Hello Folks,
Customer wants me to fix the front right leg on this piece and paint it white. Since the customer is always right I obliged but when I got it to the shop and inspected it I realized it has many fine woodworking characteristics and indications it might be fairly old. I want to suggest to the customer he should get it looked at by an antique dealer before I continue working on it but wanted to see if someone on knots could provide info that may help me push my point across with the customer. Here’s what we know about it:
– Customer says his father found it in a ditch in the Ottawa/Gatineau (Canada) region 50 years ago, the leg was broken then.
– There are no markings on the piece.
– The piece is 100% made from solid pine, which is very common for antiques in this region.
– The top is a single board, 17″ wide. Attached to the sides with cut nails driven from above.
– As the different layers of paint disappeared while I was sanding the top I discovered that at some point there was a back splash attached to the top or perhaps some sort of frame to attach a hutch to. That’s why I called it a vanity but I really don’t know for sure.
– The raised panel doors have the raised part of the panel on the inside similar to Shaker furniture.
– The drawer boxes are assembled with cut nails.
– The back is made from tong and groove beadboard.
– The hinges are made from steel with flat head slotted steel screws. Square drive screws have been around for a very long time in Canada so the fact they were not used might be a clue about the age of the piece.
– The knobs seemed to be made of a hard black plastic and are threaded for what seems to be 1/4 20 bolts. They only have 4 layers of paint on them while the rest of the piece has 6. Hence I am not sure if they are original to the piece.
– The very first layer of paint applied was the colour of molasses and it gummed up my sanding disks while the other layers did not gum up at all. I was using 40 grit disks with a vacuum attached.
Thanks for the help.
Replies
The details of the construction suggest the piece was handmade rather than from a factory. A few pictures of the drawer construction would help.
The fact that it has been painted repeatedly means any higher value it might have had for having the original finish is long gone. Your cleaning it up, repairing, and repainting it isn't going to do its value any harm, and will probably improve the value if the work is well done. The plastic knobs are not original, the door latch is probably a later addition also. The style of the front would suggest 1900 to 1920.
The piece is a sideboard and they often had a rear gallery or even an upper shelf assembly.
Shop Manager for FWW Magazine, 1998 to 2007
I dug out my old copy of "The Furniture of Old Ontario" and did a little comparing. Stylistically it's most like an Empire kitchen cupboard-sideboard from 1840-1860. As you found, it started life with a backboard that is now missing. The latch with the white knob and bronze center is common on Victorian pieces from the last quarter of the 18th century but it sure looks out of place on this piece. The heaviness around the drawsers is pretty crude, but the hinges, wavy top and the wear on the rails and drawer edges strike me as being consistent with 19th century rather than 20th. I agree with John that it's a vernacular piece from the backwoods, but I'm thinking second half of the 19th century with later modifications. Perhaps someone with more expertise than me can point out some features that lock in the date.
Pete
Edited 10/3/2009 11:57 pm ET by PeteBradley
Pete,
How about screws, especially on the hinges? If the screws are blunt, not pointy wouldn't that put it sometime before 1846? I believe they developed them (pointed/tapered screws) around this time.
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I agree with Gretchen I don't think it's pre-1846. A lot of furniture from victorian times onward was done in earlier styles.Pete
Bob - Screws produced on a screw-lathe (the "pointy" ones) can be as early as the 1830's. And while blunt-tipped screws can be helpful in dating a piece, realize that iron hardware was comparitively vastly more expensive then than it is today, so screws, nails and hinges were often recovered from older, out-of-fashion pieces and used on newly constructed ones, so in and of themselves hand-fashioned screws aren't conclusive evidence of date of manufacture.
There's a fairly interesting write-up about this in the Wooden Artifacts Group archive:
http://www.wag-aic.org/Am_Wood_Screws.pdf
That was a very informative link. Great patent fire of 1936?
Cast vs stamped hinges! We sure take hardware for granted now.
Thanks
It looks like my estimate of the piece's age was off, the arguments for for its being older, based on the hardware and nails, are strong. I knew the style was pre 1900, but in my experience handmade furniture from rural shops tended to be behind the times in adopting trends so this piece was probably made after the Empire design had already been around for quite awhile, but probaly not as late as my first estimate. John White
Shop Manager for FWW Magazine, 1998 to 2007
With all do respect, its an ugly piece that your lucky enough to find someone that wants to put money into it. Paint the thing, and be happy that in this economic downturn that you have work.
