Hold That Door

QUESTION: My mother collected doorstops. She had a collection of about 50 which she left to me when she died. I know very little about them, but I’d like to continue collecting them. What can you tell me about them—how did they originate and when, and how collectable are they today?

ANSWER: It’s great that you plan on continuing your mother’s collection. Most people seem to want to get rid of whatever items they inherit while others just warehouse them. But curating and growing a collection is different. Now it’s up to you to figure out just what doorstops you have, selling those that aren’t very good and adding those that will enhance your collection. But first, you need to learn a bit about their history.

Doorstops date back to the last quarter of the 18th century, around the time of the American Revolution, but in England. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes and held open large doors. The British called them “door porters” and liked the cast in iron or bronze.

By the early 1800s, doorstops began appearing in a variety of materials, including wood, glass, and earthenware. The cast-iron doorstops had flat backs from the hollow molds used to make them, allowing them to stand flat against the surface of the doors.

By the middle of the 19th century and especially following the Civil War, doorstops had evolved into full three-dimensional figures and were becoming increasingly popular in the United States.

American manufacturers followed the basic English tradition of making cast-iron doorstops in the familiar shape of baskets and flowers. They also began to develop a variety of attractive shapes, including houses, ships, stagecoaches, and all kinds of wild and domestic animals. American makers hand painted them in bright colors until all sorts of colorful doorstops were readily available.

By the 1880s, it wasn’t unusual to find iron birds, story book characters, and even a few human-type figures propping doors where ventilation was seasonally so important in so much of the country.

Some believe the Amish developed the use of the human figure as a doorstop to its fullest form starting in the 1880s and continuing into the 1930s. They cast figures of men, women and children, painted them with pleasing facial features, and dressed them in time-honored Amish clothing. These seven to nine inch high doorstops today sell for a minimum of several hundred dollars each.

Casting techniques had improved enough prior to the turn of the 20th century to enable foundries in the U.S. to manufacture nearly every design of doorstop a home owner could want. In fact, some of the firms invited customers to send detailed sketches of doorstops, so that they could create them. But all this variety of design resulted in variations in both the size and weight of doorstops. Heights ranged from four or five inches to two feet.

One of the most popular forms of doorstops was the dog. Manufacturers produced doorstops in the shapes of just about every breed of dog, from Alaskan Malamutes to Russian Wolfhounds to a variety of terriers. Many of these animals were full figure, cast in two parts, screwed together, and painted.

The Albany Foundry Company of Albany, New York, and A.M. Greenblatt Studios of Boston, Massachusetts, were among the major manufacturers of doorstops in the early 20th century. Both did a booming business in the late 1920s, selling cast-iron doorstops  for about a dollar each.

Additional firms included Hubley Manufacturing Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which made toys, Littco Products, National Foundry, and Eastern Specialty Manufacturing Company.

Doorstops were still quite effective and desirable well into the 1930s. Generally, production ceased abruptly at the onset of World War II, since factories converted to production of war materiel.

Today, antique doorstops sell for $50 or so in good condition, but can go as high as $200 for some special ones.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 17,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac.

A Question of Value

QUESTION: I recently purchased a beautiful old armchair from a consignment shop. It looks a lot like a Philadelphia Chippendale chair but I can’t be sure. Also, how do I determine the value? Can you help me?

ANSWER: This is a common question. Since the Antiques Roadshow first appeared on the air on PBS, people have been obsessed with knowing the value of their belongings. In fact, that’s the first question most people ask, not what is it or how old is it?

In the case of this chair, knowing what it is and how old it is makes all the difference in its value. Looking closely, you’ll notice that the carving on the knees of the chair is rather shallow. That tells you that this chair was made in a factory and not by hand in a cabinetmaker’s workshop the way authentic 18th-century Chippendale chairs would have been made. Also, the wood is dark-stained to look like mahogany. In Colonial times, cabinetmakers would have used real mahogany wood and then given it several coats of varnish to bring out the smooth surface shine.

