What Exactly is a Pier Table?

 

QUESTION: I like to visit historic houses. Invariably, the first stop is by a narrow table in the main hall. Next to it usually stands a hall tree. The docent usually begins by telling us that the women of the house would stand in front of this narrow table and adjust their petticoats using the mirror placed behind it. This seems like a plausible explanation. When and how did this practice begin? And why is the table called a “pier” table? According to the dictionary, a pier is a structure leading from the shore out to sea, used as a boat landing or for entertainment. 

ANSWER: The English language can be complicated. There are many words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Over time, the word “peer,” meaning to look through a window with difficulty, may have been confused with the word “pier,” a seaside structure used for landing boats or for entertainment. Since most people coming to the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries spoke a different language—even British English was different than American English—it’s only natural that along the way, the two words got confused. It’s also likely that because a pier table juts out from the wall that it resembled a pier jutting out from the shore.

Docents in historic houses always seem to have interesting stories about the furniture in them. One of these concerns the pier table. Supposedly, Southern women would stop in front of it and check the mirror below it to see if their petticoats were showing before going out. However, there are two things wrong with this story. First, the table did not appear primarily in the South, and second, women of the 19th century did no such thing. A woman of the time wouldn’t have been caught dead adjusting her undergarments in a public area of her house.  Besides that, the architecture of the table, with the top projecting forward, well out over the mirror, prevents anyone, male or female from actually seeing beyond  the area of their feet.

So what exactly is a pier table? Simply, it’s a low, usually narrow table that stands in the pier, or wall section between two windows, often in the parlor of a wealthier person’s house. Cabinetmakers often made them in pairs of expensive woods, such as mahogany, rosewood, and giltwood. Unfortunately, ill informed curators of historic homes—originally wealthy women who joined groups who raised money to restore and manage historic homes—had heard the story of the pier table and placed it in the main hall where it didn’t belong in the first place. 

The pier table first appeared in continental Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and became popular in England in the last quarter of the 17th century. The first known use of such a table in America was in 1765 and remained popular until the mid 19th century.

During the Regency Period from 1800 to 1830, a pier table had a mirror mounted between its back legs against the wall, or sometimes above it. The purpose of the mirror was to reflect the light around the room, not to check petticoats. The mirrors were often slightly angled towards the ceiling in order to catch as much light as possible, thus precipitating the fictional account. The extensive use of concave looking glasses in the 18th century and mirrors in the 19th century bounced the dim light from oil lamps around the room, increasing overall brightness. The mirror also reflected the pattern in the tile or carpet and helped make the room feel larger.

Eventually, pier tables became symbols of wealth. Reflecting light around a room on highly-polished surfaces, including mirrors, glass, crystal pendants on chandeliers, or fine wood surfaces, was a way of demonstrating wealth. It dazzled the eye and demonstrated a great deal of labor from servants who maintained that high degree of cleanliness.

At the beginning of the 19th century, cabinetmakers around Philadelphia usually produced pier tables in the Chippendale style. They used Chippendale’s English design and traditional construction techniques since most had been trained by English cabinetmakers. The table became an American staple in larger homes during the Federal Period in the early 19th century, primarily in the Northern states, not in the South. 

The most commonly seen example of the table is in the Classical style of the early 1800s, usually with a marble top and columns of some sort—often also marble—at each corner supporting the heavy top. But why a marble top on a hall table? These tables were almost always 30-inches high, the exact height of a dining room table. As such, they could be used in the dining room as an extra serving space without fear of damage from hot plates on the marble top.

The pier table reached it decorative zenith in the Empire period of the 1820s at the hands of such designers as Charles Honoré Lannuier, Thomas Hope and Joseph Meeks. The use of gilded caryatids—winged, female figures from Greek architecture—were frequently used as columns. Meeks used a set of lyres at each end to support the top.

One of the greatest designers of pier tables was French ébéniste Charles-Honoré Lannuier, who emigrated in 1803 and became one of the leading furniture makers in New York. Trained in Paris, he rose to fame during the American Federal Period. After the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, anti-English sentiment made French goods especially appealing to Americans. Lannuier imported French pattern books to keep abreast of the latest Napoleonic style. His work featured robustly carved and gilded caryatid supports, carved dolphin feet, and elaborate gilt-bronze ormolu mounts. And while not every wealthy person could afford a Lannuier pier table, his tables reached the height of design excellence in the first two decades of the 19th century.

