Furniture of southeastern Mass. at Winterthur Museum

An exhibit at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware from March 21-May 25 covers a little known region for furniture making, southeastern Massachusetts. "The Harbor and Home: furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850" is the culmination of exhaustive research on the decorative arts that came from Weymouth, Hingham, Taunton, New Bedford, Somerset, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

In his research for the exhibit, Brock Jobe, professor of American decorative arts at Winterthur, visited 200 shops, museums and collectors' homes. He discovered that textiles used for the arts and crafts were not difficult to obtain given southeastern Massachusetts' close proximity to the sea, rivers and port cities of Boston, New Bedford, Somerset and Taunton on the Taunton River.

With the easy access to water, textile mills sprung up – lumber, iron and mills for turning fiber into cloth. Many families made their fortunes in whaling and shipbuilding.

The furniture makers were not scholastically trained. They "borrowed" designs of more skilled artisans from Boston, Roxbury and Newport, adding their own signature designs as they went along, and their work became more polished.

To pass the time on long sea voyages, sailors carved furniture from baleen and whalebone, rosewood, oak and mahogany. An excellent example of shipboard craftsmanship is a child's chair from 1815, made for the daughter of a New Bedford whaling merchant.

Mercy Otis Warren, a staunch Boston patriot, had in her Plymouth home a mahogany and maple card table that was made in Boston in 1764. Warren embroidered the trompe l'eoil scene for the top of it, depicting cards and flowers.

Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard furniture makers made more useful things, such as slat-backed chairs, drop-leaf tables and plain, sturdy chests. A Nantucket whaling merchant, William Rotch, brought one of the first grand pieces of furniture to the island when he purchased a tall Dutch clock made in Amsterdam in 1743 by Gerrit Knip.