John's comments about it being homemade echo my first impressions. The nailed drawer sides especially raised my suspicions, and the kinda hodge-podge of materials and techniques.
Back in the day when I bought and sold vintage and antique furniture, I ran across a few notable or at least memorable home-made pieces. The cabinet in your pic range that bell in my mid.
BTW, a "vanity" would have a place for a lady to sit down. Your piece looks very kitchen-oriented to me, or at least dining-room.
I agee with John that it isn't going to have extraordinary values as a collectable under so much paint, and with the top completely defaced.
I would suggest that chemical stripping is much more appropriate with antiques. Not only does it leave the surface in better condition, and retaining some of it's patina it is typically better able to take stain. Almost no sanding would be needed. A heavily sanded surface is just the same as being new as far as value is concerned.
At this point I'd fix the leg, strip as needed, and go ahead with the paint job.
It can be made into a cute "old" piece. It isn't hand made in my opinion--factory made, and with a LOT of repair over the years (plastic knobs!)including the drawers. Strip it and finish it with a clear finish. It is early 20th century. Here in the US it might even be called "cottage furniture" at this time--or even more "shabby chick". I can't tell how big it really is, but it "looks" small for a sideboard. They were HUGE heavy pieces in this style.
I would NOT paint it again, unless it just suits the decor of the home. Properly stripped the pine in this can be absolutely wonderful, warm and attractive.
AND give up on it being pre-1846. It isn't that old.
The pictures are so huge, I wish someone would resize them so we could really get an idea of what they are.
Edited 10/4/2009 9:52 am ET by Gretchen
Seno,
The piece is in the "Empire" style, which was popular (in the USA) from 1820 or so to about 1850, maybe longer in the backwater areas away from large cities. The giveaway is the scrolled columns on the front corners, and the molded or shaped fronts to the drawers. My house, built in the 1850's in VA's Shenandoah Valley, has a fireplace surround, and stairway newel in the same style. As has been pointed out, it is a sideboard or "buffet", and many had a gallery or backsplash around 3 sides of the top, or at least across the back.
One would expect the piece if from an urban center, to be in mahogany, and mahogany veneer with the door's panels and the shaped drawer fronts veneered in a crotch veneer. Many rural interpretations in this style, built in native woods where imported mahogany was unavailable or simply too costly, were grained (decorative painted) to simulated mahogany. It's possible that the lower layer of gummy molasses colored paint is actually a layer of tinted varnish or shellac, colored to approximate a more expensive wood.
I believe your sideboard is from around 1840-1860. I see no evidence of planer or jointer ripples, indicating the wood was hand-planed. (Planer marks would push the build date to late 1800's at the earliest) Further, a piece from the 20th century would not be likely to be put together with square-shanked nails, as wire nails were so much cheaper and readily available, they became the norm by the early 1900's. But, the kicker is the hinges, which appear to be cast iron, with no pin. That is, the two halves of the hinge are inseparable; they were cast together, with one half of the hinge being placed in the sand mold for the other half to be cast around it. If so, this is a "Baldwin patent" hinge, dating from around the 1850's. If your hinges are Baldwins, and if they are original to the piece (not replacements) then the piece is almost certainly from that era. Just a few years later, stamped iron hinges became the standard. The screws, if original to the hinges, ought to have blunt points, not the sharp "gimlet points" that modern wood screws exhibit.
If the piece had been grain painted it would have more value than otherwise, if the graining had been left undisturbed--whoops, too late! Some painted pieces are quite highly desired by collectors according to the whims and creativity of the artist, and the whims and pocketbooks of the collector. Not too likely your piece ever fell into this category, but that is not even on the horizen now.
As far as your repair, if you are replacing a missing part, and use the same means of attachment for that front leg as was origianlly used, no harm no foul. And, another coat of paint on top of what's there wouldn't be a deal killer either, imo. If removing all the paint, stripper would be far preferable to sanding.
