Replies

1. 
   mufti | Jun 03, 2007 12:15am | #1

               I do not know either, but Shakers were reported to be using circular saws in 1813 and the joint is a natural for that tool.

2. 
   SteveSchoene | Jun 03, 2007 12:34am | #2

   I don't recall seeing any in Southern Furniture 1680-1830 The Colonial Williamsburg Collection, Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, but that focuses much more heavily on the pre-machinery era. 

   Finger joints are just as hard to make as dovetails if you are chopping them by hand, but depend more heavily on glue instead of a mechanical lock of the dovetail.  So finger joints would be unlikely to be used until circular saw technology made making them easier.  I wouldn't be surprised if the interior surfaces hint at a bit of circular saw work.  I think that would place them toward the end of the period you specified. since I would expect Georgia to have lagged behind the North in adopting the mechanization (circular saw) that creates maufactured furniture.  

   How strong is the provenance with respect to when it was made. 

    

3. 
   JETofTN | Jun 03, 2007 04:41pm | #3

   Thanks to both of you that recently responded.  The finger joints seem, to me just as to you, to be pretty unlikely joints for the period.  The amount of work to create seems to be much greater than pins and tails.

   Thanks for the tip on the Southern Furn. book; I'm going to try to find it.

   JET of TN.

    

1. 
   SteveSchoene | Jun 04, 2007 05:21am | #4

   Besides Colonial Williamsburg, the other resource for Southern furniture is MESDA--Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, in Winston Salem NC.  I don't know their publications as well as CW's but I'd check them out on-line. 

   I suppose there is always a chance that the piece was imported from the North.  There was trade in furniture that did flow that way--the North was industrializing, but the agrarian Southern states were quite wealthy.  Pine furniture doesn't on the surface sound too much like an object of commerce but I really don't know.  Is it Southern Yellow Pine, or Northern White Pine?   

   Edited 6/3/2007 10:25 pm ET by SteveSchoene

4. 
   jackplane | Jun 04, 2007 08:42am | #5

   Finger joints were quite common of that era. Civil War era casework has them abundantly. I don't see why they wouldn't be known of, and made in Georgia.

   Expert since 10 am.