DESK

While most southern furniture is unsigned and frequently unattributed, in 1993 MESDA acquired the earliest known example of southern-made furniture that is marked by its maker: a desk with document drawers that clearly bear the stamp of the Charleston cabinetmaker William Carwithen. In 1733, Carwithen touted his furniture-making skills by advertising in the South Carolina Gazette that he could “satisfy all people as shall want Desks and Bookcases, Chests of Drawers, Clock-cases, Tables of all Sorts, Peer-Glass Frames, Swinging Frames, and all sorts of other Cabinet Ware.”  With its baroque stepped interior, Carwithen’s desk exemplifies the rising sophistication of professional cabinetmakers, who abandoned the earlier frame-and-panel joinery for more complex methods of dovetailed case construction. Carwithen’s career further embodies the rise of Charleston as a sophisticated urban center. Once he was established successfully as a cabinetmaker, Carwithen invested his profits in plantation lands, became “a gentleman,” and, in 1759, was elected as the librarian for the Charleston Library Society, one of the nation’s first privately owned libraries.