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Chelor’s planes are not remarkable from a design perspective;
instead, they adhere to a standardized form recognizable on both sides
of the Atlantic Ocean. Like most eighteenth-century craftsmen, Chelor
chamfered flat edges on his planes rather than leave them at a sharp
right angle, minimizing user discomfort. This practice continued up
until the nineteenth century, when the flat chamfers transitioned to
rounded chamfers around 1825. Chelor planes also display graceful,
rounded finals on the wedges; these details reveal the work of a careful
hand. By the nineteenth century, these finials became flatter and more
elliptical, as well as shorter to compensate for a gradual standardization
of plane bodies to 9 1/2 inches. Many Chelor planes have replacement
wedges, as they were the most vulnerable part of the overall piece.

Sash plane, Nathaniel Dominy V (owner), 1799.
Winterthur Collection

Records show that Chelor later employed other Black planemakers
such as Jethro Jones (1733-1828) who was active in Wrentham from
1764 to 1769 and later went on to run his own shop in nearby
Medway, Massachusetts. Jones’ mark (“I.J.”) shows up on planes as
well, though his output was less prolific than Chelor’s, possibly because
he enlisted in the Continental Army in 1779 and fought in the
Revolutionary War. Chelor also worked with Sambo Freeman from
1758 to 1761. In a story like Chelor’s, Freeman was enslaved by John
Adams of Wrentham and learned woodworking in someone else’s shop.
Adams emancipated Freeman in 1754, after which he cultivated a
Cesar Chelor plane with a flat-chamfered edge, 1770. Winterthur Collection reputation as a master carpenter in Holliston, Massachusetts. Freeman
is also notable as being one of the signatories on a petition to the
Massachusetts General Court in 1773 asking for the rights of enslaved
people to earn money to emancipate themselves. Sambo Freeman was
only thirteen miles away from Chelor (Jethro Jones was less than ten),
creating a professional network whereby jobs and training were made
available to craftspeople of color. When Chelor inherited Nicholson’s
business, he replicated the shop structure and, in turn, left much of the
actual production to these workers.
By the end of his life, Chelor was a successful businessman, landowner,
and taxpayer whose estate was valued at 88 pounds and 2 shillings, an
impressive sum at a time when most rural craftsmen died broke. He also
lived to see Massachusetts formally abolish slavery, a movement initiated
in the 1770s by outspoken men and women of color, such as Sambo
Freeman, who petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to consider
liberty for all. A series of freedom suits by Elizabeth Freeman and Quock
Bead plane with a rounded edge, England, 1800-1825. Winterthur Collection Walker led to the Massachusetts Supreme Court deciding in 1783 that
slavery was illegal under the Massachusetts Constitution. Cesar Chelor
Chelor responded to a local market looking to emulate the died the very next year, at the age of 64.
architectural sophistication of English Georgian-style houses and
offered woodworkers a range of options for producing decorative A LEGACY REEXAMINED
moldings for windows, mantels, and wall panels. His shop produced a Cesar Chelor, Francis Nicholson, and their respective apprentices
wide variety of planes, and he also cut any profile to his customers’ made southeastern Massachusetts and northwestern Rhode Island into a
specifications. Variety and novelty were key assets in a woodworking nexus for planemaking in eighteenth-century New England, with most
shop, so early craftsmen might acquire up to 180 varieties of planes. production contained within a twenty-five-mile radius and encompassing
Chelor is also credited with innovating new types of planes, including Wrentham and the neighboring towns of Dedham, Medway, Mendon,
one called a “stick-and-rabbet,” or combination sash plane. This plane Middleboro, Rehoboth, and Providence. In total, there were at least 10
combined the functions of a rabbet plane and a sash molding plane, planemakers in this area throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth
both used in the production of window sash stock. With this new century, with a handful of former apprentices dispersing for Keene, New
plane, joiners could cut a rabbet in a rail or stile to receive the window Hampshire; Reading, Massachusetts; Newburyport, Massachusetts; and
glass and mold the stock at the same time, saving time and labor. A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A grand total of 18 identified planemakers
stamped Chelor ovolo sash plane is the earliest datable American were active in the colonies, providing a major source of competition for
combination sash plane currently known, but it is entirely possible that British imports. Unlike with other artisan trades, such as ceramics and
Nicholson developed this plane while Chelor worked in his shop. A textiles, the quality of American-made planes did not differ all too much
sash plane in the Dominy collection at Winterthur dated to 1799 from their British counterparts, and clients did not necessarily favor one
executes the same operation: cutting a rabbet on one edge and a over the other.
decorative ovolo on the other edge. Little research has been done to Planemaking expanded after the Revolutionary War, with new
explain the transmission of knowledge about planemaking in America, shops established in major urban centers like Hartford, Albany,
but a combination plane almost certainly made its way to East Pittsburgh, and Baltimore. The trade reached its peak between 1825-
Hampton in the thirty years after it was first used in Massachusetts, 1850, owing to the industrialization of manufacturing. Factories in
possibly by way of England. It could also be the case that Nathaniel New England, New York, and Ohio dominated the field, though the
Dominy V solved for the same problem Chelor faced by making his planemaker-craftsman remained active in more rural parts of the country.
own plane in his East Hampton shop.
Census data from 1850, which identified planemakers by their

26 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles