Buyer Beware

 

Chippendale style dining table and chairs 1930s

QUESTION: I’ve been looking for a new dining table and chairs. But the new ones I’ve seen don’t look very well made for their high cost. A friend suggested I look at buying an antique set. I found a beautiful Chippendale set in a local antique shop. It’s a beautiful set, but how can I be sure it’s the real thing? The shop is reputable so I don’t have any reason to suspect the sets authenticity. How can I be sure it’s authentic? 

ANSWER: You have every right to be suspicious. Even reputable dealers have been fooled by copies of 18th-century pieces coming out of Indonesia. The makers of these pieces do such an excellent job of copying every detail that it’s often hard for some dealers to be sure. 

The Indonesian copies are only the latest in a long line of reproductions. Most people think that because a piece of furniture of a particular older style that it must be a antique. People fail to realize that certain popular styles of furniture have been reproduced over and over throughout the last several centuries.

Indonesian Chippendale dining table replica

I could tell from the photo that the dining table and chairs had been made in the Chippendale style, but I could also tell right away that it wasn’t an antique. The giveaway was the extra leaves in the table. From the looks of it, I'd say the set might be as old as the 1930s, but I'm leaning more to the 1960s. Let’s see why.

Chippendale style dining table with two leaves 1900

Small Chippendale dining table late 18th century

At the time Chippendale furniture was popular in the mid 18th century, dining tables like this one with added leaves didn't exist. Dining tables with separate leaves didn’t come into use until the 19th century. During the 1750s, "joyners"—the person’s who made furniture—made dining tables as drop-leaf tables with large leaves or wings that could be folded down and stood against a wall until ready for use. In many cases, the owners stood them in their front hallways to allow for more space. 

A wealthy 18th-century family would have only used a larger table like this when dining with guests. They often ate at a smaller table by the fire, especially in winter, or had “tea”–what we call supper–in their bedrooms by the fire. When not in use as a dining table, they may have used it for other things and stood the chairs against the wall around the room. In fact, cabinetmakers sold the tables and chairs separately, not in sets.

Georgian Chippendale dining table made from three solid mahogany boards

At the end of the 19th century, a style called Colonial Revival came into popularity because of the colonial exhibits at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. Furniture makers began to make what they thought looked like colonial furniture although it was often stylized and lacked the fine details of the original.

Also, cabinetmakers in the 18th century used pegs to join furniture, thus the name "joyners." After the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1830, screws came into common for joining parts of furniture. Early cabinetmakers also carved their names or initials on their pieces. By the second half of the 19th century, furniture makers began to affix labels on their products.

Queen Anne side chair of Bermuda cedar

And even antique experts can be wrong. A dealer rejected an 18th-century Chippendale drop-leaf dining table and one chair as not being authentic because the wood wasn’t mahogany, the traditional wood used on such pieces. It turned out that the table and chair were authentic after all. It seems they were made of Bermuda cedar, now long extinct. This wood is more orange in color than mahogany. Although this dealer was the expert on 18th-century furniture in the area, the owner took the table and chair to other dealers who all agreed with him. It was only after a friend saw an identical table in an historic house while on a trip to Bermuda that the owner was able to determine the true age of his table and chair. 

That said, this table and chairs seems to be well constructed of solid mahogany and, therefore might sell for somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000. But don’t mistake the identity of this dining set for the real thing which might sell for upwards of $5,000. It isn’t.

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A Case of Romantic Identity

QUESTION: My husband and I recently purchased what looks like a plain sideboard while traveling through South Carolina. It’s smaller than a regular one and has only four legs instead of the usual six, plus it’s about 10 inches taller. It looks to be made of a more common type of wood like pine or elm and has little decoration. Can you tell me about this piece of furniture?

ANSWER: It seems you bought what some people call a huntboard and what most Southerners call a slab. Whether it’s antique or not is dubious.