This chair is most likely from the early part of the 20th century and not even 100 years old, so technically it isn’t an antique. As a used pieced of furniture, its value will depend on what the buyer wants to pay for it.

While the answer to the question of value may seem simple, in fact, it’s far from it. What type of value–retail value, insurance replacement value, fair-market value, auction value, or cash value? In the end, each of these values will be a different amount. Other factors determining value are age and condition. So where to begin.

Let’s start with retail value. This is the price for which an antiques dealer expects to sell an item after marking it up from the price the dealer paid for it in order to make a profit. This amount can be anywhere from 20 to100 percent of the dealer’s purchase price.

The amount of money it would take to replace an item from a antiques shop or online if it were lost, stolen, or damaged is called the insurance replacement value.

The price that an item would sell for on the open market between a willing buyer and a willing seller is known as the fair-market value. This is also the value that’s used when an item is donated to a charity or is part of someone’s estate.

And when someone puts an item up for auction, the price that an appraiser feels the item should bring at auction, based on comparison of like items and recent other auction sales, is known as the auction value, but has nothing do with the actual value of the item.

However, being told something is worth a specific value is meaningless if the appraiser doing the appraisal has no knowledge of the item itself or the market for it. And auction prices, such as those eBay are not an indicator of true "worth," since many of these sales prices are inflated many times over in the heat of bidding up an item. And a verbal appraisal is worth nothing without a written appraisal to back it up, especially in the case of settling an estate. Only a written appraisal is legally binding in case of damage or loss.

To learn more about how to value your antiques and collectibles, read my article, “What’s It Worth?,” in The Antiques Almanac. 

Would You Like to Have Tea With My Dollies?

QUESTION: I have a child’s tea set that once belonged to my grandmother’s mother.  Each piece has an illustration from a nursery rhyme. Each piece is stamped “Made in England” on the bottom. Can you tell me more about it?

ANSWER: You have child’s tea set made by Bilton’s of Staffordshire, England made sometime after World War I when the pottery began producing what they called  “nursery wares for children.” Each piece features a traditional nursery rhyme---Little Red Riding Hood, Little Bo Peep, Old Mother Goose, Ride a Cock Horse, Tom Tom the Piper's son, and others. The set, in particular the teapot, has pure the Art Deco styling of the mid 1920s..

Biltons Limited began making ceramics in 1900. The company continued until 1911 when Joseph Tellwright acquired it and changed the name to just Biltons. Prior to World War 1 they had specialized in the manufacture of tea and coffee pots, jugs, kettles, and such. After the war, the pottery produced tablewares, plus figures and devotional wares known as “grotesques.” 

However, when technical advances occurred in the 19th century, faience and porcelain became widespread since their use was no longer restricted to making tableware and decorative vases. Potteries began using faience and porcelain to make certain types of toys, and European faience factories started to produce toy tea sets and doll's accessories, in addition to their usual production.

Potteries began to make toy tea sets on a small scale for children to play with their dolls. Originally, potteries made these sets by hand. As such, people gave them to little girls as precious gifts. Because of their fragility, parents only let their daughters play with them on special occasions under their supervision.
                   
While toy tea sets belong to the world of toys, the art and craft required to make them is directly linked to the skills required to handle whatever material used, whether it be copper, pewter, tin, silver, faience, or porcelain. In the 19th century, France, together with England was one of the leading producers of faience in Europe. While porcelain was for a long time the prerogative of Germany, the situation in the 18th century changed, and the French revival raised faience production to a peak. While contemporary toy tea-sets continue to be made in ceramic, the quality is no longer  equal to the former production.

The first toy tea sets appeared in the 16th century. These early sets, made in pewter and copper, came from Germany, a country known for producing toys in wood and metal. Until the end of the first half of the 19th century, France turned to Germany for many of its toys. Before the era of faience and porcelain toy tea sets, most of them were made from metals, including gold and silver, pewter and copper. Silver and goldsmiths especially catered to the wishes of the young princesses of Europe.

