Marriages Made in Hell

QUESTION: I have inherited a cookie jar from my mother's estate, our family home outside Philadelphia. The cookie jar is marked on the bottom “Goldilocks #405 Patent Pending.” I see on the Internet that there are plenty of these jars in the marketplace. However, my cookie jar doesn't look like the one's I found with this mark. The design I have is slightly different. After a bit of research, I wondered if my version is a 'blank' that was simply uniquely printed or perhaps its just a rip off reproduction.  I have no clue. Can you help me solve this mystery?

ANSWER: What you have is the bottom of a Goldilocks cookie jar and the top of a Little Red Riding Hood cookie jar. The former was made by the Regal China Company and the latter by the Hull Pottery. Goldilocks has a blue hood and a little bear while Little Red Riding Hood has a red hood and a basket of flowers. The tops and bottoms of these cookie jars, though different in design, are interchangeable. What must have happened is that the top of the Goldilocks jar got broken and someone replaced it with the top of a Little Red Riding Hood jar. In antiques, we call this a marriage.

As in real life marriages where both people must work together to form a perfect union, antiques marriages can be either really good or terribly bad.

In the world of antiques, marriages are somewhat of a curse, especially when it comes to furniture. Here, a dealer joins together two different pieces of furniture worth significantly less than the original to form one piece that could be worth much more than the original. Novice antiques collectors could easily be fooled into spending more for a married piece than it’s actually worth.


Some unscrupulous antique dealers would no doubt try to pass off a married piece as an original while others marry parts together and literally make antiques. This is especially prevalent in the middle market where profit margins aren’t as high in the fine antiques one. This is especially true of antique furniture from the 17th to the 19th century. However, pieces made during this time often came in sections.

Back then, transporting large pieces of furniture was difficult. Pieces had to be transported in carts, and they had to be light enough that a small team of horses could pull them and two men could lift and carry them. So cabinetmakers produced furniture in pieces so that it could be easily transported and then assembled on site.

Of course, furniture that can be easily assembled is just as easy to disassemble. This meant that the end user could easily replace a broken or worn-out part of a piece of furniture without having to buy a new one. For example, if the table top splintered, the owner could simply keep the base and have a new top made. These combinations of old and new became the first married pieces of furniture.
But how does a novice collector know when a piece is a marriage? The more knowledgeable a collector is, the less chance he or she will have of getting taken.

Marriages are often easy to spot. First, look for any clash of styles. Cabinetmakers would not have combined furniture styles since most used style books to help them fashion their pieces. Second, check to see if there are any unusual proportions. Does one part seem larger than it should be? Third, does the wood used to make the piece match. While some cabinetmakers used less expensive wood for the frames, most used better wood for the exterior. Fourth, is the overall finish even. If not, this means parts of the piece have been finished at different times, such as a new table top. And finally, does the hardware match. Unless the owner couldn’t replace drawer and cabinet pulls with the same style, all the hardware on a piece should match.

Unfortunately, antiques marriages are contrived to deceive the buyer. A lot of this goes on in England where the market for antiques is always hot. Visitors especially usually have no idea what they’re buying and usually fall for marriage or even fake antiques.

One of the most common marriages is in 17th and 18th-century secretaries. The bottom desk is often married to a bookcase top from a different secretary. These two pieces may be orphans and when matched often look fairly good together. With the price of 18th-century secretaries in the six figure or more range, it’s no wonder that dealers try this. The easiest way to spot a marriage of this sort is to check the backboards. Those on the top and bottom must match, including nails. The quality of the wood must also be the same.

For chests and highboys, comparing a drawer from the top with one from the bottom should reveal the same dovetailing—all of which cabinetmakers did by hand—as well as linings.

Another popular marriage is an antique wrought iron sewing machine base that’s married to an antique table top. While this may look quite fine, it has little value.

But antiques marriages aren’t limited to furniture, although that’s where most of them occur. As with this cookie jar, like fitting pieces of ceramics or glassware can be married together. This usually falls into tops for bottoms as well as lids to jars and other containers.

Not so honest antiques dealers can deceive customers in many ways. A newer painting of a scene done in an old style can be mounted in an antique frame, for example, then sold as an antique.

But the most common marriages occur in higher end furniture where a piece that may not have sold for much or not at all is married to one that together forms a different piece that can sell for a whole lot. Don’t be fooled. Do your homework. And ask plenty of questions. The more you ask, the better chance of tripping up an unscrupulous dealer.

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Far East Fakes

QUESTION: I recently purchased a secretary. From my research online, I think it’s done in the Napoleonic Egyptian Revival style. The piece isn’t in great shape, but I would like to know how to determine if it’s a reproduction or is, indeed, an antique, and if so, how old is it?

ANSWER: At first glance your piece looks like an elegant secrétaire à abattant or a drop-front desk from the French Empire Period. But upon closer inspection, you should notice certain discrepancies. While it may look like a piece from the early 19th century, it isn’t a reproduction, but a poorly made facsimile. That’s not a fake, but a piece of furniture made to simulate a particular style.

Since the 1990s, there’s been a flood of “antique” furniture coming into the U.S. from Indonesia. While high-end antique dealers and experts can tell immediately that it’s not authentic, the typical antique dealer can’t. A high-end dealer sells quality and provenance at up-scale shows while most shop dealers are just interested in selling to make a fast buck.

So what makes this drop-front desk a possible candidate for Indonesian facsimile antique furniture? There are three construction clues that even a novice antiques collector can use to identify Indonesian facsimiles: First, Indonesian furniture makers use  a single species of wood  throughout. Second, they hot-glue many of the joints. And third, they use common nails—both finishing and flathead.

