Double chest of drawers

Despite its long lasting popularity in New England and the Middle Colonies, the high chest of drawers never achieved broad acceptance in the coastal South except for the area around Baltimore. By about 1730, the high chest was considered out-of-date in British urban centers, where it generally had been superseded by the clothespress and the double chest of drawers. Because of the coastal South's close cultural and economic ties to Britain and its continuing popularity as a destination for emigrating British cabinetmakers, gentry householders there were exposed to and readily accepted these newer forms at an early date. Eastern Virginians and their neighbors in northeastern North Carolina and parts of Maryland developed a clear preference for the clothespress, which remained in favor from the 1750s to the 1820s. Residents of the Carolina Low Country instead chose the double chest, which Charleston cabinetmakers produced in some numbers during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Accounts indicate that Thomas Elfe (1719-1775), one of many local artisans, produced nearly thirty double chests in one seven-year period (1768-1775). Only after the Revolution did South Carolinians gradually abandon the form in favor of the clothespress, a development that mimicked contemporary British trends.
Learn more at the link below.