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
William Chippendale William Chippendale William Chippendale (1730s-1802) was an English merchant who was active in Copenhagen from the late 1750s through the mid-1780s. His frim traded on the Danish West Indies. He owned the Andreas Bjørn House at Strandgade 46 in Copenhagen from 1766 and established the sugar refinery Union House on the property in collaboration with a group of planters from St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. Chippendale was born in England, possibly Yorkshire. in the 1830s. He came to Copenhagen in the late 1850s where he purchased a no longer existing property in Overgaden oven Vandet 54 in Christianshavn