“The use of this piece is to hold books in the upper part, and in the lower it contains a writing-drawer and clothes-press shelves. The design is intended to be executed in satin-wood, and the ornaments japanned. It may, however, be done in mahogany; and in place of the ornaments in the friezes, flutes may be substituted. The pediment is simply a segment of a circle, and it may be cut in the form of a fan with leaves in the centre. The vases may be omitted to reduce the work; but if they are introduced, the pedestal on which the centre vase rests is merely a piece of thin wood, with a necking and base moulding mitred round, and planted on the pediment. The pilasters on the bookcase doors are planted on the frame, and the door hinged as usual. The tops of the pilasters are made to imitate the Ionic capital.” The cylinder desk and bookcase was also in use. “The style of finishing them is somewhat elegant, being made of satin-wood, cross-banded and varnished. This design shows green silk fluting behind the glass, and drapery put on at the top before the fluting is tacked to, which has a good look when properly managed. The square figure of the door is much in fashion now.” The rim around the top is brass.
A good library table is No. 1, on Plate [LX.]
No. 1 on Plate [LX.] Sheraton calls very modern (1803). He recommends it to be made of mahogany. “The toes and casters are of one piece cast in brass. The nest of drawers in the centre rise, by two small springs placed opposite to each other, which are constructed on the model of baize door springs, which cannot but be understood by any workman who is acquainted with hanging a door of that kind. In this table, there are four real drawers made with square sides.” For card-tables, he says: “The ornaments may be japanned on the frames and tongued in the legs.”
Turning now to smaller articles, we find that convex and concave mirrors with gilt frames and branches for candles and standing tripods bearing lights are very fashionable. Brackets for lamps are made usually of brass and sometimes of mahogany. They are often screwed to the handrail of the staircase. Brackets are also especially designed for clocks. Clocks are also placed upon the chimney-piece and upon the commode. In Sheraton’s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Drawing-Book there are a number of tall clock-cases painted and japanned with ovals and arabesques and fanciful pictures; but in 1803 Sheraton writes that the tall clock-case is “almost obsolete in London,” and from what he says we gather that no fashionable person would think of having one in his house. The footstool is stuffed with hair and covered generally with needlework. Its frame is oval, square, or octagon, with turned legs. Its height without stuffing is 6 or 6½ inches; its length 9½ to a foot, and its width 7 to 8 inches.
A group of three or four tables with very light frames made to draw out and inclosed within each other when not wanted are known as quartette and trio tables. These are used at entertainments, like the “rout chairs,” which are “small painted chairs with rush bottoms let out by cabinet-makers for hire for routs and other entertainments, whence their name.”
Among Sheraton’s latest chairs there is an arm-chair with a movable desk, having branching candle-sconces,—useful for the library; another is a “hunting-chair,” with a square back and wings “stuffed all over except the legs which are of mahogany and having a slide out frame in front to make a resting-place for one that is fatigued, as hunters usually are.” There is also a “tub easy chair,” “stuffed all over and intended for sick persons, being both easy and warm; for the side wings coming quite forward keep out the cold air.” Another is a bergère with a caned back and seat, supplied with loose cushions. “The stumps and legs are turned and the frames are generally painted.”
This bergère is dated 1803, when Sheraton recommends cane of “a fine light straw colour.” He writes: “Caning cabinet work is now more in use than it was ever known to be at any former period. About 30 years since, it was gone quite out of fashion. But on the revival of japanning furniture, it began to be brought gradually into use, and to a state of improvement, so that at present it is introduced into several pieces of furniture, which it was not a few years past, as the ends of beds framed in mahogany, and then caned for the purpose of keeping in the bed clothes. Sometimes the bottom of beds are caned. Small borders round the backs of mahogany parlour chairs which look neat. Bed steps are caned.
“The commonest kind made of one skain only is called bead-work and runs open. The best work is termed bordering and is of three skains, some of which is done very fine and close with the skains less than a sixteenth broad, so that it is worked as fine apparently as some canvas.”
Two of Sheraton’s original designs show the Empire influence. One is the curricle which appears on Plate [LXII.], No. 12. Sheraton named these chairs “from their being shaped like that kind of carriage. These may claim entire originality, and are well adapted for dining-parlours, being of a strong form easy and conveniently low affording easier access to a dining-table than the commonest kind. The size of the front may be two feet over all and nearly that from back to front.”
His other original design is the “Herculaneum,” “which I have so named on account of their antique style of composition.” They are for “rooms not only fitted up in the antique taste, but where apartments are appropriated for the purpose of exhibiting ancient or modern curiosities; and we particularly recommend them for the use of music-rooms.”