Elizabeth A. Davison. The Furniture of John Shearer, 1790–1820: “A True North Britain” in the Southern Backcountry. Lanham, Md.: Altamira Press, 2011. xix + 217 pp.; numerous color and bw illus., tables, appendixes, bibliography, index. $90.00.
The Furniture of John Shearer by Elizabeth Davison brings to life the maker of quirky, overbuilt furniture made in the northern Shenandoah Valley and in the backcountry of Virginia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using his inscriptions and characteristic inlay as diagnostic features, Davison identifies a Lowland Scot with fierce dual loyalty to England and Scotland as the maker of distinctive chests, desks, tables, clocks, and a dressing glass—fifty-two pieces so far. It wasn’t easy. John Shearer never owned property and never paid taxes, so there is no paper trail. He did, however, write long inscriptions on his furniture, and Davison has not only deciphered their meaning but has identified the significance of some of his puzzling inlays.
We have known about John Shearer since 1970, when John Snyder, the Harrisburg collector and scholar, acquired a chest of drawers thinking it was made in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and then discovered it was signed by John Shearer of Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia). Snyder presented his findings in the May 1979 issue of the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts published by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA). He wrote the introduction to Davison’s new book, conceding he had identified the wrong John Shearer. Snyder’s John Shearer (1765–1810), the son of Archibald Shearer, was a wealthy planter who lived in Falling Waters, eight miles north of Martinsburg, and died in 1810. Davison’s John Shearer, the furniture maker, was still signing and dating furniture in 1818. Although Shearer wrote “from Edinburgh 1775” on several pieces, Davison, working with Scottish genealogists, has found neither a record of his birth nor evidence of his immigration. She did find a third John Shearer (ca. 1737–1777) in Frederick County, Virginia, who lived too early to be the joiner. Davison believes that Shearer the furniture maker was born in Edinburgh circa 1760 and probably came to America in 1775 before he served his apprenticeship. His furniture does not look like anything made in Scotland!
Davison was not the first to publish the fact that John Snyder’s Shearer was not the right guy. In 1997 Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, writing about the three pieces of Shearer furniture at Colonial Williamsburg in Southern Furniture, 1680–1830: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection, noted that there was a John Shearer piece dated 1816, so he was not Snyder’s John Shearer, son of Archibald Shearer, who died in 1810, though he may have been a relative.
Using his furniture as documents, Davison introduces us to a newspaper-reading, itinerant craftsman who probably spent some time at taverns. She gives us a reference book that catalogues and illustrates in color thirty-two of the fifty-two pieces of Shearer furniture that are known. The book also served as the catalogue for the exhibition of Shearer furniture at the DAR Museum in Washington, D.C. (October 8, 2010, to March 4, 2011), that then traveled to Colonial Williamsburg (April 2, 2011, to March 2012).
Davison was an intern at the DAR Museum for two semesters while in graduate school at the Smithsonian/Parsons/New School of Design Program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design, where she was encouraged to pursue the study of Shearer by her professor, Oscar P. Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald contributed an essay here, in the appendix, called “Shear Madness: The Shearer Collectors,” identifying the collectors of this idiosyncratic furniture. Martinsville collector Linda Quynn Ross, who owns at least ten pieces of Shearer’s work, was an early inspiration. Gary Heimbuch, a Boonsboro, Maryland, dealer and collector of American furniture, has handled more Shearer work than any other dealer. Heimbuch inspected forty-five of the fifty-two pieces known, sold seven of them, and kept one, a dressing glass. He also made his photographs available for this book and was generous with his time as a consultant.
Davison has not been able to find the date of John Shearer’s birth or death. Tax lists are not helpful because Shearer did not own anything taxable: no land, slaves, or livestock. His earliest inscription is dated 1798, and he identifies himself as “John Shearer from Edinburgh.” On an undated desk that Davison believes is earlier he calls himself a carpenter. He inscribed a chest of drawers “May 2, 1804 by me Shearer Martinsburg.” By 1810 John Shearer the joiner was living in Loudoun County, where he made a desk for Samuel Luckett. He was still living in Loudoun County in June 9 and 13, 1812, when he obtained a restraining order against John Smith, a schoolmaster; he was afraid Smith might beat him and do him bodily harm. After that he disappears from public records. Davison believes two pieces dated 1818 were made in Loudoun County, but nothing is known of him after that date. She thinks he may have left the state during the economic panic of 1819, when farming became unprofitable in Virginia owing to falling prices for corn, wheat, and tobacco. Perhaps he moved to Ohio.
