Buying Oak Furniture

Archive for the ‘Appraising Furniture’ Category

With experience you will be able to develop a carefully trained eye and find the perfect pieces for your home.

Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards wrote the most comprehensive volume about antique English furniture entitled The Dictionary of English Furniture. It is a must read for those who have a sincere interest in learning how to appraise antique wood furniture. This three volume set was first published in 1927, and contains wonderful illustrations. Ralph Edwards issued a second edition in 1954 which was both enlarged and revised.

Georgian Furniture, published by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1951 is another excellent reference volume for the period from 1720 to 1820.

Comte Francois de Salverte wrote an excellent book on French furniture entitled Les Ebenistes du XVIW Siecle. This books fourth edition was published in Paris and Brussels in 1953. Pierre Verlet wrote Les Meubles Francois du XVIW Siecle, which is less expensive, but also less comprehensive. Its two volumes were published in Paris in 1956, and are known as: i, Menuiserie, ii, Ebenisterie. Both of the above referenced works are written in French. If you are looking for a book written in English, you may want to read Catalogue of French Furniture written by F. J. B. Watson. This book contains a great deal of illustrations and information and was published by the Wallace Collection in London in 1956.

With experience you will be able to develop a carefully trained eye and find the perfect pieces for your home. Your extensive antiques collection is sure to become the envy of all your friends.

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.