But back in the 18th century, when faience and porcelain tea sets weren’t yet a phenomenon, potteries made them only on order for wealthy customers. These toys didn’t reach the height of their popularity until 100 years later, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Toy tea sets finally came into vogue during  the 1850's, specifically when they appeared on display at the Universal Exhibition of 1855.

And while this tea set may not be the most exciting or the most valuable, it’s a great example of a phenomenon that still exists today.

The Essence of Comfort

QUESTION: when I was a kid, I remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap in a very comfortable chair. It was designed like a big glove and swiveled on a chrome base with four legs. I don’t know what it was called, but I remember him referring to it as Danish modern. Can you tell me anything about this type of chair?

ANSWER: You were very lucky indeed, for you got to experience the ultimate in Danish design, the Egg Chair, designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1957. But before we explore this chair further, it’s important to know how this design style came into existence.

In 1924,. Danish architect Kaare Klint was asked to teach a newly class in furniture design at the Royal Academy's School of Architecture in Copenhagen. Considered the originator of the modern Scandinavian style of furnishing and furniture design which thrived from the 1940s to the 60s, Klint’s influence on even today’s designs is great.

Using teak, which was plentiful in Denmark, the Danish Modern style began to emerge in the 1920s and soon gained popularity with cabinetmakers in Copenhagen. After 1945, this unique style achieved worldwide recognition and by the mid-20th century, Danish modern had officially arrived.

The son of Peder Vilhelp Jensen-Klint, the leading Danish architect of the early 20th century, Kaare Klint studied painting and apprenticed to several architects, including his father, before opening an independent furniture design studio in 1917.

He became the first Danish designer to combine function with Danish hand-craftsmanship. His drawings revealed an attention to the needs of the human body, long before the science of ergonomics came into being.

For instance, in order that his sideboards would be the most efficient, he determined the average dimensions of the cutlery and crockery used in a Danish home. Klint then created a case containing the smallest space required for the maximum amount of cutlery needed by a household. Aesthetically, he allowed the unvarnished teak to speak for itself, maximizing its clean beauty by waxing and polishing. And so Danish designers began using natural finishes for their pieces.

Klint is known as the grandfather of modern Danish design. He, more than any other Danish furniture designer, felt that it was important to understand the craftsmanship of the furniture of the past.

He pioneered in anthropometrics, which correlates measurements of the human body to make furniture better suited to man’s physical characteristics, essentially the essence of today’s ergonomics. In 1933, he created a deck lounge chair, which he outfitted with a removable upholstered mat and pillow.

America's initial fascination with Danish modern furniture was largely the result of Edgar Kaufmann Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned from Europe in 1948 with photographs of chairs designed by another Danish  architect, Finn Juhl. The interest in Juhl's furniture led to a collection designed by him for the Barker Co.

Presented in 1951, the collection introduced American designers to the structural and decorative combining of woods of various colors and grains. Highlights included a teak armchair.   

Fruitful collaboration between designers and cabinetmakers led to more industrialized production. By 1950, a few factories in Denmark began producing furniture using purely industrialized methods. The new generation of designers included Arne Jacobsen, whose creations, while organic in nature, used materials such as light metals, synthetic resins, plywood, and upholstered plastics.

Graduating from the Royal Academy in 1924, Jacobsen soon demonstrated his mastery of both architecture and furniture design. With the completion of his Royal Hotel in Copenhagen with all its fittings and furniture in 1960, his talents became widely recognized.

Jacobsen's most commercial success was the Ant chair, which was available in a number of materials, including natural oak, teak and rosewood veneers, colored finishes or upholstery. Inspired by American legends Charles and Ray Eames, this unique chair was considered revolutionary in 1952, having only three spindly legs, no arms, and a one-piece plywood seat and back. The design of this chair became the basis for the stackable chairs used in hotels and conference centers today. Jacobsen followed the Ant with Series 7, a chair that had four legs and optional arms. Initially designed in 1955, and still being produced today.

