High Chair Middle Tidewater Virginia, 1700-1750 Black walnut Catalog no. 3

Corner Cupboard Tidewater Virginia, 1735-1745 Yellow pine, tulip poplar, and black walnut Catalog no. 150

Dining Table Eastern Maryland, 1740-1755 Black walnut Catalog no. 57

Chest Southern, probably Southern or Eastern Virginia, 1680-1730 Black walnut and yellow pine with oak Catalog no. 104

Turned and Joined Furniture
With its refined structural joints and surface finishes, the art of cabinetmaking did not become widespread in Europe and America until the 1720s. Prior to that time, most furniture was made by joiners, the same artisans who built everything from boxes to houses. Joiners often worked with professional turners, who made the lathe-turned legs on many joined tables and other furniture forms.

The Chesapeake was home to many joiners and turners in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, most of them English, Irish, Scottish, or French Huguenot immigrants. Because the Chesapeake lacked urban centers in the 1600s, these artisans operated in relative isolation‚ which inhibited development of the specific local woodworking traditions that characterize contemporary New England furniture. As a consequence, it is often difficult to determine the maker or place of origin of the earliest furniture produced in the Chesapeake.