Thomas Sheraton's Classical Revival Furniture Designs

Thomas Sheraton

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780486142685

Thomas Sheraton's trade card offered his services as delineator and designer. In this capacity he began to publish The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book in 1791. With additions and alterations it reached completed form in 1794. In the process it changed from a wordy treatise on mechanical drawing, perspective, and orthographic projection to an exemplar of furniture design. Indeed, by its masterful selection of the best of the Late Adam Classical Revival, it epitomized in textbook style the range and taste in English furniture in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The examples advanced from the Hepplewhite choices of only a few years earlier, adding decorative elegance and the restrained richness of ornament inspired by acute observation of the contemporary style of Louis XVI.
This Dover edition is essentially the furniture sourcebook of the Drawing-Book, a grand résumé of the noblest themes of the Classical Revival as inspired by the Brothers Adam and rendered into furniture by countless cabinetmakers, craftsmen, and artists who served one of history’s most self-consciously opulent societies.

THE CABINET-MAKER AND UPHOLSTERER’S DRAWING-BOOK.

PART III.

CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL PIECES OF FURNITURE. I. OF THE USE AND STYLE OF FINISHING EACH PIECE. 2. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE MANUFACTURING PART OF SUCH PIECES AS MAY REQUIRE IT. 3. AN EXPLANATION OF THE PERSPECTIVE LINES WHERE THEY ARE INTRODUCED. TO WHICH IS ADDED, A CORRECT AND QUICK METHOD OF CONTRACTING AND ENLARGING CORNICES OR OTHER MOULDINGS OF ANY GIVEN PATTERN.

INTRODUCTION.

THE design of this Part of the Book is intended to exhibit the present taste of furniture, and at the same time to give the workman some assistance in the manufacturing part of it.

I am sensible, however, that several persons who have already encouraged the work, will not want any help of this nature ; but it is presumed many will who are not much conversant in the business, and who have had no opportunity of seeing good pieces of furniture executed.

For the advantage of such, it is hoped that the experienced workman will exercise candour and patience in reading the instructions intended, not for himself, but for those now mentioned.

There are few but what may, with propriety, reflect on their own past ignorance, even in things which afterwards become exceeding simple and easy by a little practice and. experience. Such a reflection ought, therefore, to promote both candour and good nature in the minds of proficients, when they read the documents necessary to young beginners. And yet, I hope, it may be said, without arrogance, that it is probable the experienced workman may derive some information from the subsequent remarks, when it is considered that they are made not merely from the knowledge and experience I have myself of the business, but from that of other good workmen.

In conversing with cabinet-makers, I find no one individual equally experienced in every job of work. There are certain pieces made in one shop which are not manufactured in another, on which account the best of workmen are sometimes strangers to particular pieces of furniture. For this reason I have made it my business to apply to the best workmen in different shops, to obtain their assistance in the explanation of such pieces as they have been most acquainted with. And, in general, my request has been complied with, from the generous motive of making the book as generally useful as possible.

The methods therefore proposed, and the remarks made, may be depended on by those who have not yet had an opportunity of seeing the different pieces executed.

This is an attempt which has not yet been made in any book of cabinet designs, except a very few flight hints; and, though it must be acknowledged by every impartial mind as highly useful, and even in some cafes absolutely necessary, yet I am apprehensive it will not meet with the approbation of those who wish to hoard up their own knowledge to themselves, left any should share in the advantage arising from it. In some instances it may be necessary for a man to keep knowledge to himself, as his own property, and upon which his bread may depend; but I do not fee any impropriety in persons of the fame branch informing each other. In trades where their arts depend on Secrets, it is right for men to keep them from strangers; but the art of cabinet-making depends so much on practice, and requires so many tools, that a stranger cannot steal it. But in every branch there are found men who love to keep their inferiors of the fame profession in ignorance, that themselves may have an opportunity of triumphing over them. From such I expect no praise, but the reverse. Their pride will not suffer them to encourage any work which tends to make others as wife as themselves; and therefore it is their fixed resolution to despise and pour contempt upon every attempt of this kind, in proportion as it is likely to succeed. But those I will leave to themselves as unworthy of notice, who only live to love themselves, but not to assist others.

Here I would beg leave to observe, that it is natural for every man under a heavy burden to pour out his complaint to the first sympathizing friend he meets with. If the reader be one of these, I will pour out mine, by informing him of the difficult task I have had to please all, and to suit the various motives which different persons have for encouraging a publication like this.

I find some have expected such designs as never were seen, heard of, nor conceived in the imagination of man; whilst others have wanted them to suit a broker’s shop, to save them the trouble of borrowing a bason-stand to shew to a customer. Some have expected it to furnish a country wareroom, to avoid the expence of making up a good bureau, and double chest of drawers, with canted corners, &c. and though it is difficult to conceive how these different qualities could be united in a book of so small a compass, yet, according to some reports, the broker himself may find his account in it, and the country master will not be altogether disappointed; whilst others say many of the designs are rather calculated to shew what may be done, than to exhibit what is or has been done in the trade. According to this, the designs turn out to be on a more general plan than what I intended them, and answer, beyond my expectation, the above various descriptions of subscribers. However, to be serious, it was my first plan, and has been my aim through the whole, to make the book in general as permanently useful as I could, and to unite with usefulness the taste of the times ; but I could never expect to please all in so narrow a compass: for to do this, it would be necessary to compose an entire book for each class of subscribers, and after all there would be something wanting still.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL PIECES OF FURNITURE.

Of the Universal Table. Plate XXV. of the Cabinet Designs.

THE use of this piece is both to answer the purpose of a breakfast and a dining-table. When both the leaves are flipped under the bed, it will then serve as a breakfast-table; when one leaf is out, as in this view, it will accommodate five persons as a dining-table; and if both are out, it will admit of eight, being near seven feet long, and three feet fix inches in width.

The drawer is divided into fix boxes at each side, as in the plan, and are found useful for different forts of tea and sugar, and sometimes for notes, or the like. In this drawer is a slider lined with green cloth to write on. The style of finishing them is plain and simple, with straight tapered legs, socket castors, and an astrugal round the frame.

Of the manufacturing Part.

This table should be made of particularly good and well-feafoned mahogany, as a great deal depends upon its not being liable to cast. In the best kind of these tables the tops are framed and pannelled ; the bed into two pannels, and the flaps each into one, with a white string round each pannel to hide the joint. The framing is three inches broad, and mitered at the comers; and the pannels are sometimes glued up in three thicknesses, the middle piece being laid with the grain across, and the other two lengthways of the pannel, to prevent its warping. The pannels are, however, often put in of solid stuff, without this kind of gluing.

When the pannels are tongued into the framing, and the miters are fitted to, the tops should stand to shrink as much as possible before they are glued for good. There are different methods of securing the miters of the framing. Some make simply a straight miter, which they can shoot with a plane; after which they put a couple of wooden pins in. Others, again, having fitted the miters to by a plane, they flip in a tenon. But the strongest method is to mortice and tenon the miters together, having a square joint at the under, and a miter joint at the upper fide. This method, however, is the most tedious of the three, and where the price will not allow of much time, the ab...