Commode painted oak, walnut or fruitwoods, with carved decoration, typical of French provincial furniture. In the English-speaking world, "commode" passed into cabinet-makers' parlance in London by the mid-eighteenth century to describe chests of drawers with gracefully curved fronts, and sometimes with shaped sides as well, perceived as being in the "French" taste. Thomas Chippendale employed the term "French Commode Tables" to describe designs in "The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Director" (1753), and Ince and Mayhew illustrated a "Commode Chest of drawers", plate xliii, in their "Universal System of Household Furniture", 1759–62. John Gloag notes that "Commode" expanded to describe any piece of
Luke Hughes (furniture designer) Luke Hughes (furniture designer) Luke Hughes (born 11 May 1957) is a furniture designer and mountaineer. He and his practice (Luke Hughes®) have designed and made furniture for over 50 Oxbridge colleges, 100 parish churches, 20 major cathedrals and 5 Royal Palaces, 2 synagogues and 900 corporate boardrooms, including Diageo Unilever, Bloomberg and Reuters. As a mountaineer, his expeditions over 25 years include exploring unmapped areas of central Tibet. Hughes was educated at Salisbury Cathedral School and St Paul's School, London before gaining an open history scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1974. Hughes set up Bloomsbury Joinery, a small craft