Hope this helps,
Ray
Senomozi, I was trained on pieces like this all over Ontario back in the early 1980's .this piece is what is refereed to as farm house furniture it was likely hand made by a local maker,often you see piece's like this built buy farmers from pictures they would get while taking the wife into town,but such piece's always have many signs that it was built by someone who does not build furniture on a regular basis.The piece was to be used likely to house silverware and table cloths and the sort "a Hutch" and is likely from around the area of 1905 to 1920.
Dan
Interesting. What are the key points that give you those dates?Pete
Thanks to all who provided feedback to help answer the question. I conveyed the information to my customer who was glad I took the time to ask around. Since the consensus was that painting the piece would not not hurt the value of the piece the customer decided to stay with the original plan.I did more digging based on the info people provided:- The attached picture shows one of the hinges and one of the screws used to fastened the hinges. All hinges were the same as were the screws. The hinge does not look like cast steel to me and the fact the screw has a pointy end would suggest the piece was probably made in the later portion of the timeframe folks suggested...right?
- The picture also shows one of the cut nails that was used.
- After stripping the paint off the latch I was pleasantly surprised to see a somewhat ornate cast body with a nice porcelain knob. See attached picture. We will reuse it once the piece is painted white.
- I had mentioned the very first layer of paint was the colour of molasses and someone suggested it might be tinted varnish/shellac. I actually made a mistake. There was another layer of paint under the brown layer. However, after stripping all the paint one can definitely see that the piece was originally stained a dark colour, likely to simulate mahogany as someone suggested.
- The back of the base molding has machine marks similar to that of a steel infeed roller on a planer. The shelves and drawer sides seemed to have a perfectly uniformed thickness suggesting they were milled by machine.
- Finally, with the paint removed from the doors we can see some sort of detail in the chamfer on the door rails and stiles. See the light coloured rectangles in the picture. Never seen a detail like this before.
The hinge is a very conventional one made from flat steel. The cast latch with the porcelain knob is a very common item and a nice detail.The little rectangles were probably a bit sharper and more detailed before you removed the paint. The raised area and the tapering cut that finishes the beveled inside edge of the door is called a lamb's tongue, it's a classy touch, the maker had style.The moldings were, as the machine marks indicate, almost certainly machine made and purchased from an outside supplier, the simple construction of the piece would suggest that the maker, while skilled, probably didn't have a very sophisticated tool kit and wouldn't likely have had large molding planes. You will probably also find that the drawer faces are built up from applied moldings rather than carved out of solid wood.The cut nails are machine made, not hand forged, which would suggest a later rather than an earlier date for the piece. It is also quite possible that the nails and other hardware, could be quite a bit older than the date the piece was made, I have new hardware in my shop that is going on 50 years old.John White
Shop Manager for FWW Magazine, 1998 to 2007
Edited 10/7/2009 7:42 am ET by JohnWW
Seno,
That looks in the photo like a cast hinge from the uneven appearance of its surface. A cast hinge retains the faintly pitted texture of the sand mold it was poured into, (just like the latch in the picture) and often shows a faint line down its length where the two halves of the mold were put together (a parting line). If stamped, the surface of the metal is smoother, and the barrel or knuckles will be wrapped around the pin. Cast patent hinges' barrels are solid, and there will be no evidence on their ends of a pin piercing them. The "pin" on a patent hinge is actually a pimple on one end of the barrel that engages a dimple on the end of the barrel of the other half of the hinge. The two halves of the hinge cannot be separated without breaking the hinge apart.
Ray
I took a few close-ups of the hinge since I am not exactly sure how to interpret what I am seeing even though you explain it clearly. I can definitely see the pitted texture on the latch but the hinge faces look much smoother to me except for the pitting caused by rust.
Looks like conventional one made from flat steel, not cast, as John says. Low grade steel and a touch of corrosion marks. I think what may look like sand cast marks are more probably roller mill gaul (sp) marks.BB
Seno,
Is that domed surface on the end of the knuckle the head of a pin? Looks like one- if it is, its not a patent hinge.
Ray
I certainly looks like a pin but it is no removable. I assumed both ends of the pins were hammered to make some sort of mushroom shape to keep the pin in place. Regardless, it seems that at this point discovering exactly what we have is not so important anymore given we're going with plan A.Thanks for the help.
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