From his inscriptions we know he came from Edinburgh, Scotland, probably as a young boy in 1775. One of the inscriptions on the secretary desk at MESDA reads “John Shearer [illegible] from Edinburgh 1775” (p. 131). It is not known where Shearer trained. On the interior back of a case drawer in an undated desk, made circa 1790 to 1803, is “Shearer Carpenter,” visible only with infrared photography. Davison uses this as evidence that he was trained in the house-building trade. In all other inscriptions but one he calls himself a joiner. On one bedroom table he calls himself “Joiner & Cabinetmaker.” In 1805 he incised “By Shearer Joiner” on the arched-hood door of a tall-case clock. An 1812 court record lists him as a joiner. Davison thinks he may have been a house joiner and worked as a carpenter in the house-building trades and that he learned his skills from an English joiner using English tools and an English-style workbench. Her evidence includes his use of glue-soaked linen, an English custom. She believes he had his own carving tools.
Shearer moved between three counties: Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia); Frederick County, Maryland; and Loudoun County, Virginia, where he moved circa 1808–1810, probably drawn by the prosperity arising from the county’s primary exports, wheat and flour.
Davison thinks Shearer got his joiner’s and carver’s tools by barter. His inscriptions show he could read and write and was interested in current events and the theater. He was never attracted to the rebelling American colonists. Inscriptions from his days in Martinsburg and Berkeley County are pro-federalist and pro-British. Shearer’s earliest known loyalist inscription is on a bedroom table in the Linda Ross collection. It reads, “Made by Shearer from Edinburgh, July 27th, 1798 / I am a true frind [sic] to my King + / country . . . and tell the Whole World Round Grate [sic] Gorge [sic] is King Hurah” (p. 21). Davison explains that Shearer is referring to the Irish Rebellion, an uprising of Roman Catholics and the Society of United Irishmen living in Northern Ireland who wanted religious freedom for Catholics in that Protestant country.
On the desk and bookcase at MESDA, one of the twenty inscriptions is a hidden message on the back of the desk’s large top drawer along with a drawing of a man being stabbed with a pitchfork by the devil reading “Down with the Cropper of Ireland / Cropper is Repenting, and his Master is Angry” (p. 131). The man being stabbed is shouting “Never Rebel.” Davison says it, too, relates to the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and that Shearer meant “Croppy,” a derogatory term for Irish Rebels because they wore their hair cropped short, a sign of unity with the French government (p. 23). On the back of the long drawer to the fitted interior Shearer wrote, “By Shearer to Mr. Pendleton / 1801” of Winchester. It is unclear who Mr. Pendleton was, but he liked his desk, dated 1801, well enough to have Shearer add the bookcase in 1806. On it he carved a fouled anchor, with a chain wrapped around it, alluding to the October 21, 1805, Battle of Trafalgar. Although Admiral Nelson was wounded at that battle and later died, the news did not reach Martinsburg until December. On other pieces of furniture Shearer again referred to Nelson. On the bottom of a drawer of a bureau table made in January 1804 he wrote, “Huz(z)ah for Admiral Nelson / for vanquishing the Enemies of his / Country” (p. 28).
Davison believes Shearer got the news of Nelson’s victories and his death from local newspapers, and she quotes accounts he might have read. His incised inscription on a slant-lid desk made circa 1808–1810 for Mr. and Mrs. Emely Dixon reads, “Neptune Gave the Sea to England Now the world must Obay [sic]” (p. 38). Davison says Shearer refers to British naval supremacy here: Neptune was not only the Roman god of the sea but also the name of the ship that towed Nelson’s badly damaged flagship back to the British base at Gibraltar, and, after it was repaired, the Neptune served as Commander-in-Chief Cochrane’s flagship during his exploits in the West Indies. As he had done on a chest he made for Mrs. Elizabeth Richards in 1808–1814, Shearer inlaid four Indian faces on the fall board of the Dixon desk. Davison contends these are a reference to the Indian problems reported in the local newspapers.
On a desk he made for Samuel Luckett, Shearer inlaid an American eagle and the word “Liberty,” his only use of American iconography. He generally used pro-British imagery: a rampant lion with a crown, a thistle, or an anchor for the Royal Navy. Davison illustrates several political prints Shearer used as his sources. Politically he would have sided with the federalists because they were pro-British, anti-Jeffersonian Republicans. When nationalism became firm in America, after the War of 1812, Shearer used more subtle British naval imagery, but he continued to use anchors with chains and ropes.
