Eastlake. Yuck! Those two words are often found together in many discussions of 19th-century American furniture. Other terms that may be lurking close by in those same conversations include ugly, clunky, gaudy and cheap. And in most cases the terms are aptly used since what is commonly called Eastlake furniture often fits nicely with those disparaging words. But the problem is with the application of the terms since most of what we refer to as Eastlake has absolutely nothing to do with the original ideals and concepts of one our favorite Englishmen whom we love to hate - right up there with George III. But Eastlake, unlike George, is undeserving of our enmity. In the long run he actually provided a valuable service to the American furniture industry and its consumers.

Charles Locke Eastlake was born in England in 1836 with the proverbial silver spoon firmly in place. Trained as an architect, he traveled Europe as a young man and became an art and architecture critic. At the age of 19 he was appointed secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects. From this lofty vantage point he began to notice the ground swell of activity in the field of design reform. What had begun as a vague discontent with the stagnation of original English thinking on the subject crystallized into openly expressed distaste at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exposition.

The history of American furniture is filled with the names of people who made tremendous contributions to the art in design, innovation, marketing or original thinking in other areas. Among them are such well-known luminaries as Duncan Phyfe, Charles H. Lannuier, John Henry Belter, the Herter brothers, R.J. Horner, John D. Larkin and Charles L. Eastlake. But there are many lesser-known individuals who made significant contributions to the American furniture art and industry. Here are some examples of these lesser lights and what they did for us. How many of them do you know?

Let's begin with cabinetmaker Abner Cutler, who started his career in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1829. He formed the Cutler Desk Co. and eventually became fascinated by desks that had moveable tops allowing the working surface to be concealed. The idea of using a flexible, moveable tambour was first used in France in the middle of the 18th century. It is thought to have been invented by Jean-Francois Oeben, a German-born Frenchman. He introduced the use of tambour shutters for secretaries and desks beginning around 1760.

The late 19th century in America was a time of impending change, economically, socially and politically. The Western frontier was essentially a thing of the past, the Midwest was safe and the far West was livable. The South was still languishing from Reconstruction but its time would come.

Between 1870 and 1916 more than 25 million immigrants poured into the country and the population swelled from 40 million to over 100 million in that nearly half century. All these new consumers wanted new products, needed new jobs and demanded delivery systems for it all. The amount of railroad track in the nation increased from 9,000 miles in 1850 to over 200,000 miles in 1900, spurring growth along the right of way.

The country's furniture industry, growing as fast as it knew how, was unable to keep up with the demand for new household goods with its antiquated design, production, marketing and delivery systems based primarily on the experiences and practices of the early Industrial Revolution. Something had to give and change was coming.

Two major forces would soon coincide to bring a vast quantity of relatively high-grade furnishings to middle-class Americans, something that previously had been totally out of their reach. The two movements, one philosophical and one economic, would combine to produce the Progressive Era from 1890 to the beginning of World War I.