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
Jonathan Gostelowe Jonathan Gostelowe Jonathan Gostelowe (1744 or 1745, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 1795, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker, best remembered for his Philadelphia Chippendale-style furniture. He was the eldest of the four children of George Gostelow (1701-1758), a Swedish-American farmer, and his English-born wife Lydia, who lived in the Passyunk section of what is now South Philadelphia. There is no documentation of where the son learned his trade, although, based on stylistic similarities, it is conjectured that he apprenticed under cabinetmaker George Claypoole, Sr. For much of his career, Gostelowe operated a shop on Church Alley between Second and Third