DESIGNED BY TERENCE HAROLD ROBSJOHN-GIBBINGS (1905-1976), CIRCA 1956

In a period spanning four decades of the mid-twentieth century, British-American designer Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905-1976) produced a prolific body of work. During his long career Gibbings established a rather varied practice in which he created numerous interiors, wrote many articles and four books, lectured, and designed copious amounts of furniture and furnishings for both custom and mass-scale production. Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings came to the United States from London in 1936 to establish his career as an independent designer, having already made connections working at the New York office of antiques dealer Charles Duveen a few years earlier. Opinionated, articulate, and witty, he quickly and easily won social popularity and professional success in society circles. Gibbings expanded beyond his increasingly prominent work as a society designer in 1944, when Alfred A. Knopf published his first book, Good-bye, Mr. Chippendale. In the book he delivered an amusing but shrewd rant against the antiques trade and its effect on the American mass-market furniture industry. While ultimately making an appeal to American consumers, he used his platform to develop his ideas about historicism, appropriateness, ancient form, and timelessness. His aim was the reform American taste, creating a market for better designs. Good-bye, Mr. Chippendale sold well and went into multiple printings. In 1946 Robsjohn-Gibbings had the opportunity to follow his own advice when he was hired to create a line of mass-produced furniture for middle-class American consumers, to be manufactured by the Widdicomb Company of Grand Rapids. From 1946 to 1957, Gibbings turned out annual collections, with successful models remaining in continued production. He also put some of his earlier custom designs into industrial production. Robsjohn-Gibbings resigned in the fall of 1956, having designed his 1957 collection for Widdicomb. The designer's work for Widdicomb received wide media attention, in particular in the pages of House Beautiful, under the leadership of its progressive editor, Elizabeth Gordon. In December 1946, Gordon published promotional spreads on his first line for Widdicomb, something the magazine continued to do through his last collection in 1957. (James Buresh, 'T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings', Archives of American Art Journal 48: 1-2, pp. 31-45)