Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/34

10  Charleston, as early as 1732, James McClellan, "cabinet maker from London," announced himself through the Charleston paper. In 1747 William Hizner, from Philadelphia, entered the Maryland field, Anderson, from Liverpool the year before setting up at Annapolis. In 1743 we read that William Lupton, "cabinet maker from London," was making himself available in Charles Town; Thomas Lining, five years later, "lately arrived from London," was announced. Robert Deans, "Joiner from Scotland," in 1750 made himself known. So they came: Richard Baylis from London, 1739, Hall from London, MacGrath, Fisher, Biggard from Philadelphia, and Warham from Boston.

Josiah Claypoole, in Charles Town, as early as March 22, 1740, from Philadelphia, is shown doing work of excellent variety, although none too well pleased at the treatment his fine furniture received at the hands of negro servants. He made desks and bookcases even at that early period, with arched pediments and ogee heads, evidencing the high character of furniture to which these craftsmen aspired, as shown by the following notice from the South Carolina Gazette:

"Notice is hereby given that all Persons may be supplied with all Sorts of Joyner's and Cabinet Maker's Work, as Desks and Bookcases, with Arch'd Pediment and O.G. Heads, Common Desks of all Sorts, Chests of Drawers of all fashions, fluted or plain; all sorts of Tea Tables, Frames for Marble Tables all after the newest and best Fashions and with the greatest Neatness and Accuracy by Josiah Claypoole from Philadelphia, who may be spoke with at Captain Crosthwaite's in King Street. . . . . N. B. He will warrant his work for seven years, the ill usage of careless Servants only excepted."

So much was foreign training taken as a matter of course, that Isaac Johns, according to the Maryland Journal, felt called upon to explain that although he "cannot boast of European education," he had "served his apprenticeship to William Moore in this town who has had long experience in the several shops in the principal towns of the United States."

Best wood, native and foreign, was supplied; books of design were available. Tools of all descriptions were advertised as imported, some even by Shaw and Middleton, at one time cabinetmakers and later importers as well. Locks and brasses were brought in. The outstanding influence, of course, on the general quality of what was made, were the examples of furniture of exquisite line that came into the South from elsewhere, however much they may have served to reduce the amount of furniture produced.

The Southern colonies were mainly English in settlement, and in close touch with the mother country, and the generally accepted theory is that much furniture was imported from Britain into the South. The contention cannot be denied. The plantation owners, largely of Cavalier extraction and connected by birth with well-established people in England, as the mode of living over there improved, were entirely without any other idea than that of keeping pace in their living, when possible, with their kinsmen abroad. So these lordly gentlemen were constantly directing their