CHARLESTON, S.C. — Of the 32 dealers exhibiting at the Charleston International Antiques Show in March only

two were selling Colonial and Federal furniture made in Charleston, which is highly prized here.

“South Carolina furniture was made in huge quantities, but there’s not much on the market,” said David Silliman, owner, with his wife, Ann Silliman, of A. Fairfax Antiques, a Charleston gallery at the fair. “A lot of it still resides in houses here. Even in the tough times families held on to their furniture. When it does come on the marketplace, there is a romance about it because it has gone through the prism of history.”

That history includes the American Revolution (when the British occupied Charleston), the War of 1812, the Civil War (when Sherman’s troops set fire to the city), seven other citywide conflagrations, Reconstruction, the earthquake of 1886 and Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Mr. Silliman showed a Charleston mahogany sideboard with satinwood and holly inlay from about 1805. The price was $54,000.

“In general the premium one would pay for a Charleston piece is at least 10 times what you would for an equivalent antique from England,” he said. “There’s a mystique about it.”

The sideboard was decorated with inlaid wood ovals on its doors, with a matching oval on its backsplash.

What makes it a Charleston piece?

“When you see ovals on doors of a facade, think South Carolina or Baltimore,” Mr. Silliman said. “They are done with triple-banded inlay, which is typical of Charleston.”

He pointed out its craftsmanship. “Charleston was so wealthy that the furniture is the best of the best,” he said. “It has the best inlay, the best figure in its mahogany and is constructed with the best shop practices. This piece is mortised all the way through the back.”

Sumpter Priddy III of Alexandria, Va., a dealer who specializes in Southern antiques, was also at the fair. He had three Charleston pieces: a dressing table, a Pembroke table and a candle stand.

He explained how he recognized Charleston antiques: “First you can tell by the wood usage. Charleston had access to dense Dominican mahogany. Secondary woods used on the inside, like cypress and yellow pine, are local.”

He attributes his mahogany dressing table to William Axson Jr., a Charleston builder and cabinetmaker who worked between 1768 and 1800.

“Any shop maker has idiosyncratic construction details, and you get to know them,” he said. “Our goal is to isolate the styles of individual shops. Axson did high-style churches in and around Charleston, so you can correlate the details of his cabinetwork with his architecture.”

The identification of Charleston cabinetmakers has been the subject of much scholarship, in Charleston and at museums like the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, N.C., which in 2003 published a three-volume study on Charleston furniture made from 1680 to 1820.

“ ‘Plain and neat’ is how people refer to early Charleston furniture,” said Angela Mack, chief curator at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, as she walked through “Southern Masterpieces: Charleston Before 1835,” a gem of an exhibition she organized that is on view through April 29. “ ‘Neat’ means well made.”

For the show, she paired art from the Gibbes with period Charleston antiques borrowed from the Winston-Salem museum, the Charleston Museum and John M. Rivers Jr., a Charleston businessman with an extensive collection of Lowcountry silver and furniture. (Mr. Rivers is descended from a family that arrived in Charleston in 1670, the year it was founded, and is a passionate collector with three expert advisers on call.)

“The settlement of Charleston was all about money,” Ms. Mack said. “Planters came here from the West Indies looking for more fertile land to grow rice and indigo. There was mahogany everywhere because the planters had connections in the islands.”

On view, all in mahogany, are Charleston-made card tables, dressing tables, a slant-front desk, cabinet-on-chest, kettle stand, tall-case clock, sofa and sideboard, mostly from the Rivers collection. Interspersed among them are landscapes, needlework, portraits and works in silver.

By the mid-18th-century Charleston was the wealthiest city in colonial America, largely because of slave labor. It was called the Holy City because it embraced Anglicans, Anabaptists, French Huguenots, Quakers, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Jews.

Some rich families imported furniture from England. Others bought works by trained cabinetmakers who emigrated from Scotland, Ireland, England and Germany.

One table has an engraved brass plaque inscribed, “Gabriel Manigault 1739.” The wall label links it to Gabriel Manigault, a joiner’s son who developed an import-export trade with the Caribbean and owned nearly 9,000 acres and 289 slaves.

“He was the wealthiest merchant-planter in South Carolina during the colonial period,” Ms. Mack said.

A magnificent architectural cabinet-on-chest on loan from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts is attributed to Robert Dean, a Scottish artisan working in Charleston in the 1750s and ’60s, and Henry Burnett, a carver who died in 1761.

The cabinet has a mirrored door flanked by fluted Ionic pilasters beneath a Greek key frieze and a broken-scroll pediment with carved rosettes. The door opens to reveal a series of drawers, pigeonholes and an elbow-high writing slide fitted into the frame. The chest below has five large drawers. In Scotland it would have been called a lady’s closet.

“Charlestonians went to England three or four times as often as other American colonists,” Ms. Mack said. So the women knew just what to order when they got home.

Nearby is a large silver racing trophy and a painted miniature of Gen. John McPherson. After fighting in the Revolution, he became a top horse breeder, developer of a Charleston racetrack and owner of six plantations and 492 slaves. His crest and arms adorn the trophy his horse won in 1802.

“He was an inveterate gambler who liked the sporting life,” said Mr. Rivers, who lent the trophy. He enjoyed seeing the Gibbes’s portrait of the general, in watercolor on ivory, by the American artist Edward Greene Malbone.

Mr. Rivers said he was considering donating his collection to the Gibbes Museum.

One can get quite an introduction to Charleston antiques by visiting the Gibbes. The Historic Charleston Foundation, which organized the fair, also sponsors daily tours of private houses and gardens in a festival that continues through April 14. When asked, volunteer docents in the houses will identify antiques made in Charleston.

But a note to potential buyers: Beware.

“It takes a very keen eye to find a true piece,” Mr. Rivers said. “Because the value of Charleston antiques has gone up so much, there are a lot of fraudulent and cobbled together pieces on the market now.”