British Campaign Furniture: Elegance under Canvas 1740

British Campaign Furniture
Elegance under Canvas 1740 - 1914
by Nicholas A. Brawer

Contents of this Section

Publisher's Review
Independent Reviews
Excerpt from 'British Campaign Furniture'
About the Author
Related Articles and Events
Purchase 'British Campaign Furniture'

Publisher's Review

For Great Britain's gentlemen soldiers stationed in India, Africa, the South Seas, and North America, campaign furniture brought the comfort and civility of home to "life under canvas." Collapsible and compact, made to be carried on the march and assembled on site, these folding chairs, desks, and cots--used by armies since ancient times--reached an aesthetic apex in 18th-and 19th-century England.

To convey their social status, gentleman soldiers stationed abroad ordered entire suites of the ingeniously designed, elaborately styled, fold-up furnishings, and manufacturers such as Chippendale, Sheraton, and Hepplewhite furiously competed for commissions. In the first-ever book on the subject, Nicholas A. Brawer meticulously details this fascinating merger of commerce and craftsmanship."

Featuring more than 250 photographs organized by furniture type, the images include "before and after" series depicting items in packed and assembled states. A comprehensive directory of makers will prove invaluable to collectors, dealers, and military buffs.

Independent Reviews

The War Correspondent, Journal of the Crimean War Research Society, April, 2001: "...the book is worth the cover price just for the anecdotes, let alone the descriptions and super illustrations of so many examples of furniture."

Art & Auction, April, 2001: "Fascinating, erudite - and spiced with often comical excerpts from expatriates' letters home- British Campaign Furniture is a delightful glimpse into one of design history's oddest yet most compelling detours."

Excerpt from 'British Campaign Furniture'

British officers of high social position in the Georgian and Victorian periods (1714-1901) took it for granted that when they set out on a military campaign in Africa or India they could enjoy the same standard of living as they did at home. While "under canvas," as life in camp was called, an officer and a gentleman assured himself a high degree of comfort by using specially designed pieces of campaign, or knock-down, furniture. The only real difference between fine household furniture and its campaign counterpart was that the latter could be quickly folded up, packed away in boxes, transported, and - without the use of nails, tacks, or tools - reassembled in "some corner of another foreign field that was forever elegantly furnished England." The superb designs of these pieces reflected the strong sense of superiority of the gentleman-officer class, its rank in both society and in the army, and its attitudes toward travel, camp and battle. Officers’ campaign furniture included chests, writing desks, bookcases, games tables, chairs, beds, sofa-beds, washstands, and even bidets for their ladies.

The close relationship between campaign and household furniture spanning nearly two centuries is illustrated by the comments of William Pocock (active c. 1802-1824), one of a small number of campaign furniture manufacturers operating near the Strand in London, and Edward Johnson (active c. 1839-1851), a manufacturer of camp, travelling equipage, and cabin furniture by appointment to the Honourable East India Company. In an advertisement from around 1810, Pocock describes the construction of one of his extending dining tables as "so astonishingly simple, and the Scale so variable as to suit either the Cottage Ornée, the festive Board of the hospitable Mansion, or the extensive Entertainments of the Nobility and Men of Fashion. [It] can … form an elegant Piece of Furniture for a Dining-Room … and yet can be made so portable as to go with the Baggage of a Regiment for the Officers’ Mess." Similarly, in 1839 Edward Johnson placed an advertisement for his "Newly Invented Metallic Folding Bedstead," which was designed for officers of the Army and the East India Company, emigrants to Canada and Australia, and those wishing to accommodate additional guests. By day, the bedstead was said to form "an elegant piece of drawing-room furniture," while at night it could be "converted into a bed in a few minutes." When not in use, it could be folded flat to take up "less than one-twelfth part of the room occupied by the common French bedstead."

In Georgian England, the need for high-quality campaign furniture was recognized by the pre-eminent cabinetmakers and furniture designers of the day. Thomas Chippendale (active c. 1747-1779), George Hepplewhite (d. 1786), Thomas Shearer (active c. 1788), William Ince (active c. 1758-c. 1804), John Mayhew (active c. 1758-1804), and Thomas Sheraton (active 1751-1805) all bent their minds and genius to the task of portability. To these craftsmen, campaign furniture was as much in the mainstream of cabinet-making as domestic furniture. In his Cabinet Dictionary of 1803, for example, Thomas Sheraton displayed a keen awareness of how to wage war with elegant cabinetry in tow:

In encampments, persons of the highest distinction are obliged to accommodate themselves to such temporary circumstances, which encampments are ever subject to. Hence every article of an absolutely necessary kind, must be made very portable, both for package, and that such utensils should not retard rapid movement, either after or from the enemy. …And it is to be observed, that most of the things which are of this nature, will also suit a cabin or sea voyage….

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many London cabinetmakers and travel outfitters catered especially to the needs of ship’s officers and passengers, as well as to those of emigrants sailing from the British Isles. In an age when sea voyages could take months and military campaigns might last for many years, military officers, colonial administrators, tea planters, and other civilians equipped themselves with as many of the most comfortable furnishings as their servants could carry. Because campaign furniture could be packed flat, it was the ideal choice for most. In about 1810, firms such as Morgan & Sanders and Thomas Butler published broadsheets advertising dining tables that could be expanded to seat twenty, yet fold up into the floor space of a large Pembroke table, in a box only ten inches deep; one dozen portable dining-room chairs that could be packed in the space of two common chairs; and sofas that could be easily transformed into four-poster tented bedsteads, complete with drapery and bedding. Such pieces were designed specifically for "Captains’ Cabins & Ladies or Gentlemen going to the East or West Indies."

Early Victorian caned mahogany campaign armchair

About the Author

Nicholas A. Brawer received his BA from Columbia University and his MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Brawer worked as a research curator at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, England, before becoming a cataloguer at Sotheby's, New York. He is now an independent curator. He has published a number of articles on furniture and architecture, and has lectured on British campaign furniture at the Bard Center for the Decorative Arts in New York, Sotheby's, and Butterfield's.

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WoodBooks acknowledges all copyrights in the above materials, and would like to express its thanks to Mr. Brawer and his publishers Abrams for their generous help and assistance in the preparation of this article, and for their permission to reproduce the information and photographs included here.

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British Campaign Furniture Elegance under Canvas 1740 - 1914 by Nicholas A. Brawer