The first large book of furniture designs by an English cabinet-maker: chairs, sofas, beds, tables, bookcases, desks, commodes, glasses and stands in what Chippendale called the Gothic, the Chinese and the modern (French) tastes, with notes on their sizes and how they are made.
Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779) published the Director from his workshop in St Martin’s Lane in 1754, with a second edition in 1755 and an enlarged third in 1762. It was bought by noblemen and by cabinet-makers alike, and gave its name to the English furniture of the 1750s and 1760s: mahogany carved with C-scrolls and rococo ornament, chairs with pierced splats on cabriole legs with ball and claw feet, and, in the Chinese and Gothic tastes, chairs on straight square legs with fret and tracery in their backs.
The plates give the sizes of many pieces and how they may be varied; the notes on the Chinese chairs suggest them for a lady’s dressing room hung with India paper. Chippendale’s firm itself furnished whole houses, Harewood, Nostell and Dumfries House among them.