The Tea Table’s Tale: Authenticity and Colonial Williamsburg’s Early Furniture Reproduction Program

Abstract

In July 1936 Tomlinson of High Point, a mid-priced North Carolina furniture manufacturer, began a franchising and marketing concept called the Williamsburg Galleries that gained broad national acceptance in stores and among consumers. Outraged by Tomlinson’s actions and unwilling to abandon the retail market to those it felt were interlopers, Colonial Williamsburg set up a subsidiary corporation, Williamsburg Craftsmen, Inc., that licensed manufacturers to create reproductions of objects owned by the Restoration. Furniture was the most important part of the plan, and Williamsburg licensed the Kittinger Company of Buffalo, New York, as the manufacturer. Selected department stores were encouraged to build sales spaces that were period replicas of Raleigh Tavern rooms, and craft shops were developed in the historic area to promote the work of the various manufacturers. Because a number of stores sold both Tomlinson and Kittinger products, Williamsburg developed the concept of “authenticity” to distinguish th...