The Furniture of John Shearer, 1790-1820: A True North Britain in the Southern Backcountry

This book is a full-color catalogue raisonne that interprets the distinctive furniture made by John Shearer, one of the most accomplished and intriguing furniture makers during the post-Revolutionary period. Shearer emigrated from Scotland to America in the late eighteenth century and retained loyalist sympathies throughout his life, evidenced by the imagery and inscriptions sympathetic to various British causes---such as the suppression of the Irish rebellion in 1798 and the British victory in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805---that he worked into his furniture. Elizabeth A. Davison provides insight into the furniture's appeal to Anglo American patrons, not secret loyalists, but men still culturally tied to Great Britain. Shearer's pieces are scattered among various collections, and many of them have been identified only in the past twenty-five years. This catalog is the only work in which all of Shearer's known pieces of furniture are presented in a single volume.

Elizabeth A. Davison is an independent scholar who wrote her master's thesis on John Shearer while pursuing graduate studies in the Smithsonian Parsons The New School of Design program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design. She speaks on Shearer's message-laden furniture and continues her search for new pieces that might finally reveal this enigmatic craftsman.