Antique Chest Of Drawers

Flat-fronted chest of drawers

1. Perfectly matching veneer across the whole front.
2. Well-matched veneer on both sides, of corresponding thickness and colour as the front.
3. Half-round moulding down side edges and across drawer rails.
4. Mitred joins to cross-cut veneer around drawers
indicating high quality. Poorer quality workmanship had butt joins.
5. Cross-cut veneer set at a sharp 45′ angle indicates early pieces from c.1680-1705.
6. Cross grain combined with herringbone indicates
c.1695-1710. Cross-grain veneer banding alone after c.1710.
7. Plain plinth base with thick double or single half-round moulding with mitred edges.
8. Top flaring with shallow cornice-type moulding until c.1740.
9. On veneered pieces, drawers of oak with bottom grooves for runners.
10. From c.1720-35 some lesser-quality chests with drawers of close-grained imported pine, but drawer construction must be right for period.
Likely restoration and repair
11. If three drawers in top flight rather than two: almost
certainly the top half of same period tallboy.
12. New top with later moulded edges - confirms above point. Tops of tallboys were of unfinished carcase wood.
13. With three flights of drawers only. If top drawer is full width, it most probably comes from the bottom half of same period tallboy. With two drawers in top flight, examine closely for alterations, plugged screwholes of original single drawer.
14. Oak carcase: likely to be late eighteenth-early nineteenth century chest with newly added walnut veneer in early Georgian style. A popular ‘restoration’ in the 1920s and 1930s.
15. Pine carcase sides with pine drawers indicates Continental, probably Dutch.
16. Thinner timber sides: suspect Victorian replacement.
Historical background
There were two distinct periods during which flat-fronted chests of drawers were fashionable. Both periods can quite correctly be called ‘Georgian’, although nearly a century may separate them. The earliest of these was during and immediately after Queen Anne’s reign, and the second was during the Regency, when Hepplewhite reintroduced plain rectangular lines as a relief from the curved and serpentine shapes which had dominated the middle of the century. Of the two, the former are rarer to find and more interesting,
since many minor, but important, structural changes occurred between early methods of construction and the Georgian period. By the time Hepplewhite reintroduced the flat-fronted chest of drawers, construction was firmly established and furniture was being made in commercial quantities.
Early Georgian chests of drawers were still being made in walnut veneer, although its popularity was waning. By c.1735 some furniture was already being made in mahogany, which was clearly set to oust walnut, since supplies had virtually ceased to be imported. There were still stocks of seasoned walnut and walnut veneer available, but from 1720 France, England’s main supplier, imposed a total ban on exports. Thus, virtually without any change in construction, the same design was made in mahogany from c.1740 onwards.
Construction and materials
It is believed that not a few of these fine early Georgian walnut-veneered pieces were made with sides of solid walnut as well as in veneer. Perhaps this accounts for their relative rarity, since walnut is very susceptible to woodworm, and large quantities of fine walnut furniture has been quite literally reduced to dust. Veneers were carefully chosen to match over the entire front of the chest; tops were veneered in a single piece and not quarter-veneered, with bands of cross-cut veneer with mitred corners.
Drawer linings were of oak until the mid-eighteenth century. Dovetails were smaller stopped or lapped dovetails, and the sides of the drawers now enclosed the bottom boards, which were grooved on the outer edge to form bottom runners. Drawer pulls had improved from the rather insecure tang fixtures, and were now fixed to drawer fronts with flat-ended, thick, hand-cut screws terminating on the outside in a cast knob bored to take the drawer-pull, and on the inside with a nut, notched to take a special tightening tool. These fixings are known as ‘pummel pins’.
Detail
Early Georgian chests of drawers still display many design features of an earlier age, notably the popular bun feet and simple plinth moulding found on much Queen Anne furniture. Tops were made with echoes of cornice moulding, as in the previous century, splaying outward from the sides and front. Side edges finished flush with the front and drawers were edged with heavy cockbeading. But there was still half-round moulding on the drawer rails, and drawers were also bordered with cross-cut veneer or herringbone
banding. Many chests of drawers of this period have long since had their original bun feet replaced with bracket feet as fashion changed, and probably also as the veneered plinth moulding became chipped and damaged.
Variations
Chests of drawers were still fairly rare pieces of furniture in all but wealthy households. Some were made in oak, with plain-fronted drawers except for added cock-beading, otherwise much the same in construction as earlier oak chests of drawers. Smaller in size because of the smaller rooms they were intended for, they were often made originally with plain turned wooden knobs, and sometimes with herringbone inlaid banding around drawers, but no other decoration. Plain plinth bases were mounted on bun or bracket feet.
Country chests of drawers of this period were often still made in the traditional fashion, in two halves, with panelled sides. They are easy to distinguish from later country-made chests of drawers by their fine workmanship, the lines of half-round moulding along the drawer rails, and the quality of the timber which is much finer, more close-grained and smooth-surfaced.
Reproductions
Most common is the later Hepplewhite-period flat-fronted chest of drawers in mahogany veneer, usually on a red or white pine carcase, or on cheap Honduras or baywood mahogany for the better-quality versions. Inevitably, these well-designed late eighteenth-century chests of drawers merge into later, cheaply made and mass-produced nineteenth-century pieces, easy to detect from their thin, almost figureless veneer, machine-cut shaped aprons, stamped-brass handles, often with bone or ivory escutcheons.
Edwardian copies which are distinguished by badly fitting drawers and plywood backs.
It might be added here that many of these, originally
veneered in thin machine-cut veneer but with good, solidly made Victorian pine carcases, have been stripped and sold as original pine. Pine chests of drawers were not made until the end of the eighteenth century, and can easily be distinguished by their early methods of construction and detail.
Price bands
Sectional construction in oak,500-900.
With walnut veneer. $2,000-3,000.
Late eighteenth-century mahogany, 400-600.
Variations, top left: plain, early Georgian oak chest of drawers, made in two halves, with locks on the bottom drawer of each half, small, turned, wooden handles and simple panelled drawers. Bottom left: an eighteenth-century chest of drawers mounted on a low stand with a single drawer. The drop handles are from an earlier period, but the graduated drawers are early Georgian.