After the Empire period, the Late Classicism style prevailed in the 1840s and 1850s with its large cyma curves, scrolled supports and undecorated expanses of crotch-cut mahogany veneer. This is the table that was frequently associated with the Southern plantation and the petticoat myth.

After the Civil War, the pier table came to be known as a console table, and that’s when it began appearing in the foyers and front hallways of houses of the wealthy. Generally speaking, console tables stood higher than their pier table counterparts. They also usually didn’t have mirrors behind them as lighting technology had greatly improved since the beginning of the 19th century. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Let’s Have a Cold One

QUESTION: Ever since college, I’ve been a great lover of an ice cold beer. And today, with all the microbrews out there, I’ve become quite the beer afficionado. Along with enjoying a variety of beers—I even have a special refrigerator in my garage to keep my collection of microbrews cold—I’d also like to start collecting brewery memorabilia in earnest. I have a few items—coasters, bottle openers, and a variety of cans from various breweries. Can you help me get some direction to my collecting? There are so many items that I’m not sure where to start.

ANSWER: It’s appropriate that you’ve contacted me this week since the Fourth of July is probably the leading holiday at which people celebrate with cookouts and coolers of icy cold beer.

Beer has been a part of American culture since the first Virginia colonists began brewing ale from corn in 1587. Adrian Block & Hans Christiansen's brewhouse at the southern tip of New Amsterdam, now Manhattan, was the first brewery established in the New World. Ever since then breweries have opened all over America.



Michael Combrune published The Theory and Practice of Brewing in 1762. This was the first attempt to establish rules and principles for the art of brewing. In 1808, members of the Congregational Church in Moreau, New York, formed a temperance society. From that point forward, a major struggle between beer drinkers and those who disapproved began, culminating in Prohibition. Until the rise of these societies all over the country, the only competition breweries had was from whiskey manufacturers.

During Prohibition, breweries produced "near beer," a nonalcoholic beer, which people  greeted with a lukewarm reception at best. The breweries also made "health tonics," ice cream and many other products to keep themselves afloat during this time.

In 1935, the G. Kreuger Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey, became the first brewery to sell beer in steel cans. That year, only about 25 percent of all beer sold was packaged in bottles and cans. Breweries sold the rest in kegs.

The breweries have always had competition, from other alcoholic producers as well as other breweries.  To beat the competition, they used strong print and media advertising campaigns, elaborate visuals, and colorful giveaways. They used everything from foam scrapers, brightly colored cans, distinctive bottle labels, neon signs, tip trays, cups, hats, shirts, serving trays and countless other items in an attempt to make the consumer remember one brand over another.



Today, the market for vintage brewery collectibles is hot. But there are so many different items that beginning collectors have a very good chance of finding ones to fit their tighter budgets.

First, a beginning collector should buy what he or she likes and can afford. Prices for these collectibles are all over the map, so focusing a collection is important from the start. To begin, a novice collector might build on what he or she already has or perhaps start in a new direction of interest. That can include beer bottles or cans, unique advertising signs, and even beer coasters from around the world. Often, these can be had for the cost of a cold beer.

Beginners should select a collecting theme early or risk accumulating too much material to handle. It's easy to start small, with something inexpensive like coasters, as long as the beginner always buys items in the best condition. Beginning collectors of brewery collectibles usually start with signs, trays and cans produced after Prohibition. Advance collectors collect the pre-Prohibition era material and usually zero in on the geographic area in which they live or grew up.




So what determines pricing for brewery collectibles? As with other antiques and collectibles, it’s condition, condition, condition," since most brewery collectibles have been used. Pristine examples can command high prices, and they can be difficult to find. While rarity is important, for collectibles where multiple examples exist, condition rules.



