Mary Todd Moore
Charles Bridges
Eastern Virginia, 1735-1745
Oil on canvas
Frame
Great Britain, 1735-1745
Red pine

The most ambitious Chesapeake portraits were sometimes fitted with ornate imported frames. This image of well-to-do matron Mary Todd Moore and her daughter Elizabeth is set in a carved and gilded frame manufactured in Britain. It may have been provided by the artist, Charles Bridges, a Briton who stayed in Virginia only a few years.

Side Chair
England, probably London, ca. 1765
Mahogany with beech
Catalog no. 27

Most of the British furniture used in the Chesapeake was imported by colonists or private citizens, but some came with British officials. This chair is part of a set abandoned by Lord Dunmore, Virginia's last royal governor, when he fled the Palace at Williamsburg in 1775. Records confirm that Dunmore's predecessor, Lord Botetourt, brought quantities of furniture to Williamsburg from England in 1768. This chair may have been among those goods. After Governor Botetourt's death in 1770, the colony purchased many of the late governor's possessions for his successor to use in the official residence.

Back Stool
Great Britain, 1750-1760
Mahogany with beech
Long-term loan from William Bradshaw Beverley
Catalog no. 12

This fully upholstered side chair, or back stool, has a history of ownership by the wealthy planter Robert Beverley of Blandfield plantation in Essex County, Virginia. It was part of a suite that included at least a half-dozen chairs and two small matching four-legged stools. This furniture, with acanthus-carved knees, ball-and-claw feet, cabriole legs on all sides, and crimson wool upholstery, gave Blandfield an air of elegance and affluence, certainly one of Beverley's goals. Upholstery was very costly in the eighteenth century, so the presence of eight fully upholstered pieces in one room must have seemed lavish, even by Virginia gentry standards.

Sideboard Table
Great Britain, 1755-1770
Mahogany and marble with oak and deal
This sideboard table with marble top descended in the Sothoron family at The Plains, a plantation on the Potomac River in southern Maryland. It was probably custom ordered, or “bespoken,” by the first owner, since there is little evidence that British furniture was imported to the Chesapeake for speculative resale.

British Imports in the Chesapeake

Fine locally made furniture was available in most Chesapeake towns by the mid-eighteenth century, but some wealthy householders continued to order a portion of their cabinet wares from Britain. Why the gentry chose British wares over more readily available local ones is not entirely clear. Some planters found it convenient to have their British agents make purchases on credit the Virginians derived from tobacco sales. Certainly cost was a factor in some cases. When ordering English furniture, George Washington described local cabinet work as “very dear,” or expensive. He also complained about quality in a 1757 letter to an English agent: “I have one doz'n Chairs that were made in the Country [America] neat but too weak for common sitting.”

On the other hand, there were problems with imported cabinet wares, as Washington pointed out in 1761 when he was charged £17.7.0 for a mahogany bottle case made by Philip Bell of London. In anger, Washington wrote to his agent: “Surely, here must be as great a mistake, or as great an Imposition as ever was offerd by a Tradesman. The Case is a plain one, and such as I could get made in this Country (where work of all kinds is very dear) of the same stuff, and equally as neat for less than four Guineas ”[i.e., , 4.4.0].

When the supplier was three thousand miles away and delivery took months, the dissatisfied colonial customer was usually powerless to change the situation. It is worth noting that, despite his complaints, Washington's expensive English bottle case is still at Mount Vernon.