DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711050645

SECTION: HOME                    PAGE: G1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ANN WRIGHT, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  288 lines

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE MAJOR SHOW SPOTLIGHTS REGIONAL FURNITURE CRAFTSMANSHIP

SOUTHERN FURNITURE has long been relegated to a forgotten corner in the attic of American decorative arts. But, no more. Colonial Williamsburg has blown off the dust and retrieved an important part of our nation's material culture from quiet obscurity.

Two Colonial Williamsburg Foundation furniture curators have spent the past seven years examining Colonial Williamsburg's extensive Southern furniture collection, dating from the late 17th century through the early 19th century. The result of the scholarly detective work by curator Ronald Hurst and associate curator Jonathan Prown is the first definitive book on Southern furniture and a stunning exhibition that opened Saturday at the DeWitt Wallace Gallery in Williamsburg.

In writing ``Southern Furniture 1680-1830: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection,'' Hurst and Prown realized the importance of the Southern colonies in early America.

``The South made up half the nation, both demographically and geographically,'' Prown explains. ``Yet, in the telling of U.S. history, the Southern story has either been excluded or told through Northern eyes. As a result, there are some very stereotypical views of the South.''

One such opinion that still rankles after half a century is that of Joseph Downs, who was curator of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he addressed the first Williamsburg Antiques Forum.

Downs proclaimed, ``Little of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore.''

That and many other misconceptions have been toppled as the two curators examined Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's collection of nearly 700 pieces of Southern furniture and put them into historical context.

Hurst and Prown reveal a region that was much more diverse in its population than is commonly understood. The antebellum South's indelible image is that of a privileged English planter class living in grand plantation homes while enslaved Africans labor in the fields. That picture is certainly true, but it is not the whole story. Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, Swiss, German, French and Caribbean immigrants also brought their cultural traditions to the region.

From the beginning, the coastal South developed differently from Mid-Atlantic and New England colonies. The character of the Southern colonies was predominantly rural with an economy based on agriculture.

A long growing season coupled with large systems of navigable rivers in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland and the Carolina Low Country gave rise to a profitable trade with England. Tobacco made the first fortunes in Virginia while rice and indigo enriched early South Carolinians. Because seagoing ships could call at plantation docks, there was scant need for seaports in the two colonies' early years.

A couple of hundred books have explained the furniture of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Fewer than a dozen have explored Southern furniture. Luke Beckerdite, an expert on American furniture and director of the Chipstone Foundation, views ``Southern Furniture 1680-1830'' as a milestone in American furniture scholarship.

``With its probing essays, insightful entries, and exceptional photography, it sets a new standard for museum catalogs,'' he says. The Chipstone Foundation is a furniture museum in Milwaukee that helped underwrite some of the publishing costs of the book and is co-sponsoring a three-day symposium with the Williamsburg Institute, Nov. 13-16.

The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, N.C., contributed mightily to Hurst and Prown's opus. ``We couldn't have done the book without their help,'' Hurst says. MESDA, a division of Old Salem Inc., started field research in 1972. Their historians collected data and photographs of more than 20,000 examples of Southern furniture, much of it in private hands. MESDA researchers also documented about 70,000 Southern artisans working in 126 trades.

By comparing MESDA's documentation with furniture in Colonial Williamsburg's collection, the two curators were able to assign pieces with no known history to regions, towns and sometimes even specific shops.

Hurst and Prown's book has birthed two exhibitions titled ``Furniture of the American South: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection.'' The first was a critically acclaimed show at the Equitable Gallery in New York City that closed Oct. 31. Reviews in the New York Times and other national publications were laudatory. The second exhibition opened Saturday in Williamsburg.

Elizabeth Hunter, senior editor for House Beautiful magazine, wrote a story about the exhibitions that ran in the October issue. ``I guess I'm still a chauvinist Southerner even though I've lived in New York for years,'' she says. ``I'm originally from Georgia, and I run up against ignorance about the South all the time. That's one reason I wanted to write about the first exhibition of Southern furniture ever held in New York.''

The show exceeded Hunter's expectations. ``Opening night was packed, and the show was gorgeous, absolutely beautiful,'' she says.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation pulled out all the stops for the New York show, sending the absolute cream of its collection. ``Southern furniture has received so little attention we felt we had to send the zingers,'' Prown says. ``We have one of the largest and most comprehensive collections anywhere, and we took 50 of the very best pieces to New York.''

The New York show was dismantled last weekend and moved to the DeWitt Wallace Gallery where it has been incorporated into a much larger exhibit. More than 150 examples are grouped by 38 themes.

