If you're a small, enterprising antique dealer like us, you might do your own photography. For our part, we've devoted a small section of our warehouse to an enclosed photo studio with a light set and a computer with Photoshop CS3. Now I'm no PS guru but this is one of those programs that have changed the world, if only in small ways. As for furniture, the advantage of having good-looking pictures is that most antique dealers don't. This always surprises me because beautiful pictures can make or break a sale, especially since many people can be uneasy about buying online without first seeing the item in person. The trick is to show how beautiful your item is without hiding its flaws (if any), and to refrain from performing a Photoshop face lift.

Consider the following photos of a walnut writing desk that we have. Taken with a Canon Rebel XT, an 18-55mm lens and an Hoya polarizer, the left photo has no post-processing at all. The middle has what I would consider the most honest appearance, although I would consider the right most beautiful.

That's right: this here is a genuine IKEA tin desk machine-crafted around Y2K, about 20 years before WWIII. It is only one of 900 copies surviving from the original batch of 85,000...

Is this the future of antiques? I confess to actually running these kinds of narratives through my mind as I try to grasp what tomorrow's furniture world will be like. How long can our current pool of antiques last? Eventually, I suppose they will all break, rust, shatter or otherwise vanish into the thin air of history until the last remaining specimens become an endangered species of craftsmanship. So if we aren't producing new quality furniture, we are doomed to run out.

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Anybody who knows antiques and the reproductions that follow them knows that familiarizing yourself with various furniture periods can be a big help. That's why we decided to offer our readers a few useful summaries of the major furniture periods of England, starting with one of the first. This post is the 5th in a series of 7, continued from a discussion of Georgian furniture.

Regency style furniture developed in the latter decades of the Georgian period, and represented the culmination of neoclassical design. While the years previous to the 19th century saw simpler furniture designs and less rich ornamentation, Regency furniture featured the development of embellished adornment and extravagance, thus anticipating the exoticism of Victorian furniture. Regency furniture grew so popular across the Atlantic that Americans adopted their own version, known as Federal style furniture, which lingered on a few decades after Regency styles fell out of favour in England.

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A friend of mine asked me the other day about how I distinguish different wood types. Now, I only regularly deal with a limited selection of wood types, but there are two basic facts that you need to know.

1. The first, most important thing I could say on the subject is this: there is no such thing as a "cherry finish" (to name the most popular example). This is a misnomer invented for the convenience of cheap synthetic veneers made to look like cherry (or any other wood type), and the term has simply become so popular that it has come to incorrectly apply to real and imitation cherry alike. Finishing is the process of staining and coating applied to a wood.

2. The way to identify wood is by its grain—not by its color. There is, again, no such thing as a "cherry color." Before staining, nearly all wood simply looks, in color at least, like the normal timber you'll find at any hardware store. This is why you will find, for example, oak furniture that is very light, or orange, or even black (as when it is ebonized). Some woods, however, tend to be a certain color, like yew, which tends to be orange-ish, and all woods take differently to different stains. However, the rule still stands: you identify wood by its grain.

It is difficult to explain what each grain looks like, but it is easy to show with pictures. Just see the following. (Click on the pictures for larger sizes.)

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In a recent blog post for Antiques Avenue, a UK seller of vintage jewellery, I discussed the particular appeal of antique furniture, but afterward I found myself wondering about antiques in general. What is the nature of our attraction to all things old? Obviously I could cite quality, but I'm not sure that accounts for the charm that antiques hold over us. In the case of vintage antiques¹, many of us who were there are still around, so it makes sense that some Baby Boomers would have a taste for the styles of their youth. Still, vintage and retro pop aesthetics have no problem thriving in today’s young community (think of the hipster clothing craze, or the continued popularity of retro adverts). So what gives?

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