Most of Jacobsen’s designs were the direct result of his belief that architecture and furnishings should be totally integrated. Two of his commissions—the Scandinavian Airlines Terminal and the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen—resulted from the creation of the uniquely shaped chairs, the “Egg” and the “Swan.” Designed in 1957, these modernistic chairs featured hi-density, rigid polyurethane foam, upholstered on single-seat shell construction. Both are extremely comfortable while being ergonomically sound and pleasing to look at.

There was a period of time in the middle of the 20th century when Danish designers were the world's most admired. Some of the most talented earned prizes at major competitions, and their works were quickly acquired by top European interior designers and collectors. Today, American designers see them suited to many different kinds of interiors.

Back to Nature

QUESTION: Recently I got a rustic night stand from my grandmother’s house after she died. She had once said that it came from a sale of furniture from a cabin in the Adirondack Mountains here in New York State. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s a funky piece, and I’d like to know more about it. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Your grandmother’s night stand is indeed a piece of rustic furniture, also known as Adirondack furniture, even though it wasn’t restricted to just the Adirondack region.

The idea for rustic furniture came about in the late 18th century at the beginning of the back-to-nature movement, a change from the world of classic, predictable furniture patterns to one of more fanciful design using natural materials. 

Little summer shelters appeared in city gardens, often covered in vines or surrounded by trees and shrubs. These summerhouses also provided a small green refuge that shut out the discomfort and ugliness of city life.

Designers copied nature's lines in drawings for chairs and settees for these shelters and the garden paths around them. Their plans called for gnarled, distorted limbs of shrubs and trees to make a chair or bench, instead of the usual marble or plain wooden seats. Gardens, themselves, became more picturesque and less formal, with curving paths taking the place of straight ones. Designers strategically placed rustic chairs, benches, arbors and gates throughout the plantings.

At the same time came the discovery of warm springs in America. Basic living conditions were the rule in the hotels and cottages that sprung up around the springs. The coarse furniture changed from plain and primitive to fanciful and rustic as hotel owners updated amenities.

By the late 19th century, America’s millionaires filled the resorts, but although they considered themselves naturalists, they dressed and lived formally in the midst of the rustic furniture, for they had no intention of roughing it.

But some of these naturalists set up their own camps with tents and log cabins and built rustic furniture for them or had local craftsmen do it for them. Eventually, the log cabins became large log houses with all the latest amenities. Soon they became known as compounds or family camps. However, life in these camps was more back-to-nature and relaxed than at the warm springs resorts.

Rustic outdoor furniture filled the porches of these houses and spilled onto the grass. Couches and chairs made of rough pieces of local woods, holding loose cushions, adorned the sitting rooms. Even the beds showed off the rustic style, often with fanciful patterns on the head and foot boards.

The term rustic furniture covers a functional style made of organic materials, such as the tree or shrub limbs and roots or the trunks of saplings indigenous to area of the craftsman. Although roughly made, the style was often sophisticated and imaginative. The more knots there were in the limbs, the more the designers favored them. They even left the bark on the wood whenever possible to give each piece more texture and individuality.

In the Adirondack region of New York State, craftsmen made rustic furniture for the wealthy families who had camps there. They used large, gnarly roots in their furniture designs, making them into table legs and chair arms. They favored birch to build with, a slender tree with bark that peels in strips, giving the craftsmen a striking veneer for their furniture. These pieces quickly became known for their geometric designs made of the white birch bark veneer, especially on case furniture, such as your night stand. Also, many of the intricate veneered designs included various kinds of split twigs, carefully chosen by color to form patterns.

Appalachian craftsmen took pride in knowing how to get wood to work for the intricate twists, bends and weaving for their furniture designs. They knew just when and how to bend saplings while they were still growing, letting nature do some of the work before they were ready to use the wood. The best woods to use were laurel, hickory and willow because of their flexibility and strength. They built their furniture with graceful loops and interwoven curves, weaving each piece of wood to create tension, resulting in a hid-den strength disguised by the fragile look of the design.

