III
WOODS USED IN SOUTHERN FURNITURE
WOOD was the treasure of the early pioneer. Captain John Smith gave vent to his feelings in regard to the "oke." John Bartram, on a trip South, from Georgia, sent home accounts of his host squaring logs for shipment in cypress and in pine wood. Such Virginia Gazettes as are available, lift the curtain of the 1730's and reveal a busy fleet of small vessels clearing in the York and James for long voyages to distant ports. Bringing in such stuffs as Madeira, and sundry European luxuries, rum from the Barbadoes, negroes from New Guinea, and much else besides, they got away loaded with staves, hoops and headings, oak plank, and with much walnut, for England, where the quality was inferior to that the colonies produced.
The schooner Grampus cleared for Boston with corn, peas, wheat, and four hundred feet of walnut plank; a brigantine for Grenock, with tobacco and oak; the Snow Kitty and Nora for London, with tobacco, oak and skins; the Staunton for London, with "500 feet of Walnut Plank"; one with "Oak Boards" for Bristol; another with staves and headings for Glasgow; and the Buchanan out of the York with "Oak Board" for Antigua and Barbadoes.
Walnut, cherry, and pine were the woods most used by the early furniture makers of the South, until the advent of mahogany, when that wood, of course, went rapidly to a place of unquestioned supremacy. Virginia, from the earliest times, has been noted, as today, for its fine old walnut trees; and home-grown walnut, appealing to the luxurious, and used abundantly for paneling in Southern houses was, as a rule, the first choice of the Southern furniture builders for highly finished pieces. Due to its fine sheen and smooth grain, its other general characteristics which make it, today, often difficult to distinguish from mahogany, it did much to lift the general character of the work produced.
Early Southern pine, highly serviceable and lasting, and found in great abundance, was made use of for framing of furniture, and as a base for veneer. Oak, the king of woods, so thought, plentiful as it was, was little used, except in earliest times and after 1700, its chief employment was for the framework of larger pieces. Little maple or birchwood was used, except in the earlier days, and it went into disuse until 1800, although it grew in abundance. Poplar, almost as soft as pine, easily planed, was used extensively for drawer and side pulls.
Cherry, besides being popular in Annapolis, where both the wild and the cultivated was employed, was used in Maryland to a great extent, inland. From the earliest times, and up to the Victorian period, it was used particularly around the Moravian settlement at Salem, and red and white cherry is recognized in the majority of local-made furniture in the western part of North Carolina, as well as around the Moravian settlement. Many handsome
