British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas, 1740- 1914

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Summary: Review from The Arizona Republic, June 27, 2001
Review: "If you were a British officer during the 18th or 19th century, your home had the look of a proper English residence, with desks, chairs, sofas, chests and fancy bedroom suites--even if you lived in a tent.

'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...,' Nicholas A. Brawer writes in British Campaign Furniture.

How the furniture can be taken apart and stored is fascinating. One dining table and set of four padded chairs and a chaise lounge can be broken down into pieces that fit into two small crates.

There are pictures of the furnishings set up and stored. Often officers lived better overseas than at home. One cartoon depicts a British officer and his wife dining in their home overseas, with a half-dozen servants waiting on them, and then dining at home after retirement, with only one housekeeper.

Nearly half the book is a portfolio of the furnishings and detailed descriptions of manufacturers and furniture makers."

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Summary: Review from Quest Magazine, April 2001
Review: "There was a time when the sun never set on the British Empire. From Ceylon to the Americas, England ruled, bringing her lifestyle to Crown colonies around the globe.

Being stationed in India or Egypt, however, was no excuse to relax the standards of living to which British Army officers were accustomed. Living 'under canvas' did not mean roughing it. Instead, they brought their homes with them, packing cunningly constructed, portable furniture suitable for any elegant tented dinner.

Today, campaign furniture's elegance and simplicity have made it a must-have item for decorators and antique lovers. Nicholas Brawer's new book British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas (Abrams) provides a fascinating history and a guide to collapsible decor."

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Summary: Review from Art & Auction Magazine, April 2001
Review: Collapsible or 'campaign' furniture has been standard issue for people on the move for centuries. Armies in ancient Greece and Rome relied on folding chairs, cots and the like as they advanced from battlefield to battlefield. In the Middle Ages, furniture that handily collapsed was among the important domestic possessions of peripatetic aristocrats, who carted their chairs, tables and beds from castle to castle and disguised crude carpentry with costly silk hanings and tapestries. But according to British Campaign Furniture, Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914, it wasn't until the late 18th century that campaign furniture became a sophisticated accoutrement almost entirely of the British empire, outfitting the homes of Anglos abroad. A cultural constant, often found in paintings of conquering heroes, campaign furniture was hip, too. As elegantly explained by author Nicholas A. Brawer--an independent curator formerly with Sotheby's New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London--the craze for campaign furniture was fueled as much by its practicality as by its owners' desire to preserve their national image. Challenged to set up thoroughly British encampments in distant colonial outposts, soldiers and memsahibs set fail for India and points beyond with entire housefuls of furniture--most of it cunningly designed to be disassembled and packed tightly into trunks and boxes. When Mary Bolton and Captain Benjamin Simner, an officer in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, arrived in Madras in 1865, the first thing the newlyweds did was to upack two crates, each measuring about three feet square, and out tumbled an entire living and dining room: a dining table, four dining chairs, a settee, a sideboard and an easy chair. Ingenious but also luxurious. The suite, a wedding gift, was made of hand-carved walnut upholstered in button-tufted brocade. Dozens of now-obscure firms like John Jacques, Morgan & Sanders and John Ward dominated the campaign furniture industry; the Simners' suite was made by Ross & Co., a Dublin concern. Such was the demand by aristocratic soldiers, travelers and diplomates that high-profile cabinetmakers produced their share of campaign furniture as well. Thomas Sheraton designed camp beds for cavalry officers and other collapsible furniture, as did Thomas Chippendale, A. Hepplewhite & Co. and Ince & Mayhew--all of whom, Brawer notes, 'furiously competed for commissions' from outward-bound Britons.

Practical and stylish, campaign furniture allowed designers and inventors to pack as much furniture into as small a space as possible. Chairs, tables and a sofa could be packed into the lower half of a chiffonier. Canopy beds were conjured out of nothing more than a few metal rods and tightly rolled curtains dripping with fringe. Once its deftly turned legs and leaves were stored away in a secret compartment, a 10-foot mahogany dinign table could be reduced to the size of a small area rug. And at the Crystal Palace exhibition in 1851, Benjamin Taylor offered a line of campaign furniture with cork-fiber cushions that doubled as life preserves. Several items depicted in Brawer's book will be seen in 'Britain's Portable Empire: Campaign Furniture from the 18th and 19th Centuries,' an exhibition curated by Brawer opening in July at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York. Fascinating, erudite--and spiced with often comical excerpts from expatriates' letters home--British Campaign Furniture is a delightul glimpse into one of design history's oddest yet most compelling detours.

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Summary: Great picture book
Review: I just had to have this book. The subject matter was unusual and touched on the social aspects of camp life in the British Army.
The pictures are fabulous.

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Summary: Outstanding resource and entertaining read!
Review: The Washington Post refers to this book as "a rare animal: a scholarly treatise that's also a fun read and filled with astonishing before and after photographs to boot." I couldn't agree more! Written with many amusing anecdotes, such as one officer's description of life in India as "war until lunchtime, then pate de foie gras, champagne and ladies," this book uses the furniture as a way of bringing the British Empire to life. To think that officers brought dining tables to seat over 100 people to India is astonishing- but the fact that this size table can be disassembled to fit in a box only 16 inches deep is even more astounding. The book is filled with images of antique chairs, tables, beds, bookcases etc. shown assembled and then ingeniously disassembled for travel. The sheer variety of items that accompanied officers on campaign- from pianos to cut glass decanters to silver services to tea tables, dining tables, writing tables, games tables, and wine tables is truly amazing, and the stories that accompanied these travels are very amusing.