Today, you’ll find rustic pieces at higher-end antique shows. Occasionally, they’ll appear at flea markets. But people consigned a lot of pieces to the bonfire after they went out of fashion in the mid-20th century. So prices tend to be on the high side because of the uniqueness of the pieces. Twig rockers can sell for $150 and up, while lounges and settees can go over $2,000.
Case pieces rarely come on the market and when they do, their prices are exceptionally high, often in the four and five figure range. The most common pieces are various chairs and plant stands, priced anywhere from $75 to $600.

As the 20th century moved forward, individual craftsmen found it hard to keep up with the volume of orders, so factories opened to meet the need. Business remained brisk for the rural craftsmen until the 1940s and by the 1950s, rustic furniture was no longer popular.

Early 20th-Century Laptop

QUESTION: My aunt has an unusual box that opens out into what looks like a sloping writing service. I’d like to find out more information about it for her. Can you tell me anything about it?

ANSWER: Your aunt's box is what's known as a writing box. These date generally from the 19th century. Hers probably is from the last decade or two. Victorians carried these boxes with them on trips so they could write letters and postcards back home. When not traveling, many also used them in place of a desk. Essentially, they were the laptops of their day.


Writing boxes date back to the beginning of writing. Boxes in which writing materials were kept, called scriptoriums, were used by monks in the Middle Ages. Eventually, these were mounted on stands and later legs were added, creating the first desks for doing illuminated manuscripts. The writing box, itself, survived into the early 20th century.

People used traveling desks or writing boxes throughout the 19th century. When opened, they offered a leathered or velvet slope and rested on a table or over compartments for holding stationery. More luxurious versions included a removable pen tray under which spare nibs and holders could be kept, and screw-top inkwells, usually of glass, on each side. Others offered secret drawers or compartments. Though the origin of these remains obscure, they were most likely based on military dispatch boxes.

Towards the middle of the 19th century, manufacturers produced wooden writing boxes in enormous quantities to meet a growing demand. They came in all sizes and varieties of wood, including mahogany, burr walnut, rosewood and the more expensive ones in Coromandel wood. Less expensive ones, usually made of thin pine or fruitwood, were a step above an elaborate school pencil box and often decorated with cheaper decals instead of inlay..

Makers produced each to various specifications, depending on the intended type and amount of use. An army officer posted to the northwest frontier, for example, would want one robustly built, heavily brass bound, with brass mounted corners and edges to withstand rough treatment. A Victorian lady, on the other hand, might have one made in Tunbridgeware (a type of English marquetry decoration from the spa town of Tunbridge Wells, England) or even papier mache. The more expensive ones had serpentine lids, sometimes inlaid with intricate designs in brass or a mother of pearl or a shield for the owner's initials.

Simpler tourist writing cases in Moroccan leather and lined with satin came equipped with different sizes of stationery, pens, pencils, and a paperknife, but not an inkwell.

The utility of an easily portable box to provide storage for writing materials and a surface on which to write eventually led to the continuing usage of a smaller and more compact box that became very popular in the late 18th century. Known as lap desks or writing slopes, these writing boxes were quite portable, so they could be held on a lap or used at a table. They came with lids, hinged at the front, that slanted upwards towards the back, opening to form a writing surface with only one compartment underneath for storage.

Before the days of central heating, members of the family could gather by the fire and each work at his own small desk. A lap desk provided each individual with a private place in which to keep letters, paper and writing materials. In those days, ink, quills, paper, sand, wax wafers, and seals were all necessary equipment to use in writing a letter.

The writing box enjoyed its greatest popularity in days when ladies and gentlemen kept detailed diaries and wrote many letters. Imagine a romantic novelist or poet using just such a box while working in the warmth of a cozy fire. Today, cell phones, laptops, and tablets have made writing boxes and even stationery obsolete. However, as decorative boxes, they're more sought after than ever.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G...

QUESTION: My grandfather gave my parents a wooden child’s chair, covered with letters, that he had when he was a kid for me to use. I remember singing the alphabet song while sitting in the chair, and that’s pretty much how I learned my ABC’s. My grandfather is gone now, but I still have the chair. Can you tell me anything about this chair?

