Furniture Specific: Press-back decoration sans carving

While that is not exactly production line work, it is the beginning of an industrial mind-set that reached into deeper and firmer ground with its roots as the next two centuries rolled by in Colonial/Federal America. The urge to decorate plain surfaces appears to be a universal human trait that appeals to the “art” in all of us.

The replication of effort in difficult tasks in the cabinetmaker’s shop is what allowed large true sets of chairs to be turned out in the 18th century, and by the early 19th century entrepreneurs like Lambert Hitchcock really did produce furniture in an assembly-line manner with each worker performing the same task repetitively on endless lines of chairs. Even the decorations were “by the numbers” with stencils producing the same cornucopia thousands of times on the crest rails of thousands of chairs.

By mid century J.H. Belter had nearly a hundred German woodworkers and carvers in his factory located next to his rooming house in Manhattan, and the Meeks brothers had a new factory nearby and even had an outlet in New Orleans. But even with all the labor and all those tools and factories, it was still relatively expensive and time-consuming for Belter to turn out a parlor set in “Rosalie Without the Grapes” or for Meeks to order up a five-piece “Stanton Hall” set. But the desire for decoration was still there and as long as somebody could afford it.

By the turn of the century things had changed both in society and in the factory. Despite some ups and downs the decades after Civil War were prosperous and America’s population was growing both in numbers and in wealth. And those wealthier citizens were willing to pay for a little decoration in their lives—within reason.

The mail-order catalog phenomenon was in full swing and was the primary furniture distributor of the period and price was the key. How could Sears or Larkin produce decorative furniture to compete with the intricate carvings of the mid century? No one wanted to pay that much or wait that long.

They didn’t have to. In the very late 1800s along came a process that could produce elaborate designs on chair parts for a cost of next to nothing. It even had a lot of people thinking it was hand carved. The process? The steel die stamp. A design with sharp edges was etched into a metal plate. That plate was mounted on a roller and under great pressure was passed over a waiting chair crest rail that had been precut to shape and steam-bent to match the curve on the roller. The result was a perfect impression of the etching that was literally pressed into the wood giving the effect of a three-dimensional carving. Thus began the great era of the “press back” chair in American furniture.

In the simplest case a rather shallow design was pressed into the waiting crest and without further ado was mounted to a chair ready to be finished. That allowed a mail-order house like Sears to offer a dining chair in 1902 for $.63 that had “handsome carving” on the back. Other chairs were enthusiastically—and erroneously—described as having “rich hand carving,” “beautifully turned and carved back,” or simply a “richly carved back.” Maybe the catalog writers didn’t know about “the process.”

Here a few examples of press back chairs along with a few that are combinations of pressing and hand chasing and a few that are not press backs, but are from the same period.

Cheap – This chair has a shallow pattern that required single pass of the die on the birch crest. This was simply a decorative touch and made no real effort to look hand carved. This was a very inexpensive chair at the time.

Larkin – A design with a little more depth and texture but still a fairly simple look is shown in this Larkin chair that was offered in 1908 for $.25 and one Larkin certificate or in a set of four for five certificates with no cash payment.

HW – The Heywood Brothers and Wakefield Co. offered this chair around 1900 that showed a good, deep design with stiles topped by Victorian era “honey dipper” finials.

Face – The “face chair” movement was a prime beneficiary of the press back technology. Mythological creatures could now be instantly transferred to chair backs without all that tedious carving.

Dragons – Of course the other main movement of the period, the “creature feature,” worked its way into the press back theme book. These two dragons are about to mix it up.

Griffins – The two figures on this back are traditional winged griffins that have been pressed into service.

Hand chased – The Holy Land scene on an otherwise severely plain Mission-style chair was first pressed, then followed by hand chasing that removed background material and left visible tool marks to enhance the notion of hand carving.

Windmill – The outline of these happy cloggers may have been pressed but the main work was indeed hand carved.

Not pressed – This may appear to be a press back candidate but the bottlenose dolphins are true carvings applied over the quartersawn veneer.

Send your comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or email them to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book How To Be a Furniture Detective is available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor's DVD, Identification of Older & Antique Furniture ($17 + $3 S&H) is also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . All items are also available directly from his website.

