T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings, was born in England in 1905. In his teens, Robsjohn-Gibbings worked as a draftsman designing interiors of passenger ships for the London design firm of Heaton, Tabb and Co.

He then studied architecture at the University of Liverpool and London University and received additional training at the Slade School of Fine Art. Robsjohn-Gibbings left London and headed to New York in 1930 to work for Charles of London, an importer of Elizabethan antiques and furniture.
Gibbings opened his own showroom on Madison Avenue in 1936. One of his most important commissions came in 1938, when Robsjohn-Gibbings designed the furniture and interiors for the Casa Encantada in Bel Air, California for Hilda Boldt Weber.

Amongst the furniture produced for this large commission, Robjohn-Gibbings introduced his earliest Klismos chairs. He was not interested in purely imitating ancient Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and Asian influences, but rather worked to modernize these aesthetics while remaining true to a sense of timeless beauty that recalled, yet modernized these historic aesthetics.

Gibbings published widely. Some of his notable musings on furniture and design include Good-Bye, Mr. Chippendale (1944), Mona Lisa's Mustache: A Dissection of Modern Art (1944), Homes of the Brave (1954), and Furniture of Classical Greece (1963).
Gibbings produced furniture with manufacturers such as Widdicomb, Saridis of Athens, the Urban Furniture Company, and Baker Furniture, although he much preferred creating custom pieces that weren't subject to the demands of industry.


One of the most iconic works he produced for Widdicomb was the Mesa Coffee Table with its three, graduated levels reminiscent of a plateau formation. First introduced in 1951, the table measured roughly 9 feet long by 6 feet wide. Some of his most memorable work includes the line of Greek revival furniture he designed for Saridis of Athens.
T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings died in 1976.

Source:
Head, Jeffrey. "T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings" in ed. Todd Merrill and Julie V. Iovine, Modern Americana (New York: Rizzoli, 2008) p. 195

T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings 1905–1976

Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings was born in England in 1905. While studying architecture at the University of London, Robsjohn-Gibbings was fascinated by the restrained elegance of Greek and Roman art, so he often spent his spare time wandering the galleries of the British Museum.

In 1929, he moved to New York where he worked for famed tastemaker Charles Duveen before establishing a career as an independent interior designer in 1936. In 1938, Harper’s Bazaar stated that Robsjohn-Gibbings felt that “the modern should stem from the very ancient,” as he believed that furniture should be steeped in the symmetry and rationality of Greek design.

In 1946, Robsjohn-Gibbings had the chance to make his ideals manifest when he was invited to design a line of furniture for Widdicomb Furniture Company. His furniture line was hailed as a triumph by House Beautiful magazine and his design for a butler’s table was featured in the landmark Good Design exhibit of 1951 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In addition to working as an interior designer, Robsjohns-Gibbings was also an astute critic of design culture in America, and he was noted for his humorous novels like Goodbye, Mr. Chippendale, which poked fun at the American craze for all things antique in interior design.

During the 1960s, Robsjohn-Gibbings moved to Athens, the birthplace of classicism, and his apartment overlooked the Parthenon. While living in Greece, Robsjohn-Gibbings designed interiors for both Aristotle Onassis and the Niarchos family.

Robsjohn-Gibbings passed away in 1976. He left behind a legacy of classically-derived forms, and his elegant works reside in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among many others.