``The environment is designed to disappear, so the focus is on the objects,'' says Rick Hadley, exhibits designer for the Colonial Williamsburg. ``Lighting is especially important in this exhibit. We use lights shining into drawers to show the dovetailing and on the backs of pieces to highlight the construction.''

Southern furniture is generally divided into three broad geographic categories: the Chesapeake Bay, the Carolina Low Country and the backcountry. Norfolk was the largest city in the Chesapeake region and Charleston in the Low Country. Even though Edenton in northern North Carolina doesn't border the Chesapeake Bay, it is included in that region because of its proximity to Norfolk. Likewise the Cape Fear region of North Carolina is considered Low Country because of Charleston's influence. The backcountry refers to the Piedmont and mountain regions west of the coastal plain.

``Coastal Virginia and South Carolina were the absolute zenith of British worshipers,'' Hurst says. Ships carrying agricultural products and naval stores regularly left Norfolk and Charleston for England and returned with British manufactures and immigrants, including cabinetmakers familiar with the latest styles. The importation of English furniture and the influx of craftsmen kept the two cities up to date on London fashion.

Quality was typically superb in Chesapeake and Low Country furniture, comparable to fine English cabinetry and better than most Northern-made. Such niceties of construction as full dust boards between drawers, strong horizontally laminated corner blocks behind bracket feet and fully paneled backs of case pieces were English traditions that Northern makers frequently skipped.

A number of pieces once thought to be English because of their level of style and craftsmanship are now known to have been made in Charleston or Norfolk. The biggest clue is the use of secondary woods, such as bald cypress, yellow pine or tulip poplar, which are native to the Southeastern United States and unknown in England, for drawers or the backs of case pieces.

The preferred late 18th-century style in the South was ``neat and plain'' furniture with minimal carving and the simplest decorative details. Neat and plain was a marked contrast to the high-style furniture being made in Philadelphia, Boston and other Northern cities.

In this as in most matters of fashion, the Southerners were influenced by the British gentry who disdained furniture in the ``French taste,'' especially the extravagant curves, exuberant carving and lavish gilding of the French Rococo style. Thomas Chippendale's simpler furniture designs suited Virginians well and his pattern books were widely known among the colony's furniture makers.

Furniture-making was a lively trade in Tidewater Virginia with shops in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, Williamsburg, Petersburg, Fredericksburg and Tappahannock. In 1770, Norfolk had a population of around 6,000, both Fredericksburg and Petersburg had about 3,000 people, and Williamsburg had about 1,800. ``Between 1770 and 1820 in Norfolk, we know of 70 artisans involved in making furniture. These were cabinetmakers, carvers, upholsterers, and Windsor chairmakers,'' Hurst explains.

Because most of Norfolk was destroyed by fire in 1776, little remains of the pre-Revolutionary Norfolk furniture in the neat and plain style.

After the Revolution, Norfolk's economy boomed and artisans poured in from the British Isles and New York to help meet the demand of rebuilding. Neoclassical was the newest look from New York City in the 1780s and '90s and Norfolk loved it. The many small furniture shops worked at a furious pace supplying southeastern Virginia, the Eastern Shore and northeastern North Carolina homes with the latest styles. ``Norfolk served as an important regional center for the dissemination of the neoclassical style,'' Hurst says.

By 1775, Charleston was the fourth largest city in North America and possibly the most cosmopolitan. It had been founded by English colonists from Barbados. Dutch, French Huguenots, Swiss, Germans, Welsh, Scots, Scotch-Irish and Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain swelled the original English and African population. While Charleston, more than any other colonial city, still looked to England for its styles, its large international contingent also helped the city develop its own colorful aesthetic language.

``Curiously, Norfolk and Charleston share great parallels,'' says Tom Savage, director of museums for the Historic Charleston Foundation and author of the Low Country section of Hurst and Prown's book. ``They were very urban coastal centers, very British in their taste. Norfolk and Charleston are probably closer stylistically than Norfolk and Williamsburg.''

The backcountry was essentially the frontier South and includes the uplands of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, as well as eastern Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia. Because the first English settlers had grabbed the prime property along the rivers of the coastal plain, later waves of settlers headed where acreage was still available for the taking.

The greatest tide of newcomers flowed through the port of Philadelphia, overland to central Pennsylvania and south into the valley of Virginia. Germans were among the first to arrive in the valley. Later settlers pushed south into Piedmont North Carolina and westward into the Appalachian Mountains.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans fleeing religious persecution, political oppression and economic hardship made their way into the wilderness, ``The backcountry may have had the greatest diversity to be found in the South,'' Prown says. ``The tax records reveal an amazing array of names from Ireland, Wales, Northern Britain, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland and France.''

