1. Wallace Nutting, Furniture of the Pilgrim Century (Boston, Mass.: Marshall Jones, 1924), pp. 53, 54, no. 18. Irving P. Lyon described Ipswich, Massachusetts, joiner Thomas Dennis as a “really great artisan” and suggested that the artisan’s forebears were joiners and “craftsmen of distinction...to judge by the standard of our Thomas.” Lyon also speculated about a theoretical ancestor of Thomas Dennis “plying his trade with integrity and skill.” Irving P. Lyon, “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Part 1, Florid Type,” Antiques 32, no. 5 (November 1937): 230–37; “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Part 2, Florid Type, Miscellaneous Examples,” Antiques 32, no. 6 (December 1937): 298–301; “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Part 3, Florid Type, Scroll Detail,” Antiques 33, no. 2 (February 1938): 73–75; “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Part 4, The Small-Panel Type,” Antiques 33, no. 4 (April 1938): 198–203; “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Part 5, Small-Panel-Type Affiliates,” Antiques 33, no. 6 (June 1938): 322–25; “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts, Part 6, Other Affiliates: A Group Characterized by Geometrical Panels,” Antiques 34, no. 2 (February 1939): 79–81. All of Lyon’s Antiques articles are reprinted in Pilgrim Century Furniture: An Historical Survey, edited by Robert F. Trent (New York: Main Street/Universe Books, 1976), pp. 55–78. Dennis’ birthplace and the name of his master are still unknown.
2. Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture 1630–1730: An Interpretive Catalogue (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), p. 60. Forman’s chapter titled “Seventeenth-Century Woodworking Craftsmen and their Crafts” concerns many of the themes contained in this article. Frank L. Horton, founder of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, reported a phone conversation with a direct descendant of John Vogler who claimed to have the diary and who read Horton the aforementioned entry. Although the diary has never surfaced, Horton was convinced that it existed (Luke Beckerdite to Peter Follansbee, February 2000). As quoted in Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s World, A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 113. Nehemiah Wallington’s comments help dispel romantic notions about period tradesmen “painstakingly” laboring over their work in an effort to satisfy an artistic impulse, but his case was extreme. His father, John, Sr., was a warden of the Turner’s Company of London. Recognizing that his son and apprentice was depressed and suicidal, the elder Wallington paid the Turner’s Company to accept Nehemiah as a master after only two years of training.
3. This article was inspired by Mack Headley, “Eighteenth-Century Cabinet Shops and the Furniture-Making Trades in Newport, Rhode Island” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1999), pp. 17–37. On page 17, Headley notes that “modern perceptions about historic trades often conjure up images of infinitely patient craftsmen working to the highest standards with no thought given to the time invested.” Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises; or the Doctrine of Handy-works Applied to the Arts of Smithing, Joinery, Carpentry, Turning, Bricklaying (3d ed., London, 1703; reprint, Mendham, N.J.: Astragal Press, 1994). The first edition of Moxon’s work appeared in 1677. For more on Moxon and his publishing efforts, see Mechanick Excercises: on the Whole Art of Printing, edited by Herbert Davis and Harry Carter (2d ed., London; reprint, New York: Dover, 1978). Randle Holme, Academie or Store-House of Armory & Blazon (London, 1688; reprint, Menston, Eng.: Scolar Press, 1972). Holme’s work is available as a CD-Rom (Living and Working in the Seventeenth Century: an Encyclopedia of Drawings and Descriptions from Randle Holme’s original manuscripts for the Academy of Armory, edited by N. W. Alcock and Nancy Cox), and all subsequent citations are from the digital version. Holme’s work is divided into chapters, which are described as books. Subsequent references will give the book number followed by the page number. Alcock and Cox’s excellent introduction identifies many of Holme’s sources. Tool historians have traditionally focused more on Moxon than on Holme. See James M. Gaynor, Eighteenth-Century Woodworking Tools (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1997), pp. 99–116 .
4. For the Harding inventory, see Plymouth Colony Records Volume 1: Wills and Inventories 1633–1669, edited by C. H. Simmons (Camden, Me.: Picton Press, 1996), pp. 24, 25. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, 3 vols. (Boston, Mass.: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 2: 854, 855. For the Birdsall and Symonds references, see Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, 1635–1681, edited by George Francis Dow, 3 vols. (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1916–1920), 1: 143, 144 and 2: 247–50 respectively. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “lare” as a turner’s lathe, citing a 1611 reference from Randle Cotgrave, A dictionarie of the French and English tongues: “Tournoir, a Turne, turning wheele, or Turners wheele, called a Lathe or Lare.” The broadsheet is discussed in David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 112–14.
