Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/56

32  however, numerous examples of the skilled workers who strove so well in Annapolis and Baltimore, are constantly being unearthed.

Berkley attributes the fact that so few pieces there have actually survived to the Law of Vendue, which required an auction sale of all effects when there was no will for probate, and recites the same story of the path to destruction that much of value in Maryland, as elsewhere, has trod from the attic to the woodpile for kindling.

North Carolina, presenting some of the best examples, is an unusually rich section, particularly in the western part of the State. Mecklenburg County is outstanding, and in the sections around Edenton, Bath, Hillsboro, New Bern, and Pittsboro, pieces of excellence have been discovered, including examples of merit of the style of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In the vicinity of Raleigh, Greensboro, and Edenton, many fine, inlaid pieces are found of Hepplewhite and Sheraton style. From North Carolina comes the majority of the Hepplewhite tambour desks. Furniture made by the Moravians is not always definite as to the exact location in which it was discovered.

The English influence is particularly remarked in and around Savannah, and importations there and throughout the State were largely the rule. Many New England pieces are found in Georgia, obviously transported there through Savannah. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia cabinet shops had branches or warehouses in Charleston and Savannah.

On the other hand, as productive as any other Southern territory, is that of South Carolina, a rich mine of treasure within itself, and more particularly abundant along the banks of the Broad River, and around Charleston, where so much furniture activity existed, with shops on King Street, Queen Street, Meeting, the Bay, and elsewhere. Fairfields County, with its ghostlike houses in their decrepitude, sentineled by decaying columns, seemingly reminiscent of an outraged past, sets the heart of the collector a-flutter. These houses are found in the saddest of condition, a Sheraton bed, discovered in one of them, having been sawed into pieces and made into a bench.

Every collector carries with him the memory of his first big find; and it was in these sunny fields that I made my first incursion into the realm of furniture seeking. The first trip with which this book is concerned, found the writer there projected on his way with money in hand, in quest of a sideboard. I was buying the sideboard for my father who, aside from having a picture of what he wanted, had little information concerning it to offer me. With a small boy as guide, I set out, and found a sideboard at the place designated by a friend; the owner of it a woman, was in doubt as to whether she wanted to sell, but she gave me a clue to another, the owner of which was anxious to bargain at fifty dollars. To this I agreed, but she must throw in an old clock case which my eye had discovered among her possessions. She would, and I left her the money, agreeing to come back later for my purchase. The week following, I went down and secured them, forwarding my father his sideboard and bought another at reasonable price, to