The proper furniture for a Drawing-room and for a Dining-room or Parlour, being thus pointed out, it remains only to observe, that the general appearance of the latter should be plain and neat, while the former, being considered as a State-room, should possess all the elegance embellishments can give.”
The side of the room which the reader cannot see contains four windows, furnished with window stools and lambrequins; and, between each window, pier-glasses and pier-tables stand. These semi-circular tables were used, when necessary, to extend the square table in the centre of the room: one being placed at each end, for the extension table had not come into fashion.
Thomas Sheraton, an English journeyman cabinet-maker, settled in London about 1790. From that date until his death in 1806, he seems to have stopped working at his trade and to have spent his time writing practical books on furniture. His first publication, _The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing-Book_, appeared in 1791; but he had previously published eighty-four _Designs for Furniture_. In 1803, he issued _The Cabinet Dictionary_; and in 1804–7, _The Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist’s Encyclopædia_ appeared.
How many of the models in Sheraton’s books are his own it is hard to tell. He claims very few of them, and remarks in the _Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing-Book_ that “it is intended to exhibit the present taste of furniture and at the same time to give the workman some assistance in the manufacture of it.” Sheraton, like Chippendale, whose “designs,” he says, “are now wholly antiquated and laid aside, though possessed of great merit according to the times in which they were executed,” and like Heppelwhite also, therefore exhibits the fashions of his time—fashions that came from France. From what he himself writes, it would seem that he gathered designs from various sources and worked for popularity. He says:
“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.”