Peter Scott: Williamsburg’s First Cabinetmaker
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Peter Scott
There are no portraits of Peter Scott. There is no secret diary of Peter Scott. He left behind no documents that testify to his character or beliefs. Instead, during his long career as a cabinetmaker, he built a legacy through his steady woodworking output. Across six decades, his Williamsburg shop produced an array of desks, bookcases, tables, coffins, and other furniture, some of which survive today in Colonial Williamsburg’s collections.1
Scott was born in Scotland around 1695. While little is known about his early life, he likely apprenticed in an urban cabinetmaking shop somewhere in Britain. As a young man, something drew him to emigrate to Virginia. By 1722, Scott had established himself in Williamsburg. He was the first trained cabinetmaker to work in Virginia’s capital. His work both exemplified and contributed to the style of the colony’s eighteenth-century furniture.2
Scott’s Tenement House
By 1733, Scott rented a tenement house on Duke of Gloucester Street, across from Bruton Parish Church, from the wealthy plantation owner John Custis IV. It remains unclear whether this property was his home, his workshop, or both. Ongoing research aims to answer that question.
Peter Scott House and Shop
Learn more about the property's history, from its purchase in 1714 by John Custis IV, to its use by prominent cabinetmaker, Peter Scott, and its accidental destruction by continental soldiers in 1775.
Scott occupied this property for more than half of his life. After Custis’s death, ownership turned over to his son Daniel Parke Custis, and then to Daniel’s widow Martha Custis. After she married George Washington, he took over management of the property. Only a month after Peter Scott died, the building was being used by Continental soldiers. On January 21, 1776, they accidentally burned the structure down. Edmund Randolph reported to George Washington, “Mr Custis’s Tenement, where Scott lived, opposite the Church, was burnt to the Ground, by the Negligence of some of the Soldiers, who had been quartered there.” While Washington had bigger concerns (he was leading the Continental army at the time), this information carried some financial implications for him, since it meant a loss of rental income through the Custis estate that he was managing.
Journey of a Dressing Table
This bureau dressing table is a rare item that can be directly connected to Peter Scott. As a result, it has been used to identify much of Scott’s other work. Learn more about its journey after it left Williamsburg. Image courtesy of Mount Vernon.
Bought by Daniel Parke Custis
This invoice, in Colonial Williamsburg’s Special Collections, documents Scott providing “2 Mahogany Dressing tables” to Daniel Parke Custis in exchange for two years’ rent in 1754. Custis had married Martha Dandridge four years earlier. He died in 1757, leaving the furniture to Martha.
Toward Mount Vernon
After Martha Dandridge Custis married George Washington in 1759, they brought the dressing table with them to Mount Vernon.
Estate Inventory
After George Washington died in 1799, an estate inventory documented the existence of this dressing table in Martha Washington’s bedchamber. She likely used it while dressing and to store clothing or other personal items.
The Bedchamber
Artist John Gadsby Chapman created this 1835 painting of the Washingtons’ bedchamber, featuring Scott’s dressing table (to the right, topped with a dressing mirror). Dedicated to accuracy, Chapman traveled to Washington inheritors’ homes to view the original furniture. Image courtesy of Mount Vernon.
Tudor Place
After Martha Washington died in 1802, her granddaughter Martha Parke Custis Peter brought the dressing table to her home in Washington, D.C., called Tudor Place, where it remained for 130 years until being returned to Mount Vernon in 1937. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Identification
The identification of the Custis dressing table as the work of Peter Scott has provided researchers with design and construction details to identify twenty additional pieces created by Scott including this nearly identical dressing table in Colonial Williamsburg’s collections.
Cabinetmaking
Scott’s workshop was remarkable for its longevity. He practiced the cabinetmaking trade in Williamsburg for many decades, beginning sometime after his arrival by 1722 and ending only with his death in 1775. He largely practiced the trade as he had learned it in England, adapting little except to North American wood and slightly to changing fashions.3
Scott made furniture for many members of Virginia’s eighteenth-century gentry elite, including Robert Carter III and Thomas Jefferson. Serving this distinguished clientele, Scott became financially successful. Several records document his personal loans and real estate transactions in town, including the purchase of property on a “back street” of Williamsburg, with “a good Dwelling House” and outbuildings.4
The Furniture of Peter Scott
Colonial Williamsburg owns a significant number of works attributed to Peter Scott and his workshop. Click through to learn more about this furniture.
