Texas Furniture: The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1800 by Lonn Taylor and David B. Warren (review)

This is a two-volume series: Volume 1 is a revised edition of a 1975 original, and Volume 2 is a new addition by the same authors. These volumes, by their sheer size, and due to the narrowness of their subject matter, will likely not be assigned reading in any folklore course. However, a scholar of American folklore will find herein plenty of useful material for a lecture.

Settlers came to Texas in large numbers for the first time in the 1840s. Most were carriers of a cotton culture from the American South, but there were also many German immigrants to arrive on the scene. At first, furniture was imported through Galveston, the state’s major seaport. Importing furniture, and even raw lumber, proved to be a difficult and expensive task, given the proliferation of coastal swamps and the immense distances for delivery across the Texas interior. Nascent Texas communities, therefore, found advantage in manufacturing their own furniture, using native woods when practical.

The authors argue that Texas furniture-making was a unique development, peculiar for its ethnic fragmentation, local manufacturing, and persistence as a craft. The product was functional and diverse. In many ways, Texas furniture carried on styles found in the American South. A Spanish influence on Texas furniture was also evident, although the authors provide few examples thereof. African Americans likely made furniture in the state, too, but no confirmed examples from this period have been discovered. Geographical isolation kept the local Texas furniture-making industry alive longer than in most other places in the United States. Only in the 1880s, when railroads finally crossed the state, did factory-produced furniture from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and other midwestern towns, finally push the traditional makers out of business.

The second volume tells of the arrival of Texas furniture in the catalog of American art history. Before 1975, that is, Texas vernacular pieces were unstudied. Volume 2 also displays 150 additional pieces of furniture. Whereas the full-page high-quality images in the first volume are in black-and-white, the second volume is in color. This feature provides much clearer details for observing the rich textures of the images. Also in the second volume, the authors show continued and expanded interest in the German influence in Texas furniture making. German Texas furniture tended to be of the highest quality, since the immigrant cabinetmakers had served long apprenticeships in their native Prussia. Germans in New Braunfels and other Texas communities produced styles seen in Missouri and other places of German settlement. Perhaps a weakness of the book appears here, however, as the authors tend to treat the Germans as a homogenous group.

To find furniture from the period, the authors traced the descendants of cabinetmakers and woodworkers. They made extensive use of the census and Texas history collections to write biographies of the furniture makers and histories of their workshops. One must wonder, however, if a truly representative sample is presented, or if some furniture makers, like the well-known German Johann Michael Jahn, are overrepresented. True to folklore scholarship, this book studies culture primarily through its creative expression rather than through written documents. But a representative sample of the furniture is difficult to find, scattered across the state, and usually in private hands. Those seeking a thorough analysis of this semi-colonial agrarian culture or its connection to American material culture will have to look elsewhere.

The work is notably strong for its descriptions of individual pieces of furniture. Both volumes contain a full list of furniture from beds, cribs, and wardrobes to chairs, stools, tables, and desks, each piece extensively researched, with listed provenance and expert commentary on its size, manufacture, decoration, and use. Texas furniture in this period was simple and practical, yet not without artistic flourishes and occasional masterpieces. Pine dominated as a choice wood for objects...