Bookcases were of mahogany and satinwood veneer, and the large ones were often in three sections, the center section standing farther out than the two sides.  The glass was covered with a graceful design in moldings, and the pediments were of various shapes, the swan-neck being a favorite.

Sideboards were built on very much the lines of those made by Shearer and Hepplewhite.  There were drawers and cupboards for various uses.  The knife-boxes to put on the top came in sets of two, and sometimes there was a third box.  The legs were light and tapering with inlay of satinwood, and sometimes they were reeded.  There was inlay also on the doors and drawers.  There were also sideboards without inlay.  The legs for his furniture were at first plain, and then tapering and reeded.  He used some carving, and a great deal of satinwood and tulip-wood were inlaid in the mahogany; he also used rosewood.  The bellflower, urn, festoons, and acanthus were all favorites of his for decoration.

He made some elaborate and startling designs for beds, but the best known ones are charming with slender turned posts or reeded posts, and often the plain ones were made of painted satinwood.

The satinwood from the East Indies was fine and of a beautiful yellow color, while that from the West Indies was coarser in grain and darker in color.  It is a slow growing tree, and that used nowadays cannot compare with the old, in spite of the gallant efforts of the hard working fakirs to copy its beautiful golden tone.

All the cabinet-makers of the eighteenth century made ingenious contrivances in the way of furniture, washstands concealed in what appear to be corner cupboards, a table that looks as simple as a table possibly can, but has a small step-ladder and book rest hidden away in its useful inside, and many others.  Sheraton was especially clever in making these conveniences, as these two examples show, and his books have many others pictured in them.  Sheraton’s list of articles of furniture is long, for he made almost everything from knife-boxes to “chamber-horses,” which were contrivances of a saddle and springs for people to take exercise upon at home.

Sheraton’s “Drawing Book” was the best of those he published.  It was sold chiefly to other cabinet-makers and did not bring in many orders, as Chippendale’s and Hepplewhite’s did.  His other books showed his decline, and his “Encyclopedia,” on which he was working at the time of his death, had many subjects in it beside furniture and cabinet-making.  His sideboards, card-tables, sewing-tables, tables of every kind, chairs—­in fact, everything he made during his best period—­have a sureness and beauty of line that makes it doubly sad that through the stress of circumstances he should have deserted it for the style of the Empire that was then the fashion in France.  One or two of his Empire designs have beauty, but most of them are too dreadful, but it was the beginning of the end, and the eighteenth century saw the beautiful principles of the eighteenth century lost in a bog of ugliness.