Thomas Day (cabinetmaker)
[1] Born into a free African-American family in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Day moved to Milton in 1817 and became a highly successful businessman, boasting the largest and most productive workshop in the state during the 1850s.
[5][6][3][7] Day is celebrated as a highly skilled craftsman and savvy businessman, specifically in regards to the challenges his race posed to his success in the Antebellum South.
Although he was a fairly successful cabinetmaker, John Day Sr. often found himself in debt due to alcoholism and gambling, and he moved the family around often to find business in order to earn an income.
[1]: 17 Thomas Day remained in Milton as a craftsman and achieved success and respect for his skill, and in 1829 he married Aquilla Wilson of Halifax County, Virginia; she, too, was a free Black.
Even the state Attorney General and lawmaker Romulus Saunders, having been acquainted with Day's craft skill and strong work ethic, testified on his behalf.
[1]: 20 [4]: 216 [10] It was Day's social status and his crafting skill that gained him the support of the white Milton community and eventually led to Wilson being granted a waiver to enter the state.
[1]: 20 [3][2]: 37, 52 [11] White patronage and Day's education and business prowess allowed him to overcome his race-impacted circumstances and experience capital success as a businessman.
Although they were not the only cabinetmakers and craftsmen in the area, the Day Milton shop experienced early success, gaining local recognition and popularity by 1823.
[1]: 1, 16, 18 After his brother returned to Virginia and then moved to Liberia to pursue missionary work, Thomas Day took over the furniture and craft business in Milton.
In 1827, Day bought property for a workshop on Milton's main street for $550 and proceeded to take out newspaper ads to publicize his business.
Day ran his Milton workshop for 40 years, constantly keeping a line of furniture for sale in his storefront while also working on outside contracts for high-profile clients.
Day employed white apprentices as well as free black and mulatto laborers and his own slaves; his employees numbered anywhere from twelve to fourteen during his career.
[11][6]: 170 To craft his veneered cabinets and other furniture pieces, including beds and bookshelves, Day worked with hand tools in his earlier years, but in the 1840s he introduced steam power into his workshop.
[18]: 86–87 Day's workshop created various types of furniture and cabinetry, such as armoires and chairs, as well as architectural work on homes in the northern North Carolina/Southern Virginia area.
[7][3][1]: 23 Day specialized in veneered furniture and relied heavily on mahogany as a work material, which he imported from places in Africa and Central America.
While his work with mahogany came to be known as his trademark, Day also utilized other materials for his furniture such as walnut, seen in the pews he constructed for the Presbyterian church he attended in Milton.
[18]: 14, 116 Thomas Day and his workshop produced various types of furniture and practical pieces, such as wardrobes, bureaus, coffins, commodes, and lounges, as well as created architectural woodwork for wealthy homes in the Milton region.
[4]: 223 Essentially, Day took basic structures and ideas from urban trends on furniture designs and elaborated on them utilizing his personal creative taste.
[18]: 78 Based on stylistic analysis, it appears that Day pleaded many of his basic design structures for his various furniture pieces from a craftsman pattern book by John Hall, the Cabinet Makers’ Assistant, especially his use of s-shape curves.
[18]: 112 Playing on this idea of balance, too, Day would often create pieces with sharp, squared edges and designs on top, contrasted by curvilinear motifs on the bottom.
[18]: 94, 96, 97 With each of his personal stylistic motifs, Day worked to create balance within motion, and method and symmetry within improvisational spontaneity in his furniture.
[18]: 103 The design presented a light lounge with pillar supports that flourished into scroll curves, and the back rest was characterized by curvilinear motifs that created interesting and eye-catching negative space between the wood frame and the couch cushion itself.
[18]: 103 Twelve of these lounges are known to exist today, and are believed to have been crafted between 1845 and 1860; they are more or less detailed and stylized depending on customer price range, but all have the pillar and scroll designs as well as some form of curvature.
[18]: 119 Exuberant Style also included scalloped edge designs to create a cloud-like image, and thumb motifs in both the positive and negative spaces to reflect the idea of balance and symmetry.
[18]: 119 Day's usage of curvilinear designs, as well as his expert employment of positive and negative space, can be viewed as a predecessor to the Art Nouveau Style.
[18]: 131 For large plantation homes in the North Carolina and Virginia areas, Day provided mantle pieces, stair brackets and newel posts, and door frames among other architectural work.
[21] Today, Thomas Day is remembered as a skilled craftsman who instilled his own sense of style into popular designs to create highly unique furniture and architecture.
Since his death, especially following the Civil War and throughout the 20th century, Day was recognized for his perseverance, talent, and ambition in spite of his race and social situation.
[3] Following a few quiet years, a North Carolina furniture mall featured crafted pieces by Day in its atrium to celebrate Black History Month in 2000.
A successful life and a strong work ethic earned Day a reputation of skill and service that has lasted long past his life; he is permanently memorialized in statue form outside of the NC Museum of History, alongside statues of a Native American Sauratown Woman and the museum's founder, placing him irrevocably in mainstream history both in North Carolina, in the field of historical craftsmanship, and in the public memory.
