A Southern Backcountry Mystery: Uncovering the Identity of a Northern Shenandoah Valley Cabinetmaking Shop

Abstract

Since the 1980s, several Valley of Virginia scholars, auction houses, and museum curators have mentioned in publications the existence of a number of Federal-style case pieces whose history, style, materials, and idiosyncratic construction techniques all appear to be the work of an unknown cabinetmaking shop working in the Winchester area during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The catalogue notes for a child’s chest of drawers (Figures 1-6), sold in 2013 at a Virginia auction house, state that the:

chest’s skirt and more vertical foot profiles are nearly identical to a chest of drawers, a linen press, and a small spice/valuables chest, all in private collections, and a desk in the collection of The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia. These pieces have a strong Winchester association and

exhibit walnut as a primary wood; identical cove moldings and scratch-beading; distinctive, fine dovetailing to the drawers; and the characteristic framed base construction. Taken in total, all of this evidence points to, at the very least, a distinctive regional cabinetmaking style in the lower Shenandoah Valley marked

by the construction of Hepplewhite-style case pieces on a fully framed base with modified French feet, using extensive glue-blocking to secure the frame to the dovetailed case.²