The word "huntboard" conjures up visions of dashing red-coated Southern sportsmen sipping mint juleps from frosted coin-silver cups while engaging in spirited conversation with soft-spoken young belles—all gathered around a high four-legged serving table, an inlaid mahogany demilune sideboard, circa 1800, often found in Southern dining rooms.

But more likely the huntboard turned up beneath a spreading oak tree, conveniently placed so that overheated horsemen could grab a refreshing drink without dismounting. And every Southerner worth his or her riding crop knows huntboards were built a good five to ten inches taller than sideboards because men in high hunting boots couldn't bend their knees and found it more comfortable to eat standing up. Another equally practical explanation for the huntboard's height was that it kept food out of reach of high jumping hound dogs.

Both scenarios are completely fictional, devised in 1925 in a romanticized account of Southern furniture, part of the romantic, if mostly incorrect, Colonial Revival Movement, perpetuated by the grey ghosts of the Civil War. Imagine a tall, gleaming, highly polished walnut four-legged serving piece set with coin silver and transfer-pattem earthenware, complete with a long rifle, and you can almost hear the thunder of the horses’ hoofs and the hunter’s horn sounding in the distance.

If the term had been part of aristocratic Southerners' vocabulary at all, it would have been their name for the piece of furniture out on the back porch or in the back hall of the "big house"—not in the dining room of the plantation home. In the Southern mansion the hunt-board was a basic piece made of native poplar or pine, not a glamorous item of walnut or mahogany. And when meal-time came around, the humble huntboard was set with pewter, crudely fashioned wooden bowls, and crockery, not the costly imported earthenware and handcrafted coin silver.

In other words, in the wealthy Southern plantation home, huntboards were just utilitarian pieces designed for the servants and slaves to eat around—a "board," as in "room and board." This variety of 19th-century huntboard comes closest to the original purpose of a sideboard—a simple stand-up serving table.

During the mid-19th century, the agrarian South—unlike the industrialized North—had few cities to support major cabinetmaking shops. Modest farmhouses and the occasional plantation sprawled throughout the region. This spread-out population—and the abundance of Southern forests—meant that it was more economical for furniture to be made "on site" by a traveling craftsman or even a handy family member than purchased from a faraway joiner's shop. During those months when the crops were planted, dinner—as they called the heavy noonday meal—had to be served efficiently. So slaves at the plantation main house set out biscuits, gravy, and other vittles on a quickly, even crudely, constructed sideboard called a “slab.”

The term "huntboard" was born at a time when a falsely romantic image of the South was at its peak. During that time, the demand for Southern huntboards far surpassed the supply. There had been little reason to keep the plain, crudely made slab once the servant and slave society disappeared. And many middle-class families that held on to the better walnut and cherry serving tables during the bleak postwar days quickly discarded their "old furniture" after the economy improved. As a result, furniture companies produced fake and reproduction huntboards by the truckload in the late1920s and '30s. Those authentic slabs that survived were often found in deserted country houses. Though "huntboard" sounds great, there’s no evidence that people actually used the word during antebellum days.

So the piece you purchased most likely dates to the late 1920s or early 1930s. Age and neglect probably made it appear much older. One way to tell if it’s authentic is to check the wooden pegs used to join it together. If it’s old, the pegs will be slightly elliptical and jut out of their holes a bit. If newer, they’ll be round and flush with the surface of the wood.

Newlywed Furniture

QUESTION: My parents bought a bedroom set when they got married. They kept it all their married life. Now that they’ve both passed on, it’s come to me. It’s of a very unusual design with lines that look similar to Art Deco, with curves and veneer decoration. Can you tell me what this is?

ANSWER: The photos you sent identify your bedroom set as what was commonly referred to as “waterfall” furniture. Because it was relatively inexpensive, it became the style of choice for middle class newlyweds. In 1930, a set like this would have cost between $19.95 and $39.95. More luxurious sets sold for slightly more.

