The Scott Antique Market is back! This month's show will run from Thursday Nov. 10 - Sunday Nov. 13. As always, we will be in the South Building, spaces H9-H10. Say hello to Peter!
The term, "Duncan Phyfe style," is often thrown around in the furniture business. Like many terms, the meaning of "Duncan Phyfe style" has evolved over the years so that it has become perfectly acceptable to describe most simple double pedestal dining tables and dining chairs that match with splay or reeded legs and lyre or harp designs. While many purists may argue that furniture pieces made by Duncan Phyfe are considered adaptations of styles rather than a style itself, I feel the term has become used commonly enough to be considered a style. And besides, aren't all styles really just adaptations of what came before with new elements introduced?
Duncan Phfye was born in Scotland in 1768 and lived a relatively long life, passing away in 1854. At the age of 16 he emigrated to the U.S. and settled in New York. In 1794—at just 26 years old—he started his furniture making business in New York City. Mr. Phyfe quickly became one of the most renowned American cabinetmakers of all time. His store was known for quality furniture at relatively low prices. In the early years, the furniture was made solely from imported mahogany and sometimes emphasized with beautiful veneers. After 1830 his works were done primarily of rosewood. Duncan Phyfe was also responsible for introducing the factory method of making furniture to the American cabinetmaker industry.
The styles of his time heavily influenced his work. The styles that can be seen in original Duncan Phyfe furniture include Empire, Sheraton, French Classical, and most prominently Regency. More than any other decoration, Duncan incorporated carved lyres or harps the most into his pieces. Almost all of his legs were splay, reeded legs that ended in brass claws. The pulls and hardware were usually brass but he also used glass later in his career. Furniture pieces that were actually made by Duncan Phyfe are almost impossible to identify as he almost never labelled his furniture. There are a few pieces in museums and even something in the White House that have been proven made by him, but not many. Nevertheless, Duncan Phyfe certainly left his mark on American furniture and had a taste that even today people consider beautiful and elegant.
Join us at this month's Scott Antique Market, which runs Thursday Oct. 13 - Sunday Oct. 16. As always, we will be in the South Building, spaces H9-H10. Say hello to Peter! Learn more at the Scott Antique Market website.
Hardware is one of many design features that have changed along with the passage of different furniture periods. Still, there is a distinct lack of information on this topic, since most discussions on period furniture tend to focus on woods, inlays, construction, and carving styles. So, I've put together a useful compilation of which drawer pulls were most commonly used during different English antique furniture periods.
I'll start with the Jacobean period because it is the first period in which ornamentation began to clearly take shape in hardware design. Previous to the Jacobean period, drawers were mostly hidden behind doors. However, at the dawn of the Jacobean period, the chest of drawers as we know it began to rise in popularity and complexity. Drawer pulls at the time were mostly small, single-post, brass, and shaped like teardrops. The back would also be brass and round or floral shaped.
William and Mary period pulls were not much different from their Jacobean counterparts. They became slightly larger in proportion to the furniture but retained the single-post, teardrop style of the previous period.
The first two-post pull became popular during the Queen Anne period. Again made from brass, the pulls had a “batwing” shaped backplate and a curved handle between the two posts. Batwing backplates were usually a substantial size.
The Georgian period saw three of the furniture industry’s finest designers and craftsmen in Thomas Chippendale, George Hepplewhite, and Thomas Sheraton. Each of these men greatly influenced the period and had a pull style of their own. Chippendale pulls were a pierced, batwing-shaped pull, Hepplewhite pulls were a stamped brass, oval backplate pull, and Sheraton pulls were usually a round, stamped, brass backplate pull. The typical Georgian period pull was otherwise a simple swan-neck, two-post pull.
While Georgian pulls were generally rather uncomplex, Regency period pulls were exactly opposite. Still made of brass, the Regency pulls were large and very ornate, following the general shift in taste that the Regency style embodied.
As you would expect from a long period like the Victorian period, there were a few different kinds of common pulls. Many Early Victorian pieces saw a return of the teardrop, single-post pull from the Jacobean and William and Mary periods, although Victorian teardrop pulls were generally larger than earlier precedents. The Victorian period was also the first period in which mass production was used in cabinetry. This process saw the introduction of turned wooden knobs as well as porcelain knobs. Still, more ornate, hand-crafted Victorian pieces had carved drawer pulls.
Edwardian period furniture, with all of its clean and geometric lines, tended to feature simple swan neck pulls and smaller round ring pulls that complemented the satinwood and ebony inlays that were in fashion at the time.
These past two months we've received a number of gorgeous pieces great and small. Although we import the lion's share of our furniture directly from England, we sometimes venture to the Netherlands, where we recently came across some truly exquisite specimens. So without further ado, here are a few of our most recent English and Dutch pieces!
And after a brief, one-month hiatus, we're back! Come visit Peter in the South Building, spaces H9-H10. All items in our booth this month are 50% off!
