Sheraton style
Sheraton is a late eighteenth-century Neoclassical English furniture style, in vogue from about 1785 to 1820 and named by nineteenth-century collectors and dealers after the designer Thomas Sheraton. His pattern books - The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book (1791) and The Cabinet Dictionary (1803) - spread the style far beyond the workshops that copied them. Inspired by French Louis XVI furniture, Sheraton pieces are lightweight and rectilinear, with round tapered legs, fluting, and above all contrasting veneer inlays in satinwood, mahogany, tulipwood, sycamore, and rosewood, sometimes finished in paint or japanning. Swags, husks, festoons, and rams' heads supply restrained classical ornament. The style brought the Neoclassicism of architects like Robert Adam within reach of the middle class, paralleled France's Directoire taste, and became the most reproduced furniture style of the American Federal period.
Defining characteristics
- Lightweight rectilinear forms with straight, round, tapered legs
- Contrasting veneer inlays - pale satinwood panels banded with darker woods and fine stringing
- Fluting, reeding, and classical motifs: swags, husks, festoons, rams' heads
- Calm symmetry and proportion drawn from Louis XVI and Robert Adam's Neoclassicism
- Painted and japanned finishes alongside natural veneers
- Oval and rectangular tablets, often inlaid or painted with urns and floral sprays
Key figures
- Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) — Cabinetmaker and design author whose pattern books gave the style its name
- Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854) — New York cabinetmaker whose Federal-period work made Sheraton the dominant American taste
Example works
- The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book — Thomas Sheraton (1791)
- The Cabinet Dictionary — Thomas Sheraton (1803)
Sources
- Sheraton style - Wikipedia encyclopedia