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Know Everything About The Best Way to Identify the Best Furniture
Here we will
look into how to identify the best ways to recognize the furniture
whether they are good or bad and old or new. This can be done through
the general appearances, the coloring, construction, etc. All these
could help you to identify the best and the worst.
General appearance
The general
look of a piece of furniture tells the expert whether it is old or
not, but this is a matter of experience. If you are interested in old
furniture see as many genuine pieces as you can; go to museums
where you are certain of the authenticity of the articles. Slowly the
eye and mind can be trained to recognize whether the appearance of a
piece is true or not.
Coloring
The ageing of
wood alters its colour according to the timber from which it is made,
and according to the treatment it has received over the years. Even
the hidden inside parts change with time; if a drawer-lining is
scraped it will show at once how the surface has aged. Equally, the
old polished outside surfaces mellow, and repolishing changes the
colour of the wood completely.
Construction
It is
worthwhile studying the methods of making furniture,
and how they have changed from time to time. How, for instance, the
crude dovetails on the heavy drawer sides of 1600 were modified and
improved in the course of the century. When examining a piece of
furniture in a strong light, it is as well to look for signs of
alteration, and to try to reason what was done and why.
New screws
differ markedly from old; prior to about 1850 they did not taper to a
point, also, the slot in the head was hand-cut and seldom central; in
modern machine-made screws it is invariably exactly across the middle
of the head. Veneering has been mentioned on earlier pages when it
came into use with the introduction of walnut. It may be added that
old veneers were cut with a saw by hand, and are consequently quite
thick; many of them almost an eighth of an inch. Modern
veneers, however, are cut with a machine-driven saw, and are
much thinner. This, with other factors, is a useful indication of the
genuineness of a piece. The use of some of the rarer woods implies
that an article cost more for materials and probably also for labor,
and that it was probably made to a high standard throughout. The
better-quality eighteenth-century pieces were fitted with oak linings
to the drawers, but in exceptional instances this might be mahogany
or cedar. Practice varied from workshop to workshop and from period
to period, and a guide can give only clues not answers.
Books
The
comprehensive book on all aspects of old English
furniture is The Dictionary of English Furniture, by Percy
Macquoid and Ralph Edwards. It is in three large volumes, copiously
illustrated, and was first issued in 1927. A further edition, revised
and enlarged by Ralph Edwards, was published in 1954.
An excellent
guide to the period 1720-1820 is Georgian
Furniture, issued by the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1951.
A standard
work on French furniture is Les Ebenistes du XVIW Siecle, by Comte
Francois de Salverte, of which the fourth edition was published in
Paris and Brussels in 1953. Also written in French, but less
exhaustive and cheaper in price is Les Meubles Francois du XVIW
Siecle, by Pierre Verlet. It is in two volumes: i), Menuiserie, ii),
Ebenisterie, published in Paris in 1956. In English the Wallace
Collection, London, Catalogue of French Furniture, by F. J. B.
Watson, issued in 1956, contain, a great deal of information and many illustrations.
Experts in
furniture can identify the furniture and tell you that whether the
articles are new or old through the appearances of the furniture. The
coloring of the woods altered by the aging and the treatments that it
receives from time to time determines its appearances. And the types
of constructions give you a good idea about the condition of the
furniture. The screws the nails and the way the woods are fitted,
etc. gives shows what are the conditions. The Dictionary of English
Furniture, by Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards is the comprehensive
book on all aspects of the English furniture. And Les Ebenistes du
XVIW Siecle, by Comte Francois de Salverte is a standard work on French
furniture. |
