SHERATON FURNITURE. SHERATON CABINETS, TABLES, CHAIRS, BUFFETS, DRESSERS, CHESTS OF DRAWERS, BEDS, SOFAS
THE reasons given in previous chapters for confining the significance of furniture-makers’ names to the styles in which they worked have even greater force when applied to Thomas Sheraton, the actual examples of whose work in existence are both doubtful and few in number. Sheraton may be fairly described as a successor of Chippendale and Heppelwhite, although he must have been working as a journeyman cabinet-maker when they were alive. But the date upon which Sheraton came to London is much in dispute. He was born at Stockton about the year 1750, and as late as 1782 issued from that town A Letter on the Subject of Baptism, followed by other publications of a religious character from time to time. It has been assumed by various writers that he could not well have come under the influence of Chippendale, Heppelwhite, the brothers Adam, and other great designers until he had come to London after 1782. But it is not certain that this date signifies residence in Stockton-on-Tees up to that time, because he may have been working in 198
London as a cabinet-maker and had his religious tracts
published from his native town.
The interesting dates to collectors are those which give simply the births and deaths of the three great cabinet-makers of their age. Unfortunately the exact dates of birth are unknown in each case. Miss Constance Simon’s researches supply us with the deaths.
THOMAS CHIPPENDALE. Born towards the end of the reign of Queen Anne (1714) ; died 1779.
GEORGE HEPPELWHITE. Born about the beginning of the reign of George IL (1727) ; died 1786.
THOMAS SHERATON. Born about 1750 ; died 1806.
If we add to these dates the birth and death of Robert Adam (1728-1792), whose influence on furniture was so extended, we can begin to realise how indebted Sheraton must have been to the work of his immediate forerunners.
There is no reliable evidence that Thomas Sheraton in the prime of life was ever a master cabinet-maker like Chippendale and Heppelwhite. That he was a skilled designer is apparent by his best-known publication, the Cabinet Maker’s and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book 1 (1793), and that he was also a crafts-man is proved by the extraordinary detail he gives for the construction of the pieces he describes. It is not the kind of technical instruction we look for to-day in the text book, but it shows close personal acquaintance and experience with tools and the many processes of the craft of the cabinet-maker.
Sheraton was apparently a very clever workman who in early life became sincerely religious. He appears to have had ambition and considerable enthusiasm, for he did an enormous amount of work. His Drawing Book ” alone must have meant years of labour. But he was no business man, being far more devoted to the theory of cabinet-making than its practical exercise. He succeeded in drawing together a large number of ideas culled from his immediate forerunners and his con-temporaries and welding them into a distinctive style. He was the last of the great furniture designers of the eighteenth century, and towards the end of his life began to feel the decay which set in with the Engish interpretations of Empire feeling.
The principal characteristics of Sheraton furniture are the use of the straight line in design and as perfect a combination of proportion and constructive bulk as Engiish craftsmanship has ever produced. Sheraton chairs, commodes, bookcases, and tables of ail sorts express daintiness and delicacy never reached before his time. The history of Engiish furniture for hundreds of years had been a gradual progress towards refine-ment of execution, the culmination of which came with Sheraton. Purity of outline and economy of material could go no farther.
More than any other designer Sheraton exploited the possibilities of mechanical action, in bureaux, dressing tables, secretaires, and many other pieces of furniture. He did this on the whole without sacrificing simple utility. Whatever comphcated construction he introduced was not in the way of added ornamentation, but more extended convenience. Most of those bits of furniture one meets with in second-hand dealers’ shops, full of carefully thought out contrivances such as hidden mirrors, sliding screens, drawers, pigeon-holes, little boxes with lids, and so on, are of the Sheraton school. It is true that the bulk of them must have been made by cabinet-makers who were working either at the same time as Sheraton, or who took advantage of the publication of his book to reproduce his ideas for years afterwards. But the old drawing master must be credited with having done more to stimulate the manufacture of such articles than anyone else.
