Antique Chest Of Drawers

Blanket chest

1. All wood split or quarter-sawn, with more figure and grain than planking.
2. Timbers were not clamped or cleated - the lid in particular should show signs of bowing, curving and shrinking across the width.
3. Feet of both board chests and frame construction worn and frayed with use and wear on stone floors, and from damp.
4. Uneven shape of pegs and dowels, hand cut from green wood.
5. Good patination on underside of lid where it has been opened and handled over a long period of time.
6. Wood around lock and hasp, worn and polished with use and age.
7. On frame construction, panels with grain running from top to bottom.
8. Panels chamfered to slot into frames - should be slightly loose on end-grain from shrinkage of timber.
9. Interior wood with no splintering along grain - worn smooth and dust-dry from age and use.
10. Front and back timbers overlapping side edges.
Likely restoration and repair
11. New lids where originals have split or cracked. Timber will not be thick enough and lack bowing or curving.
12. Back timber of lids split where hinges have taken the strain and may be patched, replaced, pegged or repaired.
13. Made up in whole or part from bits and pieces of old panelling and timbers. Hard for novice to detect, but clear signs of saw marks on edges; lack of patination on inside and around lock and hasp are usually obvious.
14. On frame construction, original plain panels replaced with cut-down pieces from church panelling or house panelling. Particularly prevalent with ‘linenfold’ panelling, which, if original, should butt on to frame and not finish decoratively above and below it.
Historical background
Oak coffers and chests owed their origins to the ’sumpter chests’ or trunks which were strapped to baggage animals to carry the goods belonging to the household when travelling. However, the term ‘blanket chest’ is of eighteenth-century origins: blankets as we understand them were not known until the seventeenth century.
The earliest form of coffer was simply a slab-sided box or ‘coffin’ known as a ‘boarded chest’. The sides extended to the ground and were cut in a plain V-shape to form feet.
They were held together with wooden dowel pins or clumsy iron clout nails, and each piece of the chest was made from a single piece of wood. The lid had two big iron or steel strap hinges, and there was an iron lock and hasp fixed to the outside of the chest. Framing and panelling replaced this crude construction in the sixteenth century, a technique learned by carpenters for house building and for embellishing churches.
`Wainscot oak’ was imported in large quantities from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, and coffers and chests were made with frames of sawn timber and inset panels of riven wood, chamfered to fit into grooves in the frame. Panels were carved in ‘linenfold’ and arched Gothic decoration, and everyday coffers and chests had four short legs, extensions of the side frames, and became less clumsily made and more decorative.
Until the end of the seventeenth century chests were restricted to the richer classes who had possessions which needed to be stored. With the growth of the middle class they became more prevalent as storage for the more elaborate dress of the day and richer households were often equipped with chests with separate drawers for ruffs, collars, doublets, stockings, hose and gloves. Poor families kept their best clothes in simply made chests constructed in the same way as a century before.
Construction and materials
Chests and coffers were made in oak, the principal wood for most early English furniture until the mid-seventeenth century. Some were made in chestnut, and elm was also used, but it is not an entirely suitable wood since it tends to split and crack with changes of temperature and humidity. Grander Elizabethan chests were also made in cypress, known to repel moths, and from the beginning of the eighteenth century, in cedarwood. Even in later years, blanket chests were often lined with cedarwood.
The slab-sided construction of board chests continued well into the eighteenth century in country districts, but in general it was superseded in the sixteenth century by frame-and-panel construction which remained the basis for all storage furniture until well into the eighteenth century. All joins were made with wooden dowelling pegs or iron nails, with mortise-andtenon joints from the end of the sixteenth century.
Variations
Continental
While oak was the principal national timber for English furniture in the early years, so walnut and chestnut were extensively used on the Continent, particularly in France, and pine and deal in Scandinavia. Chests of these woods are almost certainly not English, as can be seen from their size, shape and decoration. The most common chests, usually of a later date, tend to be Flemish, often constructed from richly decorated and carved Gothic panelling from churches, or from the bottoms of built-in dressers and cupboards of
panelled rooms. A few very rare chests and coffers were
Detail
Panels were decorated with carving and chamfered on the back surface so that they would slot into the frames. Early panel shapes varied, but in length rather than in depth.
Elizabethan panels were smaller and squarer, but by the
seventeenth century they were much bigger.
Many early board chests were originally painted in bright colours, but some have bands of simple chip-carving in arches and geometric shapes. The legs of frame and panel chests were a continuation of the side frame and were not decorated or shaped in any way. Iron or steel locks were mounted externally, or internally with a square lockplate on the outside and a hinged hasp fastening, all secured with iron nails. Lids had simple edge moulding, but from c.1610 onwards, were finished with lip moulding.
made in chestnut before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but one is unlikely to come across these rare originals. Pine was not used in England until the mid-nineteenth century.
Below: oak ‘mule chest’, with carved timber frames, characteristic of Continental pieces and Victorian
‘improvements’.
Below left: this is almost a dresser base, ornately decorated with applied moulding in seventeenth-century Flemish style.
Reproductions
Nineteenth century
The great age of reproduction oak was the Victorian Tudor revival, when, from c.1830 onwards, simple furniture of an earlier age was faithfully reproduced, as well as being made up from bits and pieces of genuinely antique panels. There was a great vogue for ‘old oak’ in the 1860s and 1870s, still occasionally referred to as ‘Wardour Street oak’ from the famous firm of London reproduction furniture-makers who had their workshops there.
The Victorians often
‘improved’ the appearance of original chests with carving, which was often quite skilful, but the grooves will lack the patina and roundness one would expect on a really old chest.
Price bands
Coffers, sixteenth century, original timbers,
Plain board chest, $300-500. With carved stiles, $400-600.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Flemish, $800-1,400.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English,
$1,000-1,400.
Linenfold, $900-1,200.
Coffers with later additions, Victorian ‘improvement’, $300–500.
Below: frame-and-panel linenfold chest in solid, well-worn oak.