Nothing Finer Than from Carolina

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	This desk, made 1730-40, exhibits strong British style. It is rare for the Charleston area, because it's made of walnut rather than mahogany.Photo Courtesy of MESDA

In the late 1960s, archeologist Brad Rauschenberg had just been hired as a research assistant at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when he met Milby Burton, author of what was then the bible on Charleston, South Carolina, furniture. He vowed to write the follow-up to Burton's 150-page black-and-white volume, and add color photography and apply cellular wood analysis.

Thirty years later, Rauschenberg and the late John Bivins, a decorative arts consultant, completed a 1,500-page, three-volume work, The Furniture of Charleston, 1680-1820, published this spring by MESDA and Old Salem, Inc.

The first volume deals with the colonial period, and the second deals with Neoclassical-style furniture through the first quarter of the 19th century. The third contains career chronologies of 680 craftsmen and teams who helped make this city a furniture capital.

Charleston fashions were heavily influenced by the British, changing with the tides that brought ships in from London. The high-boy chest of drawers, for instance, fell out of favor in both England and Charleston in the 1750s to be replaced by double chests, although high boys continued to be made in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. With cellular analysis you could differentiate English from American wood, and up-country wood from coastal wood, which was primarily mahogany, says Rauschenberg. Burton had determined that cypress was almost universal as a secondary wood in Charleston furniture.

Charleston also attracted German immigrants who developed a distinctive style by applying Rococo elements to simplified British lines.

Rauschenberg says the demise of Charleston furniture making came about in the 1810s as local wood became less plentiful. New England shops found it cheaper to ship products south, and craftsmen began to copy national furniture makers rather than creating their own styles.

The books illustrate 450 furniture pieces with more than 1,400 photographs noting dimensions, materials, condition, construction, provenance, and special markings. Rauschenberg says the book is unique in seeking out the best surviving furniture to tell its story rather than focusing on a single collection. I don't think there are any pre-1820 Charleston pieces that I don't know about, he says.

The set will sell for $325. For more information call (800) 822-5151 or visit www.mesda.org.


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