After 1800 the fashion for furniture in the classic style was fostered by Thomas Hope, whose ideas, however much approved by J. T. Smith, the author of Nollekens and his Times, in the passage referring to Chippendale, quoted before, would if put into thorough practice have produced rooms in private houses aping the Egyptian and Roman galleries of the British Museum. Egyptian friezes, Roman chairs and couches, Egyptian standing figures, and even recumbent mummy cases, are all to be found in a design for a room in the classic style designed by Hope in 1807. About the same date J. Smith,'Upholder' to the Prince of Wales, published a book of designs in the same manner, but with the restoration of the monarchy in France, whence the classical style of the empire had come, it died out, and gave place to that renewal of the rococo which J. T. Smith had predicted in 1828, when he condemned Chippendale for his French proclivities. Henceforth the art of designing furniture went from bad to worse, the Gothic revival of Pugin notwithstanding.

What sort of pattern-book was the successor of Chippendale, Heppelwhite, and Sheraton may be gathered from The Modern Style of Cabinet-Work Exemplified, the second edition of which came out in 1831. Only the name of a publisher, T. King, appears on the title-page. 'Novelty and Practicability constitute the present Designs; in which originality generally pervades; . . . the English style is carefully blended with Parisian taste, . . . and a chaste contour and simplicity of parts is attempted in all the objects.' So runs the 'Address,' and the plates show that this book is the exemplar of the thoroughly debased heavy mahogany period of the early nineteenth century.