Colonial Furniture

In seventeenth-and eighteenth-century New England, and farther south along the East Coast, the predominant colonizers were English. The Hudson Valley became Dutch, while Swedes and Germans settled in parts of Pennsylvania. Production was local, mostly utilitarian, and immediate: stools, benches, small tables, and chests with drawers. Furniture construction was simple, medieval, and based on few tools. The resulting shapes were massive, boxy, and mostly without ornament, except for an occasional turning to emphasize leg, rungs, stretchers, and backs. Shallow carving, called "Kerbschnitt," formed geometric bands, leaves, and rosettes, on some flat areas. Later in the seventeenth century, Kerbschnitt became more elaborate. In all the colonies, chairs with straight backs and rush seats were common, and new decorative elements found wide acceptance. Refinements and the latest style came from the mother country and were available in very limited scope to those who could afford it. The Carver chair, a chair honored with the name of the first governor of Plymouth, is an example.

While American colonial furniture was distinctly functional, often serving more than one purpose, simple in design, and heavy looking, it was just as likely to employ Renaissance forms long outmoded in Europe as it was the more up-to-date baroque decorative elements that emphasized carving. As in Europe, the Baroque came in several variations. As the wealth of the colonies increased, first in the South, so did the demand for quality furniture. A variety of indigenous soft and hardwoods, such as pine, birch, maple, oak, hickory, and later walnut, were easily available to colonial furniture craftsmen. With each boat, new furniture forms arrived, including cane-back, slat-back, and leather-back chairs, as well as upholstered chairs, better known as easy chairs. Counted among the new pieces of useful furniture were tall clocks, high chests with drawers, and storage boxes.
Furniture was often named after its area of manufacture, such as the Hartford chests of Connecticut or the Hadley chests of Massachusetts, or it was given a broad, general style-based definition—like Restoration or William and Mary—by later scholars. Construction characteristics included thin drawer linings; dovetail construction; walnut veneers; fruitwoods such as peach, apple and cherry; and chased-brass mounts instead of iron and wooden knobs. Two-tiered cupboards became popular, utilizing carving and turned decoration in the English manner. A new domestic element was the Bible box. With a secure lid, it held a Bible, but also important papers.
Where space was available, it often had its own stand. By the mid-eighteenth century, the demand for comfort had grown considerably among newly prospering merchants, resulting in finer homes, with refined interiors and elaborate furnishings. Out went simple, bulky, and functional rural furniture. In came European baroque and rococo styling—elegant urban designs in Queen Anne and Chippendale styles that fit better in the enlarged houses, which now contained a central hall, a dining room, and two parlors, including a formal one with a sofa, chairs, mirror, and several small tables. Each room required specific furniture.

Starting about 1725, the fundamental baroque qualities of the William and Mary style began to merge with the more sophisticated Queen Anne forms. With its lean and taut S-shaped cabriolet legs, pad, trifid, or pointed feet, it dominated the American British colonies for the next three decades. American Queen Anne was simpler than its English counterpart. Where the English relied on carving and gilding for decoration, Americans sought symmetry and proportion, while respecting the natural qualities of the wood. On both sides of the Atlantic, claw-and-ball feet ruled. Knees on high chests and chairs sometimes appear to buckle under the weight of scalloped shells and volutes. Whatever else it boasted, the most important element of Queen Anne was the cyma curve—the one William Hogarth called a serpentine "line of beauty." No part of a piece of furniture was spared the curve—not the solid back, the vase-shaped splats, or the bow-shaped crest. Its use went beyond decoration and into the piece of furniture itself.