Somewhere to Dream

QUESTION: My husband and recently purchased an antique four-poster bed from around 1810.  The dealer called it a tester bed. It originally had a canopy which needs to be replaced. Can you tell me what a tester is and something about the origins of this type of bed?

ANSWER: Initially the wooden frame of the bed was far less important that the trappings of textiles that surrounded it. Most any reference to a bed centuries ago actually meant the mattress and whatever cloth materials people piled upon it.

During medieval times there was no particular room set aside for sleeping quarters, thus the bed became almost a room within the household. Some of the more elaborate bedsteads had both a room and sliding panel walls. Occupants could climb inside and stuff them-selves off from the rest of the chilly and drafty residence.

Gradually, heavy curtains replaced the side panels of the "bedroom," but the basic roof remained. The solid roof, known as a tester, retained the name even though the roof covering eventually became one of cloth and curtains as the sides had been.

Basically, a bedstead and two posts supported the roof of these early beds. Over the decades makers adopted a style which incorporated four posts which supported the full tester canopy.

Early in the 18th century, during the Queen Anne period, wealthy homeowners often covered their four-poster beds with velvet and other textiles so extensively that they obscured the basic woodwork. Cabinetmakers used back panels less and less. As the century progressed, the rear posts remained covered with curtains while the front posts became more visible. As a consequence, bed makers carved and decorated the front posts more elaborately.

Some of the most impressive four-poster  beds reached heights of eight feet or more, complete with a sweeping array of curtains and canopy. Cabinetmakers made sturdy frames from mahogany or walnut. People could close panels of curtains at night for more warmth and security. Matching coverlets and bases then totally enveloped the grand bed in a sea of cloth.



Wealthy homeowners continued to import fabric for their bed coverings from Europe in the 1750s and 1760s. But with the increase in leisure activities and attention to developing social graces that characterized the time, fancy needlework done by women and school girls often supplied the decorative detail.

By the dawn of the 18th century, the finest bed available was the Chippendale bed. The Chippendale and those similar in style displayed predominantly high foot posts which were handsomely carved and ended elegantly with ball and claw feet. By contrast, cabinetmakers sometimes didn’t carve the head posts and instead left them plain to be extensively decorated by fabrics. Elaborate decorating of the beds gradually increased as owners opted for serpentine headboards and reeled posts in lieu of additional drapes.

By the 1800s, the lavish use of fabrics on beds had diminished considerably and the wood itself had more of a prominent role in the overall design. Almost without exception, cabinetmakers carved or decorated posts. In addition, homeowners began placing their beds in separate rooms designed for sleeping, usually on the second floor of their houses, instead of in parlors or various other locations in their homes.  .

The rise of the Empire period in the 1820s had an impact on a vast assortment of furniture, including the bed. Scrolled headboards were very fashionable, and posts were decorated with acanthus leaves and detailed beading. Mahogany remained one of the most popular woods of choice.

It wasn’t unusual for the well established to spend more for their bed furnishings than on the actual wood structure, itself. They preferred bright colors over white and added  fine linen-like textiles in shades of red, blue, yellow and green. Many also used generous amounts of silk and lace, along with woolen cloths.

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 religious 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.

Condiments Anyone?

QUESTION: Can you tell me something about a Victorian rotating castor with 5 or 6 little "doors" decorated with hunting animals. Turn a knob and the doors open to reveal places for condiment bottles which are missing. What metal is this made of, and who would typically have owned it.  The story goes that our great grandfather was in the Civil War and brought it back to Illinois/Minnesota as a souvenir after the war. It’s in excellent condition and is currently owned by my 95-year-old sister who plans to give it to one of her grandchildren one day.

ANSWER: Just about every Victorian dinner table had a castor, filled with jars and bottles of condiments, sitting in its center. The revolving castor set was one of the most widely used pieces of Victorian tableware. It was such an important part of the table setting  that no matter how humble, a family would have one sitting in the middle of their table. But castor sets go back even further.

While castor sets holding just salt and pepper shakers have been around since the 17th century, the American Victorian version, the type most collected today, appeared in the early 19th century. A castor set held condiments. It usually contained shakers for salt and pepper, bottles for vinegar and oil, a mustard pot, and a spice shaker of some sort. Manufacturers usually made these castor sets in white Britannia metal, then silver plated them. During the latter half of the 19th century, they began to use the newly developed quadruple-plate process. Though some fancy castor sets came with cut or etched glass  cruets and spice holders plus figurines—some even had a bell to ring for a servant—most were utilitarian but decorative and graced tables of Victorians in all social classes.

