Thomas Shearer in point of time, the first published document to show it. Shearer, like many of his contemporaries, was much given to devising "harlequin" furniture. He was a designer of high merit and real originality, and occupies a distinguished place among the little band of men, often, like himself, ill-educated and obscure of origin, who raised the English cabinet-making of the second half of the 18th century to an illustrious place in artistic history. 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
Ébéniste the industry. From the mid-17th century through the 18th, a notable number of ébénistes of German and Low Countries extraction were pre-eminent among Parisian furniture-makers, as the abbreviated list below suggests. Ébéniste Ébéniste () is the French word for a cabinet-maker. As opposed to "ébéniste", ""menuisier"" denotes a woodcarver or chairmaker in French. The English equivalent for "ébéniste", "ebonist", is not commonly used. Originally, an "ébéniste" was one who worked with ebony, a favoured luxury wood for mid-seventeenth century Parisian cabinets, originating in imitation of elite furniture being made in Antwerp. The word is 17th century in origin. Early Parisian