Antique Way

Period Furniture Learning Can Pay Off Big

When people talk about antique furniture these days, they¡¯re usually referring to pieces made from the late 1800s through the Depression years of the 1930s. While some of these pieces can be pretty, especially the Victorian styles with ornate carving and lovely grained wood, they¡¯re still not quite the cream of the crop.

The top of the heap in American furniture was produced in the thirteen original colonies from the mid to late 1600s through the first part of the 19th century. Furniture like this gets the Keno brothers really revved when it shows up occasionally on the Antiques Roadshow television series.

Why? Theses pieces were impeccably hand made by skilled craftsmen in the finest colonial cabinet shops. A number of these fabulous creations were even signed by the makers.

The Goddard Townsend family of Newport, Rhode Island produced some of the most renowned and valuable pieces made during this period and a number of them were signed.

These pieces get high-end auction houses like Sotheby¡¯s really excited. In fact, a single mahogany secretary bookcase made by Christopher Townsend in 1740 once sold at auction in New York for the astonishing sum of $8.25 million.

If you read Leigh and Leslie Keno¡¯s book, Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture, you¡¯re familiar with the passion period furniture pieces can generate. Haven¡¯t had the pleasure? I saw a few copies at my local Half Price Bookstore recently. It¡¯s worth picking up.

Lyn Sack Wall also discusses the merits of period furniture in a feature previously posted on this site. As the niece of Albert Sack, who operates Israel Sack, Inc. as mentioned in the Keno¡¯s book, she is uniquely qualified to educate on this topic.

¡°It takes more than being old to determine the value of an antique. Not only must an item be of high quality, it must have artistic merit,¡± Wall wrote. She also noted that ¡°there are many periods of antique furniture. The different periods and styles overlap.¡±

Wall emphasized that cabinetmakers did not stop making Queen Anne furniture on December 31, 1749 and start making Chippendale furniture on January 1, 1750. Each subsequent period actually influenced the style of its successors. The major periods can be broken down into Colonial and Federal, however.

The Colonial period dates from around 1620 to 1780 and includes Jacobean, Queen Anne and Chippendale styles. The Federal period extends from 1780 through 1820 and incorporates Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Classical styles.

While we rarely run across these fine pieces now, you¡¯ll find a number on display in museums. In fact, I discovered some lovely pieces on exhibit at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia while on vacation, including a fabulous shell carved chest crafted by John Townsend.

In talking with Colonial Williamsburg¡¯s own cabinetmaker in a shop where period reproductions are handmade while visitors watch, I learned that the wealthier members of colonial society usually imported their furnishings from Europe. The consumers buying more ornately carved pieces of American furniture were from the up and coming middle class who wanted to show off a bit.

These days it¡¯s definitely the privileged that can afford these beautiful examples of American craftsmanship. They often purchase them anonymously through phone bids in upscale auctions where prices can skyrocket in a matter of minutes.

What makes a masterpiece of furniture worthy of such attention? According to Wall, a piece must possess a ¡°beauty and quality that transcends the bounds of the era or even the field of art it represents¡± to qualify for masterpiece status.

While you may never run across a piece of this caliber in your neck of the woods, it certainly doesn¡¯t hurt to learn about the quality of fine American furniture. The more you know about the craftsmanship and styles, the better you¡¯ll be at separating the wheat from the chaff on your own furniture foraging adventures.