George Hepplewhite (died June 21, 1786) was a cabinet and chair maker. He was one of the "big three" English furniture makers of the 18th century, along with Thomas Sheraton and Thomas Chippendale. There are no pieces of furniture made by Hepplewhite or his firm known to exist but he gave his name to a distinctive style of light, elegant furniture that was fashionable between about 1775 and 1800. Reproductions of his designs continued through the following centuries. One characteristic that is seen in many of his designs, but not all of them, is a shield shaped chair back.
Very little is known about Hepplewhite himself. He served his apprenticeship in Lancaster and then moved to London where he opened a shop. After he died in 1786 the business was carried on by his widow, Alice. In 1788 she published a book with about 300 of his designs, The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Guide. Two further editions were published in 1789 and 1790.
The book influenced cabinet makers and furniture companies for several generations. The work of these generations influenced in turn copies of the original designs and variants of them through the 19th and 20th centuries.
In one respect at least the Hepplewhite style was akin to that of Chippendale - in both cases the utmost ingenuity was lavished upon the chair, and if Hepplewhite was not the originator he appears to have been the most constant and successful user of the shield back.
The backs of Hepplewhitechairs were often adorned with galleries and festoons of wheat-ears or pointed fern leaves, and not infrequently with the prince of Wales's feathers in some more or less decorative form.
A large proportion of Hepplewhitefurniture is inlaid with the exotic woods which had come into high favour by the third quarter of the 18th century.
There was a personality there which impressed itself on the taste of his period, and for years Hepplewhite has shared with Thomas Chippendale and Thomas Sheraton the honour of creating or fostering that national taste for artistic beauty in furniture which reached its zenith in England between 1780 and 1800, the neoclassical period.
GeorgeHepplewhite was born no one knows just where, at some time during the first half of the eighteenth century, and was apprenticed to the Gillows at Lancaster.
GeorgeHepplewhite was at least a practical cabinet-maker of independent if not original ideas, and his work certainly produced a profound effect on the style of the period.
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