While the culture of the coastal South was predominantly British, the backcountry was more of an ethnic stew seasoned with many nationalities. The backcountry immigrants tended to be from rural areas, so their furniture often had a homemade, country look, sometimes verging on folk art. Other backcountry pieces from thriving market towns had a level of craftsmanship that approached the urban coastal standards.

Many more secrets of Southern furniture, particularly backcountry pieces, are yet to be uncovered, but Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has made a monumental start.

Graham Hood, curator of Colonial Williamsburg, is justifiably proud of his institution's work. ``For 70 years, Colonial Williamsburg has been dedicated to re-examining the life and culture of a Southern city, and by extension, the South as a whole,'' he says. ``We have made an incredible commitment of time, talent and resources to furthering our knowledge.''

Yet, the research is far from over. Sumpter Priddy, an Alexandria antiques dealer who specializes in American furniture and has found many pieces for Colonial Williamsburg's collection, says: ``People think that everything has been discovered, but we're only beginning to understand the material culture of the South. The wonderful work that's been done so far opens so many more questions that it's clear we're only getting started.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

...chair is from the shop of John Shaw...

Jonathan Prown, associate curator...

COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION COLOR PHOTOS

A neoclassical sofa...

This Charleston card table...

PHOTOS

This Norfolk side chair...

This Charleston double chest...

A chest painted by Johannes Spitler...

Graphics

WANT TO GO?

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

WANT A REPRODUCTION?

Baker Furniture, licensed manufacturer of the Williamsburg

Products Program, has reproduced some of the best and rarest pieces

on display in the ``Furniture of the American South'' exhibitions.

Baker plans to reproduce three additional items this fall. They

are an Empire sofa, a Baltimore Serpentine chest and a Neoclassical

console table.

For information about these or other Williamsburg Products, call

(800) 446-9240.

FIND OUT MORE

If you're interested in learning more about Southern furniture,

check out these books, organization seminars and other resources:

``Southern Furniture 1680-1830: The Colonial Williamsburg

Collection'' by Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown. Published 1997

by Abrams and Colonial Williamsburg. $75. Available through Colonial

Williamsburg and at many local bookstores.

``The Regional Arts of the Early South: A Sampling from the

Museum of Early Southern Decoration Arts'' by John Bivens and

Forsyth Alexander. Published in 1991 by the Museum of Early Southern

Decorative Arts and distributed by The University of North Carolina

Press. $24.95.

MESDA memberships start at $30 for individuals and include

subscriptions to their newsletter and the ``Journal of Early

Southern Decorative Arts.'' Call (910) 721-7360.

MESDA also offers a monthlong Summer Institute on the Chesapeake

Region (June 21-July 17) for six hours of graduate school credit.

Call Sally Gant, MESDA Summer Institute, (910) 721-7360. Tuition is

$700; housing and meals are estimated at $700. (Effective Dec. 15,

the area code for the MESDA number changes to 336.)

The Williamsburg Institute and the Chipstone Foundation are

sponsoring a symposium ``A Region of Regions: Cultural Diversity and

the Furniture Trade in the Early South,'' Nov. 13-16. Registration

fee is $250. Lodging costs are $59 to $189 per night. Call the

Williamsburg Institute (800) 603-0948.

On Saturday, Nov. 22, celebrate the arts of the South and enjoy

three simultaneous exhibits at the DeWitt Wallace Gallery in

Colonial Williamsburg. Admission is by Colonial Williamsburg Good

Neighbor Card, Patriot's Pass, Colonist's Pass, Basic or Museums

ticket. Call (757) 220-7724.

Here's a listing of the exhibits and events for the day:

``Virginia Samplers: Young Ladies and Their Needle Wisdom''

- 10 a.m. to noon - Young ladies from the Geddy House work

samplers.

- 1 to 3 p.m. - Embroiderer's Guild of America members

demonstrate needlework

``Mark Catesby's Natural History of America: The Watercolors from

the Royal Library, Windsor Castle''

- 10 a.m. to noon - Gardener Lynn Fitzgerald talks about Catesby

Plants in the east garden.

-1 to 3 p.m. - Learn about Mark Catesby's experiences

illustrating southern plants and animals.

``Furniture of the American South''

- 1 to 3 p.m. - Mack Headley Jr., a master cabinet maker with the

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, discusses furniture construction.

Colonial Williamsburg's 50th Antiques Forum will be held Feb.

8-13 and will focus on ``The Arts of the South.'' Registration fee

of $495 does not include optional tours and classes. A few tickets

remain. Lodging ranges from $58 to $189 per night. Call (800)

603-0948.

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