So, why do we prefer English antique furniture? There are a number of reasons, many of them relating to comparisons between English antiques and other traditions. The American tradition, for example, took shape out of English precedents—and, I think, never really blossomed to the same extent. Instead of taking root in an organic, artisanal tradition like English furniture, even fine American antiques tend to be machine-made, reflecting the difference between the old "mom and pop" model and mass production. Also in contrast to English counterparts, French and Continental furniture tends to allow for more ornate motifs—most notably, gilding:
Meanwhile, English furniture usually represents a kind of happy compromise between the complex and the simple. For example, during the Victorian period and before the Georgian period you're likely to find an explosion of carvings and designs, but still no gaudy colors:
Still, English furniture mostly consists of modest, elegant designs that privilege thick, shellacked finishes and hand-rubbed coats of wax. Colors are earthy but rich, while understatement prevails, so that even given a marquetry design, the complex inlays feature organic, muted colors and the architecture remains relatively basic:
In the English tradition, every element of complexity must be purchased with the addition of something simple. This lends English antiques a certain balance that I find extremely appealing. Apparently, millions of other Americans think so, too, because "mainstream" traditional or antique style American furniture is basically a copy of Georgian taste. Take this archetypal writing desk, for example:
The sheer familiarity of the design (plain rectangular shape, swan neck pulls, fluted corners, square tapered legs) speaks to how deeply the English furniture tradition has embedded itself in American taste. Georgian style is more or less the norm in offices all across the country, while foreignness or exoticism is almost always denoted by distinctly European designs like the above gilded table—not by the wholesome and familiar English tradition. So, in a paradoxical sense, English furniture is as American as it gets—or, to put it another way, we in fact prefer American furniture so much that we look to the English original.
“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?"
It is a scientific fact that wingback armchairs are conducive to producing philosophical musings.
It's true. The Incredible Hulk has perished in battle and we made him into a sofa:
Good news is that it's one of a kind!
They say the Devil is in the details. I tend to disagree. In pieces like this, the details announce impeccable craftsmanship, fine mimesis of the natural world, and symbolic meaning:
This is what we've lost with the decline of the furniture industry.
At one time, craftsmen and their clients participated in a certain tradition of meaningful artistic expression, a cultural consciousness that demanded aesthetic significance even from everyday objects. Yes, on the one hand, Victorian bookcases of this quality would have been limited to a privileged few, but on the other hand, we can say that even today's fine contemporary furniture bears the irreducible mark of stylized, mass reproducibility. We have passed from imitating "nature" to imitating the industrial process itself—with all the sterile angles and slight curves that postmodern furniture allows.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a bookcase like this, and to know that it is par for the course and not some exceptional rarity crafted over a century ago? I would like to see a return to this kind of masterful craftsmanship, to the art of rendering space in unique and emotionally significant ways—and trust me, I'm not just nerding out about this furniture (although that's part of it). Look at this drawer front, for example:
On it you can clearly see wheat paired with grapes (carved quite beautifully, at that). As a student of English poetry, I instantly recognize at least some of the meanings, here: wheat, the traditional symbol of death, but also (paradoxically) life and fertility. This is the kind of sly irony that you can expect from Victorian poetry, and here we see it in Victorian furniture, as well. And of course the grapes themselves bring their own, contrasting meaning: the fruit of wine, drink of the gods (especially Bacchus/Dionysus, who has always been linked to poetry and creativity). The meanings are numerous: death paired with life (a famous Victorian cliché), but also the notion of the harvest and thus of agrarian life, a culture that was already giving way toward modern industrialization even before the Victorian period, when the land-based nobility became the capitalist class, when the old ways gave way to the new, etc. Likewise, shortly thereafter England's long tradition of fine, hand-crafted furniture bottlenecked into the handful of dedicated hold-outs that we see today.
I don't pretend to hold some kind of scholarly knowledge about furniture, although I've learned my fair share here at English Classics. However, it is obvious that this bookcase at least exemplifies the aesthetic mentality of the day, providing some answers to the questions: what is art? and what is beauty? and how will we adapt these notions to the spaces that we live in? In my view, these are the questions that we should ask of our furniture.
But we have seen today an increasing focus on cheap utility—regardless of socioeconomic context—and although this approach has its merits (namely affordability), it often suffers from a brand of minimalism that is aimed less at the efficient use of space and more at the least amount of effort. The same could be said of a great deal of postmodern architecture, which offers its own can of worms. So, antiques aren't just about nostalgia. They bring a certain level of history and humanity to the spaces that they occupy. They remind us that we are not alone on this long historical trajectory, and that at one point furniture was valued for its art as much as for its function. So, we can hope that this level of dedicated appreciation might return again—and in a lot of ways, it has, e.g. our line of reproduction furniture. However, there is still work to be done in the culture at large, and I guess that's why we're here.
