Chippendale book was bible for all furniture makers

We could argue all day about the world’s rarest book.

Audubon’s Birds of America tends to fetch mega-money. A copy was sold by Christie’s New York on June 14 for £6.24 million, and even that was not its auction record. But if a Shakespeare first folio came up…who knows?

In the antiques world, there would be little disagreement about the premier position of Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, which comes with the explanatory sub-title, Being a Large Collection of the Most Elegant and Useful Designs of Household Furniture, in the Most Fashionable Taste.

The 1754 first edition of this great work revolutionised British manufacturing. It detailed 160 Chippendale designs which could be made for prospective clients or copied by other furniture-makers. The Director included designs for chairs, sofas, beds, commodes, clothes presses, writing tables, bookcases, picture frames – in the ‘Gothic’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Modern Taste’, the latter referring to French Rococo style. And the book was an immediate success. All of Chippendale’s known major commissions date from after its publication.

Illustrated is a mere third edition Director from 1762. It was sold in Christie’s ‘Chippendale 300’ auction earlier this month, staged to mark the tricentenary of the designer’s birth. But it came with a rare Dundee connection.

The owner’s inscription bore the name of William Stephen, who was a wright and cabinetmaker in 18th Century Dundee. The inscription was dated 1788 and noted the book’s purchase price of £4-4-0.

You don’t get Chippendale’s Director for four guineas nowadays – not even a third edition. Bound in contemporary decorated calf, the 1762 volume sold in London for a remarkable sixtimes estimate £32,500.

Presumably the association to Dundee helped!