Furniture Specific: Brass with class

In the last few months I have been fortunate enough to attend several high-end antique shows, cover some good auctions and visit a well-known museum with a wonderful collection of 18th- and 19th-century American furniture treasures. And while it is fun to sort of let yourself go and just be amazed at all the great “stuff,” the inquiring mind of a skeptic curmudgeon requires that not every piece on display or for sale be accepted at face value.

I often find myself studying a piece with the attitude that somewhere in the history of that 200-year-old chest of drawers or game table, somebody made a mistake or took a shortcut and it will reveal itself if I know where to look and how to look. I don’t use this approach to bargain for a better price on something because I am not looking to add to my collection right now and I certainly would never make a disparaging comment to a museum curator about something being improperly labeled or questionably restored. But it is fun to just play a private game of “find the faux pas” and let it go at that. However, you may find another use for the result of the game if you choose.

The most likely areas on a piece of furniture to reveal alteration or substitution are the ones most likely to suffer in daily use or the ones most easily “upgraded” or replaced. Those areas are drawer pulls, hinges, casters, panes of glass and the finish. For right now let’s just concentrate on drawer pulls, the main “brasses.”

When examining an antique, keep in mind that the older the piece, the more likely the handles have been replaced. There may have been many reasons for replacing a set of handles on a piece, most quite innocent and maybe a few less so. One reason for replacement is the “freshening up” that used to be a periodic ritual with old furniture. Old, tarnished or broken pulls were replaced with more modern ones to give the piece an updated look. Sometimes the aging process went the other way, placing pulls from a previous style or period on a contemporary piece to change the appearance. There may have been other legitimate reasons why a drawer has pulls that would seem to be from another period or style. Among those reasons is the fact that the cabinetmaker may have just used whatever he had on hand. Another is that most Colonial brass pulls were imported from England and they were often altered or cut to make do.

Drawer pulls are most commonly made of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, a tradition that dates to the William and Mary period when round drop pulls were cast. These early round or pear-shape pulls were usually flat or hollow on the back and were mounted on a thin brass backplate that often was “chased” for additional decoration. Around the turn of the 18th century the cast bail handle appeared, attached to a drawer front with cotter pins clinched on the inside, similar to the earlier drop pulls. The ends of these early bails curved inward to complete the handle. Early in the Queen Anne period the bail was attached to posts with rounded heads that accepted the protruding ears of the bail which by now were curved outward, hanging from the inner sides of the posts. This configuration lasted for most of the rest of the 18th century, reversing itself again for Hepplewhite pulls at the beginning of the Federal era. The Queen Anne post and bail hardware had a thicker brass backplate than William and Mary examples and the posts were often threaded to attach a crudely made nut on the inside of the drawer. Later Queen Anne and Chippendale backplates were not chased. The shapes became the main decorative element with Chippendale adding elaborate piercings.

Early and mid-18th-century brasses were cast in a sand mold using a wooden model of the hardware to form the mold. Sand cast hardware often has “inclusions” from impurities found in the sand. The backs of flat sand cast brasses have the texture of the sand in the mold while the edges will show the marks left by a file as it was shaped and smoothed. The flat surfaces were almost never completely flat, exhibiting a wavy pattern left by the smoothing operation which can be both seen and felt.

Two important changes in brass hardware occurred in the second half of the century. The composition of the brass was changed around mid-century with the addition of more copper to the alloy, producing a slightly redder brass than the pale yellow of the early century and rolled sheet brass became available around 1780. This meant that each piece was no longer cast but cut, greatly reducing the cost and increasing the availability. While this new method still resulted in some filing and final shaping visible around the edges, the backs were now as smooth as the fronts.

By the Federal era high pressure rollers produced the elaborate raised panel Hepplewhite back plates for American furniture, ironically produced mostly in Birmingham, England, complete with patriotic eagles, flags and drums. Periods of style after Federal, beginning with Empire, placed much less emphasis on brass hardware, downsizing to knobs and ring pulls. Rococo Revival and Renaissance Revival used even less. Elaborate stamped brass did not regain popularity until the Eastlake and Aesthetic movements and the onset of the Colonial Revival.

