Furniture Commentary

A Look at Pulls, Antique and New

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on August 07, 2010

One of my favorite things about antique furniture is the hardware. I don't often post shots of our pulls, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Enjoy!

Tags: hardware, showcase

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A Fine Example of Reproduction Furniture

Posted by under Furniture Commentary on July 01, 2010

I was in for a surprise this week while unwrapping one of our recent arrivals, a lovely flame mahogany credenza. Although the furniture produced by our third-generation English cabinetmaker is always high quality, the character of each piece is unique because every one is handmade. This time we received a real gem. Enjoy the pictures.



The selection of flame mahogany and satinwood are really quite beautiful in this piece. The stain and the finish both set into the wood flawlessly to produce one of the lovelier specimens here at English Classics.



One of the great things about fine English furniture is that it achieves the perfect synthesis of utility and aesthetic perfection.



I wouldn't want you to miss the back, so here it is—no detail was lost on our cabinetmaker.



This shot of the hand-cut dovetails also happens to showcase the gorgeous grain and complexion of the wood.



The ogee foot is probably my favorite variety, and in this picture at least I hope it is clear why.

Tags: credenza, showcase, reproduction, handmade

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A Fine Example of Victorian Craftsmanship

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on June 24, 2010

Recently I wrote about our May furniture container, and one of the items I featured in that post was a carved Victorian sideboard. This is really such a beautiful piece that I wanted to share some of the detailed photos that we have of it. Enjoy!



The black areas in the backsplash are mirrors.



Take a look at the lion in the center. He looks absolutely shocked. Somewhere, a lion died of old age and woke up in Victorian England as a carving in somebody's sideboard. Not the afterlife he was expecting. Surprise!—you're furniture.



When I first saw this guy, I thought he was a pregnant woman until I saw the beard. For a moment I considered Victorian carnies and bearded ladies, but after banishing that thought, I realized that the representation here is in a classical style, where depictions of men and women are often androgynous.



Here is the little man's female opposite. They are both holding a cylindrical object, the man with his left hand, the woman with her right, but I haven't been able to figure out what it is supposed to represent. I'm sure it was a common and recognizable motif to Victorians.



The surprising thing about these cherubs is the remarkable level of detail shown in their faces. They sure are cute little pudgy things. (In case you're wondering why I don't call them puttos, see my post, "Putto or Cherub?".)



I believe that these pulls are original to the sideboard, which is fairly uncommon for a piece of this age. Incredibly, the pulls show almost as much precise detail as the wood itself.

Tags: sideboard, showcase, victorian

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Ancient Moving Company Sticker Found

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on June 02, 2010

I had this Welsh dresser in the studio recently and found a label on the back that read, "Pickfords Ltd."



I always Google labels found on our furniture. Many times, I hit a dead end, since most of the companies with labels on antiques have long since gone out of business. This time, however, I found these guys, the very same Pickfords on the tag. What I found was fascinating: they've been in business since the 17^th century. "Ancient" is perhaps an exaggeration, but even so. Holy cow.

So there you have it. An antique company moving antiques.

Tags: pickfords, label

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Why Buy a Reproduction?

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on October 16, 2009

So you may be in the market for antique furniture, but there are often good reasons for buying a reproduction. My last post on reproductions prompted a conversation with a friend of mine about whether buying reproductions at all is a good idea when you can just go for antiques, especially since good, handmade reproductions can sometimes be more expensive than the real thing. So I decided to put together a list of the top three reasons for buying a reproduction instead of an antique:

1. You may want something flawless that looks new but is in an antique style. If it is an actual antique, you're probably looking at forking over a lot of dough. If you wanted an actual Georgian version of this walnut linen press, for instance, I would guess you would need at least $15-20k. A reproduction might set you back only $5k.

2. You may need something that is rare or practically impossible to find. Some dealers, like us for instance, can make anything you can dream up.

3. You may need a suite of matching or similar furniture; depending on what it is you need, this can be quite difficult. Most of the time when someone needs a group of items, they're looking to outfit an office. So you can get your desk, credenza, bookcase and filing cabinet in one place, with the same leather and wood types if you want—and have them all look antique.

Tags: reproduction furniture

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Finding Quality Reproduction Furniture

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on October 09, 2009

A host of fears and misconceptions haunt the idea of reproduction furniture—and in some cases, with good reason. Chinese junk, for instance, has long inundated the U.S. market, and some dealers aren't as honest as English Classics about where their items come from (and of course not all dealers get their stuff from England). But if you know what to look for in a good reproduction, then you don't need to worry too much about where it comes from because, I imagine, quality can come from the most surprising places. (In fact, I predict that as Chinese incomes rise, the burgeoning upper-class will want the same level of quality that wealthy Westerners have come to expect, and there will be a demand for quality right in their own backyards. This will make cheap, quality Chinese furniture a reality.)

For starters, the best way to find out about a piece is to simply ask the dealer. Ask where and when it is made, what it is made of (veneers, underlying materials, hardware metal). If it is finished, ask what kind of finish it is, and how to clean it. Ask what style it is in, whether it is handmade, and where and how the dealer acquired the piece. The answers to these questions will usually serve as good indicators of quality, and they might even get the dealer to lower the asking price.

Continue reading...

Tags: reproduction furniture, serpentine chest, dovetails

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Antique Appraisals: Take Them with a Grain of Salt

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on October 01, 2009

I recently came across the following article about antique appraisals while digging around for furniture news, and I was surprised at the price tag put on the furniture discussed in the article.