Heppelwhite, the Gillows, Shearer, and other makers used to construct dainty bits of furniture full of cunning fitments, and at page 122 will be seen a dressing table probably of Heppelwhite origin. But those who go to the trouble of even a cursory glance through Sheraton’s principal book on furniture cannot fail to be Struck with the fact that he was at bottom a mechanic. The twin arts of geometry and perspective were his forte. He must have known more about them as they applied to constructional woodwork than anyone living at his time, and it appears to the writer that the perfection of proportion of many of his pieces was quite as much the resuit of consummate knowledge of straight lines and angles and their relationships with each other as artistic perception. A cabinet-maker may decide that a piece of wood is the right length, width, and thickness by instinct. If it looks right to him then it is right. But Sheraton seems to have arrived at such decisions through a complete knowledge of theories of proportion and a mastery of technical
draughtsmanship. It may be for this reason that much Sheraton work
leaves us rather cold. It seems so painfully accurate, so without blemish. Where he introduces curves they lack freedom, but it is to his credit that he never put in too many of them, nor did he put them in the wrong place. His decoration was remarkably reticent, considering the possibilities for elaboration which lay in marquetry, carving, and painting, ail sometimes employed together on one painting, ail sometimes employed together on one piece of furniture.
English designers were still looking to France for inspiration, and Sheraton and his contemporaries echoed Louis Seize decoration, more or less, in ail they did. Curvilinear forms after the death of Louis XV. gave place to a return to the straight Une, and inconsequent rococo ornamentation was supplanted by a more orderly treatment of the classic theme. The ” Drawing Book ” of Thomas Sheraton exemplifies this ail through its pages.
It is a very much more important work than any of the others pubHshed in the latter half of the eighteenth Century. It is less of a trade advertisement and has far more scholarship about it than either Chippendale’s ” Director ” or Heppelwhite’s f Guide.” But it is ex-tremely detailed and diffuse. Like the other publications it was very largely subscribed for by the furnishing trade, which no doubt used it for obtaining fresh ideas.
Sheraton took a very high line. He divided the book into three parts, the first concerning itself with geometry, the second with perspective, and the third with furniture. In the preface he feels himself called upon to give a short resume of the works which have preceded his, pointing out their shortcomings pretty plainly. Of Chippendale’s ” Director ” he says :
” It has given us, it is true, the proportions of the Five Orders, and nes for two or three cases, which is all it pretends to relative to rules for drawing : and as for the odesigns themselves they are now wholly antiquated and laid aside, although possessed of great merit, according to the times in which they were executed.”
Another book, 1 The Cabinet and Chair-Maker’s Real Friend and Companion ” (Robert Manwaring), he charges with containing an assertion which ” exceeds the bounds of modesty and truth,” and for Heppel-white’s ” Guide ” he has obvious contempt. ” Some of the designs/’ he says, I are not without merit, though it is evident that the perspective is, in some instances, erroneous. But notwithstanding the late date of Heppelwhite’s book, if we compare some of the designs, particularly the chairs, with the newest taste, we shall find that this work has already caught the decline, and perhaps, in a little time, will suddenly die in the disorder.”
In those days the value of a knowledge of perspective was much greater than now, when the camera is of so much use to the furnishing trade in conveying a true idea of the appearance of a piece of furniture. Hence the great space which Sheraton devotes to the subject. An important section of the first part of the book is devoted to a consideration of the five Orders of Architecture as the base of classical design. The author even discusses their origin, which he suggests goes back to Solomon’s Temple, the dimension of the pillars of which he gives from Josephus. In parts the book is the quaintest mixture of morality and mechanics. Sheraton seems almost at times to feel that his rules of perspective even need justification by ethical law.
Sheraton’s notes on furnishiing in another book, the ” Cabinet Dictionary I (1803), are particularly interesting to students of old furniture as indicating the fashion of that day. He says : ” In furnishing a good house for a person of rank, it requires some taste and judgment, that each apartment may have such pieces as is most agreeable to the appropriate use of the room. And particular regard is to be paid to the quality of those who order a house to be furnished, when such order is left to the judgment of the up-holsterers ; and when any gentleman is so vain and ambitious as to order the furnishing of his house in a style superior to his fortune and rank, it will be prudent in an upholsterer, by some gentle hints, to direct his choice to a more moderate plan.”
