Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/875

Rh the Draband and the Chandwan. The Sheranis are generally of middling stature, thin, but hardy and active. They have bold features, high cheek-bones, and their general appearance is wild and manly. Their dress consists of a coarse black blanket tied round the waist, and another thrown over the shoulders. Their chief occupation is agriculture, but they carry on an extensive trade in the autumn months in Dera Ismail Khan district. The Sherani tribe and country are divided into two well-defined branches called Bargha and Largha, or the Highlands and the Lowlands, the inhabitants being called respectively Barghawals and Larghawals. The Highlands are on the side of Zhob, the Lowlands on the side of the Derajat, the dividing line being generally the watershed and higher peaks of the Takht-i-Suliman range of mountains. The physical configuration of the country makes the separation so complete that the two tribal divisions act independently of each other. After the Zhob expedition of 1890 the question of boundaries between the Punjab and Baluchistan came up for settlement, and the government decided that Bargha should remain with Baluchistan and Largha with the Punjab. The Gomal river from Kundar-Domandi to Kajuri-Kach is the boundary between Baluchistan and Waziristan, as well as between the respective provinces. In 1901 these frontier districts were transferred from the Punjab to the North-west Frontier Province.

SHERATON, THOMAS (c. 1751–1806), next to Chippendale the most famous English furniture-designer and cabinet-maker, was born in humble circumstances at Stockton-on-Tees. His education was rudimentary, but he picked up drawing and geometry. He appears to have been apprenticed to a cabinetmaker, but he was ever a strange blend of mechanic, inventor, artist, mystic and religious controversialist. Indeed, it is as a writer on theological subjects that we first hear of him. Although his parents were church people he was a Baptist, and in 1782 he published at Stockton A Scriptural Illustration of the Doctrine of Regeneration, to which was added A Letter on the Subject of Baptism, describing himself on the title page as a “ mechanic, one who never had the advantage of a collegiate or academical education.” Of his career as a maker and designer of furniture nothing is known until he is first heard of in London in 1790, when he was nearly forty. The date of his migration is uncertain, but it probably took place while he was still a young man. In London he did work which, although it has made him illustrious to posterity, never raised him above an almost sordid poverty. Biographical particulars are exceedingly scanty, and we do not know to what extent, if at all, he worked with his own hands, or whether he confined himself to evolving new designs, or modifying and adapting, and occasionally partly copying, those of others. Such evidence as there is points to artistic, rather than mechanical work, after he began to write, and we know that some part of his scanty income was derived from giving drawing lessons. Even the remarkable series of volumes of designs for furniture which he published during the last sixteen years of his life, and upon which his fame depends, were not a commercial success. He was a great artistic genius who lived in chronic poverty. The only trustworthy information we possess regarding his circumstances is found in the Memoirs of Adam Black, who when he first arrived in London lodged a week in his house, only two years before Sheraton's death. “ Sheraton,” he says, “ lived in a poor street in London, his house half shop, half dwelling-house, and himself looked like a worn-out Methodist minister, with threadbare black coat. I took tea with them one afternoon. There was a cup and saucer for the host, and another for his wife, and a little porringer for their daughter. The wife's cup and saucer were given to me, and she had to put up with another little porringer. My host seemed a good man, with some talent. He had been a cabinetmaker, and was now author, publisher, and teacher of drawing, and, I believe, occasional preacher.” Black shrewdly put his finger upon the causes of Sheraton's failure. “ This many-sided worn-out encyclopaedist and preacher is an interesting character. . . . He is a man of talent and, I believe, of genuine piety. He understands the cabinet business—I believe was bred to it. He is a scholar, writes well, and, in my opinion, draws masterly—is an author, bookseller; stationer and teacher. . . I believe his abilities and resources are his ruin in this respect—by attempting to do everything he does nothing.” There is, however, little indication that Sheraton chafed under the tyranny of “ those twin jailors of the daring heart, low birth and iron fortune. ” “ I can assure the reader,” he writes in one of his books, “ though I am thus employed in racking my invention to design fine and pleasing cabinet-work, I can be well content to sit upon a wooden-bottom chair, provided I can but have common food and raiment wherewith to pass through life in peace.”

His first book on furniture was published in 1791 with the title of The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book. It was issued in parts by T. Bensley, of Bolt Court, Fleet Street; there was a second edition in 1793 and a third in 1802, each with improvements. In the first edition it was stated that copies could be obtained from the author at 41 Davies Street, Grosvenor Square; in the second, that he was living at 106 Wardour Street; the last address we have is 8 Broad Street, Golden Square. There was also an “ Accompaniment ” and an “ Appendix.” In this book, which contained 111 copper-plate engravings, Sheraton gives abundant evidence of the arrogance and conceit which marred all his publications. He dismisses Chippendale's designs in a patronizing way as “ now wholly antiquated and laid aside, though possessed of great merit according to the times in which they were executed.” His lack of practical common sense is suggested by the fact that more than half the book is taken up with a treatise on perspective, needless then and unreadable now. He falls foul of every volume on furniture which had been published before his time, and is abundantly satisfied of the merit of his own work. The designs in the book are exceedingly varied and unequal, ranging from pieces of perfect proportion and the most pleasing simplicity to efforts ruined by too abundant ornament. Some of the chair-backs are delightful in their grace and delicacy, but in them, as in other of his drawings, it is easy to trace the influence of Hepplewhite and Adam—it has even been suggested that he collaborated with the Adams. Sheraton, indeed, like his predecessors, made extensive use not so much perhaps of the works of other men as of the artistic ideas underlying them which were more or less common to the taste of the time. He was sometimes original, sometimes adaptive—what Alexandre Dumas père called a “ conqueror ”—sometimes a copyist. His “ conquest ” of Hepplewhite was especially unmerciful, for he abused as well as pillaged him. But his slender forms and sweeping curves were his own inspiration, and his extensive use of satinwood differentiated his furniture from most of that which had preceded it.

It must be remembered that Sheraton's books, like those of the other great cabinet-makers of the second half of the 18th century, were intended not for the “general reader ” but for the practical use of the trade, which, no doubt, copied their designs extensively, although it is reasonable to suppose that he himself obtained orders by the publication of his books and employed other cabinet-makers to manufacture the work. It seems certain, however, that he himself never possessed anything more than a small shop. Of his own actual manufacture only one piece is known with certainty—a glass-fronted book-case, of somewhat frigid charm, stamped “T.S.” on the inside of one of the drawers. It lacks the agreeable swan-necked pediment so closely associated with his style. The Drawing Book, of which a German translation appeared at Leipzig in 1794, was followed in 1802 and 1803 by The Cabinet Dictionary, containing an Explanation of all the Terms used in the Cabinet, Chair and Upholstery branches, containing a display of useful articles of furniture, illustrated with eighty-eight copperplate engravings. The text is in alphabetical form, and, in addition to a supplement with articles on drawing and painting, the book contained a list of “ most of the master-cabinet-makers, upholsterers, and chair makers,” 252 in number, then living in and around London. Sheraton told his readers that he had hitherto derived no profit from his publications on account of the cost of producing them. 