Thomas Sheraton

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(b ?Stockton-upon-Tees, Co. Durham; bur London, 27 Oct 1806). English furniture designer. In his obituary he was described as 'a native of Stockton-upon-Tees, and for many years a journeyman cabinetmaker, but who since about the year 1793, has supported himself, a wife and two children, by his exertions as an author'. In his first pattern-book of 1791-3 he described himself as a cabinetmaker, but a trade card of about 1796 (London, BM) indicates that he was a professional furniture designer and drawing-master rather than the owner of a workshop. He is first recorded as being in London in 1791 but he returned to Co. Durham c. 1800-02, where he was ordained as a Baptist minister. His remaining four years were spent in London, and he was buried at St James's, Piccadilly. In 1804 he was described by Adam Black, a publisher, as 'a Man of Talents, and, I believe, of genuine piety. He understands the cabinet business

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The English furniture designer Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) brought about the transition from the late-18th-century Adam and Hepplewhite style to that of the Regency period.

Born at Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, Thomas Sheraton had little education and worked at first as a journeyman cabinetmaker. He went to London about 1790 and is said to have "supported himself, a wife, and two children by his exertions as an author." From then on he probably lived chiefly from the sale of his furniture designs, but it is extremely unlikely that he made any furniture after his early years.

In 1799 Sheraton left London to become a Baptist minister at Stockton and Darlington, Yorkshire, and continued in this work until 1802. He passed his last years in London, where he died on Oct. 22, 1806. The Edinburgh publisher Adam Black wrote of Sheraton's abject poverty and spoke of his gifts as a scholar, designer, and teacher.

Sheraton's first and most important publication, The Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, was issued in 49 separate parts between 1791 and 1794. His designs were intended "to exhibit the present taste of furniture" and "at the same time to give the workman some assistance." They represent an advance upon the neoclassic designs of Robert Adam and George Hepplewhite in the direction of even greater elegance and refinement and in the preference for chair backs and mirror frames of square shape instead of the oval forms favored by these two predecessors. Sheraton's early designs, usually intended to be carried out in satinwood, are often highly ornamental and strongly express the influence of Louis XVI furniture, especially in the shaping of tabletops with serpentine or bowed breakfronts and quadrant ends, in the delicate scrolling of flower and leaf patterns, inlaid or painted, with ribbon decoration, and especially in his use of slender turned colonnettes and feet of "spinning-top" design. Some elements of his designs, such as "reeding" and splayed "claw legs" for tables, persisted as late as 1820.

Of greater significance for the Regency period, however, was Sheraton's The Cabinet Dictionary (1803), in which he emphasized the new severer and more archeologically correct aspect of the classical spirit, which he had derived from French Directoire designs and from the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Henry Holland, Charles Heathcote Tatham, and Thomas Hope. Sheraton now included animal motifs such as lion masks and lion monopodia, or lion-shaped supports for chairs and tables. He also showed the curved-saber, or scimitar, leg of the typical Regency chair and made use of dolphins and other marine motifs such as anchors, masts, cordage, oars, and sails in furniture designs associated with Nelson's nautical victories.

Thirty of the projected 150 parts of Sheraton's third work, The Cabinet-maker, Upholsterer and General Artists' Encyclopaedia, were issued from 1804 to 1806. Increasingly in his later years his designs showed signs of eccentricity, but a selection of the best designs from his three works, published as Designs for Household Furniture (1812), did much to establish his influence in early 19th-century furniture design and production.

Further Reading

Ralph Fastnedge, Sheraton Furniture (1962), is an admirable comprehensive and well-illustrated account of the designer's life and work. A selection of his work is in Sheraton's Furniture Designs, with a preface by Ralph Edwards (1949). Recommended for general background are Ralph Fastnedge, English Furniture Styles from 1500 to 1830 (1955); Peter Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century (1958); and Clifford Musgrave, Regency Furniture, 1800-1830 (1971) and Adam and Hepplewhite and Other Neo-classical Furniture (1966).

Additional Sources

Fastnedge, Ralph, Sheraton furniture, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antique Collectors' Club, 1983.

Sheraton, Thomas (1751-1806). English furniture designer. Sheraton was born in Stockton-on-Tees, where he learned cabinet-making, probably never returning to this trade after his move to London about 1790. He was principally occupied writing several manuals on furniture design, the most popular, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book (1791-4), including treatises on geometry, architecture, and perspective. Sheraton's many chair-back designs were simple and elegant, employing straight lines and delicate marquetry of animals, flowers, or musical instruments.

A Sheraton style chair with rectangular back

Thomas Sheraton (1751 – 22 October 1806) was a furniture designer, one of the "big three" English furniture makers of the 18th century, along with Thomas Chippendale and George Hepplewhite.^[1]

Sheraton was born in Stockton-on-Tees, England. He was apprenticed to a local cabinet maker and continued working as a journeyman cabinet maker until he moved to London in 1790, aged 39. There he set up as professional consultant and teacher, teaching perspective, architecture, and cabinet design for craftsmen. It is not known how he gained either the knowledge or the reputation which enabled him to do this but he appears to have been moderately successful.

Starting in 1791 he published in four volumes "The Cabinet Maker's and Upholsterer's Drawing Book". At least six hundred cabinet makers and joiners subscribed to his book and it was immediately widely influential over a large part of the country. During this period he did not have a workshop of his own and it is believed that Sheraton himself never made any of the pieces shown in his books. No pieces of furniture have ever been traced to him directly^{[citation needed]}. So a piece of furniture described as being "by Sheraton" refers to the design and not to the maker of the piece.^[2]

In 1803 he published "The Cabinet Dictionary", a compendium of instructions on the techniques of cabinet and chair making. Then a year before his death, in 1805 he published the first volume of "Cabinet Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist's Encyclopaedia".

Sheraton's name is associated with the styles of furniture fashionable in the 1790s and early 1800s. Many of the designs are based on classical architecture, knowledge of which was an essential part of a designer's technical education. Not all of the drawings are of his own design; he acknowledges that some of them came from works in progress in the workshops of practicing cabinet makers. But he was a superb draughtsman and he set his name on the style of the era.

See also

• Luke Vincent Lockwood
• Lyre arm

References

1. ^ Icons of England
2. ^ Antique Furniture Guide

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