One bottle had a hinged lid with a slot for a spoon. This was for mustard. Other bottles could hold soy sauce, spices or “castor” sugar which was a pounded sugar—not powdered sugar and not granulated sugar—which cooks made by pounding loaf sugar with a mortar and pestle.

Though castor manufacturers produced bottles made of plain or etched glass, people could also purchase ones made of more expensive cut glass designs, available in blue, amber and cranberry after the American Civil War. Manufacturers also offered buyers a choice of handles and cruet styles. And some also had an open or closed revolving frame.

There were several different types of castor sets. The simplest included perhaps only salt and pepper shakers and a container for sugar. Breakfast castors generally included three or four bottles while dinner castors, the most elaborate, consisted of a silver or silverplate frame which held five or six cruets.

In 1860, castors became more elaborate and had bottles of pressed glass. Pressed glass bottle patterns ranged from Bellflower to Daisy & Button, Beaded Dewdrop, Beaded Grape, Medallion Bull's Eye, Fine Cut, Fine Rib, Gothic, Hamilton, Ivy, Honeycomb, Palmette, Powder & Shot, Thumbprint, Roman Rosette and Eugenia.

The rotary castor, in which the bottles fitted into holes on a circular platform which stood on a tall cone-type base, was patented in 1862. Makers often decorated its center handle with elaborate openwork design in one of several styles to go along with furniture of the time. Eastlake castors were some of the most popular. In the 1870's, they added heavy grape and beaded borders. One of the rarer types was the closed castor set in which the bottles sat behind closed doors.

In addition to pressed glass of blue, canary or crystal, makers used Pomona art glass, opalene twist, imported, decorated ruby glass and cut crystal glass. The glass containers had a fancy plated cover and decorated tongs were fastened to the stand.

The castor set became old fashioned in the early 1900s. By World War I, castor sets had fallen into disuse.

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 religious 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.

50 Shades of Veneer

QUESTION: At several antiques shows I’ve attended recently, I noticed some beautifully decorated veneered boxes from the 18th century. At one of them, I also saw a hall table with a top decorated with a floral marquetry bouquet.  I know nothing about how veneering is done, nor do I know how it originated. What can you tell me about this intricate work?

ANSWER: Today, the art of veneered marquetry and veneer decoration is almost non-existent. But back in the 17th,18th and early 19th centuries, it was all the rage.

Early furniture makers recognized and appreciated beautiful woods and wood grains for their beauty. Veneering, the process of gluing thinly cut layers of precious wood to surfaces of less exotic wood, goes back to ancient times and became popular during the Renaissance, when inlay designs were common forms of furniture decoration.

But there was a problem early on with cutting large enough slabs of wood to the desired thinness in order to cover entire surfaces with single sheets of the more precious wood. So cabinetmakers cut small pieces of wood and glued them to the carcass of a piece of furniture in patterns and designs that took advantage of the beauty of the wood grain and variations in color.

By the 17th century, veneering became an art, and the decorative use of thin sheets of wood could be found on many examples of European furniture. The French were the style-setters in marquetry inlay, and British and other European craftsmen soon followed suit.

There were two advantages to using veneers. The first reduced the cost of a piece of furniture or a box by applying an exotic and expensive wood to a less expensive domestic wood. The second advantage was that the tensile strength of the surface of a piece could be increased many times when the cabinetmaker laid a veneer cross grain to the under piece of wood. The layer of glue between the two surfaces also added to the strength of the finished piece.

The aesthetic advantages of the use of veneers in the decoration of cabinetry  increased, also. The cabinetmakers, using thinly cut sheets of the same piece of wood, could repeat the grainings and markings in order to form interesting patterns. This use of the natural design in wood required artistry as well as craftsmanship. By using veneers judiciously, cabinetmakers could inlay designs and decorations of different kinds and colors of wood, thus producing interesting motifs and styles.

Before the 19th century, specially trained veneer cutters, skilled in slicing the layers of expensive wood to uniform thickness, cut veneers by hand. They then sold these sheets to furniture makers and box makers who used them in decorating the many kinds and styles of decorative furniture and boxes that developed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

At the beginning of the19th century a steam-driven saw, registered in London, that made it cheaper, faster, and easier to cut large, thin, uniform slices of wood to be used for veneers. After the invention of the special saw, wood could be cut in many different ways to take advantage of the variations in grainings.