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Summary: Lavish Coffee Table Book on British Campaign Furniture
Review: This book is a must have for anyone interested in English antiques, social, military, or naval history. I have never seen another book on this subject and it is filled with very interesting "before" and "after" photographs of dozens and dozens of pieces of campaign furniture "assembled" and "disassembled." I imagine this book has been a great hit in London.

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Summary: Lavish Coffee Table Book on British Campaign Furniture
Review: This book is a must have for anyone interested in English antiques, social, military, or naval history. I have never seen another book on this subject and it is filled with very interesting "before" and "after" photographs of dozens and dozens of pieces of campaign furniture "assembled" and "disassembled." I imagine this book has been a great hit in London.

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Summary: Oh that all books were as beautiful..........
Review: This is an excellent review of British Campain Furniture.

Each piece is photographed in colour and/or Black & White, discussed and given brief measurements. The "disembled" photos are of great use to anyone who wishes to reconstruct any of the items from the book, as well as satisfying the just plain curious. Some of the gadgets are fantastic.

Unfortunately, like most books of this type, the author is limited by the pieces that he can access within a year or two. I know there were 'Campaign' folding rocking chairs, and I an certain that there are other examples of furniture, with other systems of assembly ( Louis Vouton made a folding-bed-in-a-trunk for the Brazza Expedition in Africa in the late 1800's which survives - there is a single picture in 'Treasure Chests').

I can only hope that the author will be encouraged to keep looking & photographing, and that we may see a second volume in years to come.

Sorry Amazon, you just don't have enough stars........

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Summary: Review from The Birmingham Post (UK) March 3, 2001
Review: When Georgian and Victorian top-brass set off on military campaigns during the 19th century they took the furniture with them. It was simply taken for granted that when a military officer set off for Africa or India he expected the same standard of living he obviously enjoyed at home. While he was 'under canvas' as life in camp was called, an officer assured himself of a high degree of comfort by taking along carefully chosn and sometimes privately made campaign or 'knock-down' furniture.

There was really very little difference between normal household furniture and the knock down variety. It was simply that the latter could be taken apart at a moment's notice, folded up, packed into boxes, transpoted to wherever and then re-assembled, without the use of nails, screws, tacks or tools, in some corner of a foreign field 'that was forever elegantly furnished England.' When these things turn up on the furniture stands at the NEC fairs or in the sale catalogues, the first thing that strikes you is their absolute elegance. The superb designs of these canvas and wood lunging chairs, bureaux, beds or whatever, reflects the sense of calm superiority which belonged to the officer class, its social and military rank and its unflurried attitude to travel, camp, battle and other people--particularly inferiors. Campaign furniture included chests, writing boxes, silver cutlery sets, much favoured by people like the Duke of Wellington, brass candlesticks which folded down into two tiny little doughnut shapes which could be slipped into the pocket, bookcases, inlaid games tables, sofa-beds, washstands and even collapsible bidets for officers' wives who were also equipped with rubber knickers to combat the unhealthy climate of India during the monsoon. The illustrations of these things (not the knickers of course which have long since perished) shown in the recently published British Campaign Furniture--Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914 by Nicholas A. Brawer (Abrams) show the sheer beauty of the bookcases, sets of chairs, dining tables, side tables...The folding bookcase shown, for example, on page 21, has the metal grilles of its more superior brethren but is a finished piece of cabinet work in its own right. And the pictures tell an extraordinary story, since it was not only the purely utilitarian pieces which were taken halfway across the world, we can also read that the Memsahibs looked for, expected and received, complete dining suites, tables to seat a dozen people with beautifully upholstered chairs to match and found it unloaded at the docks in a DIY box set. The sofa-beds which we use today to put up guests are obviously nothing new. One is shown here opening out from an elegant bergere sofa, into a king-size double bed. And astonishing dining tables could form an elegant piece of furniture or be made so portable as to go with the regiment. But then, officers in the Georgian period would require a large dining table in their tents. It meant that they could maintain their prestige and rank during the battle. And it was needed when the port went round. These things were taken seriously enough by Sheraton, Chippendale and Hepplewhite, wonderful furniture makers and designers, all of whom concentrated their minds on problems of portability. Interestingly enough, in this excellent book, which examines a fascinating and little known area of furntiure collecting in a scholarly way, Nicholas Brawer makes the point that although we tend to associate Chippendale and company with up-market wildly expensive drawing room masterpieces, these men were quite happy to place campaign furntiure in the main steam of early 19th century furniture making. But how you got all this gear from place to place was amazing and it is shown in this book in some extremely funny Indian watercolours, themselves obviously highly collectable. As late as 1910 Harrods were advertings equipment for exploreres, miners and sportsmen who might wish to make homes in Lucknow, Suez or the Australian outback. Harrods claimed their furniture could be packed in cases suitable for 'Camel Loads, Mule Loads, Pony Loads and Native Head Loads.' Presumably, little tins containing anti-insect oil also went with the furniture to combat termites in unfriendly climates. And the amount of local camp followers anxious to earn a few pence a day carrying the Sahibs and their endless baggage was inexhaustible. A delightfully silly photograph shows Mary Curzon, the Indian Viceroy's missus crossing a stream in India in 1904 with enough elephants, horses and locals to fill up the Indian army. When Captain Hope Grant of the 9th Lancers (an avid violinist and composer) was posted to Simla, it took 93 men to carry his bits and pieces. Flora Annie Steel in 1890 advised military wives sailing for India, that 'a piano must be carried by coolies of whom 14 or 16 will be needed.'