ANSWER: What you have is a wooden alphabet chair with lithographed letters of the alphabet decorating it. If your chair is in really good condition—many of these are not—then you have something of some value.

Lithographed toys range from dollhouses to acrobat figures to nests of blocks to an array of boats, horse-drawn carriages, and trains. Collectors value for their often substantial size, handsome graphics, and careful attention to precise details.

Of the three types of lithographed toys—tin, wood, and cardboard—the latter two have vibrant, two-dimensional details printed on paper that’s combined with a three-dimensional shape. Collectors appreciate the intimacy and color of these hand-drawn but mechanically printed designs.

Before the development of chromolithography—the process of printing a color picture from a series of lithographic plates—by German printers in the 1840s, toys had to be handmade. So most toys were too expensive for all but wealthier people. Less affluent families had to make do with homemade toys.

By the 1870s, French, English, and American firms had patented chromolithography production methods, which offset designs from inked sheets or rollers onto toy surfaces. By the 1890s, they had standardized the process, and both the American and European toy industries were able to mass-produce colorful toys inexpensively. In time, American toymakers, such as Rufus Bliss, John McLoughlin, and Parker Brothers, refined the technique and became world-leading toy manufacturers.

Production of all three types of lithographed toys ran from the late 19th century into the early 20th. But just as horse and steam power gave way to the internal combustion engine, production of wood and cardboard lithographed toys waned as technology developed. By the 1920s, after ore became available for cast-iron toys, manufacturers found metal better suited for mass production and that lightweight tin could more easily house clockworks and springs than wood.

The mass production of toys came at a time when parents were beginning to view their children less as miniature adults to be instructed and more as children to be entertained as well as taught.

Numerous wood lithographed replicas of horse-drawn fire engines, prairie schooners, steamboats, and luxury side-wheeler river steamers paralleled a strong interest in the rapidly changing modes of transportation at the turn-fo-the-20th-century.

Today wooden lithographed toys are available at auctions; estate sales, and flea markets. Because of their fragility, however, it’s difficult to find examples in excellent condition. Those that have survived the years are worth from $50 to $4,000, depending on size, condition, and rarity. Since your alphabet chair is of the larger variety, it’s worth more, depending on its condition.

Collecting Boxes

QUESTION: I love old boxes and want to start a box collection. But where do I begin? What sort of boxes are highly collectible?

ANSWER: Collecting old boxes is a great introduction into collecting antiques. Boxes are small enough so as not to take up too much room, yet intriguing enough to keep you interested as your collection grows.

Boxes are popular with collectors. The shape of a box reveals clues as to what it once held while the quality and type of workmanship are a key to the type of individual that owned and used it. And when you life the lid of an antique box, you’ll smell exotic aromas of times gone by—the scent of peppery clove, the fruity wood smell of tobacco, the delicate odor of beeswax or bayberry.

With the passing of time, the styles and functions of boxes have changed . Early settlers used rustic wooden and tin boxes to hold necessities like salt, flour, and candles. Colonials in Ben Franklin's day toted their snuff in convenient pocket-size boxes, the elaborateness of which indicated a gentleman's social standing. Elegant Victorian ladies who indulged in the luxury of lace gloves and cloth beauty patches kept them in ornate silk- and velvet-covered boxes. Today,  boxes like these bring a bit of history to any room and can be used to hold keepsakes or simply enjoyed for their own unique charms. So you want to start a box collection? What’s involved?

Before you buy any antique box, research it carefully. If you're looking for boxes made in the late 19th century, for example, read books on the subject, view historical displays of that period in museums, and browse antique shops and shows.  Once you decide on the type of boxes you want to collect, go to auctions, estate sales, and quality flea markets to see what's available.