One of the priciest examples is the Clipper beer can, which sold on eBay for more than $19,000. Lithographic factory signs have sold for $7,500 to $15,000, die cuts for $1,000 to $2,500, tin lithographic serving trays for $250 to $1.000 and tip trays for $250. While these are the priciest items, there are lots of others selling for much less.. Signs with reverse painting on glass and calendars are especially prized by collectors.

The variety of brewery collectibles is astounding, so much so that they offer lots of possibilities for collectors at all levels. The bottles and cans produced today may someday be worth more than the contents they hold as will signs, lights, mirrors, tap handles, and labels.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about western antiques in the special 2019 Spring Edition, "Down to the Sea in Ships," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.   

Bringing Light to the Farm

QUESTION: The other day I was going through some old things that belonged to my father and came across what looks to be an almost brand-new Coleman lantern still in its box. Since I’m not much of a camper myself, I wondered if people collect these lanterns and if they have any value.

ANSWER: According to your photo, your lantern looks to be one made in the late 1940s. Soldiers who had fought in World War II and had used special field stoves designed and made by the Coleman Company were familiar with their products. So as they settled down to have families, they saw the need for vacations. Car camping became very popular, as these new families loaded up their station wagons and headed out to explore America.

Anyone who has gone camping knows the glow emitted from campgrounds as campers sit around their tables having dinner by the light of a Coleman lantern. Promoted as the "sunshine of the night," these lanterns have long since become essential gear to car campers.

The incandescent electric light, invented in 1879, was a long way from reaching rural America in 1900, when William C. Coleman, an itinerant salesman, first sold indoor pressurized gasoline units, which he called Efficient Lamps. Coleman had poor eyesight, and the standard lamp of that time burned kerosene and produced a smoky, flickering, yellowish light. The steady white light produced by his new lamp enabled him to read even the smallest print. Two years later he bought the manufacturing rights for the lamp, and by 1905 he had begun producing them in his Wichita, Kansas, factory.

By1909, Coleman had improved his 300-candlepower, portable table so that it provided light in every direction for 100 yards and could light the far corners of a barn. Single handedly, he changed the way farmers worked and thus increased their productivity. His lamp became a staple in rural America, eventually transforming the local company into a national one on which people depended.

Coleman’s initial lamp featured decorative brass or nickel-plated elements that arched up around the lantern´s glass shade, providing an upper loop for hanging or grasping the lantern for barn use. Later, he designed ones with bulbous bases that could sit on tables. And like other lamps at the time, some had colorful glass shades with elaborate designs around the edges.

Coleman’s first lamps for indoor use differed from oil lamps. Each had a pressure tank that acted as its base, replacing the oil lamp's fount or reservoir. In place of the oil lamp's chimney and wick, Coleman’s lamp used a generator, which vaporized air-forced white gas. The burning vapors ignited a mantle of loosely woven fabric. Both of these features helped Coleman lamps produce 20 times more light than oil wick lamps.

By 1914, the first self-contained, portable Coleman lanterns for outdoor use—the ones so familiar to campers today—appeared on the market. He enlarged the fount so that it stored two quarts of white gas, enclosed the generator and mantles in a wind- and bug-proof glass globe, and added a bail for easy carrying and hanging.

Coleman designers continued to improve their lanterns and by the 1930s, many came with housings in   different colors. The tops of some of the lamps of this period had a green finish which eventually became the signature look of Coleman products. The company also supplied lanterns to the National Forest Service, some of which bore the familiar “NFS” insignia.

From the 1940s on, Coleman lanterns featured a forest green finish combined with shiny nickel-plated brass elements. The upper and lower parts of one of the company’s most popular and long-running lanterns, the Model 200A, produced from 1952 through 1983, are bright red.

Most people use Coleman lanterns for camping. They’re as prized now as they were decades ago for chasing darkness from a campsite. When night falls, a few strokes on the pump primes it for action. And at the touch of a match the lantern throws its magic circle of light in a 360-degree arc.

Starting in 1901, Coleman has produced close to 50 million gas lanterns. The long history and the range of styles and models makes the Coleman lantern a popular collectible that’s affordable for most collectors. A Coleman lantern can sell today for $20 to $400, depending on its age, condition, and rarity.















