The Woodshop Shed

adventures in woodworking and home maintenance, from my shop in an oversized backyard shed

Southern Cellarette

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)

This is a reproduction of a Southern style cellarette for storage of bottles of fine beverages. Around 1760, the Dutch began importing gin into the American Colonies, and other high quality spirits came from elsewhere. This style cellarette evolved to store the square bottles containing the Dutch gin; however, the bottles were prized and were reused for brandy and other spirits. The upper case was designed to be removed, thus, when visitors arrived who were not deemed worthy of sharing the very expensive spirits, the case and contents could be quickly whisked out o sight. These cellarettes were very similar to sugar boxes in the colonial period, except for the partitions. Similar cellarettes were in use in the UK at the time.The original of this piece was made around 1780 by Micajah Wilkes in North Carolina, and is on display in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Wilkes is known for several exceptional pieces; the original cellarette sold at auction for $165,200 before being donated to the museum. The original is shown in the last photo.The piece measures 34 high, 19 wide and 14 deep and accommodates 12 bottles. Inside compartments separate the bottles and prevent banging together. The compartments are 3 5/8 square and accommodate most bottles.The wood is 7/8” walnut, with curly maple bead accents and inlays.My goal was to build this with traditional vintage hand tools. The only operations were done by machine were crosscutting the panels on the table saw sled for perfect squareness, and routing the profile around the top. The molding corner joints were cut with the pre-1912 Goodell miter box, using the Disston back saw which dates between 1896-1910.The through dovetails on the case are hand cut. The half-blind and through dovetails on the drawer are also hand cut.The 15” wide board was thicknessed and smoothed using the #606 Bedrock and #7 foreplane. Most of the planing was done with the #606. When I restored it, I ignored the blade as it had a significant nick an dI had spent enough time on it. Once I worked it out, it became obvious that the blade is laminated – I was unaware that Stanley made laminated blades, but it is clearly marked. That extra hard blade was honed down to 1000 grit and cut throughout the entire project without resharpening.The final smoothing of the surfaces was done with card scrapers and a restored Stanley #12 scraper plane with an owner's name and date of 1905 - it worked beautifully, but slowly. There was a leaning curve for sharpening the #12 blade, but once mastered, it was great.The recesses for the accent moldings were cut with a #78 rabbett plane. Some antique chisels were used in cutting the dovetails. The dovetails were laid out using a divider owned by my great-grandfather.In the interest of authenticity, I used cut nails to attach the drawer slides and kickers, as well as the bottom. likewise, it took some effort to find small steel screws for the lock, as brass screws did not exist in the 1700's.I was not satisfied with the finish, and removed it and started over – twice ! Not unusual for me.The bottle shown was made in Holland between 1800 and 1830, about 200 years ago.So, a vintage reproduction reproduced mostly with vintage tools. I intended to keep track of the time involved in this but lapsed at about 30 hours, and that was about halfway.