Style in Furniture

r the first time in the history of our craft, certain designers and manufacturers of cabinet work rose, by force of their own originality and genius, from the ranks of their fellow-artists and craftsmen, and became known and distinguished individually by name. They created distinct styles on lines selected by themselves, and those styles won the approval of the cultured public to so extraordinary an extent that nearly every other designer and maker of the time was content to copy them; indeed they became the order of the day, to the almost total exclusion of every other mode which was not in accord with them. This being the case, and knowing as we do, almost to a year, the periods during which these notable men worked, the dates of the publication of their design books, and the names of many of their noble patrons, it is the simplest thing imaginable to classify their productions correctly, and place them in chronological rotation. All that we need trouble ourselves about with regard to them is to acquire a knowledge of the different characteristics by which one may be distinguished from another. A century earlier we have no such assistance ; there is no Chippendale, Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, to serve as a landmark ; the names of individual workers and creators of style were not then held in popular esteem, and, indeed, so "JACOBEAN." I. Plate Reference In Text Page Fig. 1. See 54 2. 54, 55. 23' 3- - 4o,42 Fig. 4. See 4o, 52 ,, 5- .' 4o,...