Johannes Heuvel

“ Joiner and cabinetmaker were both concerned basically with fitting together pieces of wood to make a whole structure. The pieces or parts had to be shaped, of course; and it was in the shaping processes—sawing, planing, and chiseling—that the worker’s real skill showed up. Pieces properly formed will fit together neatly and enduringly, while no amount of glue will make a sound joint of pieces that do not fit.
Two crafts always prominent in Europe are noticeably absent from the list of Williamsburg woodworking crafts. ”

“ English products were so much admired in Virginia, in fact, and so easily obtained by those who could afford choice things, that the local artisan had little chance to compete. Whether cause or consequence of this lack of demand for their services, Virginia cabinetmakers appear to have been less highly skilled and less highly schooled in the craft than their colleagues in London and in a number of large colonial cities. There was no “school” of cabinetry in eighteenth-century Williamsburg such as developed in Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and elsewhere. ”

“ Eighteenth-century Williamsburg was not, however, quite so crowded with woodworking craftsmen as this list would 5 indicate. For if the guild traditions of the Old World required that each operation be the monopoly of a specific craft, in the New World practical needs tended to force a merging of related crafts. Only in a few of the big colonial cities—Philadelphia, New York, Boston, or Charleston—was demand great enough to keep some of the specialists going. Elsewhere the craftsmen of town or village had to be versatile—or go hungry. ”

“ Eighteenth-century lathes were machine tools of a sort but not “power tools” since human muscle provided their motive force. Three varieties can be seen in the reconstructed cabinet shop in Williamsburg: the bow lathe, the treadle lathe, and the great wheel lathe. The last named is the most impressive and the most effective, turning up some 700 rpm on the spindle with a good strong apprentice cranking the large wheel.
The power woodworking lathe today is a considerably more complicated machine, but the fundamental principles involved in wood turning have not changed. ”

“ With obvious exceptions, all woodworking tools are intended primarily to remove small amounts of material by some kind of cutting or tearing action. With this simple fact in mind, it is no surprise to learn that saws, planes, chisels, and boring tools found in ancient Egyptian tombs, or depicted by artists of that time, were not significantly different from those of the eighteenth century after Christ. (Examples of furniture made in ancient Egypt, incidentally, still exist, the oldest known articles being stools dating at least from the First Dynasty—3500 B.C.!) ”

“ American black walnut, known in England as “Virginia walnut,” had been the most important of native woods to the colonial cabinetmaker since the seventeenth century. Strong, durable, hard enough to resist surface marring in 8 daily use but still easy to work and carve, it shows a handsome grain, has a lovely color, and takes an excellent finish.
Known and infrequently used earlier, mahogany began to arrive in quantity both in the colonies and the mother country about 1725. In England, by the middle of the century, it had pushed aside walnut as a furniture wood. ”

“ Applying a finish to woodwork is an ancient art and has always served two purposes: to give the wood a protective coating and to enhance its appearance. By the eighteenth century the techniques for applying several different kinds of finish were well understood and widely used in the colonial cabinet shop.
Painting, generally limited to the cheapest sort of furniture, was little practiced by quality cabinetmakers. The imitation of oriental lacquer called japanning was not common in the colonies, and in any case was the province of the japanner. ”

“ Thomas Affleck, Jonathan Gostelowe, Benjamin Randolph, and others in Philadelphia made that city a center of pre-Revolutionary cabinetry, and created the “Philadelphia Chippendale” school of furniture design.
Virginia cabinetmakers, too, rarely labeled or signed their products; or if they did, the products have not survived in more than a very few examples. What is known to be of Virginia origin is rarely ornate. The examples to be seen in Williamsburg today, for instance, are truly provincial: sturdy, generally well-proportioned, capably made, and inclined to be simple in decoration. ”

“ As we shall presently see, no surviving piece of eighteenth-century furniture can be positively traced to Hay or any other Williamsburg maker. But every piece having a possible claim to local origin, including the Speaker’s Chair, contains either walnut or mahogany as the primary wood. Similarly, few documentary records survive to tell about the furniture actually made in Williamsburg shops and they do not always mention the kinds of wood used. Where they do, however, walnut and mahogany are invariably specified. ”

