The 3rd edition (1762) of Chippendale’s the Director is considered the superlative version because it comprises the largest number of plates - 200 rather than the 160 of the earlier editions (1754, 1755). Furthermore, it illustrates how Chippendale’s designs evolved since the publication of the earlier editions. The revisions to the 3rd edition were ‘an exercise in streamlining, an attempt to produce a competitive second-generation pattern book’ in which Chippendale was entirely successful for no other comparable work was published again until 1788 (1).
Chippendale’s Director was the most ambitious and successful pattern book issued by a craftsman. It was the first of its kind – earlier collections of furniture designs having been small-scale intended for the trade. It was modelled on important architectural folios that an architect would present to his patron. Chippendale’s intention, as described in the ‘Preface’, was to bring clients and cabinet-makers together: ‘to assist the one in the choice, and the other in the execution of the designs’ (2). The Director offered designs in the ‘Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste’ (the ‘Modern’ or ‘French’ style being the English interpretation of the Rococo) in addition to scale drawings and detailed measurements so that it appealed to both clients and craftsmen alike.
Chippendale had evidently planned to issue a pattern book during the early stages of his career as a cabinet-maker. From 1752, he and his engraver, Matthias Darly (circa 1720-80), were sharing a house, adjacent to palatial Northumberland House, London home to Sir Hugh Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland (circa 1714-86, from 1766, 1st Duke), and his wife, Lady Elizabeth (1716-76); the collaboration on the plates for the Director began in 1753. Chippendale dedicated both the 1st and 2nd editions of the Director to the 1st Earl, undoubtedly wishing to attract the patronage of one of the wealthiest and most influential noblemen. In order to promote the forthcoming publication of the Director, on 19 March 1753, Chippendale placed an announcement in the London Daily Advertiser, and further advertisements in other metropolitan and provincial papers undoubtedly followed:

‘To be published by Subscription
THE GENTLEMAN AND CABINET MAKER’S DIRECTOR
Being a New Book of Designs of Household Furniture in the
GOTHIC, CHINESE AND MODERN TASTE, as improved by
the politest and most able Artists. Comprehending an elegant
Variety of curious and original Drawings in the most useful,
ingenious and ornamental Branches of Chair, Cabinet and
Upholstery Work… A work long wished for, of universal Utility,
and accommodated to the Fancy and Circumstances of Persons in
every Degree of Life… Subscriptions are taken by the Author,
Thomas Chippendale, in Northumberland Court, Charing Cross’ (3)

The 1st edition contained 160 engraved plates, and was limited to only 400 subscriber copies, which if bought as unbound sheets cost £1 10s or £1 14s bound, with half the amount to be paid in advance. Following publication, the price would be increased to two guineas. Chippendale was able to attract 308 subscribers, who ordered 333 advance copies, and the Director appeared four months early in April 1754. Ever the publicist, in June the same year, Chippendale was evidently looking for further subscribers because he placed at least five announcements in the Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer over a two-week period (4). Notably, the price to buy the unbound sheets had risen to £1 17s. The inclusion of a subscriber’s list at the front of the publication was a useful form of publicity. The subscribers comprised a mix of titled nobility, gentry, professionals, cabinet-makers and upholsterers, a significant number of these were Scottish; the former included the Duke of Portland, the Earls of Morton and Northumberland, the Countess of Shaftesbury and Lord Chesterfield, who, as Christopher Gilbert notes: ‘all shared a taste for Rococo decoration in preference to the English Palladian style’ (5). Notable craftsmen subscribers were the architect James Paine, many of Chippendale’s competitors such as Vile and Cobb, William Hallett, Linnell, Paul Saunders and William Bradshaw, and ‘Cheere, Esq.’, one of the family of sculptors responsible for many Rococo chimney-pieces (6).
The prompt for the publication of the 2nd edition a year later was probably first and foremost the opportunity to attract further clients, but also to correct some of the errors that had occurred in the rush to publish the 1st edition, such as two plates numbered XXV, spelling mistakes and a mix of both Roman and Arab numbering. The 2nd edition is virtually identical to the 1st in preface, list of subscribers, text and plates (7).
The publication offered here is the 3rd edition of the Director, issued in 1762, and the last to be printed during Chippendale’s lifetime. It includes revisions and improvements to ninety-four of the original plates from the 1st and 2nd editions, and an extra one hundred and six new plates making it forty plates longer than the earlier editions. The incentive to reissue the Director as a larger and improved publication was probably the announcement by Chippendale’s rival, Mayhew and Ince, in July 1759, that they would be launching their own project, A General System of Useful and Ornamental Furniture, closely based on the designs in the Director.
On 6 October 1759, Chippendale announced in The London Chronicle:

This Day were published
No. 1 of the Third Edition
(being Four Folio Copperplates, printed on Royal Paper, Price 1s).
THE GENTLEMAN’S AND CABINET MAKER’S DIRECTOR
To be continued Weekly, and the whole completed in Fifty Numbers
By Thomas Chippendale
Cabinet Maker, in St. Martin’s Lane

In April 1762, the 106 new plates were offered as separate sheets at £1 10s. 0d and the full 200 plates at £2 12s 6d unbound (8).
Unlike the 1st and 2nd editions dedicated to ‘the Right Honourable Hugh Earl of Northumberland’, Chippendale by this date aspired to attracting the patronage of the Royal family, and the dedicatory plate for the 3rd edition reads:

‘To
His Royal Highness
PRINCE William Henry
May it please your Royal Highness
To take the Following Work under your Protection
Your Royal Highness’s Ready Condescension to encourage
whatever is Laudable and useful in every Art and Profession emboldens
the Author to lay it at Your Royal Highness’s Feet, as it gives him
an opportunity of assuring Your Royal Highness that he is with
the profoundest Respect
Your Royal Highness
Most Obedient,
Most Devoted
And
Most Dutiful Servant
Thomas Chippendale’

The third edition provides an insight into the way Chippendale’s furniture designs developed over the course of nearly ten years with the addition of an additional 40 new plates. It shows that Chippendale was commercially-minded and conscious of the competition he faced in the London cabinet-making trade, and how he addressed this challenge through the publication of a bigger and better edition of the Director. Furthermore, it illustrates the ever-changing taste in furniture design.
This copy was owned by William Stephen of Dundee of which nothing is known except that he was a Scottish eighteenth-century ‘wright’ (cabinet-maker).

(1) C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, p. 88. This was George Hepplewhite’s posthumously published The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Guide (1788).
(2) A. Bowett, J. Lomax, Thomas Chippendale 1718-1779: A Celebration of British Craftsmanship and Design, exhibition catalogue, Leeds, 2018, pp. 22.
(3) Ibid.
(4) 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers.
(5) Gilbert, op. cit., p. 70.
(6) Ibid., p. 71.
(7) Ibid., p. 77.
(8) Ibid., p. 81.