Thomas Shearer Thomas Shearer Thomas Shearer was an 18th-century English furniture designer and cabinet-maker. Shearer was a craftsman and the author of most of the plates in "The Cabinet Maker's London Book of Prices and Designs of Cabinet Work", issued in 1788 "for the London Society of Cabinet Makers." The majority of these plates were republished separately as Designs for Household Furniture. They exhibit their author as a man with an eye at once for simplicity of design and delicacy of proportion. Indeed, some of his pieces possess a dainty and slender elegance which has never been surpassed in the history of
Cabriole leg in about the year 1750 with the advent of Chippendale furniture design; while Chippendale chairs adopted the cabriole leg, the leg design became more delicate than those of the Queen Anne Style. American designs arose by the mid-18th century, imitating the English Queen Anne Style and borrowing elements from all three sub-periods of its development in England: Queen Anne period (1702–1714), George I period (1714–1727) and George II period (1727–1760). To demonstrate the central role of the cabriole leg in this period of American furniture, this period "has frequently been called the cabriole period, and this is no misnomer, since