Dating antique furniture requires a whole lot of work; investigation, detailed looking, and time. It is usually tasking and as such, a lot of people prefer to skip this and hire professionals. However, dating antique furniture on your own isn’t impossible. With the right guidance and dedication, you should be able to. This article would be a comprehensive guide on How to Determine the Age of Antique Furniture. Meanwhile, check out these antique console tables.
Dating Antique Furniture;
To accurately determine the age of Antique furniture on your own, the first thing to do is to know the kind of furniture you want to date. Now, of course, the purpose of wanting to date furniture is to know the type. But it’s best to narrow down your search, to further find what you’re looking for by knowing your furniture on a wider scale.
Is it American furniture? Victorian? What style of furniture is it?
After answering this question, you should be able to go further.
Dating American Furniture.
American style furniture has Twelve distinct ages viz; early American period, federal period, colonial period, Pennsylvanian period, Sheraton, Victorian, shaker et cetera.
If you do know this, you can easily perform a search on your search engine, and get an answer. But this is often wide and not exact. For instance, if you won a Federal Piece, your furniture was made between 1780 1820. Also, in dating a piece of furniture, you cannot just take a gander at the style and determine as a lot were also reproduced past its heydays.
Hence, below are practical steps to determining the age of antique furniture.
- Look beyond what you can see; no expert determines the age of antique furniture by a gander at the style. Doing this is the easiest way to get ripped off. Rather, other practical steps are taken
- Assess the Insides, Back, and Bottoms of the Antique Piece; in doing this, you can easily detect the materials used to create the furniture. You can also tell if it was handmade or created by a machine. Machine-made furniture is not so antique now, are they?
- Look for imperfections In Symmetry; handmade cabinets and drawers that are handmade are often different in size and shape, this is visible pointers to the fact that they were made before 1860 where furniture was handmade.
- What Tools Were Used? Furniture dating way back to 1860 should have chisel marks, and nicks in the wood. Furniture dating back to the mid-19th century was made by a handsaw. Here, you would notice a straight pattern and no nicks.
- Upholstery and Wood; in dating ages of furniture, distinct woods were preferred as well. upholstery. Knowledge of this is a large pointer to when a piece of furniture was created. In the 1700s, mahogany was preferred, in the 1800s, we had the emergence of maple and cherry wood, 19oos saw the popularity of a whole lot of oak
Conclusion;
In determining the age of your furniture, these tips are sure to help you narrow down the dates.
Northern girl Laura is the epitome of a true entrepreneur. Laura’s spirit for adventure and passion for people blaze through House of Coco. She founded House of Coco in 2014 and has grown it in to an internationally recognised brand whilst having a lot of fun along the way. Travel is in her DNA and she is a true visionary and a global citizen.