Southern Antiques/Chapter 8
VIII
SEEKING SOUTHERN ANTIQUES
INTO this land filled with the memory of high achievement, distinction in living, beauty and refinement in concept and execution, I have gone on a search a bit late; for much of the furniture imported or local-made has long since been deported by pioneer collectors before the South awoke to the value of what it possessed. But I have gone in time to find enough to tell the fine story of the pioneer workers in furniture in the South, and bring abundant example of the development of a craft long since gone. I have gone through almost trackless forests, over rugged roads, to crumbling doorways; I have gone on the spur of the moment of notice of a sale or of any division of an estate, the breaking up of a home, or the division of property.
It is not always that I have gone to some white-columned mansion of other days and lifted a knocker at gleaming portals, where within its guarded confines rare pieces were well preserved. The doorways at which entrance has often been sought, have been largely neglected doors, along the river country where old settlements remain to tell the story of grandeur now departed. Forgotten doors, they sometimes were, even to columned houses, fallen from their high estate, passed into disuse and decay, and sometimes even into the hands of negroes. Some of the furniture, its value unrecognized, its owners having yielded to indifference or necessity has been burnt at the woodpile for kindling, as being in the way, shoved off on some poor relative or servant, or taken up at vendues or sales by the negroes of the neighborhood. Some of it is still to be found within.
The whole State of Virginia has furnished a rich mine of treasure. From the coast inward, up the bay, and along the Potomac, the James, the York, and the Rappahannock Rivers, and at Jamestown and Yorktown, rich fields are offered for study and research. At Alexandria and at Fredericksburg, where cabinetmaking was done, and many fine inlaid pieces have been found, the supply is seemingly exhausted. Portsmouth and Suffolk offer a particularly fine opportunity for the collector, and the yield is good in Norfolk, Williamsburg, and in Richmond. In Charlottesville, and Albemarle County, where home-making was at its best, and the refining influence of Thomas Jefferson was felt, real results have been obtained, with fine, inlaid pieces likewise found there. Wheeling (now in West Virginia) cultivated the craft, and offers opportunity. In the Shenandoah Valley, and along what was once the post road, established in 1782, reaching down into North Carolina, many relics of the furniture of the past are found.
Maryland antiques are more difficult to discover, except the highly valued pieces, although there is an effort there, as elsewhere, to bring back into the State the finer original pieces which have disappeared; but about the shores of its many rivers, however, numerous examples of the skilled workers who strove so well in Annapolis and Baltimore, are constantly being unearthed.
Berkley attributes the fact that so few pieces there have actually survived to the Law of Vendue, which required an auction sale of all effects when there was no will for probate, and recites the same story of the path to destruction that much of value in Maryland, as elsewhere, has trod from the attic to the woodpile for kindling.
North Carolina, presenting some of the best examples, is an unusually rich section, particularly in the western part of the State. Mecklenburg County is outstanding, and in the sections around Edenton, Bath, Hillsboro, New Bern, and Pittsboro, pieces of excellence have been discovered, including examples of merit of the style of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In the vicinity of Raleigh, Greensboro, and Edenton, many fine, inlaid pieces are found of Hepplewhite and Sheraton style. From North Carolina comes the majority of the Hepplewhite tambour desks. Furniture made by the Moravians is not always definite as to the exact location in which it was discovered.
The English influence is particularly remarked in and around Savannah, and importations there and throughout the State were largely the rule. Many New England pieces are found in Georgia, obviously transported there through Savannah. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia cabinet shops had branches or warehouses in Charleston and Savannah.
On the other hand, as productive as any other Southern territory, is that of South Carolina, a rich mine of treasure within itself, and more particularly abundant along the banks of the Broad River, and around Charleston, where so much furniture activity existed, with shops on King Street, Queen Street, Meeting, the Bay, and elsewhere. Fairfields County, with its ghostlike houses in their decrepitude, sentineled by decaying columns, seemingly reminiscent of an outraged past, sets the heart of the collector a-flutter. These houses are found in the saddest of condition, a Sheraton bed, discovered in one of them, having been sawed into pieces and made into a bench.
