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
Ébéniste the industry. From the mid-17th century through the 18th, a notable number of ébénistes of German and Low Countries extraction were pre-eminent among Parisian furniture-makers, as the abbreviated list below suggests. Ébéniste Ébéniste () is the French word for a cabinet-maker. As opposed to "ébéniste", ""menuisier"" denotes a woodcarver or chairmaker in French. The English equivalent for "ébéniste", "ebonist", is not commonly used. Originally, an "ébéniste" was one who worked with ebony, a favoured luxury wood for mid-seventeenth century Parisian cabinets, originating in imitation of elite furniture being made in Antwerp. The word is 17th century in origin. Early Parisian