In a note hidden in the section of Alfred Belt’s desk into which the tambour recedes, Shearer wrote, “this Desk for Alfred Belt / the meanest know [sic] man / I Worked for the Greatest scoundrel in Loudoun County” (p. 146). Davison discovered that Belt was a slave owner and wealthy planter who “was hated by his neighbors and loved by nobody” (p. 149); Shearer added those words in red pencil to the desk. Belt’s Quaker abolitionist neighbors would have had no use for him.
Shearer’s inscriptions on his latest piece, a table stand for Mary Piles, are touching: “To love Intire, is my desire. (Who My Mary Piles)” and “September, A free Gift to Mary Piles” (p. 189). Who was Mary Piles? Davison has found no trace of her.
Shearer generally used walnut as a primary wood and occasionally cherry and small pieces of oak. He sometimes mixed woods in a single piece, for example, two drawers of cherry and one of walnut. Yellow pine, tulip poplar, and oak were his secondary woods. He often used crotched graining for drawer fronts. He often signed his name multiple times: on a chest he made in 1804, fourteen times; on a desk-and-bookcase, twenty. Davison believes he signed some of his boards before he used them to keep them separate from other cabinetmakers’ lumber in storage.
Shearer always nailed his backboards vertically. Some fall boards on his desks were mitered and some have batten ends. Davison thinks he may have learned some Pennsylvania shop practices from Henry Klinger, a house carpenter and cabinetmaker who went from Reading, Pennsylvania, to Williamsport, Maryland, and married the daughter of Archibald Shearer, plantation owner in Falling Water, possibly a relative of John Shearer. She speculates that John Shearer could have worked as a journeyman for Klinger and there learned some of his woodworking skills. The fact that Shearer used the entire fall board of a desk rather than just the center as his artistic canvas may be an influence of desks made in Reading, Lancaster, and York, Pennsylvania (pp. 12, 58). Shearer’s drawers are supported by a mortise-and-tenoned frame. The rear rails are further secured by nails driven through the backboard, an example of Shearer’s overengineered construction.
Another example of his overconstruction is his use of additional leather and brads to reinforce tambour slides. He sometimes secured inlay with countersunk screws and covered them with wax. A Shearer characteristic is exaggerated large-scale feet, either ogee bracket feet or carved ball-and-claw feet. He did his own carving.
One of Shearer’s favorite motifs is a pierced quatrefoil, an interlacing knot in an oval frame, a motif that appears in William Ince and John Mayhew’s Universal System of Household Furniture (London, 1762). On only one piece, a chest made in 1809, he incised the words “The Federal Knot.” Hurst and Prown alluded to the popular backcountry perception that the Federal Knot stands for the hopelessly entangled and ineffective new federal government, an anti-Jeffersonian point of view. Davison says Shearer was an outsider in American politics and that he used this design to poke fun at the American government in crisis after Jefferson’s Embargo and Nonimportation Act led to the severe economic downturn of 1808 and 1809.
Shearer also carved convex shells with alternating convex and concave lobes. He used engaged quarter-columns, some with stop fluting, and some with bay-leaf motifs. The distinctive shapes of Shearer’s spade feet with deep cove moldings at the top help attribute some tables and stands to his hand. In the beginning of his career Shearer made case pieces with flat façades and drawer pulls where you would expect them to be, but circa 1800 he made bold blocked serpentine chests of drawers and desks with variations in the top and base moldings, boldly swelled feet, and unconventionally placed pulls in vertical or diagonal positions.
Brian Coe, in a thoughtful article in the appendix, speculates on what might have been in John Shearer’s tool kit, circa 1800 to 1806. By studying what he made, Coe came up with a list of tools Shearer must have owned: planes, chisels, saws, mallets, screwdrivers, awls, a brace and bit, a square, a ruler, marking gauges, scribing knives, dividers, trammel points, and a bevel gauge, plus carving tools, notably a stippling tool, turning saw, and a rasp. He may have had an English-style workbench and likely had some patterns. He used hide glue, files, sharpening stones, scrapers, finishing tools, and pencils and crayons. His turnings may have been done by others. And of course he had to have had a tool chest, one that would fit into a small buckboard or wagon.
Elizabeth Davison continues to pursue Shearer’s message-laden furniture, hoping she will learn more about this enigmatic, eccentric, rural craftsman, a house-carpenter-turned-joiner who catered to his like-minded backcountry clientele. Davidson marvels that Shearer made thirty-two large case pieces and left one of the largest bodies of signed and attributed work of any craftsman working in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, even though he never owned a shop. Here she has fully catalogued those thirty-two pieces, and she hopes others will turn up. Since the exhibition at the DAR Museum, a tall-case clock has surfaced, and she is pursuing a lead for a table.
Lita Solis-Cohen
Maine Antique Digest