In the late 19th century, most American furniture makers produced pieces from solid wood. This continued until after World War I when the conservation movement, led by Teddy Roosevelt, gained prominence and the invention of lumber core plywood signaled the end of this practice. Plywood consisted of four layers of wood, two on each side, glued to a core of inexpensive lumber. Makers glued the layers at right angles to each other for added strength.

Before 1930, manufacturers prided themselves in producing pieces with sometimes up to 11 layers of wood, especially for curved door panels. Working with curved surfaces was up to this time a very painstaking and expensive process.

But then came the Great Depression. With so many people struggling just to get by, furniture makers had to adapt. Families continued to grow and there became a demand for furniture from the newlywed market. Most new couples couldn’t afford to guy their own house, so all they had was a room in usually the bride’s parents house. The "Bedroom Suite" was probably the only thing that they owned, resulting in inordinate sentimental attachment to the furniture and a reluctance to change even when finances improved.

Because of the furniture’s free-form and curvy lines, people called it “waterfall” furniture. There are all types of pieces, including chairs, desks, end tables, clothes chests. Waterfall furniture doesn’t have a  frame. It relies on the strength of the molded plywood to give it structure, enabling makers to also give it  curved or rounded horizontal edges. Manufacturers employed an unusual veneer design called bookmatching on the fronts of pieces and ran the grain of the veneer from front to back on the top surfaces. Drawers featured Bakelite handles.

The inspiration for waterfall furniture came from handmade furniture emanating from the modernist movements in France, Austria and Germany, known as Art Moderne. Makers copied the designs of the ultra-exclusive French firm of Sue et Mare. Early examples, designed to appeal to broad audiences. mix Victorian motifs with modernist themes,  .

The style is most frequently seen in Bedroom Suites, although manufacturers produced dining sets and even billiard tables. A basic bedroom set included a bed, vanity and bench, and chest of drawers. More deluxe, thus more expensive, sets included nightstands, a dresser, a cedar chest, and a armoire/chifferobe. A full dining room set included a table with removable leaves big enough to seat six people, five chairs, china cabinet, and buffet, all of which sold for $103.50.

Today, a complete basic bedroom suite sells for $800-$900 in reasonable condition. The hardest pieces to find are nightstands and vanity benches. Cedar chests go for $400 and up.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

QUESTION: I saw a Queen Anne dining set in a shop, and it appears to be old, however the chairs are upholstered in a ‘vinyl’ material which also appears old, but is this an antique?

ANSWER: I get questions like this a lot. Most of the time, the persons asking them think that because a piece of furniture is in a particular style that it’s an antique. But they fail to realize that certain popular styles of furniture have been reproduced over and over throughout the last several centuries.

From the photo, I could tell that the dining table and chairs had been made in the Queen Anne style, but I could also tell right away that it wasn’t an antique. The giveaway was the extra leaves in the table. From the looks of it, I'd say the set might be as old as the 1930s, but I'm leaning more to the 1960s. Let’s see why.

At the time Queen Anne was popular in the 18th century, dining tables like this one with added leaves didn't come into use until the 19th century. During the 1750s, joyners–the person’s who made furniture–made Queen Anne dining tables as drop-leaf tables with large leaves or wings that could be folded up and stood against a wall until ready for use. In many cases, the owners stood them in their front hallways to allow for more space. A wealthy 18th-century family would have only used a larger table like this when dining with guests. They often ate at a smaller table by the fire, especially in winter, or had “tea”–what we call supper–in their bedrooms by the fire. When not in use as a dining table, they may have used it for other things and stood the chairs against the wall around the room.

At the end of the 19th century, a style called Colonial Revival came into popularity because of the colonial exhibits at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. Furniture makers began to make what they thought looked like colonial furniture although it was often stylized and lacked the fine details of the original.

That said, this table and chairs did seem to be well constructed of solid woods and, therefore might sell for somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000. But don’t mistake the identity of this dining set for the real thing. It isn’t.