This dangerous advice is one among many proofs that Sheraton’s moral scruples far outweighed his business acumen. He goes on to say : ” It is the business of an upholsterer not to recommend anything that would offend the known sentiments of his employer, when virtue and morality are not the question, but mere indifferent opinion.” . . . “But it is to be lamented, that both the pictures and prints of some gentlemen are but too sure indications of their looseness of principle ; as to virtue and morality,
though these ought to be the principal ornaments of human life, which in no character shines more be-comingly than in the gentleman of rank.
The library,” says Sheraton, ” should be furnished in imitation of the antiques ; and such prints as are hung on the walls ought to be memorials of learning, and portraits of men of science and erudition.”
After a few hints as to the hanging of pictures in the gallery of paintings,” and ad vice as to the prints of the muses in the music room, he gives particulars of the dining-room furniture. | The dining parlour must be furnished with nothing trifling, or which may seem unnecessary, it being appropriated for the chief repast, and should not be eneumbered with any article that would seem to intrude on the accommo-dation of the guests.
The large sideboard, inclosed or surrounded by Ionic pillars ; the handsome and extensive dining table ; the respectable and substantial looking chairs ; the large face glass ; the family portraits ; the marble fire places ; and the Wilton carpet; are the furniture that should apply to the dining room.”
Sheraton appears so overcome with the grandeur of the drawing-room that he omits to give any details of the furniture. But he is explicit as to the unsuitability of including such incongruous items as books, globes, and pictures ! ” Nothing,” he says, | of a scientific nature should be introduced to take up the attention of any individual, from the general conversation. . . .
Several plates show the proper disposition of furniture and the character of the decoration. The most interesting is that which illustrates the Prince of Wales’s Chinese drawing-room in Carlton House Terrace. The author does not pretend that it is an exact drawing by any means. It was evidently a formal reception room and had none of that haphazard,
sketchy appearance with which we are familiar in modern drawing-rooms. Such casual treatment was permitted, apparently, only in the breakfast parlour or tea-room. The walls of the Prince’s room are panelled and hung with stretched silk having needlework with Chinese designs in embroidery. All the chairs are placed formally m position near the walls, there are pier tables under huge mirrors, a marble mantelpiece with looking-glass above, some square stools, and a large ottoman.
Some of Sheraton’s own remarks on this room may be quoted : ; The pier table under the glass is richly ornamented in gold. The top is marble and also the shelf at each end ; the back of it is composed of three panels of glass, the Chinese figure sitting on a cushion is metal and painted. The candle branches are gilt metal, the panels painted in the style of the Chinese ; the whole producing a brilliant effect.
The view contains an ottoman, or long seat ; extending the whole width of the room, and returning at each end about five feet. The Chinese columns are on the front of this seat, and mark out its boundaries. The upholstery work is very richly executed in figured satin, with extremely rich borders, all worked to suit the style of the room.”
A most curious arrangement is made for heating, for, within this ottoman are two grand tripod candie-stands, with heating urns at the top, that the seat may be kept in a proper temperature in cold weather. On the front of the ottoman before the columns are two censers containing perfumes, by which an agreeable smell may be diffused to every part of the room, preventing that of a contrary nature, which is the consequence of lighting a number of candies.
The carpet is worked in one entire piece, with a border round it, and the whole, in effect, though it may appear extravagant to a vulgar eye, is but suitable to the dignity of the proprietor.”
Sheraton shews another drawing-room which has similar characteristics. There is a pier table opposite the fire-place having a high square mirror over it to correspond with the one over the mantelshelf. Be-tween the four tall sash Windows are three console tables, and on the other side of the room a formal Sheraton settee with six arm-chairs. No centre table, bookcase, china cabinet, horse screen, pole screen, or other piece of furniture having domestic interest is to be found in the late eighteenth century drawing-room, which was obviously copied from the French. It is in the parlour and dining-rooms that the bulk of the furniture was seen.
The description of the Prince of Wales’s dining-room at Carlton House Terrace in one or two particulars suggests that the features seen there may be taken as indicating fashion in generai. They were not included exclusively for the Prince.
Sheraton says that there is ” a large glass over the chimney piece . . . to which are fixed candie-branches. At each end is a large sideboard, nearly twelve feet in length, standing between a couple of
Ionic columns, worked in composition to imitate fine
variegated marble, which have a most beautiful and magnificent effect. In the middle are placed a large range of dining tables, standing on pillars with four claws each, which is now the fashionable way of making these tables. The chairs are of mahogany, made in the style of the French, with broad top rails hanging over each back foot ; the legs are turned,” and the seats covered with red leather.” Sheraton remarks further : ” Many dining rooms of the first nobility have, however, only two columns and one sideboard, and those of less note have no columns.”