If the style of the brass looks right and the apparent age of the brass fits with the apparent age of the piece, how can you tell if the brass is original or has been replaced? Since it is much easier to detect replaced hardware than to identify original brasses, start there beginning with the least invasive technique, working through successively more invasive methods.

The least invasive technique is simply careful observation of the brass and the surrounding area of the wood and finish. Since most people do not remove the hardware every time a piece is cleaned or waxed, a handle that has been in place, undisturbed for a very long time will have a buildup of wax, brass polish and dirt around the edges. That’s a good clue but valuable only in its presence, not in its absence, because the original brasses could have been removed, the case cleaned and the brasses polished and reinstalled, resulting in crisp edges with no build up. Examine the surrounding area for signs on the surface of different hardware such as indentations made by other back plates, bruises in the wood from other bails as they drop and a change in color where another piece of hardware protected the finish in a different spot.

The next step is to open a drawer for a peek at the backside. The most common clue to other hardware is the presence of additional holes that may have accommodated a different size plate or holes that have been plugged. Then check the attaching system employed to hold the hardware in place. Is it consistent with the period of the piece? Do any of the older holes show evidence of clinched cotter pins that have been replaced by more modern threaded posts and nuts? Older handmade nuts tend to be round and may even have a slot in them. Newer machine-made hardware has square nuts on the post inside the drawer and the threads on the posts are perfectly symmetrical.

Finally, if appropriate, remove the hardware and examine both the brass and the wood underneath. If older, smaller brass was replaced with a bigger piece, there could be a shadow or outline of the older pull visible in the wood, especially if it had sharp rear facing edges like the pressed Hepplewhite backplates. Then take a look at the back of the hardware for evidence of sand casting or milling on the plate. Older posts started at the backplate as square and tapered as they were threaded to accept the round nuts. More modern posts start out round and accept the square nuts.

Most modern reproduction hardware is easy to spot. The backplates are stamped, not cast and the posts are pressed into fittings on the backplate and of course they look like they just came from the local hardware store. However there are some dedicated craftsmen currently producing excellent quality handmade cast reproductions of period hardware using molds made from the real thing. One of the better of these is Londonderry Brasses of Cochranville, Pa.

Familiarize yourself with the correct hardware style for the period of the furniture and learn to tell modern reproduction hardware from period pieces.

For more information about old hardware and brasses see the following books:

Fake, Fraud or Genuine, Myrna Kaye, Bulfinch Press

Early American Furniture, John Obbard, Collector Books

Old Furniture-Understanding the Craftsman’s Art, Nancy Smith, Dover Publications

Send your comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or email them to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book How To Be a Furniture Detective is available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor's DVD, Identification of Older & Antique Furniture ($17 + $3 S&H) is also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . All items are also available directly from his website.

Furniture Specific: Letter to the future

But that doesn’t have to be the case with another type of letter we get to send to the future and to our children—our antiques. And like our children we do not truly “own” the antiques. We are merely entrusted with them for a period of time even though we may actually have paid a pretty penny for them, just as we did for our offspring. In fact, also like our children, sometimes it seems more like they own us rather than the other way around. In either case it still boils down to us being responsible and how we prepare our children or how we take care of our antiques will be part of our message to the future.

PROTECTION

One of the primary services we offer to our children is one that we should offer to our antiques—protection. These artifacts from the past have somehow survived to this date, often by chance and sometimes by design, and it should become our business to make sure they continue to survive, at least on our watch.

Protection can be achieved in a number of ways. First among them is how the artifact, in my case primarily furniture, is displayed. An 18th-century chair simply cannot be left on the front porch. It deserves an inside berth. In general the area in which the furniture is to be displayed should be clean and dry and have a relatively low level of light. That doesn’t mean you have to live in the dark with the old stuff but a low light level helps maintain the original color. When you are in the room or actually using the furniture turn the light up to a level that is comfortable. But when you leave the room turn the lights down or off. The same holds true for window covering. Most pieces of antique furniture do not especially like bright sunlight or even filtered sunlight. Keep drapes closed in the display area when not in use if possible. Even thin liners can help keep out excess light if it is inconvenient to completely close the drapes.