Desk and Bookcase (1722–1730)
This desk and bookcase represents an early example of Scott’s work. Elements like the stepped interior drawers and well in the desk interior along with the application of a surbase molding above the outer drawers followed British examples of the early eighteenth century.
Speaker’s Chair (ca. 1735)
Like most British cabinetmakers of his generation, Peter Scott did not make chairs. But this ceremonial seat attributed to Scott was constructed more like a piece of architecture. The chair sat in the House of Burgesses in both of Williamsburg’s Capitol buildings, and was rescued from the 1747 fire.
Tea Table (ca. 1722–1730)
This tea table was inspired by earlier Asian styles that were popular among many British cabinetmakers. This table was owned by the Galt family of Williamsburg.
Dining Table (ca. 1745–1755)
Tidewater Virginia dining tables are typically so similar in design and construction that they can only be differentiated from British examples by the use of American woods for the rails. The yellow pine found in this table and a few construction details link it to other pieces produced in Scott's shop.
Bureau table (ca. 1755–1765)
This bureau dressing table is nearly identical to the table sold to Daniel Parke Custis, discussed above. The table carries an oral tradition of ownership by Patrick Henry.
Enslaved Workers
Like many tradespeople, Scott was an enslaver. The cabinet work that came from his workshop was likely crafted, in part, by the skillful hands of the enslaved men who worked for him. He may have also employed apprentice and journeymen workers, though he never advertised in the newspaper seeking apprentices, as some other tradespeople did.
Virginia Gazette (Hunter), Sept. 12, 1755, p. 3
In 1755, Scott announced that he intended to leave for Great Britain and planned to sell his possessions at the porch of the Raleigh Tavern. While he never relocated, his advertisement offers some details about his life and his business. Most significantly, it notes that Scott was selling “Two Negroes, bred to the Business of a Cabinet-maker.” The description of these two men indicates that they were likely fully trained in the craft.5 Given the timing of this advertisement, it is possible that these enslaved men were involved in the creation of the bureau tables sold to Daniel Parke Custis in 1754.
Years after the 1755 advertisement, Thomas Jefferson recorded paying an unnamed “negro man at Peter Scott’s” in November 1772. This man may have been enslaved by Scott, or Scott may have rented his labor from another enslaver. But when Scott died three years later, a Virginia Gazette advertisement for the sale of his property did not list any enslaved people.6 No evidence has yet indicated the names or further stories of the enslaved people who worked in Scott’s cabinetmaking shop.
Legacy
Peter Scott died in December 1775, aged 81. Relatively little can be said about the details of his life. But as a longstanding member of the eighteenth-century Williamsburg community, he would have been long remembered. Today, he is known as the first cabinetmaker in Williamsburg, and an important and long-lived figure in the history of early American furniture.
More to Explore
Peter Scott House and Shop Archaeology Project
Check out artifacts as they're being discovered, talk with experts in the field and learn about the property's history.
A Tale of Twin Tables
Nearly 150 miles apart stand two twin bureau tables—one at Mount Vernon, the other now on view at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg
In our expansive galleries, you'll find wonderful examples of American and British antiques and decorative art from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as well as bold and imaginative pieces of colonial and contemporary folk art.
Sources
- Ronald L. Hurst, “Peter Scott, Cabinetmaker of Williamsburg: A Reappraisal,” American Furniture (2006), link.
- Hurst, “Peter Scott, Cabinetmaker of Williamsburg.”
- Hurst, “Peter Scott, Cabinetmaker of Williamsburg.”
- Hurst, “Peter Scott, Cabinetmaker of Williamsburg”; Virginia Gazette (Hunter), Sept. 12, 1755, p. 3, link.
- Bill Pavlak, “A very good cabinetmaker,” Fine Woodworking, Mar. 30, 2020.
- Virginia Gazette (Purdie), Jan. 5, 1776, supplement, p. 2, link.
