“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.”
He then informs the reader of “the difficult task I have had to please all.... 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 expense of making up a good bureau and double chest-of-drawers, with canted corners, etc., 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.”
This taste changed gradually from the Louis XVI. style to that of the Empire. Sheraton, consequently, covers these two periods. Sheraton had his own tastes and his own ideas, however, and his books are full of his individual fancies and instructions. He was a great admirer of carving. When we read: “Having possessed a strong attachment and inclination for carving in my youth, I was necessarily induced to make attempts in this art, and on succeeding in some degree, I was employed in the country occasionally in it,” this explains the many graceful designs that he gives for carved splats and bannisters of chairs. He was also fond of inlaid and painted furniture, and greatly liked the new fashion of inlaying with brass, especially for black woods. Satin wood, too, particularly of a “fine straw colour,” which has a “cool, light and pleasing effect in furniture,” he also admired, and thought tulip-wood and zebra-wood (of the “scarce brown and white streaked variety”), beautiful for cross-banding.
Mahogany he uses for dining-room, library and bedroom furniture, and for chairs with carved backs. He brightens much of his mahogany with such brass ornaments, as handles, key-plates, columns, rails and claw-feet, and often inlays it with a few small lines of brass, as he does rosewood. Rosewood he recommends for choice pieces, such as work-tables, secretaries, etc. Brass beads is another form of ornament that he likes to use. The straight line appears in the forms of the Sheraton furniture. The chair leg is frequently reeded, or turned and decorated with twisted flutes and fillets. The tambour shutter Sheraton makes much use of, and he likes to introduce all kinds of mechanical devices into his furniture.
Among his favourite ornaments are the husk, or bell-flower, the swag, or festoon, the column, the lyre, the lotus, the acanthus, the urn, the vase and the patera, the latter being used especially to hide the screws of beds and joining of chair-frames (see Plate [LXIII.] and Nos. 10 and 11, Plate [LXII.]). Like Chippendale, he gives an immense number of book-case doors composed of panes arranged in ornamental designs, and behind these he flutes green silk curtains. During his last period, the wire door appears for commodes, cabinets and other pieces.
Sheraton’s drawing-room furniture was of white and gold, of satin-wood, wood painted and japanned, or of rosewood. The coverings for the drawing-room chairs were silk or satin, the designs being stripes or the oval medallion. In 1803, he advocates cane.
Sheraton has very little to say about textiles or colours. He speaks of printed cottons, and silks and taffeta of all colours, plain, striped, checked, flowered and mixed with gold and silver. The only colour about which he has any thing to say is blue: “Blue and white, blue and black, very light blue and yellow will harmonize. Blue kills some colours; and on which account before any be used to join with another colour, they should be compared together; and if the more brilliant colour to which it is joined becomes therefore less vivid, some other colour should be chosen.”
He gives many directions, however, regarding the arrangement of rooms.
“As the entrance, or hall, of any well built house ought always to be expressive of the dignity of its possessor, so the furniture ought to be designed in a manner adapted to inform the stranger, or visitant, where they are, and what they may expect on a more general survey of every apartment.
“As the hall is a general, or ought to be a general opening to all the principal apartments, it should be furnished so as not to be mistaken for the most superb division of the structure, or where they may expect to meet the nobler person who resides in it. The furniture of a hall should therefore be bold, massive and simple: yet noble in appearance and introductory to the rest.”