Antique Chest Of Drawers

French CHESTS AND CHESTS OF DRAWERS About 1890 to 1940
Macassar ebony chest of drawers, 1930s.
1890-1920: Sinuous art nouveau line lends itself to leggy items – tables, chairs – more readily than to carcase pieces. Leading practitioners (Majorelle, Galle) adapt bow-fronted types by framing within stem-like mouldings, placing them on swept plinths and decorating with stylized plant forms, carved or inlaid – reminders that original chests were hollowed-out trees.
1910-40, Industrial Design: Theories of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus, combined with practicalities of mechanized production, reduce chest to angular carcase.
1920-40, Art Deco: In reaction against industrial design, commode is treated by designers (Ruhlmann, Dunand, Follot) as item fit for drawing-room of a princess rather than cubicle of an institution. About 1930, price of one by Ruhlmann, Paris, higher than an important 18thC example – often source of inspiration exploited in novel ways. Style soon becomes debased, with flashy ornament added to angular or boldly curved shapes; but between extremes of machined austerity and Art Deco kitsch, are many hand-made, simply designed and discreetly decorated chests of drawers.
Except for birch plywood and Scandinavian pine used as secondary woods, most of the main timber for furniture of all types is imported into Europe from the tropics. Art Deco designers also use ivory, semi-precious stones and silver for inlay.
Although much woodworking machinery now in use, old techniques survive, hand-skills being essential for fine Art Deco commodes; but by 1930s, most dovetail joints and mortises cut by machines.
Rear view of handmade drawer with lipped front.
Art nouveau and Art Deco: Marquetry, carving.
Industrial design: Almost none.
Mainly French polishing. Some Art Deco commodes lacquered. Industrial design favoured natural finish paint, cellulose.
Art nouveau and Art Deco commodes, expensive when new, now command very high prices. Best buy: medium range 1930s chests of drawers in natural wood, hand-dovetailed.
Before paying a high price for an Art Deco commode, check that any veneers are in reasonably good condition. They were usually knife-cut very thin and prone to cracking and peeling.

CHESTS: DRAWING-ROOM COMMODES
About 1750-1800
Fine quality drawing-room commode in French style, about 17 75.
Valuable and prestigious objects made for the main rooms of fine houses. Probably seldom used in a practical sense; principally valued for their fine decoration. Usually made in pairs to stand at either end of a room or against the window piers. Gradually replaced by simpler cabinets during the Regency period.
Differently proportioned to bedroom chests; usually longer in relation to height.
Two, three or four drawers, sometimes en-, closed by doors (occasionally interior shelves instead). At first in French rococo style, or bomb shape (i.e. with swelling serpentine sides), keeled corners and splayed feet
with ormolu (gilt bronze) or gilt brass mounts with matched handles. Marble or wooden tops.
Ormolu, mounted on keeled front edges of serpentine commode.
Ousted from fashion about 1770 by straight-sided semi-circular shape with straight, tapering, later turned, legs.
Fine quality woods, particularly mahogany, satinwood. Tulipwood, kingwood, harewood (green-stained sycamore), chestnut, fruit and many other woods used for marquetry and inlay. Oak when japanned. Oak and pine for carcases. Marble or scagliola (a plaster-based material imitating rare marbles) was sometimes used for tops. The latter can be plain or patterned.
Generally standard methods were employed. Mostly veneered. Bombe sections coopered or laminated beneath veneer. On mid-century examples dustboards between drawers (not a feature of French commodes until late in the century).
Many have variously arranged mahogany veneers; often geometric patterns. Before about 1770 the finest have marquetry of floral patterns, musical instruments, trophies, birds. Neo-classical inlay from about 1770
onwards of urns, shells, husks, bell flowers, acanthus leaves, sometimes shaded with scorching or overlaid with pen and ink. Oval and fan shapes were popular.
Painted decoration (not all over) included ovals containing classical figures, borders of flowers, ribbons, garlands etc. Occasionally low-relief Wedgwood plaques incorporated, with gilt brass framing.
Chinoiserie decoration (especially for bedrooms and dressing-rooms) sometimes japanned, occasionally partly composed of genuine Oriental lacquer taken from broken-up imported screens.
Polish, japanning, paint.
VALUES
A specialist market, prices in four, five or even six figures. Not objects to be purchased without expert advice.