Appraising Antique Wood Furniture

For the novice hoping to learn about antiques, it is wise to carefully examine as many genuine pieces as you can.

Only experience will give you the tools to examine a piece of furniture and determine whether or not it is old. For the novice hoping to learn about antiques, it is wise to carefully examine as many genuine pieces as you can. A great resource is a museum where you can be assured of an items authenticity. Through practice you will eventually gain enough knowledge to know when a piece is a true antique.

The color of wood will change over time. This change will vary according to type of wood used to create the furniture and the way it was been maintained over the years. Believe it or not, even the wood inside the piece that has not been exposed to sun or wear will change over time. You can see the difference by scraping off a small amount of material in an unnoticeable place inside a drawer. The outside surfaces of the wood that have been polished will also change over time, and will change completely if the wood is polished again.

It is also a good idea to learn about the various methods that have been used to manufacture furniture throughout the years. For example, the dovetail joints used in the early 1600s were very crude in comparison to later pieces. It is best to use a very bright light to carefully inspect the piece and look for any alternations that may have been completed. It will be helpful to know what has been changed and why.

It is also helpful to know about different hardware. Screws, for instance, have changed over the years. For example they did not taper to a point until after about 1850. Another example is the slot on the head of the screw, which has become straight along the center of the screw head thanks to modern machinery. Older screws have a slot that is almost always off center.

The veneers used on older pieces of furniture needed to be cut by hand, making them very think compared with modern veneers. Old veneers were often almost an eighth of an inch think, while modern veneers are machine cut and therefore much thinner. The thickness of a veneer can give you some idea as to the age of a particular piece.

The highest quality pieces were often created using rarer woods. These rare woods cost more, and demanded that the most skilled laborers worked on them. Some of the highest quality eighteenth-century pieces were given an oak lining in the drawers, although you can also find high quality pieces with cedar and mahogany linings as well. Each individual shop had its own practices, and these changed over time. As a result, you will not always be able to get an exact date for a piece by simply examining it.

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