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Primitive Furniture The term “Primitive Furniture” that we use today, tends to describe the “country” furniture, which was produced in the late 1700s and early 1800s. This primitive style was a result of adapting the European and English styles of the Colonists, as they had just arrived from the old country. The Colonists had little material to work with or from…..using trees they fell. The furniture style, was a result of furniture from memory of what they had had, in the old country. The furniture had to be more serviceable and useful in form, for the people living on farms and in rural communities usually made their furniture from the local wood of that region, and it was most often painted, where its predecessors would have been more ornate and stained. Painting furniture helped to protect it from the harsh elements that many times it was exposed to……such as cabins with no glass in the windows, or soddy houses with dirt floors, homes that had to become livable quickly for these Colonists. Early homes, consisted of one room, and the furniture in that room, had to have several functions. Even when a home had more than one room, quite often the furniture had to be moved from one room to another, and serve more than one purpose. The early homeowner cherished their furniture, just as we now cherish that same furniture, knowing that it was made in an earlier time period………..a simpler time period. A time period, when a homeowner's primitive furniture, consisted of a bed, table, chair and possibly a blanket chest. Now our primitive furniture includes many more choices for our homes, yet the effect it brings into our own homes, is much the same……..pride of ownership. Primitive furniture gives us a tie to the woman who possibly watched her husband fell the wood with which it was made. It affords our homes a cozy ambiance. We lovingly touch the pie safe door and think upon the woman who originally owned it and placed her pantry goods inside. With her pantry goods inside, she had the problem of rodents trying to get inside. To circumvent this problem, often the pie safes were hung from the ceiling on pulleys. Hanging pie safes are the most hard to find today. Pie safes could have also had their legs tarred and then set into pans filled with water to keep rodents at bay. This last solution often caused the legs to rot over time and for this reason, today, we often find pie safes with the legs cut or needing to be cut to use it. The rope bed, we so lovingly brought home, once gave comfort to someone, or several someone's, after a hard, long day's work. We now display our coverlets and quilts upon it and dream of that day in the past. The stepback cupboard placed in your dining room, holds dishes just as it once did, possibly in a log cabin or a soddy house. It may have been the one sole possession of the woman who traveled West. We can now display our redware or pewter in it and have our friends, compliment us when visiting. I bet the woman who originally owned this cupboard, also had friends that complimented her on her cupboard and contents. Nearly every early home had a bucket bench and a dry sink. When these furniture pieces were constructed, they were built with hard use in mind. They were usually painted to help protect the wood from dry rot and water spills. The paint would have been home made, buttermilk paint, utilizing the leaves, berries and plant material they had on hand for their color palette. Furniture painted with these types of paint, most often still have the trace of these colors on them. -------------------------------------------
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