A TRADITION OF CRAFTSMEN

The craftsman literally provided a cradle-to-grave service with his products, including coffins.

DEAN FAILEY

Just as they shared a single church and religion for nearly two centuries, the people of East Hampton shared a common way of life and similar values when it came to matters of taste and fashion. Their relative physical isolation would determine both the pattern of woodworking craft practice and the appearance of the furniture produced in this village for over 150 years.

Following the initial settlement in 1649, East Hampton experienced a brief period of rapid growth, followed by a sharp decline in the number of new settlers when land within the town was completely accounted for. It is critical to understand the importance of land ownership, particularly to these initial settlers. In their native England, the ownership of land was the most important determinant of social and economic status.

This was especially true for the artisan class, whether they were woodworkers, blacksmiths, or weavers. Practicing their specialized trades under guild and town regulations, the ownership of a farm or land was almost impossible to dream of for the average craftsman. The yeoman, or basic farmer who owned his land, was by the far the rural artisan's superior in terms of security of livelihood.

The best of worlds, therefore, for the rural craftsman was to own land that he could farm to supplement his craft earnings. It was this possibility of self-sufficiency that farming as well as a craft practice offered that attracted many of the early settlers to America - not the promise of religious freedom.

In East Hampton, within 50 years of settlement, it was almost impossible to obtain land unless you were a descendant of an original family or were fairly wealthy. The result was

that at a very early date there was no

incentive, in fact no reason for new craftsmen, bringing with them new fashions and skills, to migrate to the very end of Long Island.

The pattern of craft practice that was therefore established relied on the transferal of tools and skills from master to apprentice, meaning in most cases from father to son or other member of the family.

Joshua Garlick, who died in 1677 and was the husband of the accused witch Goody Garlick, provided in his will to "give my tools to my sons Joshua and John equally to bee Devided betweene them when they are capable to use them." These tools included joyners' tools, turning tools, coopers' tools and carpenters' tools.

The father-to-son transferal of the knowledge and equipment to earn a living forms a clear pattern. Among the families with multigenerational woodworking craftsmen, many traceable to the 17th century, are the Bakers, Dominys, Fithians, Hedgeses, Mulfords, and Schellingers.

The first generation of craftsmen who settled in East Hampton probably had rather specialized skills. For example, a woodworker, who was termed a carpenter in England, would have been assumed to possess only the tools and skills needed to build houses, not furniture. Joiners were a step above carpenters in both skills and the type of tools they owned. They were trained to do finer finishing work and furniture-making. Other woodworkers specialized in turning, coopering, wheelwrighting, and ship-carpentry.

The large urban centers in the colonies, such as New York and Boston, could support such specialized branches of the craft, but the realities and needs of the small rural towns dictated that woodworking craftsmen were forced to take on a variety of woodworking tasks, hence the diversity of tools Joshua Garlick left to his two sons.

In a study of the relationships between the first three generations of craftsmen and their sons in the early southeastern New England settlements, the cultural historian Robert St. George suggests that family craft units, or dynasties, encouraged diversification of skills to enable the younger members of the family to remain in their home village and compete economically both within and outside the family.

In other words, there was a limit to how much new furniture was needed in a demographically stable community like East Hampton, and a newly-trained artisan might find himself either in competition with his own father or forced to consider moving away. But if the craftsman could also make shingles and clapboard, build houses and mills, produce barrels for whale oil and flour, or build boats, his chances of earning a sufficient living were greatly enhanced.

Having a diversity of skills was actually a necessity in a rural community dominated by an agrarian economy. To begin with, lack of enough business and the need to raise crops and animals made woodworking a part-time rather than full-time enterprise. The typical Long Island craftsman owned his house and had his shop within or adjacent to it, as did the Dominys and their contemporary Timothy Mulford. He owned approximately 100 acres of land, usually a few acres adjacent to his house and the rest in fields a short distance away.

An active imagination helps to comprehend the variety of tasks a woodworking craftsman might be called upon to perform in a town like East Hampton. There were houses to be built, houses to be moved, and houses to be torn down. The meeting house might need repairs, the jail a new door. Barns, sheep sheds, and chicken coops were required, not to mention work on the fulling mill, pecking mill, and grist mill. For the farm, the craftsman might provide an ox yoke; a wheelbarrow; a rake, hoe, or axe handle; feed troughs, or even a wagon.

Household needs had to be accommodated and might include bread trays, knife boxes, butter molds, salt boxes, rolling pins, curtain rods, shelves, dough troughs, dry sinks, mortars and pestles, pressing boards, inkstands, cartridge boxes, foot stoves, and hatboxes. There was also a need for looms, spinning wheels, hetchel boards, and swifts. Among the more unusual items were crutches, writing-slate frames, rulers, and wig boxes.

The craftsman literally provided a cradle-to-grave service with his products, including coffins.

We tend to think of craftsmen as creating and making brand-new items, but a look through any woodworker's account books indicate that a great deal of his time was spent repairing or fixing furniture, farm equipment, and household articles. In fact, entries for "mending" appear so frequently it would appear that no broken furniture was ever discarded. Farm equipment received hard use, as did spinning wheels, and replacement parts were constantly needed. Chair posts, stretchers, and splats, as well as table tops and leaves, were replaced. In 1831, the East Hampton cabinetmaker Septimus Osborne mended 24 desks at Clinton Academy.

Furthering my belief that nothing was thrown away even if it did go out of style, Osborne also altered old-style chests with one or two drawers into more fashionable four-drawer bureaus.

It only makes sense that as a part-time craftsman with a need to work his farm, the rural woodworker would prefer, if possible, to concentrate on making furniture during the winter months. Of course he would take on work in the summer if necessary, and especially if he had sons to help out or could barter his services for labor in the fields.

The importance of maintaining a balance between his craft and the source of food for his family and livestock is nowhere better illustrated than in the accounts of the Bridgehampton woodworker Nathan Topping Cook. In the midst of a series of entries dated 1797 involving the building of a house for David Hedges, Cook simply noted, "This Day quit to harvest."

In summary, the rural and essentially agrarian environment of East Hampton dictated a woodworking craft practice that was part-time rather than full-time, and that quickly evolved, shortly after initial settlement, into diversified rather than specialized skills. The relative physical isolation and the lack of land or other inducements to attract new settlers, and particularly new craftsmen, until the late-18th-century development of nearby Sag Harbor, meant that the community was dependent upon a group of craftsmen who were part of locally trained family craft dynasties.

Skills, tools, and patterns, not to mention shared values and attitudes, were passed from one generation to the next, establishing a continuity in craft practice and in deed - that is, the physical shape and form of the furniture produced - which remained almost unchanged, and only rarely challenged, for 150 years.

Dean Failey, senior vice president of Christie's, is the senior director of its department of American furniture and decorative arts. This is an excerpt from a 350th anniversary lecture that he delivered.