Danish West Indian furniture

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1999 by Michael Connors

Of all the furniture crafted in the West Indies, Danish West Indian furniture is the most distinctive, stylish, and classical. It is large, boldly proportioned, often with over-scaled carving and turning, and it is always made from richly figured tropical hardwoods. Only recently has the furniture been recognized and collected outside the Caribbean. There are no books on the subject and only superficial research exists into the material culture of the Danish West Indies. The few available old inventories make no distinction between furniture made on the islands and imported furniture. None of the furniture makers signed, dated, or labeled their work, and no shop journals have been discovered. Therefore identification of this furniture relies on an assessment of materials, workmanship, and design styles.

Danish West Indian furniture began to be made around the middle of the eighteenth century, when Frederick V (r. 1746-1766) seized control of the islands of Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, and Saint John from the Danish West India and Guinea Company. He made them crown colonies, which they remained until the United States bought them from Denmark in the early twentieth century. At first the islands produced cotton, tobacco, and sugar. The latter quickly became the most important commodity, and by the third quarter of the eighteenth century the islands prospered from the production and export of sugar. This was particularly true of Saint Croix, which was larger and had more fertile soil than the other two [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED]. A measure of the economic importance of sugar is that England weighed the relative importance of keeping Canada or the sugar island of Guadeloupe when negotiating the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763.(1)

As sugar became Denmark's greatest treasure in the eighteenth century, its West Indies became its most important economic stronghold. The industry gave rise to a new class of affluent plantation owners, most of whom were Danish merchants and expatriate European planters. Hundreds of sugar plantations sprang up on the islands, each with its great house [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED]. The very names of the plantations - Anna's Hope, Big Diamond, Wheel of Fortune, Judith's Fancy, Betsy's Jewel - embody the vanity, pride, and expectations of the new slave-owning gentry. In their luxurious style of life the successful planters "gave the lords and barons in Denmark a run for their money," as one Danish historian put it.(2)

The planters imported fine European and North American furniture in the latest styles [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE V OMITTED], but because the imports generally contained soft secondary woods they were soon decimated by the tropical climate and insects. The task of repairing and replacing the opulent furniture fell to the plantation carpenter or the local turner and joiner. Christian Georg Andreas Oldendorp (1721-1787), who visited the Moravian missions on the Danish Islands in the late 1760s, reported that at least one-tenth of the African slave population was composed of craftsmen, including carpenters and cabinetmakers.(3) There is no evidence that there ever were European or North American furniture makers in these islands. Reimert Haagensen (1721-1771), recording his impressions of life on Saint Croix from 1739 to 1750, wrote that there were quite a few freed slaves who made their living as carpenters.(4)

As the craftsmen were illiterate and there were no pattern books to be had, they took their inspiration from imported furniture - largely in the neoclassical style, for that was the period when the plantation economy was at its most prosperous. Even Duncan Phyfe received an order for a dining table from Saint Croix in January 1810. Lady Elizabeth Heyliger (1756-1813) placed it through her agent William Rogers.(5)

The armchair shown in Plate IV is a good example of the style of furniture most popular in Europe at the time. It was designed by Hermann Ernst Freund,(6) a Danish sculptor and decorative artist, and its provenance suggests that it was imported from Denmark in the 1830s for an official working in Government House in Christiansted, Saint Croix.

Mahogany remained the wood of choice for the island cabinetmakers and was most often used as both the primary and secondary wood. Other furniture woods were sabicu, thibet, satinwood, purpleheart, and Spanish cedar, all indigenous to the islands.(7) With time, the copies of imported furniture became more interpretive than exact. The craftsmen began to use traditional African zoomorphic decorative motifs and motifs from tropical flora and fauna. The continual importation of West African slaves until the mid-nineteenth century ensured the survival of African motifs.

The earliest surviving examples of furniture made in the Danish West Indies date from the last half of the eighteenth century and are made of mahogany (Swietenia mahogani) or bulletwood (Sapota Archras Mill.). The case and seating furniture is generally simple, in keeping with the rudimentary skills of the early makers. From about 1790 to about 1825 the imported furniture influenced the island's craftsmen to create heavier neoclassical forms with geometric architectural features. Good examples are scaled down armoires used in the parlor for storage and display [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VII, VIII OMITTED]. Armoires large and small were preferred over chests of drawers because their airier interiors were less prone to the mold and mildew prevalent in the tropics. The architectural design of the armoire shown in Plate VI exemplifies the plain symmetrical style characteristic of the case furniture made in the West Indies during the first half of the nineteenth century. Like their counterparts in Louisiana, the West Indian armoires could be dismantled for ease of transportation. They were popular with plantation owners, who owned houses large enough to accommodate these massive objects.