A revolution in taste: Furniture design in the American backcountry

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2001 by Philip Zea

I had spent this Morning in Riding Thro Paradise....From Bissells [tavern] in Windsor to Hartford Ferry, 8 Miles, is one continued Street--Houses all along and a vast Prospect of level Country....the Land's very Rich and the Husbandry pretty good. Here is the finest Ride in America....I wish [the] Connecticut River flowed through Braintree [his home near Boston].... the most beautifull Town of all [is Middletown]....The Road lies here along the Bank of the River and on the right Hand [west] is a fine level Tract of Interval Land as rich as the Soil of Egypt. [2]

The British officer Thomas Anburey (b. c. 1756) saw a similar kind of wealth and potential in the plantations of Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1779:

[The] face of the country appears an immense forest, interspersed with...plantations, four or five miles distant from each other; on these there is a dwelling-house...with kitchens, smoke-house, and out-houses detached...each plantation has the appearance of a small village; at some little distance...are peach and apple orchards, &c. and scattered...are the Negroes huts and tobacco-houses, which are large built of wood, for the cure of that article. [3]

In this backcountry of prosperous merchants, industrious farmers, obscure paupers, and slaves, wealth and taste were Enlightenment goals shared with the coastal elite in the quest for a better way of life. Refinement was based on the ability to acquire emblems of status--then stylish neoclassical houses, fine furnishings, and imported commodities--as well as the knowledge to use them properly in polite conversation within a society no less hierarchical than that along the coast. [4] The ability to create emblems of refinement required a complex pattern of patronage, set by the standards of worldly knowledge, substantial credit, quality materials, and access to competent craftsmen who might wish to demonstrate their own knowledge and refinement.

Rural refinement was expressed by consumers acting in unison with tradesmen and merchants rather than as free agents working to satisfy private needs. It was a public affair, and consequently rural furnishings reflect the full range of acceptable taste as well as the character of the community and the complexities of its economy Rural workmanship is less specialized than workmanship on the seacoast; that is, a single craftsman executed more aspects of the specialized work invested in the product. As a result, the hand of an individual tradesmen is often visible in the fabric of the product--in its overall design, ornament, and technique of assembly.

Backcountry furniture ranges from eye-catching workmanship to surprisingly urbane restraint. Both were effective in conveying status through worldly knowledge and ability. Among the universal symbols of status--urban and rural--are tall clocks built of costly exotic materials. [5] With their human proportions and sounds, clocks captured the Enlightenment mind by measuring the dimension of time and by functioning as the first domestic machines (Pls. I, III). Refinement, however, was not solely measured by the ability to attract attention through display The rural gentry also had room for the restrained, classical taste popular during the later years of the eighteenth century. The Piedmont clothespress in Plate V, with trays concealed behind its paneled doors, looks and functions much like its British and Virginia Tidewater antecedents with all of the connotations of ample, specialized space for the storage of expensive clothing and other textiles. [6]