While we are often reminded in the popular press that “change is good” most antiques, especially pieces of wooden furniture, don’t see it that way. They like things just the way they are, thank you, and if any change is to be affected it needs to be minor and gradual. Extremes of temperature and humidity can cause antique furniture items to “squirm,” to move, to expand, to contract and this movement will eventually cause damage to the piece. The general range of relative humidity that maintains a neutral condition is 40 percent to 60 percent and the rule of thumb about temperature is that if you are uncomfortable so is the furniture.

The furniture must also be protected from pests that want to use the antiques for their own purposes. Just be aware that there are no organic forms except you that are beneficial to antique furniture. That includes pets, insects, boorish guests and, I am afraid, the raw material of our original letter to the future, most children.

CARE and REPAIR

While my antiques do not require nearly the time and attention that my children demanded, they still need a little TLC on a regular basis. A well-made piece of antique furniture, in generally good condition, does not require a lot of maintenance on a regular basis but it does need some. Even the cleanest display area sometimes needs to be dusted and if the area needs cleaning so does the furniture. Remove dust with a soft cotton cloth or even with the new Swiffer wipes. They can help you keep from just transferring the dust from place to place. Be sure to use the dry version, not the wet ones. While it is tempting to use a feather duster on fragile antiques they do pose a risk. The feathers often have a tendency to snag in any loose crevices and you may accidentally pull a loose piece of veneer or remove a section of a fragile finish. Soft artist’s bristle brushes can help you get into the nooks and crannies without scraping the surrounding areas. If the area has somehow accumulated a little bit more detritus than just simple dust use a dampened cloth to remove the accumulation.

This dusting regime assumes of course that the furniture has a nice coat of paste wax over the finish. The paste wax will help keep the dust and dirt from adhering to the surface and will give the piece a nice pleasant glow. Paste wax is the primary first line of defense for antique furniture. And a little goes a long way. A thin coat of paste wax applied sparingly and allowed to dry adequately before buffing will greatly enhance your protection program and make routine care less of a chore. Do not use products that contain oil which can be a dust and dirt attractor as well as discolor the original finish.

When serious repairs to our children were required, such as the occasional stitch or sprain, the choice was clear. Get them to the doctor immediately. I was always assigned the stitch patrol duty while my wife handled the other details. But what do you do when your antique furniture needs repair? The good news is that it is not making a lot of noise or a big mess while you consider your options. The bad news is that you may not know exactly who to call. But you do have the time to do the research to find out who can make the correct repair in a reasonable time frame. In that time find a good conservator or repair tech who understands antique furniture and the appropriate repair methods. Most good dealers know the right buttons to push to reach reliable repair folks.

MOVING

Relocation was a painful process in my youth, but I never had that problem with my own children since we lived in the same house all of their youthful lives. But I was in the furniture restoration business and that meant that I had to move a lot of antique furniture and that could be as traumatic an event to the furniture as moving was to me as a child.

A few simple rules about moving go a long way toward a successful change of venue. Make sure the piece is intact before you move it and that it will survive a careful move. Then use the correct method to lift and carry the piece. Tables are lifted by the skirt, chairs by the seat rail, never the arms, case goods by the frame. Remove any loose elements like drawers, finials, marble tops and slip seats and secure the piece in the vehicle with pads, ropes and straps. Totally disregard the presence of wheels on a piece of furniture. They are not for your use in this purpose. Most important of all: Be sure to use your head in thinking through the entire moving process, step by step and location by location.

While it is true that antiques are not as much trouble—or as much fun—as children can be, they do have similarities and require similar approaches.

So how are you doing on your letter to the future?

Send your comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or email them to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. "His book How To Be a Furniture Detective" is available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor's DVD, "Identification of Older & Antique Furniture" ($17 + $3 S&H) is also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . All items are also available directly from his website.

Furniture Specific: Molded to perfection

How? The piece is done.

That’s easy enough, just add some molding, or moulding, to some flat spots and it picks right up.

