ree conjoined chairs,
the arms, backs and legs identical with those which he used for single
seats. He was likewise a prolific designer and maker of book-cases,
cabinets and escritoires with doors glazed with fretwork divisions. Some
of those which he executed in the style which in his day passed for
Gothic are exceedingly handsome and effective. We have, too, from his
hand many cases for long clocks, and a great number of tables, some of
them with a remarkable degree of Gallic grace. He was especially
successful in designing small tables with fretwork galleries for the
display of china. His mirrors, which were often in the Chinese taste or
extravagantly rococo, are remarkable and characteristic. In his day the
cabinetmaker still had opportunities for designing and constructing the
four-post bedstead, and some of Chippendale's most graceful work was
lavished upon the woodwork of the lighter, more refined and less
monumental four-poster, which, thanks in some degree to his initiative,
took the place of the massive Tudor and the funereally hung Jacobean
bed. From an organ case to a washhand-stand, indeed, no piece of
domestic furniture came amiss to this astonishing man, and if sometimes
he was extravagant, grotesque or even puerile, his level of achievement
is on the whole exceedingly high.

Since the revival of interest in his work he has often been criticized
with considerable asperity, but not always justly. Chippendale's work
has stood the supreme test of posterity more completely than that of any
of his rivals or successors; and, unlike many men of genius, we know him
to have been warmly appreciated in his lifetime. He was at once an
artist and a prosperous man of business. His claims to distinction are
summed up in the fact that his name has by general consent been attached
to the most splendid period of English furniture.

Chippendale was buried on the 13th of November 1779, apparently at the
church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and administration of his intestate
estate was granted to his widow Elizabeth. He left four children, Thomas
Chippendale III., John, Charles and Mary. He was one of the assignees in
bankruptcy of the notorious Theresa Cornelys of Soho Square, of whom we
read in Casanova and other scandalous chronicles of the time. Thomas
Chippendale III. succeeded to the business of his father and
grandfather, and for some years the firm traded under the style of
Chippendale & Haig. The factory remained in