Object Description
A superb and striking pair of satinwood banded armchairs, in Sheraton Revival taste, Circa 1880 in date.
The high back arm chairs feature satinwood banding with boxwood and ebonised line inlay and wonderful foliate carved decoration. The square tops are supported by a pair of ionic columns which frame rails above criss-cross splats.
The overstuffed tan leather upholstered seats with brass studs are above satinwood banded seat rails and the armchairs are raised on reeded taping legs that terminate in decoratively carved spade feet.
It is rare to find such a perfectly sculpted pair of armchairs and they will enhance your desk beautifully.
Condition:
In excellent condition having been cleaned, polished, waxed and reupholstered in our workshops. Please see photos for confirmation.
Dimensions in cm:
Height 96 x Width 56 x Depth 55
Dimensions in inches:
Height 3 foot, 2 inches x Width 1 foot, 10 inches x Depth 1 foot, 10 inches
Thomas Sheraton
(1751 – 1806) was an English cabinetmaker and one of the leading exponents of Neoclassicism. Sheraton gave his name to a style of furniture characterised by a feminine refinement of late Georgian styles and became the most powerful source of inspiration behind the furniture of the late 18th century. His four-part Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers’ Drawing Book greatly influenced English and American design.
Sheraton was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker, but he became better known as an inventor, artist, mystic, and religious controversialist. Initially he wrote on theological subjects, describing himself as a “mechanic, one who never had the advantage of collegiate or academical education.” He settled in London c. 1790, and his trade card gave his address as Wardour Street, Soho.
Supporting himself mainly as an author, Sheraton wrote Drawing Book (1791), the first part of which is devoted to somewhat naive, verbose dissertations on perspective, architecture, and geometry and the second part, on which his reputation is certainly based, is filled with plates that are admirable in draftsmanship, form, and proportion.
In 1803 Sheraton, who had been ordained a Baptist minister in 1800, published his Cabinet Dictionary (with plates), containing An Explanation of All Terms Used in the Cabinet, Chair and Upholstery Branches with Dictionary for Varnishing, Polishing and Gilding.
Some of the designs in this work, venturing well into the Regency style, are markedly unconventional. That he was a fashionable cabinetmaker is remarkable, for he was poor, his home of necessity half shop. It cannot be presumed that he was the maker of those examples even closely resembling his plates.
Although Sheraton undoubtedly borrowed from other cabinetmakers, most of the plates in his early publications are supposedly his own designs. The term Sheraton has been recklessly bestowed upon vast quantities of late 18th-century painted and inlaid satinwood furniture, but, properly understood and used in a generic sense, Sheraton is an appropriate label recognizing a mastermind behind the period. The opinion that his lack of success was caused by his assertive character is hypothetical.
Our reference: A1078x