HERE is no royal road to the study of eighteenthcentury furniture, and there is no easy set of rules for understanding it. There was certainly an evolution to lightness, but it was not continuous. The sideboard table grew more imposing in the hands of Robert Adam, and wide-seated chairs were made even in the time of Sheraton. At present we are chiefly interested in another exception, which is that the chairs of the sixties were actually heavier in design than those of the preceding decade. Without a knowledge of Robert Manwaring's designs, most of the chairs made by him in this period would almost certainly be supposed to have been executed fifteen to twenty years previously, and as a matter of fact this mistake has been made over and over again.

Manwaring's chairs are generally attributed to Chippendale, and there is a great family resemblance, which, however, diminishes under careful scrutiny and leaves the mind impressed both by his artistic taste and his individuality. That is, so far as his best work is concerned, for there was a terrible descent every now and then to bathos and eccentricity. Of all Chippendale's contemporaries he is probably the most interesting, but he is also the most difficult to study, from the fact that many of the designs which have been attributed to him are certainly by others. Most of this difficulty arises from the fact that Manwaring was one of the leading spirits in the society of upholsterers and cabinet makers, which published a book entitled 'One Hundred New and Genteel Designs, being all the most approved Patterns of Household Furniture in the

Present Taste.' This is a most interesting book, as it is not by one but by several hands, though it is not so instructive as it might have been had the designs been signed and the book itself dated.

In the society's book there are twentyeight plates of chairs which are usually attributed to Manwaring, and most of them probably with justice, though there are others which have no resemblance to his style. It is quite impossible to say what Manwaring might have done in his moments of madness, but such plates as the ribbon-back chairs are so vastly inferior to the example given in his own book, and are so poor, structurally, that I think Manwaring may be fairly exonerated from any blame concerning them. The 'fluttering ribbon,' to use Mr. Heaton's phrase, is not only fluttering, but waving wildly, whereas in the single design of the kind which is undoubtedly by him it is treated in a more reserved and possible manner. impression is that those in the society's book are by Ince, though they may have been the work of one of the forgotten men.

My

Manwaring's own book, "The Cabinet and Chair Makers' Real Friend and Com

panion, or the whole system of chairmaking made plain and easy,' was brought out in

I-Gothic' gates for the entrance to gardens

1765; but, as if to make the study of his work more difficult, he republished, in 1766, the twenty-eight designs from the society's book with forty-seven additional plates (all but one of which are unsigned) under the title of 'The Chair Makers' Guide, by Robert Manwaring and others.' The work of the 'others' is, in the majority of instances, so inferior that it is no wonder that Manwaring's name should have suffered; nor is it easy to see why, in this instance, the plates were left unsigned. There may have been a reason for the omission in the publication by the society, where the risk was probably equally shared by several workers, and therefore no man was allowed to advertise his name at the expense of his fellows. It is easy to understand that the designers of the twenty-eight republished plates might be debarred from

acknowledging them even in the new form, but there was evidently no rule to that effect in 'The Chair Makers' Guide,' for Manwaring's name appeared in the title-page, and one of the new plates is signed Copland fecit.' Manwaring's share in the new plates is evidently very small, which makes it all the more likely that the bulk of the old designs are by him. The first four new plates are almost certainly his, as is also plate 48-a garden seat-but probably nothing else, though there is a distinct resemblance to his style in the plates running from 49 to 54, and also in plates 35 and 36. Plate 55 is signed by Copland, and 56 and 57 are also by him, as are 66, 67, and 68, and probably 60 to 65. Of the authorship of the rest it can only be said that they are neither by Manwaring nor by any designer whose works are extant, though many them show marked peculiarities, proving them to come from the same hand. Plates 33 and 34, for instance, are certainly by the designer of the last seven plates in the book. It would be interesting, historically, to know his name, but they have practically no artistic excellence. They possess a certain amount of individuality, but it is not of a pleasing kind.

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The eighteenth-century furniture maker, however much he may have been of an artist, and however much he claimed to be so, did not take himself sufficiently seriously as regarded posterity. He was a shopkeeper, and his books were trade advertisements, produced and published for the sole reason of extending his business. Nor did he give his customers what he himself might consider his best, but his newest work. There was no such stability in design as there had been in previous centuries, for a few years were sufficient to render not only an individual piece but a whole style obsolete. At a time when the

1 Possibly Manwaring may have considered it a better trade advertisement to run the chance of inferior work being mistaken for his than to allow the names of the 'others' to appear even on the plates.

II- Real Friend' (plate 5).

language was changing with almost as great rapidity our writers bewailed what they considered to be the inevitable fact that in another century their English would not even be understood. Present acceptation therefore was all that the most selfreliant of the eighteenth-century designers attempted to achieve. That their furniture is without any distinguishing mark or signature, except in a very few instances, was possibly due to the fashion of a time when the greatest painters did not sign their masterpieces. In the case of such men as Reynolds or Gainsborough whose touch is, or ought to be, unmistakable, the omission of a signature is a matter of small importance; but in furniture-making there is no such guide. There is a legend that Thomas Chippendale was left-handed, and that the pieces carved by himself may therefore be told by the direction of the chisel-marks. Even admitting the truth of the statement, it is difficult to see how knowledge can be derived from it. If a chair were first put together and then carved, something might indeed be told or guessed at; but as the carving was done for convenience in each part separately, so that it could be turned about on the bench for ease in working, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to be certain with which hand. any particular chisel-mark was executed.

Of the few pieces of signed furniture of which I have heard one seems to have been by Manwaring. I am told of it by a friend, who is one of the few experts that have paid any great attention to this particular designer, and I have no doubt that he is right in supposing that the M with which a set of chairs were signed stood for his name. When he saw them they were in a private collection, but several years since all the furniture in the house was sold by auction and they cannot now be traced. Even if they could, a single set of chairs might teach us little more than we can learn from his book.

The small amount of recognition given. to Manwaring by modern experts is due to several causes. The mixture of his work with that of inferior designers already mentioned is one, but the deplorably inartistic renderings of his drawings is perhaps a still greater. The former is merely an added difficulty in comprehending him; the latter would make a really good design appear worthless to anyone casually turning over the leaves of his book. It is perfectly true that most of the other furniture books of the time suffer from the same cause, but no man with any pretensions to be in the front rank has been so vilely treated at the hands of his engraver.

It is probable that Manwaring was not himself much of a draughtsman; it is certain that he was no critic, for he tells us that the illustrations in The Cabinet and Chair Makers' Real Friend' are 'beautifully executed on copper,' which could scarcely arise merely from Christian forgiveness.