Once you begin finding boxes to add to your collection , select on the best ones and avoid those that show more than normal wear. Bypass wooden boxes with warped veneers, cracks, and damaged hinges. Check porcelain, pottery, and glass boxes for chips and cracks, and avoid metal boxes that have bad dents. Always buy the best your budget will allow. Quality boxes do appreciate in value with time. Plan to keep any box you purchase at least 10 years to realize this appreciation.

Box collectors particularly favor those handmade by American craftsmen in the 19th century. Many of these are rustic and were designed to hold everyday possessions, such as salt and seasonings or grooming aids. The contents of a box usually determined its shape. A box made for a three-cornered hat, for instance, was triangular, while a candle box was long and narrow. Craftsmen decorated some boxes with carving or delicate hand-painted designs while they left others plain.

Brightly colored boxes made by Pennsylvania Germans, and boxes with finger-style joinings made by Shakers are excellent examples of folk art, and command high prices today. Fortunately, most antique shops and shows have many other types of primitive boxes at reasonable prices.

Boxes made during the early 20th century are also gaining popularity with collectors. Victorian women used some of the most common ones, made of cardboard covered with silk, velvet, paper, or shells, to store gloves, handkerchiefs, sewing items, and trinkets. You’ll find these boxes for $15-20 and up. Other early 20th-century examples include assorted sizes of Japanese lacquered  boxes, selling for $20 or more, small brass Oriental ones with metal appliques, and porcelain "fairing boxes," originally sold at English country fairs. You’ll usually find these “fairings” in antiques shops or at shows, starting at around $125.

Collecting boxes can be addictive because there are so many different kinds out there. The more focused your collection is, the better.

Ugly Ducklings

QUESTION:  I inherited a couch with a matching chair from my grandparents. I have tried to do research online, but the multitude of antique items is overwhelming. This set appears to resemble the Chippendale style, but not exactly from what I have seen. My grandmother said the set was already over 100 years old when she purchased it in the 1960's to 1970's. I’m trying to gain knowledge about these pieces. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Sorry to say, but someone gave your grandmother misinformation about her living room set. It’s not uncommon for dealers in used furniture to do this because they really don’t know how old the pieces they’re selling are and just want to sell them.

This couch and chair date from the 1920s or 1930s. They’re a great example of pseudo styles that manufacturers created to fill the need in the early to mid-20th century middle and working class markets. At that time, most people were looking forward and didn’t want “old” furniture in their homes. To buy all new furniture was a big deal, especially during the Great Depression. It was a way people impressed their friends and neighbors. If you could afford to buy new furniture, you were definitely going places. So manufacturers produced some truly ugly, ostentatious pieces to fill this need.

There were truly only four officially recognized furniture styles during the early 20th century.  The first was Art Nouveau, a style based on a movement that began in Paris in the late 19th century and lasted into the 1920s. Designers of the time developed this furniture as a revolt to the styles of Victorian times. Heavily influenced by natural forms, it featured stylized images of grasses, irises, snakes, dragonflies, and a myriad of other animal and plant forms.

Another style, Arts and Crafts, or Mission as it became known in America, was a style, originally developed in England, that defied the overly decorative and mass produced pieces of the latter part of the 19th century. Designers went back to the simpler times before the advent of the steam engine when cabinetmakers made furniture by hand. The Mission style became a direct result of the American Arts and Crafts Movement led by such designers as Gustav Stickley.

In 1925, an exposition in Paris showcased modern designs in furniture, jewelry, and architecture. An offshoot of this exposition was the birth of the Art Deco style in which furniture makers employed stainless steel, aluminum, and inlaid woods to fashion sleek, ultra modern pieces with bold geometric patterns and abstract forms.

The roots of the fourth style, Modernism or Arte Moderne, grew out of pre-World War II industrialism. As an outgrowth of Art Deco, this furniture style used little or no ornamentation and a function over form concept. Influenced by Scandinavian, Japanese, and Italian designs, it featured industrial materials such as steel and plastic.

What all of the above styles had in common was that they were mostly produced for those that could afford them. Newly wealthy industrialists, bankers, and merchants wanted furniture that was in fashion and were willing to pay great sums for it. However, the common person couldn’t afford such luxuries and ended up with mass-produced pieces that didn’t cater to any taste in design.

