Uniting Elegance with Utility: George (and Alice) Hepplewhite

Hepplewhite’s name is synonymous with a neo-classical style of furniture often reproduced in modern dining rooms and lounges.  His name is probably as familiar as that of Chippendale and yet, in comparison, he was an obscure cabinet maker of the 1780s about whom very little is known.  His fame derives from his book of designs, published and ‘improved’ after his death by his wife Alice, which gives us a wonderful stylistic summary of the more ‘democratic’ interpretation of Robert Adam’s aristocratic Neo Classicism popular at the time and which showed how well-designed and executed fashionable furniture could indeed “unite elegance with utility and blend the useful with the agreeable”.