Fashionable furniture for April 1814

Loretta reports:

From the April 1814 issue of Ackermann’s Repository, remarks on the value of the arts accompany the illustration of a table and chair inspired by the man who gave the Regency its name.

~~~

Plate 23. —FASHIONABLE FURNITURE.

We know that a people become enlightened by the cultivation of the arts, and that they become great in the progress of that cultivation. That a just knowledge of the useful and a correct taste for the ornamental go hand in hand with this general improvement, the dullest observer may be satisfied by looking around him. We now acknowledge, that it is alone the pencil of the artist which can trace the universal hieroglyphic; understood alike by all, his enthusiasm communicates itself to all alike, and prepares the mind for cultivation. A national improvement is thus produced by the arts, and the arts are supported in their respectability by the calls which the improving public taste makes for their assistance ; they are inseparable in their progress, and mutually depend on each other for support. In the construction of the domestic furniture of our dwellings we see and feel the benefit of all this. To the credit of our higher classes who encourage, and of our manufacturing artists who produce, we now universally quit the overcharged magnificence of former ages, and seek the purer models of simplicity and tasteful ornament in every article of daily call.

The table and chair which are the subject of the present engraving, are peculiarly of the description of improvement of which we are speaking. They exhibit a judicious combination of elegance and usefulness, do great credit to the artists who designed and executed them, and highly merit the patronage afforded them. They are from the ware-rooms of Messrs. Morgan and Sanders, of Catherine-street, Strand. They take the name of Carlton-House Table and Chair, as we presume, from having been first made for the august personage whose correct taste has so classically embellished that beautiful palace.
—The Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politics,1814