Collectors whose means do not permit them to compete in the auction-room for masterpieces may still find many bits of furniture of the Sheraton school well worth having, and at comparatively small pieces. In the chapter on Heppelwhite, distinctions have already been drawn between the chairs of the two designers, but a fuller analysis of the characteristics of Sheraton seats is necessary.
His best work was in solid satinwood, carved or painted. He never succeeded, like Chippendale and Heppelwhite, in evolving a chair back which was peculiarly his own, but he certainly designed a large number of varying forms to which he imparted
recognisable character. The amateur at once recog-
nises the typical Chippendale chair back with its
carved and pierced centre splat and bow-shaped crest-
rail. He can see at a glance Heppelwhite’s shield back.
But there is no fundamental shape which we can say
is Sheraton’s. It is rather in his treatment of designs
already known that Sheraton is distinctive, and that treatment is based upon angularity and accuracy of proportion. You will see, for instance, a Sheraton chair like the one opposite, obviously adapted from an Adam example, which has an almost unrelieved top rail above the lyre, another horizontal rail just above the seat level, and formal square legs decorated with fluting and carved feet.
Sheraton undoubtedly favoured the straight top-rail in his chair backs. He appears to have first thought of it as such, and then in response either to fashion or to a feeling within himself, to have modified it a little here and there. Sometimes one sees the middle third of the rail raised a quarter of an inch above the rest, the added thickness which resulted carved in short vertical flutings. The straight line, again, may be stopped short of the angles and dipped in a little concave curve to join the upright.
Where a Sheraton crest rail is slightly arched in the middle it appears as though the curve had been drawn with a pair of compasses, or struck from the two foci of an ellipse. It does not suggest the sweep of freehand drawing. The designer apparently thought in angles and admitted curves as modifications. In this no doubt he was constructionally right, particularly in developing an Anglicised version of Louis Seize which was in its essence a straight line style.
Sheraton chair legs, as already pointed out, may be looked upon as columns supporting the ends of the arms, with the seat junction an incident about two-thirds the way up. In circular or turned legs he was undoubtedly the best interpreter of Louise Seize of his time. Heppelwhite and other makers used the turned leg, but collectors who find it in furniture of the late eighteenth century may assume that it denotes a Sheraton chair, table, or settee, unless there is conflicting evidence from some other part of the article. The carving will be in flutes, and the turning will show usually the thickest part about a quarter the way down from the top, just below a neck which in turn is under a square section decorated often with a carved patera. Sheraton feet run straight down in line with the leg. They do not splay out, excepting in the later examples which are adaptations from French Empire. In these instances it will usually be found that the backs curl over in convex fashion ” with broad top rails hanging over each back foot,’ as in the Prince of Wales’s dining-room.
Sideboards by Sheraton often have their front straight on plan, here again seeming to show that the designer regarded this as the fundamental une. The ends, however, were mostly convex, very rarely concave. The example at page 202 is interesting as showing features suggesting both Heppelwhite and Sheraton as the originator. It has a simple curved front with a top approaching the serpentine in shape. The treatment of the inlaid spandrils is very like Sheraton.
The side table with flanking pedestals and vases above had not given place to the fitted sideboard entirely, although the latter in Sheraton’s time must have begun to be very popular. The author of the” Drawing Book * says that ” sideboards are often made without drawers of any sort, having simply a rail a little ornamented, and pedestals with vases at each end, which produce a grand effect.” This was no doubt precisely the case. If after 1780 or there-abouts a wealthy man with a large dining-room wished to express grandeur, he would have the side table and pedestals. But with Heppelwhite’s and Sheraton’s books to consult the country cabinet-maker could offer a very neat, composite piece of furniture to his clients who would doubtless prefer it, for reasons of space alone, if for no other consideration.
