exquisitely carved—for Chippendale was a carver before everything—in a vast variety of designs ranging from the elaborate and extremely elegant, if much criticized, ribbon back, to a comparatively plain but highly effective splat. His armchairs, however, often had solid or stuffed backs. Next to his chairs Chippendale was most successful with settees, which almost invariably took the shape of two or three 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 St Martin’s Lane, but in 1814 an additional shop was opened at No. 57 Haymarket, whence it was in 1821 removed to 42 Jermyn Street. Like his father, Thomas Chippendale III. was a member of the Society of Arts; and he is known to have exhibited five pictures at the Royal Academy between 1784 and 1801. He died at the end of 1822 or the beginning of 1823. (J. P.-B.)
CHIPPENHAM, a market town and municipal borough in the Chippenham parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, 94 m.
W. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 5074.
Chippenham is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12
councillors. Area, 361 acres. It lies in a hollow on the south
side of the Upper Avon, here crossed by a picturesque stone
bridge of 21 arches. St Andrew’s church, originally Norman of
the 12th century, has been enlarged in different styles. A paved
causeway running for about 4 m. between Chippenham Cliff and
Wick Hill is named after Maud Heath, said to have been a
market-woman, who built it in the 15th century, and bequeathed
an estate for its maintenance. After the decline of its woollen
and silk trades, Chippenham became celebrated for grain and
cheese markets. There are also manufactures of broadcloth,
churns, condensed milk, railway-signals, guns and carriages;
besides bacon-curing works, flour mills, tanneries and large
stone quarries. Bowood, the seat of the marquess of Lansdowne,
is 312 m. S.E. of Chippenham. Lanhill barrow, or Hubba’s Low,
212 m. N.W., is an ancient tomb containing a kistvaen or sepulchral
chamber of stone; it is probably British, though tradition makes
it the grave of Hubba, a Danish leader.
Chippenham (Chepeham, Chippeham) was the site of a royal residence where in 853 Æthelwulf celebrated the marriage of his daughter Æthelswitha with Burhred, king of Mercia. The town also figured prominently in the Danish invasion of the 9th century, and in 933 was the meeting-place of the witan. In the Domesday Survey Chippenham appears as a crown manor and is not assessed in hides. The town was governed by a bailiff in the reign of Edward I., and returned two members to parliament from 1295, but it was not incorporated until 1553, when a charter from Mary established a bailiff and twelve burgesses and endowed the corporation with certain lands for the maintenance of two parliamentary burgesses and for the repair of the bridge over the Avon. In 1684 this charter was surrendered to Charles II., and in 1685 a new charter was received from James II., which was shortly abandoned in favour of the original grant. The Representation Act of 1868 reduced the number of parliamentary representatives to one, and the borough was disfranchised by the Redistribution Act of 1885. The derivation of Chippenham from cyppan, to buy, implies that the town possessed a market in Saxon times. When Henry VII. introduced the clothing manufacture into Wiltshire, Chippenham became an important centre of the industry, which has lapsed. A prize, however, was awarded to the town for this commodity at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
CHIPPEWA[1] FALLS, a city and the county-seat of Chippewa county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on the Chippewa river, about 100 m. E. of St Paul, Minnesota, and 12 m. N.E. of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Pop. (1890) 8670; (1900) 8094; (1910, census) 8893. It is served by the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie, the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by the electric line to Eau Claire. The first settlement on
the site was made in 1837; and the city was chartered in 1870.
CHIPPING CAMPDEN, a market town in the northern parliamentary
division of Gloucestershire, England, on the Oxford and
Worcester line of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1542.
It is picturesquely situated towards the north of the Cotteswold
hill-district. The many interesting ancient houses afford
evidence of the former greater importance of the town. The
church of St James is mainly Perpendicular, and contains a
number of brasses of the 15th and 16th centuries and several
notable monumental tombs. A ruined manor house of the 16th
century and some almshouses complete, with the church, a
picturesque group of buildings; and Campden House, also of
the 16th century, deserves notice.
Apart from a medieval tradition preserved by Robert de Brunne that it was the meeting-place of a conference of Saxon kings, the earliest record of Campden (Campedene) is in Domesday Book, when Earl Hugh is said to hold it, and to have there fifty villeins. The number shows that a large village was attached to the manor, which in 1173 passed to Hugh de Gondeville, and about 1204 to Ralph, earl of Chester. The borough must have grown up during the 12th century, for both these lords granted the burgesses charters which are known from a confirmation of 1247, granting that they and all who should come to the market of Campedene should be quit of toll, and that if any free burgess of Campedene should come into the lord’s amerciament he should be quit for 12d. unless he should shed blood or do felony. Probably Earl Ralph also granted the town a portman-mote, for the account of a skirmish in 1273 between the men of the town and the county mentions a bailiff and implies the existence of some sort of municipal government. In 1605 Campedene was incorporated, but it never returned representatives to parliament. Camden speaks of the town as a market famous for stockings, a relic of that medieval importance as a mart for wool that had given the town the name of Chipping.
CHIPPING NORTON, a market town and municipal borough in the Banbury parliamentary division of Oxfordshire, England, 26 m. N.W. of Oxford by a branch of the Great Western railway.
