Designers & Makers: The Manufacturing of Mahogany

The introduction of mahogany, as well as other novel commodities such as tea, coffee, chocolate, and tobacco, encouraged American manufacturers to expand the range and diversity of consumer choices. Mahogany was excellent for the elaborate shapes and exquisite carving of the newly fashionable “Chippendale” style. Cabinetmakers created special accessories for new social rituals like mahogany tea boxes, tea trays, and tea tables.

Given its maritime economy, Rhode Island’s busy seaports developed a strong merchant class, providing ample patronage and attracting an influx of skilled craftsmen trained in London and Paris. By the 1750s, for example, Newport boasted several hundred cabinetmakers, journeymen, and apprentices. Most successful, the cabinetmaking dynasty of the Townsend-Goddard family built an impressive clientele using a traditional master-apprentice labor system. As competition intensified, however, other workshops (such as the Cahoones’) sought to improve profit margins by shifting to a wage-labor system, hiring journeymen on a semi-permanent basis and jobbing out piece work to part-time craftsmen.

Artisans transformed rough lumber through carving and sanding to a texture as smooth as a baby’s skin, which was then polished with linseed oil and brick dust until it shone. In larger cabinetmaker firms, the polishing was done by a full time specialist, but in smaller firms it might be delegated to apprentices.

Rhode Island furniture soon was in high demand in local, regional, and overseas markets.  A sugar planter in Jamaica or a rice planter in Charleston could fill their mansions with furniture fabricated in Rhode Island out of mahogany felled by enslaved Africans in the West Indies. 

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