(b Hilter, nr Osnabrück, 1804; d New York, 15 Oct 1863). American cabinetmaker of German birth. He arrived in New York in 1833 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1839. He was established as a cabinetmaker by 1844 and showed an ebony and ivory table at the New York Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in 1853. In the following year he opened a five-storey factory on 76th Street near Third Avenue. In 1856 Belter’s brother-in-law John H. Springmeyer joined the firm. William Springmeyer and Frederic Springmeyer joined in 1861, and in 1865 the firm’s name was changed to Springmeyer Bros; it went bankrupt in 1867. Belter’s fame is for technical innovation, reflected in four patents: the first, in 1847, for a device to saw openwork patterns into curved chair backs; the second, in 1856, for a two-piece bedstead of laminated construction; the third, in 1858, for a refinement to his process for achieving laminated construction with three-dimensional curves; and the fourth, in 1860, concerned with laminated construction and central locking. Belter’s furniture—curvaceous rosewood chairs, sofas (see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, fig. 35), tables, étagères, beds etc—is in a coarse and exuberant Rococo Revival manner, characterized by elaborate open crestings and aprons, decorated with C and S scrolls, leaves, flowers and grapes, partly in high relief, where extra sections were glued to the laminated base. His imitators included Charles A. Baudouine, J. and J. Meeks & Co. (1797–1868) and Charles Klein of New York, and George J. Henkels of Philadelphia. Although his innovations in curved and laminated construction were, like those of Michael Thonet, firmly rooted in the Rococo Revival, Belter has been seen as a precursor of Charles Eames and other 20th-century users of laminate technology.

• Belter, John Henry
  • USA, §VI, 4: Furniture, 1841–1900
  • works
    • Chair, §3: After c 1450
    • USA, §V, 4: Interior decoration, 1831–1900
    • Wood (i), §III, 2: Construction