Now let me lay out some disclaimers: I sell furniture, I don't appraise it (we don't do appraisals, in case you were wondering); the furniture I sell is mostly English (duh), not French; most of what comes into our shop is usually 19^th century, not 18^th; and I am sure that Ms. Durr is an absolutely capable professional.

So, that being said, I would be very surprised if Mrs. Francis gets half of the $64,000 of the estimated value. As the article itself indicates, it is difficult for individuals to sell furniture and even more so to sell it at its "worth," because of the Internet (hello, English Classics?) and the slow economy. Unless Francis gets serious about marketing this set, it probably won't sell, and usually such an effort is long and painstaking. This is why marketing is an entire industry in itself, and why, in fact, I am sitting in front of this monitor slapping away at the keys—not everybody can do it.

Mostly it comes down to time. Francis indicates that she is willing to wait, but even given several years, the odds that she will find a buyer without 1) professional help or 2) serious investment of her own time are pretty slim. These kinds of relatively rare, quality items tend to sell in very selective markets composed of high-end auctions, designers and big-shot retailers (e.g. Miami Circle). Other options include Ebay, consignment and a patient email campaign to retailers—none of which are likely to reap anything close to the $64k that Francis is hoping for. This is partly because the Internet is a market where people expect to pay less, and dealers aren't in the business for free.

In short, the furniture market is generally insulated from individuals seeking to dump their valuable antique furniture. Not that I wouldn't love to be surprised or proven wrong, but if you're looking into selling your own furniture or antiques, just keep in mind that a piece's "value" isn't necessarily its price, and for that matter is often just some abstract number that doesn't really mean much to anyone but insurance companies. Your best bet is to do some research and compare what you've got to what other people are selling. Either way, good luck!

Tags: appraisals, antiques

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Putto or Cherub?

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on September 12, 2009

This isn't the type of question I ask very often, but a post about a Thomas Brooks Dresser over at Rare Victorian peaked my interest. John Werry raised the issue of whether the winged male child, shown at the top of this dresser as well as in countless other works of furniture and art, ought to be referred to as a "putti" (singular for "putto") or as a "cherub."

According to Wikipedia's version of the story, "cherub" cannot refer to the artistic representation of toddler angels, a claim for which Wikipedia provides no support in that article but does in another on putto. I use the term "support" loosely, since the reference does not appear to be academic or peer-reviewed; in any case, a forum poster known as Juan Carlos Martinez argues that "cherub" refers exclusively to the Christian theological figures, and that putto are only secularized versions of Cupid—and thus obviously not Christian (see the rest of his argument). Not wanting to leave the question unanswered, I did what I always do in any contest of English diction: I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary (which unfortunately requires a subscription to access).

Continue reading...

Tags: putto, cherub, oed, thomas brooks, rare victorian

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Divided We Fall? The Shared Plight of Antique Dealers

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on September 03, 2009

When asked to consider their relationship to other dealers in the industry, most antique furniture merchants will respond with one word: competition. Now of course this is a perfectly reasonable answer, and perfectly correct, but competitive rivalry doesn't exactly capture the nature of the business.

Yes, there is a bottom line—everyone wants to sell the best product at the best prices. In other industries, the resulting competition has seen the concentration of capital in a few hands, most notably in multinational corporations (i.e. our toothpaste comes from four companies, our cars from a dozen or so). In our industry, we have managed to reproduce the same model of horizontal integration, if only on a smaller scale. Nevertheless, just mentioning the phrase, "antique furniture," calls to mind the myriad of mom-and-pop jobs, small dealers and down-to-earth trade markets like Atlanta's own antique show.

Why is the antique business so decentralized? Because our industry is one that resists colonization by larger market forces. As Rockefeller once said (and I'm paraphrasing here), the age of the individual is over, having been replaced by globalized corporate identities—and yet, here we are. Perhaps this is because it is in the nature of antiques to resist change—after all, evading or enduring the countless number of catastrophic events that can beset a piece of furniture, only to emerge hundreds of years later as a beautifully patinated work of art is quite a feat. And of course there is the difficulty in reaping profits from said furniture.

Continue reading...

Tags: dealers, industry

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Edwardian Furniture (1901-1910)

Posted by Chris under Furniture Commentary on August 28, 2009

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 last in a series of 7, continued from a discussion of Victorian furniture.

The Edwardian period represents in many ways the last period of English furniture craftsmanship in which bench-made furniture pieces played a central role, with later styles of furniture more or less abandoning traditional precedents in favor of cheap materials and machine production. Today, only a handful of English furniture manufacturers continue the tradition preserved by Edwardian craftsmen, among them the third-generation cabinetmaker who supplies our own line of furniture.

So named for King Edward VII’s reign from 1901-1910, the Edwardian period continued the Victorian tradition of reviving and blending older styles. Georgian furniture inspirations occupied the forefront of Edwardian furniture-making, however, and thus the period produced a kind of neo-Georgian style, with key differences. Among these, for instance, was the revived prominence of Queen Anne style furniture, which tended to employ cabriole legs, serpentine curvatures in chests, and chair backs curved to fit the body, with walnut as a favourite wood type. The Art Nouveau style was also a contemporary of the Edwardian period.

Typically, Edwardian furniture makers used mahogany, often in butterfly or quarter-veneer styles. Square tapered legs and spade feet were common. Satinwood was the favoured wood type for inlays, usually in combination with ebony. Satinwood inlay patterns included fan, swag, festoon, and string inlays. In fact, very often Edwardian furniture would include a combination of all of these inlays, producing a richly ornamented appearance, even in the absence of heavily worked carvings, and in this respect Edwardian craftsmen favoured the simple yet elegant Georgian approach to ornamentation.

Tags: furniture, history, edwardian

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