  A great deal of authentic eighteenth-century furniture—both English and American in origin—has been assembled for display in the Exhibition Buildings of restored Williamsburg. The collection is acknowledged to be one of the finest in the country. Unfortunately, it contains not one stick of furniture that can be positively identified as coming from the hand of a Williamsburg cabinetmaker. We do have, however, many bits and pieces of documentary evidence about various Williamsburg cabinetmakers of the colonial era and about the kind of work they did. A number of them, for example, advertised their services in the columns of the Virginia Gazette from time to time. Practitioners of other crafts often listed at great length the wares they made and sold; but the cabinetmakers usually announced only that they stood ready to make to order any kind of furniture. They were confidently versatile, it would seem; that they kept busy making and doing all sorts of things is corroborated by other scraps of written and printed information. Joshua Kendall, when he set up shop in Williamsburg, offered to make “Venetian SUN BLINDS for windows.” Venetian blinds were widely made and used in both the Old World and the New. This how-to-do-it illustration also comes from Diderot’s encyclopedia. In 1755 Peter Scott announced that he intended to leave for England and would sell his house and lots, “Two Negroes, bred to the Business of a Cabinet-Maker,” and “sundry Pieces of Cabinet Work, of Mahogany and Walnut, consisting of Desks, Book-Cases, Tables of various Sorts, Tools, and some Materials.” Apparently his plan did not materialize, for when he died 20 years later his estate included “A great variety of cabinet makers tools, Mahogany, Walnut, Pine Plank, like wise new walnut book cases, desks, tables, &c.” From personal account books of John Mercer, lawyer, and Robert Carter of Nomini Hall, planter and councilor, we know that Scott made a set of book shelves for the former and twice repaired tables for him, and that he made two card tables, one sideboard, and four picture frames for the latter. In 1772 Benjamin Bucktrout submitted a bill for services to the same Robert Carter of Nomini Hall. It is worth quoting in full:
Three years later Edmund Dickinson rendered a similar statement: The Estate Colo John Prentis To Edmund B. Dickinson Dr
Putting together these and other bits and pieces, several conclusions seem warranted: Williamsburg cabinetmakers made furniture not only to order but for open sale in their shops; they probably spent more time repairing furniture than in making it; they were by no means too proud to undertake such incidental jobs as putting up and taking down bedsteads and curtains. Finally, they were capable of producing any and all of the major items of furniture: chairs, beds, chests, desks, bookcases, clothes and china presses, tables, and candlestands. While perhaps not all of them would have had occasion to make every variety of the less common articles, some doubtless were called on for spinning wheels, bootjacks, bowls and trenchers, cradles, toys, tools, coffins, spice chests, fire screens, music stands, trunks, cellarettes, looking-glass frames, and so on and on. |
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