Last week we finalised and placed the order for all the furniture for Willowbrook. We had been working on the designs for about a year. For much of the house we have designed Chippendale styled furniture to match our own antique pieces. Much of the design was taken directly from Chippendale's Director.
The pieces are being handmade out of sustainable mahogany. We had to search around many different manufacturers before finding one whose workmanship was passable for authentic period carpentry and whose carving was suitable skillful; but who also had ethically sourced mahogany. There is a one year lead in time for a house lot of furniture, so we had to place the order by the end of October to ensure it arrives on time October next year.
One of the less formal and more fun pieces we chose was a balloon chair for the Blenheim Suite.It will be upholstered in a tuquoise silk to match the Zoffany Manchu wallpaper and the custom designed bed stead, similar to the examples below.
Below: Zoffany's Manchu Turquoise Wallpaper. One can see the pomegranates in this swatch, but not the crimson birds which are very jolly indeed.
The bedstead is in the Chippendale Chinese style, with a gilded bedhead with birds carved into the surround. The birds tie in with the wallpaper and are also replicated in an oriental Chippendale-styled mirror for the suite.
Above: The bed head. What is shown in gray undercoat will be gilded, and the upholstery will be in a Chinese silk to compliment the wallpaper.
Below: Detail of the foot of the bed. Again, the upholstery will be in the same silk as the headboard.
Below: The Oriental Chippendale styled mirror.
It was great fun to design our own furniture. We printed out the entire director along with hundreds of photos of furniture we liked and then cut and pasted all the details together to create the perfect pieces of furniture. The carpentrty firm we are using has been very supportive and onboard with what we are doing, which is also very helpful. And the ever patient Robyn of Aureum Imports and McPherson Architecture has coordinated the whole project and helped us pull it together on time. Many thanks to her.
More Balloon Chairs...
Photos from Tumblr
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