Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/45

Rh  were appearing, and the South was making ready to follow the fashion. Chairs of the period showed the hoop back, and the vase or the fiddle splat, and chests as well as chairs, were showing the cabriole leg. The pad foot in the South was popular with the cabriole. Chests were moving on their way, with the tall boy, of the first of the century, developing before the middle into that aristocrat of furniture, the high boy, with ogee scroll pediment; and Josiah Claypoole, as has been shown, advertising desks and bookcases, in 1740, as made in his shop with arch pediment and ogee heads.

Beds were now in the heyday of the finery of bed furniture. Back panels and tops in England were gone. Many of the Southern beds were richly carved, the majority with four tall posts, and oftener than not, a small rail or cornice around the top for holding the draperies, called a tester. Tables were showing new shape and use. The cabriole-leg table was shown with the swinging leg and two drop leaves. The three-section tables, first used in this period, were being made. Tea tables had appeared.

Desks were showing many forms, and as if to meet a growing need, the side table, or sideboard table, developing from the side table, is mentioned in the South as early as 1725, and a side, or sideboard table of walnut of a Queen Anne style, 1730-'50, is shown in this book.

In 1732 furniture making asserts itself in Charles Town definitely, through the Gazette, with James McClellan, from London, announcing on Church Street the making "of all sorts of Cabinet Ware, vz Cabinet desks and Bookcases, Buroes, Tables of all Sorts, Chairs, Tea Boxes and the new Fashioned Chests &c," and he was selling joiners' tools as well. Broomhead and Blythe the next year announced "Chest of Drawers, and mahogany Tables and Chairs made in the best manner," and marking, perhaps, the earliest appearance of that wood known in the South.

New men appeared then almost every year, until 1736, when we find a woman succeeding to the craft laid down by her husband, "William Watson, deceas'd, with a considerable Stock of fresh goods necessary for Funerals, and Workmen fully capable of making Coffins and Cabinet ware with Tables, Chests-of-Drawers and Buroes." Cradles this year, too, might have been bought of Charles Warham, and "a fine Easy Chair cover'd with green Silk, also a Couch with Squab cover'd the same Way," just imported, 1738, from Watson and Mackenzie.