Thomas Elfe Thomas Elfe Elfe was born in 1719 in London, England. He was an accomplished and prolific furniture and cabinet craftsman of the American colonial period. Elfe, a contemporary of Thomas Chippendale, was considered Charleston's best furniture craftsman of the eighteenth century. His working career spanned almost thirty years from about 1746 to 1775. At one point in his career his personal worth was a fortune of over 6,200 English pounds. Local Charleston historian and one time director of the Charleston Museum, E. Milby Burton (1889–1977), attributed Elfe as the craftsman of some of the finest nationally acclaimed furniture produced. Burton's
Peter McLean (cabinet maker) Peter McLean (cabinet maker) Peter McLean, a cabinet maker of Dumfries, Scotland, arrived in Port Phillip, Australia in February 1853 with his family during the gold rush. He crafted one of the finest and most remarkable examples of Victorian colonial cabinetmaking, no doubt with the post gold rush market in mind. Described as a tour de force of precision joinery, wooden inlay and detailed, high-relief carving, McLean's pièce de résistance was a remarkable sideboard, or 'buffet', which has carved scenes depicting the early days of the then Colony of Victoria, including a native chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe and