Clothespress Rookesby Roberts Williamsburg, Virginia, 1795 Black walnut with yellow pine Catalog no. 123 This is an example of a basic clothespress format popular from the 1750s through the 1820s. It features an upper case with sliding trays designed to store folded garments. Predating clothes hangers, such trays held everything from women's gowns and men's suits to shirts and shifts. The trays are high at the back and sides to prevent folded garments from falling off as the tray is pulled forward. They are short at the front for easy access. This press is one of the few examples of Federal Williamsburg furniture that can be documented. It was made in 1795 for St. George Tucker, whose house still stands on Market Square. The original bill of sale, signed by local cabinetmaker Rookesby Roberts, survives in Tucker's papers. Structurally and stylistically, the press epitomizes the way makers and patrons in the coastal South remained faithful to neat and plain furniture even after they became aware of the newer neoclassical style.

High Chest of Drawers Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1760-1780 Cherry with white pine Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John M. Bobbitt shown on right

High Chest of Drawers Massachusetts or Rhode Island, 1750-1765 Maple with chestnut, white pine, yellow pine, red cedar, and tulip poplar Bequest of Gertrude H. Peck shown left

Elegant high chests continued to be made throughout New England during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Still stylish in the eyes of many northern colonists, high chests nevertheless were modeled on a design that by 1775 had been out of favor in London for a half-century. When considered in contrast to the contemporary southern preference for the more modish and double chest forms, these evocative artifacts speak strongly about the diverse nature of American regional identity in early America.

Regional Choices in Furniture Forms
Just as taste in furniture styles differed from place to place, preferences for specific furniture forms varied from one region to another. The clothespress never achieved broad popularity in the North, but the Chesapeake gentry began to adopt the form by the 1750s. It remained the region's most popular form for storing clothing well into the nineteenth century.

The preference for the clothespress in the Chesapeake was due in part to uneven rates of urban growth. Although most cities in the South remained too small to support full-time cabinetmakers until the 1720s, as towns like Annapolis and Norfolk grew, they attracted furniture makers recently trained in Britain. These new arrivals brought up-to-date knowledge of British taste in household furnishings including forms like the clothespress. Since urban centers in the North were already well established, large furniture-making communities there were more resistant to the influences of immigrant British artisans. As a consequence, the gentry in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia retained their preference for the high chest of drawers despite the fact that it had gone out of favor in urban Britain during the 1720s and 1730s. They accepted newer goods like the clothespress less readily.
Ironically, the high chest is today among the most popular of early American furniture forms even though the Chesapeake gentry thought it old fashioned and out-of-date on the eve of the Revolution.