The chair-maker's guide: being upwards of two hundred new and genteel designs, both decorative and plain, of all the most approved patterns for Gothic, Chinese, ribbon and other chairs, couches, settees, burjairs, French, dressing and corner stools ...

Abstract

First edition. Manwaring was the author of several furniture pattern books; one year earlier he published The cabinet and chair maker’s real friend and companion; this latter title, was, according to Morrison Heckscher, “the most influential rococo [furniture] pattern book in New England.” But the present work apparently never found its way to America, at least not in the 18th century. But it has been analyzed by several scholars: Elizabeth White states that plates 1-28 in the Society of Upholsterer’s Household furniture in the genteel taste for the year 1760 were in fact drawn by Manwaring and were republished in the present work. She further states: “Other plates in the book (33-4, 37, 39-45) for hall and parlour chairs were by Matthias Darly...Three plates were signed by Ince and Mayhew and others by Copeland. It is impossible to tell whether Manwaring was behind this compilation or whether (which is more likely) it was the publisher and print seller Robert Sayer making a living out of re-issuing so many of the furniture designs of the 1750s.” - (Pictorial dictionary of British 18th cent furniture designs, p. 50). As noted above this is the first edition but it is a slightly later (but still 18th century) issue; the names of some of the designers have been erased from the plates. (Charles Wood, cat 167, # 56)