What ordinary people wanted was their own form of luxury—comfortable couches and chairs that they could fall asleep in after a hard days work but that would also impress guests. They wanted just enough decoration to make the pieces seem elegant but not so much as to make them hard to care for. These needs resulted in overstuffed chairs and sofas with springs in their cushions to give added comfort, extremely stylized shallow carving that was easy to clean, and generally little decorative woodwork since using more added to the cost of the piece. Manufacturers could use cheap woods to build the frames which they then covered with upholstery.

Unfortunately, while a few pieces of furniture from this period have some charm, most do not and no amount of restoration or reupholstery will transform these ugly ducklings into beautiful swans.

Taking the Mystery Out of Identifying Antiques

QUESTION: I have what I believe to be an English ceramic plate with a mark that looks like a diamond with a bunch of letters and numbers in it. Can you tell me what that means?

ANSWER: The stamp on the back of your plate is known as a mark. Manufacturers of English pottery used this particular design between 1842 and 1883. The letters and numbers indicate the dates of the plate’s design registration with the British patent office. You can easily decipher this alpha-numeric code by checking the chart found on the Phoenix Masonry Web site or in Kovels' New Dictionary of Marks--Pottery & Porcelain: 1850 to the Present by Ralph and Terry Kovel (Crown Publishers, New York).

Pottery makers replaced this diamond-shaped registry mark with a sequential numbering system prefaced by the abbreviation Rd. No.  in 1884. Over the years, they modified the arrangement of the numbers several times, so it can be confusing. If you need specific information, you can contact the British Designs Registry Patent Office for dates registered in and after 1909 and the British Public Record Office for dates registered prior to 1909.

Sometimes, pottery and porcelain makers used word indications that spelled out the date. If the mark shows the country of origin, this means the piece dates after 1891, according to the U.S.  McKinley Tariff Law.

Often manufacturers worldwide employed words to describe their wares. These usually had start and end dates, making it easy to figure out the approximate date of a piece. For instance, the term "Nippon,” the Japanese name for Japan, indicates that piece of Japanese porcelain dates from 1891 to 1921while "Made in Occupied Japan" shows that the piece dates from  1945 to 1952. "Semi-vitreous" means the piece appeared on the market after 1901 while "bone china" indicates that the piece dates generally from the 20th century.  The phrase "oven-proof' appeared on pottery and china after 1933, but "dishwasher proof ” didn’t appear until after 1955. Sometimes a location, such as "East Germany" can indicate a time period, which in this case extends from 1949 to1990.

If a piece of pottery or porcelain has a mark showing a design and/or maker’s name, this information may also help to date it. You’ll find loads of resources, both in print and online, to help you identify early English, European, and Asian pottery and porcelain marks.

In the United States, makers stamped patent numbers on the backs and bottoms of their pottery pieces. A patent number represents the very earliest an article could have been produced. For example, a patent number of 16,388 indicates the piece appeared after Jan. 1, 1857 but prior to Jan. 1, 1858. Therefore, it dates from 1857, the year of its patent registration. Should you discover several sequential patent number sets on one piece, you should look up the final set on a patent date chart to date the piece.

Marks on furniture, glass, and silver are another story. When a maker uses his name or logo, you may have enough information to track the date of manufacture. Often during the course of the run of a piece, the maker will use different names. This is true of Tiffany glass. On some pieces, Tiffany signed, that is incised, his name “Louis C. Tiffany.” On later pieces, “Tiffany Studios” appears on the piece, and yet others show no mark at all.

Early furniture makers often scratched their name on the bottom of a piece, such as under the seat of a chair. But by the early 20th century, almost all manufacturers used labels affixed to the backs or bottoms of their pieces. If a piece of furniture has a label, it surely indicates that the piece is modern. Gustav Stickley employed a red decal featuring his logo, a joiner's compass, from 1902 to 1903 as compared to the revised decals Stickley used between 1903 and 1912.