Antique Chest Of Drawers

Carolean chest of drawers

1. Mellow, rich colour of timber, hardened with age.
2. Graining, rippling and figuring of wood where it has been split or quarter-sawn, rather than cut as planks.
3. Base should show signs of heavy wear, knocking and `fraying’ of timber.
4. Applied moulding and decoration, cut from single piece of wood with continuous graining, not in individual sections with change in grain.
5. Marked signs of wear on drawers and runners.
6. Dents on front below drop handle where it has fallen and swung over years of use.
7. Patination on sides of drawers through handling.
8. Side panels slightly loose from timber shrinkage.
9. Top of chest not completely flat, showing signs of curving and bending with damp, changes in temperature, shrinkage along the grain.
10. Drop handles corresponding to holes in drawer-fronts — no other signs of screw holes or bore holes, where handles have been moved or replaced.
Likely restoration and repair
11. Three small drawers in top flight indicates that the piece is the top half of a chest-on-chest. This applies to walnut-veneered chests of drawers only.
12. New top too flat and even, denotes the same: tops of cheston-chests were of unfinished planking.
13. Moulding and reeding, secured with brass pins - usually a Victorian ‘improvement’ to a plain-fronted chest or a Victorian ‘original’.
14. Side-panelling frames do not match up with drawer-frames -newly replaced, or new frame from old timbers.
15. New timbers in base seen when bottom drawer is removed - should be same age as the back plank. Suspect other replacements if this is the case.
Historical background
Chests with one long drawer beneath them are found from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, variously described as `mule chests’, ‘dowry chests’ or ,counter chests’, each with various explanations for their names. A ‘mule chest’ is recent terminology, a ‘dowry chest’ is self-explanatory, and ‘counter chests’ were believed to have been used by merchants, with drawers for money and documents. Some credence may be attached to the last, since early inventories refer to drawers as `titles’, the word still used for money-drawers today.
By the Restoration, the whole frame of the chest was taken up with drawers, although some early chests have two drawers in the base, made as one piece, and a hinged top to a more shallow chest which fitted above the drawers. Others have a single deep drawer in the top half, and two drawers in the base. Even when they were proper ‘chests of drawers’ they continued to be made in two pieces, in a manner similar to early bureaux.
In principle, chests of drawers were either made of oak, with fielded or coffered panels and drawers running on a side-runner, with the traditional frame and panel construction, or in veneer or marquetry with carcase construction and drawers on bottom runners. Chests of drawers of this period had four flights of drawers, often with a pair of shallow drawers in the top flight. They were taller than those of later periods, and were usually mounted on plain block feet or bun feet from c.1690. Few chests of drawers were made without locks, for they were intended as places of safe-keeping as well as storage.
Construction and materials
Of the two types, the solid wood chest of drawers is more interesting in its construction, since carcase construction became the standard method of making veneered chests of drawers from the eighteenth century onwards.
With oak chests of drawers, the frame construction can clearly be seen, with panelled sides, cross- frames, and the drawers decorated with applied mouldings to conceal through dovetails with reeding, string-of-beads or half-round beading. The top was made in a single piece. Drawer bottoms were usually joined with a simple rebate to the sides, reinforced with iron nails and with the grain of bottom boards running from front to back. Drawers for clothes and storage did not run the full depth of the piece, but there was a space of two to three inches to allow air to circulate inside the chest.
Detail
At this period, simple drop-handles were most common, with small circular or rosette-shaped backplates. The cast brass drop-handles were secured to the drawer fronts by a rudimentary split pin, called a tang, which was pushed through a hole in the drawer front and then hammered flat on the inside. The top edges of drawers were smoothly rounded, the runners nailed or pinned to the interior sides of the carcase. In heavier pieces, drawer sides had a groove into which side-runners fitted. These drawers are sometimes known as ‘hung’ drawers. Tops showed vestiges of the cornice shape, with moulding below the overlap, although by the end of the century they were also made with simple lip-moulding or edge moulding. Backs were of plain oak planking, nailed to the frame.
Variations
The oak chest of drawers with frame construction was the prototype for much country-made furniture for several centuries. Plain-fronted oak chests of drawers with simple reeded or half-rounded mouldings and small turned
wooden knobs were made well into Georgian days. Some smaller chests of drawers in yew wood, fruit
woods and beech, as well as the familiar country mixture of oak and elm were made at a slightly later period. It is as well to remember that chests of drawers implied considerable possessions and clothing, and that until the mid-eighteenth century relatively few people needed more than a single chest in which to store their `Sunday best’.
Below left: late seventeenth-century oak chest of drawers made in two halves.
Below: William and Mary chest of drawers on bun feet.
Reproductions
Eighteenth century
Oak chests of drawers with more elaborately decorated panels are usually of a later date and are Flemish or Continental. Many marquetry chests of drawers are on pine carcases, indicating that they stem from Dutch or German origins where they were made long after they had gone out of fashion in England.
Nineteenth century
During the Victorian Tudor revival, countless copies of early oak furniture were made, among them chests of drawers from old panelling and timbers with stained frames of coarse-grained, poorly seasoned oak, which has cracked and split and may
mislead the novice into believing it to be of a far earlier period. The drawer timber in particular will show up its relative lack of age from the almost black lines in the grain of commercially seasoned oak.
Twentieth century
Marquetry and decorative
veneer enjoyed (if that is the right word) a boom during the ‘twenties, when many fine, flat-fronted chests of drawers of the Hepplewhite period were
stripped of their plain mahogany veneers which were replaced by vulgar, machine-cut ‘marquetry’ and inlay. The essential clue to this disastrous period is that the carcase wood is pine and not oak. The veneer was thin and cut in sheets with the grain running through decorative panels and inlay.
Price bands
Oak with coffered or fielded panels, c.1680, $2,000-3,000.
Oyster veneer, laburnum, olive or walnut with
stringing, c.1700, $4,000.
Veneered front, plain sides, c.1700, 1,600-2,000.
Oak with sectional construction, c.1700, $1,500-2,500.