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CW Journal
: Summer 2007 : Goods
Foundry |
by J. Hunter Barbour
We call them "goods" because
we mean what the word means:
things "having in adequate degree
those properties which a thing of the kind
ought to have." Good as far as it goes, that
definition, taken from the Oxford English
Dictionary, does not quite cover the wares
produced by the tradespeople in Colonial
Williamsburg's Historic Area. Their goods are
more than adequate.
Working in eighteenth-century garb at
restored or reconstructed colonial businesses
and sites, masters, journeymen, and apprentices
use period tools and techniques to reproduce
by hand the goods of twenty-two historic
trades. Silver services, woven cloth, wooden
casks, iron tomahawks, gentlemen's boots, ladies'
shoes, dining room candlesticks ...they
turn out examples of the best technology had
to offer two centuries and more ago, keeping
their occupations alive, and demonstrating
the role of technology in culture.
They supply what, in another definition
of goods, the OED says "is expected or required
(for a purpose
expressed or implied);
the real thing; the genuine
article."
Colonial Williamsburg
photographer Dave Doody
set out to illustrate that
with a series of images taken
from the shops, fields, and
forges where the men and
women of trades are at
work. As he shot, he noticed
that goods made in one establishment
are used by the
next—the iron that sharpens
pleats at the millinery was
built by the blacksmiths who
use a bucket from the cooper's
to quench hot metal ...
and so on. These pages are a
sampling of Doody's work, of
his goods.
—J. Hunter Barbour
Silversmith | 
Foundry |
Shoemaker |
Milliner |
Blacksmith |
Rural Trades |
Cooper |
Weaver |
Wigmaker |
Goods of the Trades Slideshow
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Historic Triangle