Elfe was among the first of the great American furniture makers. Craftsmen love this book for the easy-to-follow patterns; collectors of southern antiques value it for reference.

This vintage volume contains a classic study of Charleston furniture. With over one hundred and forty authentic photographs, this guide catalogues the famous designs of some of the most sought-after furniture in North America. Contents include: “Sources of Furniture”, “English Importations”, “American Importations”, “Other Importations”, “Negro Cabinet-Makers”, “Kinds of Furniture used in Charleston”, “Kinds of Furniture Not Made in Charleston”, “Styles and Influences”, “Schools”, “Labels”, etc. Many vintage books like this are becoming increasingly hard-to-come-by and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality addition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on Charleston furniture.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of Anglo-American communities and eventually of American citizenship. Deftly interweaving analysis of images with furniture, architecture, clothing, and literary works, Van Horn reconstructs the networks of goods that bound together consumers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Moving beyond emulation and the desire for social status as the primary motivators for consumption, Van Horn shows that Anglo-Americans' material choices were intimately bound up with their efforts to distance themselves from Native Americans and African Americans. She also traces women's contested place in forging provincial culture. As encountered through a woman's application of makeup at her dressing table or an amputee's donning of a wooden leg after the Revolutionary War, material artifacts were far from passive markers of rank or political identification. They made Anglo-American society.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.