Live with the Cabinetmakers

Tools tell stories. Join the cabinetmakers as they construct a raised panel door using planes reproduced from originals by free Black plane-maker Cesar Chelor. Trained in the craft during his enslavement to America's first known plane-maker, Francis Nicholson, Chelor successfully carried on the trade after he gained his freedom. His surviving tools offer tangible insight into his life and work and the work of his customers like cabinetmakers and joiners.