Making a Claw-and-Ball Foot, Shell, and Dovetails

This video shows Rhode Island furniture maker Jeffrey Greene demonstrating the techniques eighteenth-century Rhode Island cabinetmakers used to create signature aspects of their work, including carving a claw-and-ball foot with undercut talons, designing and carving an applied shell, and cutting the fine dovetail joints for which Rhode Island makers were renowned. The demonstration pieces Greene made for the video are available to be handled in the exhibition "Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830."