How to Determine the Authenticity and Era of Consignment Finds…continued

One of the most common ways to decipher the age of furniture is by its construction.  For instance when a person comes into my consignment store and is considering buying a dresser the first thing they will look at are the joints on the drawers.  Most go through this ritual because they have seen someone else do it, therefore pretending to know what they are looking for.  Similar to when we go through the wine tasting ritual when the Wine Steward pours our wine.  Seldom do we know what the heck we are supposed to be doing, but we do know we are supposed to at least look like we do.   However, there are some that have done their homework and know exactly what they are doing.  My goal is to arm you with enough furniture knowledge to become somewhat of an expert or at the very least know why you are going through the motions.

 Let’s get started, shall we?  There are many different kinds of  joinery, some you have heard of and some you may have never heard of.  Such as, tongue and groove, dove tail, finger joint, knapp joint, mortise and tenon, butt joint, dowel joint, hung rabbet and of course nailed joints.   

Probably the most familiar joinery is dovetail which initially was used in the 17^th century and has been continually used into the 21^st century.  However, in the beginning dovetail joinery was generally one large dovetail encased by two smaller pins.  With America emerging full speed ahead we began to realize that handcrafted dovetails were laborious and we needed to invent an alternative to this slow process. By the 19^th century hand work was going by the wayside, and Furniture manufacturing was converting to the mass production and the use of the multiple cuttinghead dovetail machine .  There are earlier examples from the 1870’s and 1880’s of machine made dovetailed drawers, but most came so late that we labeled them a 20^th century phenomenon.  The machine work is easily distinguished from the hand work, mostly because the machine made dovetails are identical in size.  This is a telltale (no pun intended) sign of furniture made circa 1870’s  to 1900’s and beyond….to be continued.

See you in the store soon!

Kathy

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