At forty years of age Thomas Sheraton was a poverty-pinched journeyman
cabinet maker and Baptist preacher in Stockton-on-Tees. Then in 1790
he went to London, where he found even a greater poverty, but where he
made for himself as a designer of furniture a name that will last as
long as the world loves beautiful things. The fifteen remaining years
of his life were tragically sad.
Sheraton’s knowledge was gained through years of hardship and
privation. He lived to see his chosen art reach its zenith, and then to
see it fall away. He had scarce perfected his creations when they were
overwhelmed by a wave of bad taste that swept much beauty from English
furniture.
When Sheraton reached London he hadn’t enough money to set up shop,
much less to employ skilled workmen. So, instead of making furniture,
he wrote about it, varying this occasionally by writing sermons or
tracts. He made little money, but many enemies, for he had a bitter
tongue.
Adam Black, afterward the famous publisher, was then a printer’s
apprentice, and lived for a time in Sheraton’s humble home. “The night
I arrived,” Black wrote, “there were but two cups and saucers, one of
which I used, Sheraton’s wife sharing her young daughter’s porridge
bowl.”
Black published Sheraton’s “Encyclopedia of Furniture.” This brought
Sheraton some fame, but little food. The big work showed the great
range and variety of Sheraton’s art.
We love his furniture for its finely curved surfaces, graceful sweeps
of sideboards and cabinets reflecting the light. Aside from its beauty,
Sheraton’s furniture was essentially practical--sometimes in most
original fashion. For example, he invented a summer bed, divided in the
center so as to give a greater circulation of air. There was likewise
a hollow-front sideboard that became popular for the ease with which
a butler could reach across for a stray glass or piece of china ware.
His “conversation chair” was designed for the beaux of Georgian times,
whose coat-tails were too costly to be sat upon. The proper position
in this chair was for the sitter to face the back of the chair, with
his arm resting on the top rail, so that his coat-tails could hang. The
so-called “Pouch Table,” much beloved today by neat housewives, was
Sheraton’s invention. It was a work table with a pouch of silk on each
side.
Besides his great book, Sheraton got up a handbook for the benefit of
his brother craftsmen, in which he gave in a helpful manner minute
descriptions of his various pieces. The spirit that prompted him to do
this was the finest thing in Sheraton’s nature. He had his faults. He
was narrow, self-centered, and bitterly resentful of the success of
others, but he believed it to be a man’s duty to give to the world the
benefit of his full knowledge, and he sacrificed himself through life
to do this.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 30, SERIAL No. 30
[Illustration: LOUIS XVI CABINET]
_FURNITURE AND ITS MAKERS_
_George Heppelwhite_