Percy Macquoid

Who was Percy Macquoid?

Percy Macquoid was a theatrical designer and a collector and connoisseur of English furniture, and the author of articles, largely for Country Life, and of four books on the history of English furniture, the first major survey of the subject, which have been reprinted and are still of use today: The Age of Oak, The Age of Walnut, The Age of Mahogany and The Age of Satinwood, ending his surveys about the year 1800. These terms, particularly the first three, have become the standard terms for referring to these different periods and styles. Despite this respect for his observations and commentary, his historical research has often been queried. He collaborated with Ralph Edwards on The Dictionary of English Furniture. Macquoid's books were published by Country Life.

The son of the book illustrator and watercolourist Thomas Robert Macquoid, his early career was as an illustrator and theatrical designer, whose illustrations in The Graphic Vincent van Gogh praised to Anthon van Rappard in 1883 as "the non plus ultra of elegance and mild refined feeling". Macquoid was a favoured designer of the theatrical producer Herbert Beerbohm Tree, notably for Tree's 1906 productions of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra and Nero. In 1899 Macquoid produced decorations for the renovated St. James's Theatre, King Street, which were carried out by the leading London decorators Messrs. Morant and Co. For the great collector Lord Leverhulme, Macquoid designed the 'Adam Room' for the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Liverpool. The work was carried out by the London decorating firm of White, Allom and installed the year of Macquoid's death. For it, Macquoid adapted principal elements from two documented Robert Adam houses: the plasterwork and colour of the walls derived from the Music Room at Harewood House, West Yorkshire, while the mirror above the fireplace is based on one at 20 St. James Square, London.