The addition of molding to “finish out” a piece of furniture goes at least back to classical Greek designs and probably even earlier. The molding is used to emphasize the difference in planes of parts of a piece or to provide bands of reflected light to enhance the outline or texture. According to The Encyclopedia of Furniture by Joseph Aronson, moldings generally fall into three categories: flat, single curved and compound curves. The single curved molding include the cavetto, commonly called a quarter round; the ovolo, the reverse of the quarter round; the flute, a shallow groove; the torus, commonly called a half round; the astragal, a small torus or bead; the scotia, a deeper version of the ovolo; and the roll, a three-quarter round.

Compound curves include the cyma recta, a double curve that ends up in the direction it started, the cymatium, the cyma reversa or ogee, a seprentinie or double molding and the beak mold with the upper part concave and the lower part convex.

Among the flat moldings are the band or fascia, flush with or sunken into the surface, the fillet, a raised band, and the chamber, an inclined band. The flat moldings are the most commonly seen and have some of the best names. Here are some frequently seen examples of flat molding.

DENTIL MOLDING – This is a common molding seen on Federal pieces and qualifies as a fillet molding. It is a decorative trim molding of evenly spaced square or rectangular blocks that resemble teeth. Why it is spelled "dentil" instead of "dental" is lost on me. The dentil molding on this Colonial Revival china cabinet is easily identified just below the pediment. Fred Taylor photo

Other types of flat moldings that may be either band or fillet are the Greek key and the egg and dart. The Greek key is a symmetrical design that includes interlocking right angle and vertical lines to resemble a set of intertwined squares. "Egg and dart" is a surface decoration derived from classical Greek décor. It was first used in the West by English architect William Kent in 1730. The pattern, seen on molding and inlay of classical pieces, consists of a series of partial circles (the egg) with a pointed design (the dart) between them. The pattern can be seen on flat molding or on single curve molding.

RIPPLE MOLDING - One of the more intricate flat moldings is an inclined band molding known as a ripple molding. This type molding first appeared in Empire style furniture in the 1830s. The ripple molding seen here is on a wall cabinet from the 1840s. While the cabinet was well made and certainly functional, it would have been very plain without the ripple molding on the drawer and around the mirror. It is made by hand on a three section sliding jig that moves hand-operated cutters at regular intervals. This version is a uniform ripple pattern with each group of rises evenly spaced and each channel the same depth. Fred Taylor photo

MODIFIED RIPPLE – The ripple molding seen in this Empire example is not the uniform pattern seen in the example above. Here there is a difference in spacing and depth with a deeper central channel. It is still hand made using a jig but is a little more difficult to make. It was seen on more expensive pieces of the mid-19th century. Fred Taylor photo

SINGLE RIPPLE – The traditional triple ripple molding was used around mid-century and even resurfaced in the late 19th century as part of the Empire Revival period of the 1890s. But the idea didn’t die there. It appears here as a unique single ripple on a marble- top vanity from the early 20th century. Fred Taylor photo

MODERN RIPPLE – An even more recent example of the triple ripple molding is seen on the edge of this Colonial Revival Depression era reproduction of a Chippendale desk. Fred Taylor photo

REEDED - Another example of flat molding is the triple raised edge seen on this eighteenth century English pedestal table. This type molding with multiple, usually three but sometimes more, individual closely set ridges or raised lines is called reeded molding. The opposite of that configuration, with multiple concave lines is said to be fluted. Fred Taylor photo

BEADED – Both types of molding seen on this Late Classicism game table on the skirt and the base are a variation of the single curve molding called the torus. In this case the half round torus is divided into rounded sections of beads and is called astragal molding. Fred Taylor photo

GADROONING – Another variation of the astragal molding is seen on the top edge of this secretaire a’ abattant. It is called gadrooning. In this case the beads of the astragal are shaped into opposite facing ovals that line the top edge and form the border for the front of the desk. Fred Taylor photo

Send your comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or email them to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. "His book How To Be a Furniture Detective" is available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor's DVD, "Identification of Older & Antique Furniture" ($17 + $3 S&H) is also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . All items are also available directly from his website.