Thomas Hope
Household Furniture and Interior Decoration
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London · 1807 · English
Summarised and illustrated here; the text is not reproduced.
Outline engravings of the rooms and furniture of Hope’s own house in Duchess Street, London: the Greek chairs and couches, round tables on tripods and monopodia, library tables, the Egyptian room and its furniture, all drawn from ancient vases, reliefs and the antiquities of Rome and Egypt.
Thomas Hope (1769–1831), a banker’s son and collector, designed the furniture of his house himself, to go with his collection of antique sculpture and vases, and opened the house to visitors. His book, and the pieces made from it, made the Greek manner in English furniture: the klismos chair with its broad curved back and sabre legs, the couch with one scrolled end, the table on lion monopodia.
Rules drawn from Household Furniture
Make the furniture after the antique: the chair as the Greek klismos, its broad back curved to the sitter and its legs swept out like sabres; the couch with one scrolled end; tables on a central pillar and claws or on lion monopodia; and give each piece the plain, broad surfaces and the ornament of the vases and reliefs it is drawn from.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Thomas Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/source/hope-household-furniture. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.