To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about western antiques in the special 2019 Winter Edition, "The Old West," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook. 

Electric Lamps for Everyone

QUESTION: Several years ago, I bought an early electric glass lamp at a flea market. Although it was filthy and needed lots of TLC, I decided that I just couldn’t live without it. After giving it a thorough cleaning and having it rewired, I noticed how much it looked like the Tiffany lamps of the early 1900s. Upon further inspection, I noticed E M & Co. impressed into the base. So far, I’ve been unable to discover who E M & Co. is? Can you tell me who made my lamp and a little about it.

ANSWER: You’re the proud owner of a beautiful silhouette lamp—called that because of the silhouettes created by the shade when the lamp is on—made by the Edward Miller & Company of Meriden, Connecticut.

Unfortunately, when people think of metal and glass lamps of the early 20th century, they usually associate all lamps with Louis Comfort Tiffany. Then their eyes light up with dollar signs. But most of the lamps from this period were not made by Tiffany.

When Tiffany first began making his lamps, they were expensive to make and expensive to buy. Prices for them ran into the hundreds of dollars. Slag glass panel lamps, as they're known  today, had a few large pieces of glass fitted into a cast metal frame that simulated the effects of the more expensive leaded glass lamps. That made them affordable for the average person. A 1925 Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog offers metal table lamps fitted with "art glass" priced from $6.90 to $19.

Many companies made this type of lamp. Often the lamps weren’t signed, but if the makers did mark them, they usually cast their mark into the metal on the bottom of the base. Sometimes they placed a mark on the metal edge of a shade or elsewhere on the base. Some lamps had paper labels, but most of them are long gone. Edward Miller & Company was one of many lamp makers.

The Miller Company began in 1844 in Meriden, Connecticut, as Joel Miller and Son. Originally, the company produced metal candle-holders, then moved on to kerosene lamps, gas lighting, and electric lighting. The name of the company changed, also, becoming Edward Miller & Company, then The Miller Company, both under the mark E M & CO on their lamp bases.

Although Miller produced expensive leaded glass lamps, the company took advantage of the opportunity to sell lighting to the middle classes as more homes became wired for electricity. The company sold lamps in bulk to utility companies in large cities who retailed them to their customers. A 1920 Philadelphia Electric Company catalog shows lamps with prices from $12.50 to $60, depending on size.

Miller took advantage of the latest discovery in lighting—electricity. Up to the last decade of the 19th century, everyone owned and used either gas or kerosene lamps. But the light they gave off was dim. The discovery of electricity led to lamps that glowed brighter in a downward direction, thus offering improved lighting for reading and sewing.

Though electrical lamps offered lots of advantages, there were problems with the carbon filaments in early incandescent light bulbs that didn't last long. The bulbs turned dark inside from carbon, and they used a lot of electricity per watt of light. The invention of the tungsten filament bulb and improvements to it made between 1906 and 1910 established electric lamps as a practical and reliable alternative to gas and kerosene.

These early electric lamps offered a variety of base and shade overlay designs, influenced by several style movements including Art Nouveau with its intricate curvy lines and botanical themes, Arts and Crafts with its simpler forms and straighter lines, and Orientalism with its Middle Eastern flavor. And with the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922 , people’s interest in everything Egyptian grew.

Lamp creators took their inspiration from all of these influences, giving consumers a choice of floral designs, geometric patterns, or scenes with camels, palm trees and pyramids. Other designs reflected Neo-Classical Revival architectural and furniture styles, employing fluted columns, garlands, and urns as design elements.

Manufacturers produced slag glass lamps with amber glass, as well as other colors. Amber was the dominant color because it proved to be the most restful for reading. These lamps often have more than one color of glass. Makers sometimes used various colors of slag glass to simulate sunsets or water behind their metal frames.

Today, these same slag lamps sell for $500 to $1.500, depending on style, size, and especially condition. Smaller varieties, known as boudoir lamps, sell for less while larger ones sell for more.

With the onset of the Great Depression, the market for more expensive dramatic, heavy lamps with glass shades faded and manufacturers responded with cheaper, lightweight lamps with paper or fabric shades.