5. For more on the Symonds shops, see Martha H. Willoughby, “Patronage in Early Salem: The Symonds Shops and Their Customers,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 169–84; Robert F. Trent’s catalogue entry in The Joseph and Bathsheba Pope Valuables Cabinet, Christie’s, New York, January 21, 2000, pp. 18–21; and Robert F. Trent, “The Symonds Shops of Essex County Massachusetts,” in The American Craftsman and the European Tradition 1620–1820, edited by Francis J. Puig and Michael Conforti (Minneapolis, Minn.: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1989), pp. 23–41. Little’s inventory is dated April 4, 1672. Plymouth Colony Probate Records 3: 46, 47. Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, 2: 1189–92.
6. For the Symonds, Pickworth and Wickes inventories, see Dow, ed., Probate Records of Essex County, 2: 247–50; 1: 428, 429 and 1:241–43. Peter Follansbee and John Alexander, “Seventeenth-Century Joinery from Braintree, Massachusetts: the Savell Shop Tradition,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1996), pp. 81–104.
7. W. L. Goodman, The History of Woodworking Tools (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1964), pp. 147–48. On page 45 of American Seating Furniture, Forman argues that the panel does not depict a London shop because the joiner’s and turner’s trades were separated by regulation. The “slab” type lathe seen in this panel is not unusual, though Moxon depicts a framed construction for his lathes.
8. Holme, Academie of Armory & Blazon, 3:317. Holme mentions but does not illustrate an “Iron Frower,” which was used to cleave laths and wood. He considered this tool “necessary for a good farm or dairy.” In his section on joiner’s terms, Holme defines panels as “little cleft boards, about 2 foot high, and 16 or 20 inches broad, of these Wainscot is made.”
9. For more on the duality of the carpenter’s and joiner’s trades, see Robert F. Trent, Peter Follansbee, and Alan Miller, “First Flowers in the Wilderness: Mannerist Furniture from a Northern Essex County, Massachusetts, Shop” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001), pp. 3, 4. In the present article, the term “joiner” is used to describe an artisan who made joined furniture while acknowledging that carpenters occasionally produced such goods. Simmons, ed., Plymouth Colony Wills and Inventories, 2: 349.
10. For the Francis Eaton inventory, see Simmons, ed., Plymouth Colony Wills and Inventories, 1: 41–44.
11. Holme, Academie of Armory &Blazon, 3:368.
12. Simmons, ed., Plymouth Colony Wills and Inventories, 1: 37–40. Thorp and his servant are mentioned twice in the colony’s records:
Jan 20 1632    Robt Barker servt of John Thorp, complayned of his mr for want of clothes. The complaint being found to be just, it was ordered, that Thorp should either foorthwith apparrell him or else make over his time to some other that was able to provide for him.
Aug 15 1633    Whereas Robt Barker had bound himselfe an apprentise to John Thorp in the trade of carpentry, the said Thorp being dead, Alice , his wife, hath turned over his time, wch will be exspired the first of April 1637 to William Palmer, nayler, of Plymouth, by free consent of the said Robert, the said William promising to instruct & teach him his said trade of nayling & at the end of his time to give him onely two sutes of apparell.
Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, edited by Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, Mass., Press of William White, 1855–1861), 1: 7, 16.
13. Moxon, Mechanick Exercises; p. 71. Gerrit van der Sterre, Four Centuries of Dutch Plane Making (Leiden, Netherlands: Primavera Press, 2001). Van der Sterre’s definition of the gerfschaff indicates a fore plane rather than a smoothing plane, putting Randle Holme at odds with some modern tool historians. Holme includes a second version of the tool, one with a convex sole, which he calls a “round” smoothing plane. On pp. 51–53, van der Sterre cites surviving “traditional” examples of these planes with many different sole shapes: “The sole can be straight, hollow, or rounded in cross-section, as well as straight or curved lengthways.” New England Begins: The Seventeenth-Century, edited by Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, 3 vols. (Boston, Mass.: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), 3: 542–43. The sole of this plane is curved along its length, with a short flat section where the iron fits through the mouth. Holme, Academie of Armory & Blazon, 3: 367.
14. Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, pp. 69–70. Holme, Academie of Armory & Blazon, 3: 352. W. L. Goodman, “Woodworking Apprentices and their Tools in Bristol, Norwich, Great Yarmouth, and Southampton, 1535–1650” in Industrial Archaeology 9, no. 4 (November 1972), 376–411. Research by W. L. Goodman (see British Planemakers from 1700, 3d ed. [Mendham, N.J.: Astragal Press, 1993], pp. 13–16) and Donald and Anne Wing supports Holme’s claim that woodworking craftsmen often made their own plane bodies. Wing and Wing cite Francis Purdew (active 1704–1722) and Thomas Granford (active 1687–1715) as the earliest plane makers on record (Donald Wing and Anne Wing, The Case for Francis Purdew [Marion, Mass.: Privately printed, n.d.], pp. 9–22).
15. Simmons, ed., Plymouth Colony Wills and Inventories, pp. 37–40. Holme, Academie of Armory & Blazon, 3: 369.
16. For the February 21, 1685, inventory of William Carpenter, Sr. of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, see Simmons, ed., Plymouth Colony Wills and Inventories, pp. 361–67. Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, pp. 71–73. Moxon borrowed heavily from the French work of Andres Felibien (see Benno M. Forman’s introduction in Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises: or the Doctrine of Handy Works, edited by Charles F. Montgomery [New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970], pp. ix–xxvi). Felibien’s discussion of wainscotting differs from that of Moxon and Holme: “The strongest are those which are set into a furrow.”
17. Goodman, “Woodworking Apprentices,” pp. 376–411. Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, p. 94. Holme, Academie of Armory & Blazon, 3: 368.
18. Modern turners often use brown paper to help separate the glue line when breaking
the finished turning apart. Animal hide glues like those used by period tradesmen are easily soluble with warm water or steam unlike modern yellow glues, which can be quite tenacious.
19. John Evelyn’s Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions, &c. (1664). The reference cited here is from the text by Guy de la Bédoyère (1995) and cited with permission (<www.british-trees.com/bibliography/silv.html>).
20. Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, p. 88.
21. Holme, Academie of Armory & Blazon, 3: 368.
22. For the Blin reference, see Patricia E. Kane, “The Joiners of Seventeenth-Century Hartford County,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 35, no. 3 (July 1970): 65–85. Bond of John Rickards to Anne Boote, June 6, 1668, Accomack County, Va., Orders, Wills &c. 1671–1673, fol. 231, as cited in Robert A. Leath, “Dutch Trade and Its Influence on Seventeenth-
Century Chesapeake Furniture,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1997), pp. 35–36.
23. Records and Files of the Quarterly Court Essex County, Massachusetts, edited by George Francis Dow, 8 vols. (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1911–1921), 8: 123, 124.
24. Ibid. Some tradesmen kept account books, as indicated by Ipswich, Massachusetts, wheelwright Richard Kimball, Sr.’s 1675 inventory listing £15.11 “due by Booke,” but none are known today. Kimball’s inventory is in Dow, ed., Probate Records of Essex County, 3: 16–19.
25. Photocopy in author’s possession with title page reading “Records of the Town of Ipswich volume 1, 1634–1674, copied by the Order of the Town of Ipswich, by Nathaniel Farley, 1890.”
26. Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven, from 1638 to 1649, edited by Charles J. Hoadly (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany and Co., 1857) pp. 36, 44. The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649, edited by Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 102. Part of Winthrop’s concern was that “the evills...were...many spent muche tyme idlely &c: because they could gett as muche in four dayes as would keepe them a weeke...they spent muche in Tobacco & strong waters.” Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, edited by Nathaniell B. Shurtleff (Boston: Press of William White, 1853), 1: 160. Dunn et al., eds., Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649, p. 345.
27. In a 1682 court case, Thomas Dennis reported that “Grace Stout bought a carved box with a drawer in it of him in 1679 and it had two locks.” For this, Dennis was paid 2 shillings 6 pence. Although this may have represented one day’s labor, the value of the locks makes any calculation problematic (Lyon, “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich Massacusetts,” in Trent, ed., Pilgrim Century Furniture, p. 56).
28. Follansbee and Alexander, “Seventeenth-Century Joinery from Braintree,” pp. 81–104.
29. For more on Norman, see Robert F. Trent, “The Marblehead Pews,” in New England Meeting House and Church, edited by Peter Benes as volume 4 of the Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (Boston: Boston University, 1980), pp. 101–11.