Rococo, less commonly Roccoco, also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, and trompe-l'œil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement.
Thomas Chippendale was an English woodworker in London, designing furniture in the mid-Georgian, English Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. In 1754 he published a book of his designs in a trade catalogue titled The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director—the most important collection of furniture designs published in England to that point which created a mass market for furniture—upon which success he became renowned. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, "so influential were his designs, in Britain and throughout Europe and America, that 'Chippendale' became a shorthand description for any furniture similar to his Director designs".
Jean-Henri Riesener was a famous German ébéniste (cabinetmaker), working in Paris, whose work exemplified the early neoclassical "Louis XVI style".
A commode is any of many pieces of furniture. The Oxford English Dictionary has multiple meanings of "commode". The first relevant definition reads: "A piece of furniture with drawers and shelves; in the bedroom, a sort of elaborate chest of drawers ; in the drawing room, a large kind of chiffonier." The drawing room is itself a term for a formal reception room, and a chiffonier is, in this sense, a small sideboard dating from the early 19th century.
Robert Ralph Parsons is an American entrepreneur, billionaire, and philanthropist. In 1997, he founded the GoDaddy group of companies, including Internet domain name registrar GoDaddy.com, reseller registrar Wild West Domains, and Blue Razor Domains. In July 2011, Parsons sold approximately 70 percent of GoDaddy to a private equity consortium and resigned his position as CEO. In June 2014, he stepped down from his position as Executive Chairman and served on the board until 2018.
A chest of drawers, also called a dresser or a bureau, is a type of cabinet that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers generally stacked one above another.
William Vile was an English cabinetmaker.
Joseph Calleia was a Maltese-born American actor and singer on the stage and in films, radio and television.
André-Charles Boulle, le joailler du meuble, became the most famous French cabinetmaker and the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry, also known as "inlay". Boulle was "the most remarkable of all French cabinetmakers". Jean-Baptiste Colbert recommended him to Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King", as "the most skilled craftsman in his profession". Over the centuries since his death, his name and that of his family has become associated with the art he perfected, the inlay of tortoiseshell, brass and pewter into ebony. It has become known as Boulle work, and the École Boulle, a college of fine arts and crafts and applied arts in Paris, continues today to bear testimony to his enduring art, the art of inlay.
Buried Child is a play written by Sam Shepard that was first presented in 1978. It won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and launched Shepard to national fame as a playwright. The play depicts the fragmentation of the American nuclear family in a context of disappointment and disillusionment with American mythology and the American Dream, the 1970s rural economic slowdown, and the breakdown of traditional family structures and values. In 1979, Shepard also won the Obie Award for Playwriting. The Broadway revival in 1996 received five Tony nominations, including Best Play.
Sir Lawrence Dundas, 1st Baronet was a Scottish merchant and politician.
The Great Automatic Grammatizator is a collection of thirteen short stories written by British author Roald Dahl. The stories were selected for teenagers from Dahl's adult works. All the stories included were published elsewhere originally; their sources are noted below. The stories, with the exception of the war story "Katina", possess a deadpan, ironic, bizarre, or even macabre sense of humor. They generally end with unexpected plot twists.
"A Christmas Memory" is a short story by Truman Capote. Originally published in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, it was reprinted in The Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963. It was issued in a stand-alone hardcover edition by Random House in 1966, and it has been published in many editions and anthologies since.
James Joseph Parsons is an American actor. From 2007 to 2019, Parsons played Sheldon Cooper in the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. He has received various awards, including four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Musical or Comedy. From 2015 to 2018, Forbes named him the world's highest-paid television actor.
Dawn Langley Pepita Simmons was an English author and biographer. Born as Gordon Langley Hall, Simmons lived her first decades as a boy. As a young adult, she became close to British actress Dame Margaret Rutherford, whom she considered an adoptive mother, and who was the subject of a biography written by Simmons in her later years.
Benjamin Goodison, of London, was a royal cabinetmaker to George II of Great Britain, supplying furnishings to the royal palaces from 1727 to the time of his death. He served his apprenticeship with James Moore, who died accidentally in October 1726; Moore was the pre-eminent London cabinetmaker during the reign of George I. Goodison's classicizing case furniture owes much of its inspiration to the neo-Palladian designs of William Kent; outstanding documented examples are the pair of part-gilded mahogany commodes and library writing-tables Goodison made for Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby Hall, Yorkshire, now in the Royal Collection; they have boldly-scaled Greek key fret in their friezes and lion masks gripping brass rings heading scrolling consoles at their corners.
Bernard II van Risamburgh, sometimes Risen Burgh was a Parisian ébéniste of Dutch and French extraction, one of the outstanding cabinetmakers working in the Rococo style. "Bernard II's furniture is brilliant in almost every respect. His carcasses are beautifully shaped, his mounts and marquetry are always in complete balance even when extremely elaborate, and there is a logic to his works that allows the eye to comprehend them effortlessly," wrote Ted Dell.
Paul Howard Gordon is an American composer of popular songs and music for the theatre.
Jacob Cress, better known as Jake Cress, is a furniture maker in Fincastle, Virginia who is known for his interpretations of classical 18th century furniture. He considers himself to be a cabinet maker and not an artist. He also builds normal classical furniture, miniature furniture, and carves boxes, as well as decorative pieces. He also restores furniture. Additionally, he builds more modern pieces like country tables and desks. Cress works with mahogany, walnut, and cherry woods. His animated works include "The Decorator," "Alladin's Lamp," "Hickory Dickory Dock Clock," "Self-Portrait," and "Clock Face." Cress crafts each piece of furniture by hand in his shop without sketching the furniture before he begins working on it.
The furniture of the Louis XV period (1715–1774) is characterized by curved forms, lightness, comfort and asymmetry; it replaced the more formal, boxlike and massive furniture of the Louis XIV style. It employed marquetry, using inlays of exotic woods of different colors, as well as ivory and mother of pearl.
