The general look of a piece of furniture can tell an expert whether it is old or not, but this is a matter of experience. If you are interested in old furniture, see as many genuine antique pieces as you can. Go to museums where you are certain of the authenticity of the articles. Your eye and mind can be trained to recognize whether the appearance of a piece is an authentic antique or not.
Look at furniture in good light. If possible, take the piece outside. Condition is important; look at the entire piece – the legs, inside, bottom, top and back, including the cornice or pediment. Remove all drawers; check the drawer runners. The inside condition will reveal repairs, remodeling and changes. Ask the owner to point out any known repairs.
Old furniture shrinks, because wood is 80 to 90 percent water. Therefore a round table may no longer be symmetrically round. Drawers may no longer fit perfectly. Inlays will show shrinkage.
Early dovetails were not carbon copies of each other. Later dovetails have identical and uniform shapes. Dovetails can be seen on ancient Egyptian pieces. We still use them today.
Dirty furniture looks older than clean furniture, but old dirt and wax built-up in crevices and cracks are a good sign of age. If it has a pristine appearance, look again more closely.
Check to see if casters have been removed; if so, the value is less. Check the feet carefully for damage. I saw a chest with 40% of it’s feet cut off to lower it for a shorter person. This makes it beyond restoration, and the price should reflect this drastically.
If the finish underneath the mount (pull) is identical to the outside, it has recently been refinished.
Signs of wear should be in proper places. This is important! Otherwise, suspect replacements.
Splotches of stain are a warning; check the area very carefully, inside and out.
Holes that serve no purpose indicate a substitute piece. A small knitting needle serves me well. A collector does a lot of crawling under tables and into case pieces.
Don’t be afraid to give a little shake to a chair, etageres or hall trees; you want solid, not wiggly, furniture.
As part of your tools to help determine if a piece of furniture is an authentic antique, carry a flashlight and tape measure. Look closely at any screws; early screws are one-half-inch or shorter and have flat heads, flat tips and unseen threads. Tips remained blunt up until 1850, after which screw tips were pointed. Older screws are difficult to turn, and may be rusted in place. Beware of loose screws. Also, the slot in screw heads were hand-cut and seldom centered; in modern machine-made screws, the slot is precisely cut across the middle of the head.
Old hand-made nails were forged in a furnace, causing them to be different sizes; they are called “rose-headed” nails. Old nails often bleed into the wood around the nail hole.
Old dowels (wooden pins) are not uniformly round, as are those produced by machines.
Look for saw marks. Marks from antique ripsaws are straight. Modern saws make half-moon impressions. Tilt pieces upside down and at an angle to see these impressions. The impression left on a timber by a saw is called a “kerf mark.”
Victorian Windsors are larger, heavier and more complex than earlier ones.
Exaggerated knees on cabriole legs with claw-and-ball feet indicate “revival pieces,” pieces made after 1876.
One becomes a good judge of antiques by investing a great deal of study, and putting theoretical knowledge to the test with practical experience. The more you handle antiques, touch them, measure them with your eyes, rub you fingers across them and mentally photograph pieces, the quicker you’ll develop an instinct.
New paint is not as hard as old paint; it dents. Old paint looks softer than new paint, and has a mottled patina. Old paint will shatter into slivers. Painted pieces are becoming more important to collectors; it is important not to strip or repaint these pieces, since this will destroy their potential value. These old painted charmers are better left alone. Grain painting is the technique of applying paint to imitate the grain of wood.
Ask yourself, do veneered panels, above and below, match? Do they exhibit the same grain patterns?
Veneering was introduced with the use of walnut. Old veneers were cut by hand, and consequently, are quite thick, many almost an eighth of an inch. Modern veneers, however, are cut with a machine-drawn saw, and are much thinner. This, along with other factors, is a useful indication of the genuineness of a piece.
The use of some rare woods implies that an article costs more for materials, and probably also for labor, and that it was likely made to a high standard throughout. The better quality eighteenth-century pieces were fitted with oak linings to the drawers, but in exceptional instances this might be mahogany or cedar. Practice varied from workshop to workshop as well as from period to period, and a guide can only give clues to answers.
Skillful repairs are not usually a do-it-yourself job, and it is not always easy to find the right man to undertake them. It’s dangerous to buy pieces in a bad state of repair, unless you know someone who can be relied upon to put them into good order. Go to a reputable dealer, with skilled men in his own workshop who can make any necessary repairs.
It’s worthwhile to study the methods of making furniture, and how they have changed over time. Learn, for instance, how the crude dovetails on heavy drawer sides were modified and improved each century.
The tips should help you determine if furniture pieces are genuine antiques.