The different designs that could be obtained in veneered wood depended on the type of wood used and the way in which the log was cut. The earliest methods of cutting veneers by hand produced only vertically cut grains. This vertical slicing achieved a pattern which was circular and was known as "oystering." Other types of graining commonly used in the 19th century were "crotch," cut from the area of the tree where two limbs fork out, the "burl," a growth on the tree trunk and a particularly attractive gnarled design, and "bird's-eye," which was formed by the deep growth of buds most commonly found on the maple tree. Many other patterns could be obtained by the expert cutting of the wood in different cross sections and the employment of the saw in cutting circular sections around the log.

Woods often used in producing veneers were chestnut, poplar, walnut, elm, birch, rosewood, ebony, satinwood, sandalwood, sycamore, box, yew, olive, pear, teak, tulipwood, laurel, and many other similar exotic woods. Mahogany was and still is the most popular veneer wood. It was strong and hard and had figurations in the various cuts of its grain that were unmatchable for their beauty. Mahogany also takes a high polish extremely well.

A large variety of boxes were made of veneered wood in the 19th century. British box makers, especially, produced a great many veneered boxes. Often, they made elaborate boxes to protect valuables against damage, and more often, theft. Sometimes, they made elegant boxes simply as a means of displaying the contents to its best advantage.


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 religious 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.

Victorian Cottage Charm

QUESTION: I have a four-piece bedroom set that I believe may be Cottage Victorian. My mother bought it in a second hand store in Pennsylvania over 56 years ago, when I was around 8 years old. I still use it, but I have considered letting it go. But before I do anything with it, I want to learn more about it. Can you help?

ANSWER: Your bedroom set is in exceptionally good condition. It’s made in a style known as Cottage Victorian. What’s also interesting is that you have the entire set. And because it has been in constant Victorian furniture became popular in the United States, particularly along the East Coast, after the Civil War. Pieces began appearing in workshops and then homes of the wealthy in places like Martha's Vineyard, Cape May, and the Berkshires. But the popularity of these items didn’t remain exclusively with the upper class. As the middle class grew, equally elegant, but relatively reasonably priced versions began to appear in the homes of the nation’s growing work force, particularly in Pennsylvania and New England.

Homeowners purchased Victorian Cottage furniture in mostly bedroom "suites,"sold as coordinating groupings consisting of a double bed, a washstand, a dresser or vanity with an attached mirror, a small table, a straight chair and a rocker, and often a wardrobe. In this case, the set consists of four pieces. Cabinetmakers used pine or other inexpensive wood, then painted the entire piece with several layers of paint. The finished sets were colorful and whimsical. But not all sets were painted.

Cottage Victorian beds have high, decorated headboards, some as high as six feet. Finials and medallions constituted what little carving there was on most pieces. Most of the decoration took the form of painted flowers, fruit, and other plants, featuring a large painted bouquet-like medallion in a central panel on the headboard and a smaller, matching one on the foot-board.

Originally, local cabinetmakers, most of whom didn’t have any formal training, built these pieces from designs in pattern books, but towards the last two decades of the 19th century, manufacturers began to mass produce them. This set is one of those.

Those made by untrained cabinetmakers had decoration applied to them in a primitive, folk art sort of way. More expensive sets featured scenes of sailing ships or local wildlife. The same decorative motif appeared on all the pieces of a furniture suite. Those that were painted had a background color of tan, pale blue, pale green, pink, mustard yellow, and sometimes chocolate brown.



One of the biggest misconceptions was that Victorian homeowners loved the appearance of natural woods in their furnishings. That preference didn’t appear until the early 20th century. Cottage Victorian furniture was usually painted to brighten people’s dark, oil-lamp lit homes. As a result, many pieces of painted furniture have been stripped and finished to the often not so beautiful bare wood by well-meaning dealers and collectors.

Cabinetmakers fitted drawers and cabinet doors with wooden knobs instead of metal hardware. Even the boldly colored paint, didn’t have the look of value to it. Those pieces of Victorian Cottage furniture that have survived intact usually have a crackled surface from age-shrinkage, with flakes in spots due from dryness.

Manufacturers produced sets like this one as cheaply as possible. Made usually of pine with machine turned legs and finials, they featured as little structural decoration as possible. Even painted motifs were kept to a minimum to reduce the time it took to do them. Some even feature stenciled designs, so that the maker didn’t have to pay more for trained artists.

