The history of American furniture is filled with the names of people who made tremendous contributions to the art in design, innovation, marketing or original thinking in other areas. Among them are such well-known luminaries as Duncan Phyfe, Charles H. Lannuier, John Henry Belter, the Herter brothers, R.J. Horner, John D. Larkin and Charles L. Eastlake. But there are many lesser-known individuals who made significant contributions to the American furniture art and industry. Here are some examples of these lesser lights and what they did for us. How many of them do you know?

Let's begin with cabinetmaker Abner Cutler, who started his career in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1829. He formed the Cutler Desk Co. and eventually became fascinated by desks that had moveable tops allowing the working surface to be concealed. The idea of using a flexible, moveable tambour was first used in France in the middle of the 18th century. It is thought to have been invented by Jean-Francois Oeben, a German-born Frenchman. He introduced the use of tambour shutters for secretaries and desks beginning around 1760.

The most common desk with a moveable closure in mid-19th-century America was the slant-front desk followed by fold out Empire secretaries and soon to be supplanted by cylinder-roll desks. But Cutler felt that the flexible tambour had a place in American furniture. In 1850 he was granted the first American patent for a type of horizontal tambour rolltop desk. It took 30 years for the rolltop to become the primary commercial desk in the country, but when it got there it remained there for many decades, and Cutler Desk was right up there among the leading brands. Sikes Chair eventually acquired Cutler Desk Co. and it was renamed Sikes-Cutler Desk Co. While Abner Cutler did not exactly invent the rolltop desk, his modifications to the mechanism helped make it the best-known commercial desk in America in the late 19th century. Almost every rolltop found today, no matter how old, uses elements from his patent. Good job, Abner.

There is another name in American furniture, Peter Lowentraut, who became famous (or maybe less so) by an indirect route. On May 29, 1888 a patent was issued to George F. Hall of New York. The patent, number 383805, related to the manufacture of iron rocker swing parts used in a variation of the platform rocker, the platform glider. The glider mechanism allowed a smooth back-and-forth motion in a seat suspended on a platform without the radical motion of a spring-mounted rocker. For some unknown reason Hall assigned half the patent rights to Peter Lowentraut of Newark, N.J. The patent only applied to the actual design of the iron hardware itself and not the design of the entire chair. Because the hardware was easily duplicated and patent infringement was rampant at the time, a great many manufacturers immediately snapped up the idea and produced glider rockers with both this mechanism and a competing version. The McLean patent swing rocker soon became widespread, but the type of rocker was generally called a Lowentraut. Today the glider rocker is still a popular chair, especially in hospital waiting and recovery rooms because of its easy motion. Replacement iron mechanisms identical to the Hall/Lowentraut patent are available from Van Dykes Restorers at www.vandykes.com.

Another notable person whose name many not be familiar to many is Charles B. Knapp. Knapp was one the many erstwhile inventors working diligently about the time of the Civil War to develop a machine-made dovetail joint for drawer construction. Most of the inventors focused on creating a joint similar in appearance to the traditional hand-sawn dovetail with interlocking pins and tails. A few were successful in turning out a machine that could make one uniform tail or pin at a time, but not a whole row of identical fittings.

Charles Knapp did some of what we now call "thinking outside the box" and instead of coming up with a way to duplicate the traditional dovetail, he redefined the problem as one of making a good, uniform, machine-made joint for a drawer, no matter what it looked like. And his new joint certainly did not look like a dovetail. In fact it looked nothing like anything ever made in furniture before. His new joint was variously described as "scallop and dowel" or "scallop and peg," using words that reflected the physical appearance of the joint. The joint appeared to be a series of semi circles cut into the side of the drawer front and held to the side with dowels or pins. Actually it was more complicated than that. The new dovetailing machine actually had nine cutting heads and in various motions drilled a semicircular hole in the drawer front side but left the center intact. This intact centerpiece became the pin or peg that fit the hole drilled in the drawer side. The sidepiece was cut by another motion that drilled the hole for the peg and cut the semicircular edge to match the drawer front side. It was ingenious, quick and tight.

Knapp first patented his machine in 1867 and kept tinkering with it until he gave it a trial run at the Matthews Brothers furniture factory in Milwaukee in 1870. Satisfied, he put his patent up for sale. It was acquired by a group of investors in Massachusetts who formed the Knapp Dovetailing Machine Co. and put into use immediately at the Beal & Hooper factory in East Cambridge, Mass., in 1871. While the Knapp method of dovetailing is not used today for a number of reasons that are the subject for another day, Charles Knapp's innovative thinking pointed the way for the adaptation of applied science to the industry which affects us on a daily basis.

Because I have space remaining for only one more example, I will introduce you to Marshall B. Lloyd, the inventor of the Lloyd Loom. If it doesn't deal with upholstery fabric what could the invention of a loom have to do with furniture you might ask. Lloyd was another inventor who happened to land in the furniture business. In 1900 he bought the manufacturing company he was working for and began to make a line of wire doll carts, boy's wagons, baby carriages and furniture made of hand-woven reed. He invented the oxyacetylene tube method of welding and eventually had a contract from Ford as the exclusive supplier of windshield frame tubing for the Model T.

His greatest invention came in 1917 when he faced strike by the reed weavers in his factory in Menominee, Mich. When the strikers returned after five weeks they found Lloyd had invented a giant mechanical automated loom that replaced the expensive hand weaving of the reed. His Lloyd Loom changed the nature of wicker furniture manufacturing and virtually every piece of wicker furniture since 1917 has been made on a Lloyd Loom.

Send your comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Visit his Web site at www.furnituredetective.com.

Fred Taylor is a freelance writer based in central Florida, who earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in finance from the University of Florida. While he is perhaps better known in his role as a nationally syndicated columnist on the subject of antique furniture, he is interested in almost all things related to Florida. He has covered many auctions both inside and outside the Sunshine State for leading antiques trade publications. Fred and his wife, Gail, love to travel Florida’s highways and byways on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.