserie, in the eighteenth-century England, as regards the formation of furniture design, through the pattern books and design experimentation of William Halfpenny, as well as the inspired publications and the manufacturing mastery of Thomas Chippendale.