“ The eighteenth-century upholsterer, of course, could not have done his work without brass tacks, and quantities 10 of them have been found in the course of archaeological excavation at the site of the Hay-Bucktrout-Dickinson cabinet shop on Nicholson Street. The colonial cabinetmaker sometimes used small nails for such special purposes as attaching drawer guides. But he would no more have nailed together a piece of furniture than would his modern counterpart. ”

“ But no evidence has been found that any Williamsburg cabinetmaker augmented his work force with indentured servants.
Formal apprenticeship of Negro slaves was not uncommon, and many examples can be cited of Negroes who became skilled workers even without the formality. The largest number in and around Williamsburg seem to have been carpenters, but other crafts had skilled and semi-skilled practitioners who were slaves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although Dunmore’s tools and lumber were probably destined for the plantation he was seating near Warm Springs as a private venture, the possibility cannot be dismissed that some furniture work was done at the Palace. At one spot on the grounds several items of cabinet hardware have been excavated. And the amount of furniture in an establishment as big as the Palace could no doubt have kept a man busy just repairing the everyday wear and tear. ”

“ The most prominent 18 pre-Revolutionary cabinetmakers were all active during some part of the period when the Galts, father and sons, were founding the family’s name and fame. It is possible, judging from appearance alone, that the two simpler pieces could have been made for the earliest Galt by the earliest (known) cabinetmaker, Peter Scott, while the third was constructed for a later and more pretentious household by a later craftsman, perhaps Edmund Dickinson. ”

“ No doubt most of these tools were made in England, though the inventory does not say so. Perhaps all of them were. Three years before Dickinson became master of his shop—just about the time he would have been acquiring many of his tools—John Blair, the acting governor of the colony, reported to the Board of Trade in London that:
Our pig-iron and some bar-iron is chiefly shipped to Britain. We do not make a saw, augur, gimlet, file or nails, nor steel; and most tools in the country are imported from Britain. ”

“ The cabinetmaker favored oil, wax, or varnish finishes to produce a hard, transparent, and glassy-smooth surface.
To prepare the surface of the wood, colonial cabinetmakers had planes, scrapers, glasspaper, and sandpaper—the latter two available by the late eighteenth century and probably much before that. Stains were used to enrich the 28 natural color and emphasize the grain of the wood, and pulverized chalk, plaster of Paris, or the like was used to fill the pores of coarse-grained woods. ”

“ A Williamsburg cabinetmaker, thus, was likely to be also joiner, carver, and upholsterer—and probably undertaker as well.
This illustration from Diderot’s famous eighteenth-century encyclopedia of the arts and sciences shows the interior and lumber yard of a large European joinery. Workers inside the shop are making, carving, and fitting various elements of paneling. Outside, to the right, two others are ripping a length of scantling with a pit saw. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A joiner might also make furniture of the plainer sort. Cabinetmaking demanded skills of a higher order to create furniture having such refinements as curved surfaces, dovetail joints, cabriole legs, carved ornamentation, veneered or inlaid surfaces, and upholstering. ”

“ Dickinson was well equipped to make better furniture than any of these three clothes presses. An apprentice in Anthony Hay’s cabinet shop on Nicholson Street, he may have stayed on as journeyman during Benjamin Bucktrout’s proprietorship of the shop and timber yard. ”

“ A century and a quarter later—in 1928—another Horatio Bucktrout sold the family undertaking establishment and thus brought to an end the Bucktrout saga in Williamsburg. The story of cabinetmaking as an active eighteenth-century craft in Williamsburg had ended long before, of course. ”

“ After the Revolution the designs of George Hepplewhite and, late in the century, Thomas Sheraton followed the usual route across the Atlantic.
Throughout the century, too, some regional differences can be discerned. ”

“ With an unlimited supply of very wide boards to be had for the sawing, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial cabinetmakers found good use for them in table tops and leaves, and the sides and tops of chests. ”