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
Chair-maker furniture. In the country manufactories it is otherwise; yet even these pay some regard to keeping their workmen constantly at the chair, or to cabinet work. The two branches seem evidently to require different talents in workmen, in order to become proficients." In Paris, a chair-maker was a "menuisier", or joiner: guild regulations forbade "menuisiers" to engage in cabinet making. Some "menuisiers" produced the planed and carved wood paneling for rooms ("boiseries"), while others, "menuisiers en sièges", produced the frames for seat furniture, which would be upholstered by other craftsmen, such as "huissiers". Chair-maker Since the mid-17th century a chair-maker,