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
Paris in the 18th century tight short trouser attached below the knee to silk stockings. The Revolutionaries and poor mocked the rich by calling themselves the "sans-culottes", those without culottes. With the Revolution and the disappearance of the aristocrats, men's clothing became less colorful and more sober, and women's clothing began to imitate the popular view of the clothing of ancient Rome and Greece, in keeping with the revolutionary ideals of the new French Republic. During most of the 18th century, the Parisian economy was based on thousands of small workshops, where skilled artisans produced products. The workshops were clustered in particular neighborhoods; furniture makers