An interesting reference to sideboards with curved fronts occurs in the ” Drawing Book | which suggests that they were rather out of fashion to ten years before the end of the century. Sheraton says : ” It is not usual to make sideboards hollow in front, but in some circumstances it is evident that advantages will arise from it. If a sideboard be required nine or ten feet long, as in some noblemen’s houses, and if the breadth of it be in proportion to the length, it will not be easy for a butler to reach across it. I therefore think, in this case, a hollow front would obviate the difficulty, and at the same time have a very good effect, by taking off part of the appearance of the great length of such a sideboard. Besides, if the sideboard be near the enter-ing door of the dining room, the hollow front will some-times secure the butler from the jostles of the other servants.” A drawing and plan is given of such a sideboard, but it is over nine feet long, a most unusual length.
Small dining-rooms were often furnished in Sheraton’s day with sideboards having neither drawers nor pedestals. The custom was to place a wine cooler underneath, hooped with brass, partitioned and lined with lead for wine bottles. This attendant piece was easily accessible and took the place of cellaret drawers. It was occasionally used, however, in connection with sideboards which were fitted with cellarets, the arched opening in the centre of the larger piece of furniture being provided to enable the butler to get at the bottles beneath.
Dining tables at the end of the eighteenth Century were extremely well made, and even those showing Empire features can scarcely be regarded as having their appearance entirely spoiled. Many patents were taken out for those which extended by means of loose leaves. The ordinary useful dining tables about the year 1800 were supported upon pillars and claws, four claws to each pillar and running on brass castors. Both Heppelwhite and Sheraton curiously omit illustrations of dining tables in their works, but the former says : ” For a Dining Room, instead of the Pier-tables, should be a set of dining tables,” and Sheraton gives a careful description of their mechanism in his dictionary. Most of it is technical and of little interest to the collector, but it is evident that the tables were made any length to suit a particular room, ” by having a sufficient quantity of pillar and claw parts, for between each of these is a loose cap, fixed by means of iron straps and buttons, so that they are easily taken off and put aside.” Sheraton used to allow in his calculation as to the size of these tables a space of two feet for each person sitting down. The patent tables of his day were made to draw out, loose flaps being enclosed in the piece to fall into place as required, an idea evidently the immediate forerunner of our extend-ing screw tables. Another patent dining table was on pillar and claw, but according to Sheraton ” the loose flaps cannot be mitred within the frame, but must be, when not used, put into some convenient place in the room where the dining table stands.”
Many pieces of Sheraton furniture made after 1800 are quite worth attention, if one allows for the fact that the best period of English furniture making was over. At the present time sofas of late Sheraton design, for instance, are cheap. There is practically no demand for them. But this will not always be the case, and the collector who makes money out of his hobby is he who buys at a low figure and bides his time for the market. The character of these sofas is very easily recognised. They have scroll ends, the legs are curved and splayed out and run on castors. The crest rail is usually perfectly straight, and the upholstery is horsehair as often as not. Sheraton’s use of the splayed out legs at the latter period of his career was constant, and on the whole at this time they were the best support he designed. His turned legs became vulgarised with the Empire influence, but this vulgarity did not appear so evident when French Empire was simply copied. Students of French work of this period will readily realise that it had character of its own, although it was heavy and pretentious. But the Empire motif, clumsy and forbidding as it was, ruined Sheraton’s work entirely when he attempted to graft it on to his own delicately proportioned furniture.
Chair backs and the lattice work in bookcase doors which show diamond shaped divisions may generally be taken as later than 1800. Sheraton’s tracery in the best part of his career was flowing, even more so than that of Heppelwhite, but we see scarcely a curved one in the later glazed fronts. It is interesting to note that the revolt against wooden bedsteads on account of their supposed attraction for vermin came to a head at this time in the patenting of various methods of putting posts and rails together without having any crevices in which the insects could hide. Brass joints were used and when the posts and frame had been screwed together brass plates were fixed securely over at the point of junction. Some bedsteads had brass dovetail tenons which slipped into sockets of brass fixed in the pillars.
The four post bedstead had a long life after this, and Sheraton’s posts are particularly graceful and neatly ornamented. His schemes for upholstery were among the poorer parts of his work.
He designed three and four-back settees, sometimes upholstered, sometimes caned in back and seat. His dressing chests were often like chests of drawers when closed, the glass and other fitments being neatly packed away in the Upper compartment.
The short legs to such pieces are termed ” stump ” feet, the two inlaid cabinets at page 214 having them.