Carpenter-Made Furniture
Cabinetmakers were not the only Chesapeake woodworkers who built furniture in the eighteenth century. Carpenters and house joiners also produced a wide range of cabinet wares. Those artisans usually worked in rural areas where specialized furniture makers could not find full-time employment and fashions sometimes lagged a decade or more behind those of the region's towns and cities. Yet carpenters and joiners often found creative and unusual solutions to the design problems they encountered. The furniture they constructed, while less refined than pieces made by cabinetmakers, is often imaginative and well conceived.