A revolution in taste: Furniture design in the American backcountry

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2001 by Philip Zea

Backcountry artisans have contributed mightily to American culture, but their legacy remains obscured by the superb craftsmanship of specialists in the famous ports along the eastern seaboard. Rarely analyzed on its own terms, rural workmanship is usually awarded a wry smile for eccentricity rather than applause for ingenuity. [1] Yet America's rural population was the largest component of society until the 1920s. What can we learn about our national past from the material culture of rural people? And what information lies in the designs and techniques of the local craftsmen who labored for their neighbors? Because of the universal need for furniture, the work of cabinet- and chairmakers provides a constant variable in the study of culture through artifacts.

The goals of this article are to determine the common elements of the furniture made at opposite ends of the Appalachian Mountains before the close of the War of 1812; to identify a few of the distinctions in the design, construction, and ornament of upland furniture; and to introduce the topic of the next major furniture exhibition at Colonial Williamsburg, scheduled to open in October 2003.

The appearance of goods made above the fall line--where the rivers from the hinterland cascade to the coastal plain--was not wholly governed by trade with or emulation of coastal merchants. A kind of powerful inland "river," running along the ridges and valleys of the interior parallel to the coast, matched the influence of urban merchants in creating the cultural wealth that still defines the American backcountry. Shaped by the British as well as continental Europeans, Africans, and American Indians, the Appalachian chain is the oldest of these cultural "rivers." Most people recognize the Blue Ridge as the defining feature of the backcountry of Virginia and the Carolinas. Although the arts of the southern backcountry are a rich and beloved story in themselves, the first chapters of American cultural history are better understood through an analysis of the whole Appalachian chain, including the Piedmont region between the fall line and the mountains. At one end, these mountains rise above the villages of sou thern Quebec and northern New England and sweep like a broad Hogarthian S-curve west of the fall line to Alabama through communities of French, English, Scots-Irish, Dutch, German, Swedish, Swiss, Scots, Irish, Welsh, African, Portuguese, and Spanish. Each of these communities was subdivided by religious affiliation and influenced by neighboring cultures, including that of American Indians.

Today's mobile Americans must explore this Appalachian "river" to understand the history of the profound differences that ultimately unite us. While the commercial and political influences of the urban English in the famous Atlantic seaports provide the warp in the fabric of eighteenth-century American culture, there is no weft to bring pattern and warmth to the weave without a full exploration of the wide cultural spectrum of those who lived outside the shadow of urban English taste, customs, politics, and religion.

Within the context of material culture, agricultural practices, architecture, art, music, and furnishings (especially locally made furniture, textiles, ceramics, and metalwares) are the country roads best suited for tracing the movement of people across the landscape. Ethnic origins, religious and cultural beliefs, political allegiances, and revolutionary unrest are each visible in the design, ornament, and construction techniques of furniture. Together, they create a cultural map that shows us how Americans perceived themselves and their neighbors during the age of revolution.

Broadly defined, rural wealth grew in the fertile valleys along the Appalachian chain in the years between the first settlement above the fall line, generally during the third quarter of the seventeenth century, and the passing of the first frontier after the War of 1812. There were conflict and deep poverty of course, but as in all parts of America, society was suspended between extremes of hardship and prosperity. Cash money was often lacking, but liberal credit and other kinds of material wealth encouraged the importation of manufactured goods from the seaports.

Numerous artists and diarists have captured the boundless natural resources, the fertility of valley soils, and the rich cultures of the intertwined peoples who defined the character of the backcountry. While lacking specie, this society kept warm and ate well during much of the year. The confidence born of performing a variety of skills for oneself in a conservative community of cousins, alongside neighbors of diverse cultures, and migrants just passing through, brought variety to the quality of life from one end of the Appalachian Mountains to the other.

Within a decade of one another, John Adams (1735-1826) in western New England and a paroled British officer near Charlottesville, Virginia, observed the same surprising wealth and confidence springing from the sparsely settled countryside. Adams remarked about Windsor and Middletown, in the lower Connecticut River valley, in 1771: