The English furniture designer Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) brought about the transition from the late-18th-century Adam and Hepplewhite style to that of the Regency period.

Born at Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, Thomas Sheraton had little education and worked at first as a journeyman cabinetmaker. He went to London about 1790 and is said to have "supported himself, a wife, and two children by his exertions as an author." From then on he probably lived chiefly from the sale of his furniture designs, but it is extremely unlikely that he made any furniture after his early years.

In 1799 Sheraton left London to become a Baptist minister at Stockton and Darlington, Yorkshire, and continued in this work until 1802. He passed his last years in London, where he died on Oct. 22, 1806. The Edinburgh publisher Adam Black wrote of Sheraton's abject poverty and spoke of his gifts as a scholar, designer, and teacher.

Sheraton's...