Chest
Eastern Shore of Virginia, 1795-1805
Yellow pine
Catalog no. 106

Most carpenter-made furniture from the Eastern Shore was executed in yellow pine, which was readily available and often painted to conceal the coarse grain of the wood. The blue and white paint on this chest, the most frequently used color combination on Eastern Shore furniture, is largely original. The form of the front panels was probably taken from plates in William Salmon, Palladio Londinensis (1755), a popular architectural design manual (see illustration). The doors on several contemporary Eastern Shore houses feature almost identical paneling.

Bottle Case
Roanoke River Basin, North Carolina, 1795-1805
Black walnut with yellow pine and holly
Catalog no. 163

Unlike man early southern bottle cases, this example shows no evidence of the refined, fully concealed joinery found on most urban case furniture. The large dovetails that join the front, back, and side panels are fully exposed, and the top of the lid was simply nailed in place. Assembled without dovetails, the drawer was nailed together like a box. All of these features suggest that a carpenter or house joiner produced this bottle case.

Des-and-Bookcase
Southside Virginia, possibly Surry County,
1760-1780
Black walnut with yellow pine, oak,
and boxwood or maple
Catalog no. 139

This neat and plain desk and bookcase was made in the vicinity of Surry County, Virginia, a rural district in the eighteenth century. Although the exposed parts were well conceived and nicely finished, the coarsely cut backboards are at odds with urban cabinetmaking practices. Set into rabbets on the case sides, the boards are heavily nailed to the back of each bookcase shelf. Compare this construction with that on the back of the desk to the right. This desk and bookcase also exhibits the prevalent use of pinned joinery, laminated cornice molding, and skillfully sash-molded muntins in the doors, all of which suggest an artisan familiar with carpentry and architectural conventions produced it. This conclusion is further supported by the plinths bracing the rear feet, which appear to be a pair of unfinished blanks for staircase spandrel.

Clothespress
Eastern Shore of Virginia, 1765-1780
Black walnut with yellow pine
Catalog no. 122

This remarkable clothespress was the product of a finish carpenter rather than a cabinetmaker as the case of most eighteenth-century case furniture from the rural Eastern Shore of Virginia, a peninsula isolated from the mainland by the Chesapeake Bay. The similarity between the paneled surfaces of the press and the paneled walls of contemporary Eastern Shore houses is obvious. Structural details followed those of house paneling as well. The carcass is not dovetailed. Instead, the fully assembled paneled facade was simply nailed to the front edges of the sides. Dovetails were used in only four of the five drawers, which were built in the standard way. The fifth drawer, although original to the press, was nailed together like a box.

Tall Clock
Eastern Shore of Maryland, ca. 1814
Cherry with yellow pine
Partial gift of Robert P. Fondes

In both structure and ornamentation, this clock case reflects the work of a carpenter or joiner rather than a cabinetmaker. In addition to the unusual proportional combination of a tall hood on an otherwise short body, it has relatively coarse joinery. Much of the surface is adorned with the same beaded molding used by early nineteenth-century builders to define the borders of such architectural components as window and fireplace surrounds.

The imported wooden movement on the clock probably was made at the Eli Terry clock manufactory in Connecticut, the first large-scale producer of clocks in America. The dual portraits on the dial are highly distinctive, even by Terry standards. They may have been added by an itinerant Eastern Shore painter at the request of the original owners.

Detail not available.