The following is excerpted from “Woodworker’s Pocket Book,” edited by Charles Hayward.
The division of the periods from 1500 to 1800 into the ages of the Carpenter, Cabinet Maker, and Designer is convenient because these terms suggest the type of furniture being produced. In the earliest period furniture was made by the carpenter, who regarded furniture-making as incidental to his general work, and it therefore bore the characteristics of a craftsman used to large joinery work. Soon after 1660 some woodworkers began to specialise in furniture, and so came the age of the cabinet maker. Lastly, at about the middle of the eighteenth century, furniture began to be associated with the names of the individual designers and craftsmen, hence the term Age of the Designer.
And we can also see how new discoveries are rewriting things. There is a paneled, walnut chest recovered from the Surgeon’s cabin in the wreck of the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, right in the middle of the Tudors in England. Recovered in the late 1970’s. so well after the above chart was made. Live and learn they say.