ion: From a painting for Colonial National Historical Park by
Sidney King.

A Domestic Scene at Jamestown About 1625

This representation of seventeenth-century home life was executed by the
artist after a detailed study of artifacts and archaeological remains
found at Jamestown.]

Various house furnishings have been listed in the inventories or are
listed hereafter. During the latter part of the century, particularly,
it will be seen that these furnishings were as elaborate or as simple as
in the comparable home in England.

Next to the fireplace, perhaps, the table adds more good feeling among
family and friends than any other item of the household. To "gather
around the board" was not merely a figurative expression in the early
seventeenth century when the first tables were boards laid on trestles
and set aside after meals. Table frames and planks were mentioned in a
Lower Norfolk County inventory in 1643. Later, permanent legs were
attached to the boards, and stretchers, fastened to them with pegs, kept
the table steady. However, as the English began to fashion fine pieces
of furniture, the table of various types found its way to Virginia and,
by the middle and late seventeenth century, there were serving-tables,
tea-tables as well as dining-tables. The four-times married Mrs. Amory
Butler owned a rare item in an extension table.

[Illustration: Early Dining Table

Though the first tables in the Colony were boards laid on trestles, the
above shows the adaptation of supports for permanent placing of this
article in the household.]

Even the planter with a modest household owned table-linen. As
heretofore noted, Joseph Ham possessed, before 1638, a dozen napkins
and a table-cloth. The well-to-do planters, especially after 1650,
brought with them, or sent for, a wide variety of table-linen, and both
Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Digges owned napkin-presses, that of the former
listed in 1673, and that of the latter in 1692.

Wooden trenchers and wooden spoons were the earliest tableware in
Virginia. Later, pewter-ware supplanted wood and while earthen-ware
trays and pots were mentioned, in a few inventories, and were used in
the dairy, and while earthen-ware was produced in the Colony by 1675, it
did not come into general use for dining during the seventeenth century.
Table-knives were not plentiful, nevertheless, various types of such
knives are mentioned in inventories by the latter part of the century,
black-handled