Every collector carries with him the memory of his first big find; and it was in these sunny fields that I made my first incursion into the realm of furniture seeking. The first trip with which this book is concerned, found the writer there projected on his way with money in hand, in quest of a sideboard. I was buying the sideboard for my father who, aside from having a picture of what he wanted, had little information concerning it to offer me. With a small boy as guide, I set out, and found a sideboard at the place designated by a friend; the owner of it a woman, was in doubt as to whether she wanted to sell, but she gave me a clue to another, the owner of which was anxious to bargain at fifty dollars. To this I agreed, but she must throw in an old clock case which my eye had discovered among her possessions. She would, and I left her the money, agreeing to come back later for my purchase. The week following, I went down and secured them, forwarding my father his sideboard and bought another at reasonable price, to which the lady of the moment also held title, proposing to start my own private collection. Then yielding to the memory of the first of the three sideboards I had encountered, which still lingered with me, I sought out the lady in possession, who was now ready to sell. One hundred dollars was the amount asked. This, too, was seized upon. Whereupon, I sold the second and took the proceeds to have the third repaired, providing myself with a piece small money will not buy.
Accent, or manner foreign to the locality, is against the buyer. Various strategies must be employed. The question of values is always a delicate one, and even though well-to-do people of established financial and social position are hard to bargain with, the experienced collector always prefers to deal with someone having some idea of value and a definite figure in mind. For the day is long gone when the buyer is out to deceive the owner as to proper values, even though, as yet, the average buyer is not adverse to making a good bargain.
Ready money, flaunted in the face of the owner, seventy-five new paper dollars, as in one instance, brought prompt results with me. Some hedging, and even sidestepping a bit, is often in order on both sides, which, when it comes to the naming of price, often operates to the grief of one or the other in reality wishing to sell or buy. Ten dollars, on one occasion, offered as a start, for a tambour desk by a buyer who, in fact, would have gladly given two hundred dollars to possess it, threw the owner, a woman, into a state of indignation. "Not a penny less than twenty dollars," was her answer, and the bargain was concluded on that basis.
Dealers, often too, lose out. A fair price, offered by a collector, while rambling around in a South Carolina attic with a family group who, at his suggestion, had unearthed a complete set of dining room furniture of distinct value, but long since discarded for a more modern set, led to their refusal for anything except an extortionate price—so possessed had they become with the fictitious idea of its value, and the possibility of demanding a highly inflated price. This led to the set being returned to its former setting and the collector reflecting on a lost opportunity, because he had offered something reasonable in the beginning.
Those that are anxious to sell, sometimes exhibit, unexpectedly, so much enthusiasm, that it is not always difficult to read what is actually in their minds. Stories are kept on hand in limitless numbers, particularly in the rural sections, and are shot at the unsuspecting buyer in such a way as to make him a bit wary when it comes to the actual transaction. Something that has to do with the War Between the States is the first preference, with General Sherman running as a general favorite, and given credit for having had to do with more tables, sat in more chairs, looked under more beds, and eaten from more sideboards than the capacity of any man would allow; but even these do not always bring success. Held liable for one hole in a slant-top desk, the General was represented as having gotten into the desk by another, but this did not work. The buyer was sure that even Sherman himself, diligent as he was in small things, could not have put himself through, and so assured the seller. Even the disaster of a tureen top knocked off, and charged up to Sherman, who unknowingly, it seemed, had stopped off in his march to the sea to commit the blunder, failed to make the sale.
The buyer, furthermore, is not above appealing to the emotions, and this, in certain cases, has been known to bring results. Two buyers in Raleigh, North Carolina, moved by a gate-leg table in a negro cabin in the country, to the amount of one hundred real gold dollars spread out before the owner, were amazed to find him deciding that he did not want to sell, and those around him asking him if for any reason he had suddenly "gone crazy."