Chinese Chippendale Chairs

My husband today exclaimed in disdain at a set of Chinese Chippendale Chairs I am eyeing:

"When I see that, I think old, crusty Asian dining rooms. Bleh."

I'm sure Darling, if you saw this, yes, I'd agree, crusty on the side:

You can tell, can't you, that he is NOT in any way into interior design? If he was, he'd seen the plethora of these chairs in tres' chic rooms in blogland.

So this post is for him: Darling these chairs are not crusty (with a little loving and attention)!

Foyer: Set from Nanny Diaries

Dining room: Sherill Canet

The Chinese Chippendale chairs that have come back into vogue of recent are pared-down interpretations of real antique Chinese chairs. Dining chairs in China in the 1700s would have been heavy, chunky, ornate rosewood pieces. Garden chairs were fashioned from bamboo and cane.

Dining room: Sherill Canet

With Orientalism happening in the 1700s, chinoiserie started appearing in artwork, fabric, wallpaper, furniture. Mid-18th-century furnishings were so fancy and ubiquitous that in 1756, one waspish observer wrote, "Every chair in an apartment, the frames of [looking] glasses and tables must be Chinese: the walls covered with Chinese paper filled with figures which resemble nothing in God's creation, and which a prudent nation would prohibit for the sake of pregnant women."

Dining room: Thibaut Wallpapers

Thomas Chippendale started to marry the two (rosewood and bamboo) in the mid 1700s with his classically English pieces. These normally slender chairs are characterized by its pagoda motifs in the fretwork particularly on the back and the brackets beneath the seat rail.