Northern Influence in the
Colonial Chesapeake
It is often reported that the coastal southern furniture market was flooded with furniture exported from the North. While that is true for the decades after the Revolution, recent studies suggest that only modest quantities of northern furniture were brought into the coastal South during the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century. Northern taste and technology thus had little impact on the form and construction of furniture made in the colonial Chesapeake. However, there are a few exceptions that dramatically illustrate instances of northern influence.