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Monthly Columns in ACN

  • Kovels - Antiques & Collecting: Week of Jan. 5, 2009
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  • Live Auction Talk: Beatles collectors come together
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  • Kovels - Antiques & Collecting: Week of Dec. 28, 2008
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  • Kovels - Antiques & Collecting: Week of Dec. 21, 2008
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  • Furniture Specific: Depression Era
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Furniture Specific: Depression Era PDF Print E-mail
Written by Fred Taylor   
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 19:49
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One of the most interesting and important times in American history is quickly fading from living memory. The Depression Era, as it is commonly called, encompassed the better part of three decades early in the 20th century and it had a profound effect on the course of the country, the conduct of the World War that followed and even on our life today.

While the Great Depression did not officially start until 1929 and was not truly over until the early 1950s, the general term for the period covers most of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The survivors of that time are fast leaving us and with them will go a firsthand familiarity with an era that gave us a number of important words, phrases and concepts that many of us use today without really knowing the original context of the usage or the impact of them in their heyday.

Lifestyle words like Prohibition, speakeasy, bathtub gin, flapper and zoot suit come to mind as do governmentally generated ideas like the NRA (National Recovery Act), the WPA (Works Project Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and the New Deal. And of course there were darker words like breadline, soup kitchen, Apple Annie and the match girl that reflect the desperation of the times.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 December 2008 23:06
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Furniture Specific: Creature Features PDF Print E-mail
Written by Fred Taylor   
Tuesday, 04 November 2008 09:56
The hairy paw foot is an integral part of the ambiance of this Empire drop-leaf table.

It’s hard to find a time in history when the everyday affairs of humans were not intertwined with those of animals, as poacher, as prey or as master. It didn’t take long in the development of the human brain for gifted artisans to depict the likenesses other creatures on the walls of the caves of Lascaux, usually in remote spots not normally occupied or scratched into rocks in high places. Were the images used as worship of the creatures depicted? Were they used as part of spell casting to help the hunters with greater harvests or perhaps to bless the creatures for greater fertility? Maybe they were to honor the creatures for what they provided or perhaps the artists just like drawing animals better than human figures.

Ancient civilizations took the creature feature to a higher level bringing examples of them into the home in three-dimensional forms incorporated into furniture. Abundant examples of Egyptian furniture have been discovered that reveal chair legs ending in the paws of a lion. One example that is at least 3,000 years old is in the British Museum. The basic form of the Egyptian bed remained unchanged for 2,000 years. Most of them had legs in the form of animal extremities ranging from heavy bull’s legs with hooves to elegant and graceful gazelle legs to feline legs with paw and claw. This last example perhaps was in keeping with the use of panther hides as bed coverings.

Last Updated on Saturday, 06 December 2008 11:58
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Furniture Specific: Sex and the Seating PDF Print E-mail
Written by Fred Taylor   
Saturday, 09 August 2008 20:23
Latin is a dead language, dead as it can be. First it killed the Romans, and now it’s killing me.” I heard that refrain numerous times in the two years of high school that I took instruction in that archaic form of communication. One of the things that always bugged me about Latin was the requirement that nouns have a gender associated with them. For example a table was tabula, a masculine form. Other nouns were feminine, and yet others were neutral. Why? It didn’t really matter to me, but it must have mattered to the Romans, because the plural and possessive forms of nouns were determined by their gender.
Parlor set Roux

 

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This parlor set made by Alexander Roux is typical of the elaborate seven-piece sets from the height of the Victorian period of the middle part of 19th century. Each piece of seating is clearly identifiable by size and shape. Photo courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive.

Today it matters even less to most of us what the supposed gender, if any, of a piece of furniture, happens to be. A chair is a chair, and a table is a table. That sexist stuff doesn’t work anymore – except in certain cases like a “gentleman’s chest” or a “lady’s writing desk.” But those are easy to figure out, and most of those items are from a time past.
Last Updated on Saturday, 06 December 2008 11:58
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