Since there are few legal restrictions on how furniture makers can market or advertise wood,  trade names have been developed to help promote little known wood or to make common woods sound more valuable.

The wood in Indonesian reproduction furniture, for example, comes from the groups Shorea, Parashorea, and Pentacme which grow in Asia and aren’t true mahogany. However, all of them can be legally advertised and sold as "mahogany." Two other generic trade names for these woods are Philippine mahogany and Lauan mahogany. The genuine mahogany used in fine antique furniture comes from a different group called Swietenia, originating in Central and South America, Cuba, Honduras, and the West Indies.

So why do Indonesian furniture makers use only one type of wood? The answer is simple. Since they’re using a lesser quality wood, they can afford to use it for an entire piece. Cabinetmakers of the 18th and early 19th century used expensive mahogany on the outside of a piece of furniture where it would be seen and lesser quality woods on the inside out of sight. It would have been impractical for a cabinetmaker back then to use mahogany for a glue block, for example, when no one would ever see it.

Another reason to use more than one type of wood was weight. Larger pieces of 18th and 19th-century furniture would have been too heavy if cabinetmakers used mahogany for entire pieces. Indonesian facsimiles are actually heavier than authentic antiques because they use dense Philippine mahogany.

Cabinetmakers of the 18th and early 19th century used dowels, splines, or special cuts, such as mortise and tenon, to join pieces of wood. They didn’t use nails because they cost more and didn’t hold the joints as well. And they didn’t use screws because they didn’t exist at that time. Indonesian furniture makers tend to use hot glue or common nails to join wood. Hot-glued joints tend to split with shrinkage. Plus the hot glue will fluoresce under black light.

Countersunk finishing nails are commonly used on Indonesian facsimiles. In fact, makers often use wider, filled in countersunk holes to simulate the effect of using wooden pegs.

Now let’s take a look at the details on this drop-front desk to see why it isn’t a real antique. Mahogany veneer has been applied to all the outside surfaces. However, the drawers don’t seem to be veneered but are made of solid pieces. And all the parts of the drawers seem to be made of the same Philippine mahogany wood. Because the wood isn’t real mahogany, it doesn’t have the beautiful grain pattern of the real thing. Also, the grain on the drop-front is horizontal but the grain on the drawers, like the sides, is vertical. Certainly all the grain on the front should be going in the same direction.

The brass fittings or ormulu are very poorly cast and finished. The escutcheons—keyhole surrounds—seem to be nailed rather than screwed into place. The brass fittings are of several different styles0—Baroque, neoclassical anthemium combinations, and egg and dart molding. The masks look more Phoenician or Egyptian, as do the heavy drawer pulls. The plaque in the center of the drop front is “Autumn” from the four-seasons series produced in bisque by Royal Copenhagen, but, it too, is poorly cast. The bows with streaming tails are the Baroque-style decorations. The overall effect tries to be elegant, but individually the decorations don’t go together.

Much of this type of furniture has surfaced in the American antiques market. Some unscrupulous dealers, knowing that their clientele wouldn’t know the difference, have imported it to sell in their shops. Other pieces have been bought and sold several times in the last 20 years and have successfully become part of the overall antiques market inventory. Sometimes one of these facsimiles will even make it to an antique show because the dealer hasn’t done any research or ignores the lack of provenance. In this case, the dealer will sell if for less, but still make a profit on the unsuspecting buyer.

Locating Antique Furniture Parts

QUESTION: I have a Chippendale/Mahogany bookcase/secretary that is missing a finial. Do you have any idea where I can locate one?

ANSWER: Finding parts for pieces of antique furniture can be a quest in itself. But before you decide to restore a piece, you first have to know how old it is. A piece of furniture dating before 1830 is considered a fine antique. As such, it has special rules for restoration. First, you cannot replace more than 60 percent of it without it being declassified as an antique. Replacing anything on it will definitely lower the value. In fact, doing any sort of restoration usually hurts the value, unless it’s to restore the integrity of the piece.

Restoring furniture made after 1830 is another matter. As time goes on, even pieces dating from the mid-19th century will be scrutinized closer when it comes to restoration. However, generally the fine antique crowd tends to avoid anything Victorian, looking upon it as used furniture. Replacing parts and restoring a piece of Victorian furniture can actually enhance its value. But the replacement has to be of the finest quality and the restoration done right.

The person who asked the question above didn’t signify when her bookcase/secretary was made. If it were an authentic 18th-century Chippendale piece, replacing that finial would have to be done by a professional cabinetmaker and restorer. This could cost several thousand dollars, but when the piece may be worth half a million in the first place, that’s a drop in the antique bucket. The cabinetmaker or joiner would have to hand-carve the missing finial to create an exact match to the original.

If–and that’s a BIG if–a replacement could be found from an identical bookcase/secretary, that would also work. But since 18th-century cabinetmakers all customized details like finials on their pieces, the chance of finding one is a million to one. The only way to make sure is to find a bookcase/secretary from the same cabinetmaker that’s beyond restoration and use it for parts.

On the other hand, if the piece were from a later period, and I’m guessing it is, it may be possible to find a finial floating around in a antique or junk shop. But you can’t just go to a home center and pick one off the shelf.

The first place to start looking is in antique shops that specialize in selling furniture. This could take years of browsing. But parts have been known to service in the least possible places.

You can also turn to a cabinetmaker who specializes in making replacement parts for furniture. This, again, could cost a bit since each part has to be handcrafted and that takes time.

Finally, there area a number of places on the Internet to find replacement parts. A lot of them sell mostly replacement hardware, but some, like Don’s Furniture Clinic and Antique Furniture Repair and Refinishing, do make parts to order. McLean’s Refinishing, of Bogart, Georgia,
stocks old furniture parts and has access to reproduction and replacement parts.