AT no place in the development of the English people is the democratic idea for which the Magna Charta stood more clearly demonstrated than in the furniture and furnishing ideas of the period known as the Georgian. The Queen Anne style lasted through the reign of George I and nearly through that of George II. At this time the Louis XV period was at its best in France. A more or less close intimacy between France and England had brought many English people of the upper classes into contact with the French salon. The gorgeous period of Louis XIV had been admired and copied in a limited way by some of the English cabinet makers, and many of them had studied at close range both the Louis XIV and Louis XV styles.

The domestic tendencies of the court of Queen Anne had established a prototype in England of the French salon. It was the custom of court ladies and others to meet together for embroidery and conversation, though their topics were, perhaps, less weighty or witty than those discussed in the French salon. The democratic sentiment in religion and in social practice had so permeated the core of English life that an exodus to Holland and to the united colonies had been going on for over a century.

Liberty of thought in this country and in England had a wonderful effect upon the demands, and therefore upon the creations, in the applied art field of the English people. As men began to think for themselves they began to do for themselves. They were no longer willing to allow the royal will to decide the shape of a chair or how many a man should have and how he should use them after he owned them. Each man conceived, by an apparently simultaneous impulse, the idea that the house was the expression of the individual who lived in it and that each person had not only the right to a special design, but was in duty bound to attempt to have something made which expressed his peculiar idea of what that object should be.

One of the first persons to sense this situation and act upon it was one Thomas Chippendale by name, whose influence between 1750 and 1800 can scarcely be estimated. So important has he become in the study of late English furniture that many believe everything that was designed between these dates was done by Chippendale or under his direction. Not only is this true, but one frequently meets people who confuse the Colonial types of the time with the Chippendale style, and not a few persist in confusing Hepplewhite, Sheraton, Mayhew and others with Chippendale.

Too much cannot be said in commendation of the great pioneer who defied tradition, took away from royalty and the court the right to dictate styles, and freed man to express himself in any way he saw fit, yet to give him all the glory, or to ascribe to him all the niceties which were brought out as a result of his conception, is to overrate what he did and to underrate the influence and work of other men as worthy of consideration as he.

Of the early life of this man little is known. In 1754 he brought out a book called "The Gentleman's and Cabinet Maker's Director." This book has been considered a well-spring for all Georgian styles, but its value lies in the clear way in which it shows the right of the individual to dictate his own style.

Chippendale studied and observed the French styles. So taken was he with certain phases of these styles that one part of his work may be said to be an adaptation of the French to individual needs. He brought this about in an interesting way. Conceiving the idea that in place of the French salon an English tea shop and furniture shop could be combined, he established such an institution under his own roof. To this shop he invited not only his friends, but the wealthy people of London, as his guests for tea. While drinking tea, sitting upon a Chippendale model and viewing other examples of his work in the room, his guests proved an easy prey to his commercial scheme for showing furniture as it relates to the home. His success was pronounced and people flocked to the Chippendale shop to view, to purchase regardless of cost, and to order new articles of furniture which should be individual and made to express the personality of the owner.

This indeed was a strange departure in cabinet-making. These French Chippendale pieces will not be described here, but they are the forerunners of the individual styles in England and in the United States.

Sometimes Chippendale fell under other influences than those of France. He borrowed from the Gothic and attempted to create dining-room and drawing-room chairs with Gothic motifs, but these were in commercial early Georgian style. The result was inartistic and a failure.

Sir William Chambers had opened up the wealth of artistic material in China, and had brought back many examples of textiles, pottery, carved wood, etc., from the limitless supply of the Chinese Empire. Chippendale, shrewd as usual, fastened upon the Chinese lattice and other Chinese motifs, and used them with considerable facility in the expression of a new Chinese-Chippendale style. These are interesting, sometimes picturesque, frequently grotesque, while they present no end of chance for criticism as to their proportion and practicability.

This is true especially of the chairs which he made. Mahogany was the wood of woods for Chippendale. His style, marking as it does the first of the individual styles, developed certain ideas which were originated during the Queen Anne period. He widened the seats of the chairs, accommodated the back more perfectly to the human figure and standardized the height of the seat from the floor. He also worked out more carefully the function of a sideboard, a bookcase, a secretary and writing table. He sought by every known means to impress the idea of individualism upon his clients, and to furnish as many kinds and types of useful things as human ingenuity could devise. In all this he was emi-nently successful.