Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/31

Rh  sorry fellows some of them were, to be sure, impressed into service as need would arise, and perhaps often none too much in love with the task. An old Virginia newspaper records the disappearance of Joffath Rainbird, "a cabinet maker and Joiner by trade in Charles County, Maryland, a smooth-tongued, inſinuating Fellow and an Englishman born."

Two of them at a time took off from one of the Virginia plantations, Richard Kibble, "a ſquat Fellow of a ſwarthy Complexion," and Samuel Vlein, "ſmall and thin." Vlein's clothes must certainly have betrayed him, "a little White Cloth Coat with Cape, a white Jacket flowered on the Breaſt with green Silk, a white Linen Shirt, a black Wig, an old Hat, a Pair of red Camblet Breeches" and, not to mention osnabrigs, white stockings and old shoes. Kibble's was no better, "his coat a burnished color, green double breaſted Jacket, a check'd Shirt, a red ſpotted Silk Handkerchief about his neck, a black natural Wig, a good Hat with black Crape about it"; and to complete the picture, along with "greaſy Leather Breeches," worsted stockings and good shoes, "there were many Letters and Figures on his breaſt and left Arm . . . the End of his noſe turns up pretty much and he professes to be a Carpenter and Joiner by trade." Vlein and Kibble, both one-time convicts, joiners and carpenters by trade, God rest their souls.

By 1640 Virginia had almost fifteen thousand people, and the demand for furniture was steadily increasing. More than one family often lived under one roof; families were large, as a rule, and the door stood open for strangers and friends alike, at all hours. The amount of furniture required rose as the standards of living advanced. Virginia looked out for herself in this, one of her major needs, and her county files reveal a host of men at work. The earliest cabinetmakers recorded were those at Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. Norfolk, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, Richmond, and Wheeling (now in West Virginia) had cabinet shops. Petersburg, Richmond, Blackstone, and Wheeling produced chairs from 1760.

One of the master designers of furniture in Virginia, perhaps, as time wore on, as well as in architecture, was Thomas Jefferson, whose experiences in Paris, Southern France, Italy, and England in the period of the classical revival of architecture and furniture, from 1784 to 1789, must have served him in good stead. Numbered among the books on the Monticello shelves was one entitled, in his manuscript catalogue, as follows: "Chippendale's Cabinetmaker's Designs. Fol. Gentleman and cabinet-maker's directory; being a collection of . . . designs of household furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and modern taste . . . (with) a short explanation of the five orders of architecture—3d ed London 1755."

One of Jefferson's notes, written while traveling in Europe, records a "Memorandum on a Tour from Paris to Amsterdam, Strasburg, and back to Paris," and describes "Dining tables letting down with single or double leaves," and shows a set of miniature drawings illustrating his ideas.

His outstanding design was, perhaps, the table on which he wrote the