To the untrained eye, Victorian Cottage furniture looks as if it should be sold as junk or stripped to the bare wood. But this style of furniture has a charm all its own.

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 religious 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.

And the Band Played On

QUESTION: Recently, I visited the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, where they have a fine collection of old music boxes. I love the tinny music that they played. And as sophisticated as music playing devices are these days, I still enjoy the romantic sound of those old machines. What can you tell me about their history? I know they’re highly collectible, but it would take a small fortune to be able to collect them.

ANSWER: Music boxes come in all shapes and sizes, from the tiny ones inside jewelry boxes to the gigantic band organs found on old carousels. I believe the type you’re speaking of are the ones produced for home use.

By definition, a music box is an automatic musical instrument in a box that produces musical notes by using a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc to pluck the tuned teeth, called lamellae, of a steel comb.

In 1796, Antoine Favre-Salomon, a clockmaker from Geneva replaced the stack of bells of a carillon by a comb with multiple pre-tuned metallic notes in order to reduce space, and together with a horizontally placed pinned barrel, produced more varied and complex sounds. This he called carillons à musique, French for "chimes of music." Slivers of steel, shaped, polished, tapered, and screwed into position so that the projections in a rotating cylinder could pluck at its free extremity was capable of emitting a pure musical sound at an acceptable pitch and volume for its size. Some of the more deluxe models also contained a tiny drum and/or bells in addition to the metal comb.

The typical table music box had six interchangeable cylinders. It could have been any size from that of a hat box to a large piece of furniture, but most were tabletop models.  Artisan clockmakers produced clockwork mechanisms to power them. For most of the 19th century, Switzerland was home to the majority of music box makers. Jérémie Recordon and Samuel Junod opened the first music box factory there in 1815. There were also a few manufacturers in Bohemia and Germany. By the end of the 19th century, some of the European makers had opened factories in the United States.

Manufacturers made the cylinders of metal and powered them by a spring. In some of the more deluxe models the cylinders could be removed to change melodies, thanks to an invention by Paillard in 1862, which Metert of Geneva perfected in 1879.

But the cylinder music box was, at best, a cumber-some device, and expensive. From the beginnings of today's music box technology, the music box underwent a progressive improvement in Germany and later in the United States.

In 1870, a new type of music box appeared in Germany that played changeable flat discs instead of cylinders. Invented almost simultaneously in London by Ellis Parrand and in Leipzig by Paul Lochmann, it revolutionized devices that played music. The worldwide center of the industry was in Leipzig and Berlin. In the last decades of the 19th century, however, mass-produced models, such as the Polyphon, made use of interchangeable metal disks instead of cylinders. The cylinder-based machines rapidly lost popularity. By 1895 more than 3,000 people were employed in Leipzig, and exports from there went to many parts of the world.

The term "music box" also applied to clockwork devices which had a removable metal disk or cylinder that was only used to program them without producing the sounds directly by means of pins and a comb. Instead, the cylinder or disk worked by activating bellows and levers which fed and opened pneumatic valves which, in turn, activated a modified wind instrument or plucked the chords on a modified string instrument. The Orchestrion could do both at the same time, essentially combining a music box with a player piano.



One of the earliest music boxes to be sold in America was called the Symphonion. It employed steel discs, had a patented fly wheel, speed regulator, side dampers, and double comb arrangement. One winding would allow it to play for 30 minutes. The Symphonion won awards at shows in Chicago in 1893 and Antwerp, Belgium in 1894. Prices ranged, depending on the degree of sophistication, from $4 all the way up to $300.

There were many variations of these large music machines, usually built for the wealthy of the pre-phonograph 19th century. Some were called the Symphonium while others were called the Concert Regina Music Box machine. Both variations were as tall as a grandfather clock and both used interchangeable large disks to play different sets of tunes. Both were spring-wound and driven and both had a bell-like sound. The machines were often made in England, Italy, and the US, with additional disks made in Switzerland, Austria, and Prussia. Early "jukebox" pay versions of them existed in public places.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, most music boxes were gradually replaced by player pianos, which were louder and more versatile and melodious, when kept tuned, and by the smaller gramophones which had the advantage of playing back voices. Escalating labor costs increased the price and further reduced volume.

But the invention of the phonograph, the First World War, and the economic crisis in the 1920s made the luxury music box completely disappear.


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 religious 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.