How to Purchase Antique Furniture Part 3 - Assessing Quality, Rarity, Provenance and Cabinet Makers
In the previous two articles we discussed Hints For Determining Age and Quality and the question Should the Furniture be Restored? These topics bring us to another few points worth mentioning which are so often overlooked when purchasing a piece of furniture, are the quality, rarity, provenance and cabinet makers.
Quality consists of a number of factors starting with the materials used for the manufacture of an item right through to the ability of the cabinet-maker or upholsterer, taking into consideration the working conditions, when it was made and the availability of materials.
So therefore, I believe if recycled materials are used it does not necessarily mean these materials were of poor quality.
With furniture there is seldom a piece made where timber was not selected for the specific function that it had to perform.
An example of this is for mouldings.
You would select timber for straightness of grain.
For door panels one would choose figure over stability.
Whenever a piece of Australian furniture is seen with a split in it, poor quality workmanship should not be assumed.
Many of the figurative timbers are very unstable and extremely hard to work by hand.
Many twisted doors and bowed drawer fronts are due to the figure and grain of the timber used in the manufacture of that particular piece.
There are also many pieces of Australian furniture that have splits because of the use of unseasoned timber.
The rap id increase in population and wealth in the 1850s created a situation where demands for good quality seasoned timber were well in excess or the dry boards available for cabinetmaking.
It must also be said that many Chinese cabinet-makers working in Australia in the latter half of the 19th century manufactured goods from inferior quality timber as the competition with their European counterpart was fierce.
However, this is not true in all cases because some of the European workshops were no better.
Well worth noting is that superior quality furniture was not mass produced, it was commissioned, manufactured as a one off, or for an exhibition.
They didn't just happen, the exceptional quality was intentional.
In regard to rarity be aware the few people could actually afford to commission a piece of furniture from a cabinet-maker in the first 50 years of settlement.
Our small population is indicative of how few pieces of furniture would have been manufactured in those early years.
A substantial number of convicts made up the population listed below.
Most of the remainder of the population were able to afford little more than the barest of essentials.
That is why all early surviving examples are so highly prized.
Population statistics 1828-1901:
The prospects are exciting and, I feel, create a closer bond with our short, but exciting past.
There are very few pieces of Australian furniture that bear cabinet-maker's identification prior to 1840.
Signed, labelled or impressed pieces after 1840 are more keenly sought after than unidentified pieces.
This is so for several reasons, namely the familiarity and reliability of trading in labelled pieces from the better workshops means that each cabinet-making shop manufactured to a standard, and as such, a certain guarantee of workmanship and quality of timber can be relied upon.
You can almost purchase these pieces without inspection as they were reliably manufactured and will have very few disappointments.
It has become apparent over the last few years that the collecting public have become very familiar with and well versed in their own specialised fields of collecting.
This means we will have to keep improving our stock and store of knowledge to cater for a more sophisticated market.
Denise and Steven Koszek Gumnut Antiques
Quality consists of a number of factors starting with the materials used for the manufacture of an item right through to the ability of the cabinet-maker or upholsterer, taking into consideration the working conditions, when it was made and the availability of materials.
So therefore, I believe if recycled materials are used it does not necessarily mean these materials were of poor quality.
With furniture there is seldom a piece made where timber was not selected for the specific function that it had to perform.
An example of this is for mouldings.
You would select timber for straightness of grain.
For door panels one would choose figure over stability.
Whenever a piece of Australian furniture is seen with a split in it, poor quality workmanship should not be assumed.
Many of the figurative timbers are very unstable and extremely hard to work by hand.
Many twisted doors and bowed drawer fronts are due to the figure and grain of the timber used in the manufacture of that particular piece.
There are also many pieces of Australian furniture that have splits because of the use of unseasoned timber.
The rap id increase in population and wealth in the 1850s created a situation where demands for good quality seasoned timber were well in excess or the dry boards available for cabinetmaking.
It must also be said that many Chinese cabinet-makers working in Australia in the latter half of the 19th century manufactured goods from inferior quality timber as the competition with their European counterpart was fierce.
However, this is not true in all cases because some of the European workshops were no better.
Well worth noting is that superior quality furniture was not mass produced, it was commissioned, manufactured as a one off, or for an exhibition.
They didn't just happen, the exceptional quality was intentional.
In regard to rarity be aware the few people could actually afford to commission a piece of furniture from a cabinet-maker in the first 50 years of settlement.
Our small population is indicative of how few pieces of furniture would have been manufactured in those early years.
A substantial number of convicts made up the population listed below.
Most of the remainder of the population were able to afford little more than the barest of essentials.
That is why all early surviving examples are so highly prized.
Population statistics 1828-1901:
- 1828 - population 36,598
- 1833 - population 70,794
- 1841 - population 130,856
- 1851 - population 338,474
- 1861 - population 1,136,454
- 1871 - population 1,663,039
- 1881 - population 2,250,194
- 1891 - population 3,177,823
- 1901 - population 3,773,801
The prospects are exciting and, I feel, create a closer bond with our short, but exciting past.
There are very few pieces of Australian furniture that bear cabinet-maker's identification prior to 1840.
Signed, labelled or impressed pieces after 1840 are more keenly sought after than unidentified pieces.
This is so for several reasons, namely the familiarity and reliability of trading in labelled pieces from the better workshops means that each cabinet-making shop manufactured to a standard, and as such, a certain guarantee of workmanship and quality of timber can be relied upon.
You can almost purchase these pieces without inspection as they were reliably manufactured and will have very few disappointments.
It has become apparent over the last few years that the collecting public have become very familiar with and well versed in their own specialised fields of collecting.
This means we will have to keep improving our stock and store of knowledge to cater for a more sophisticated market.
Denise and Steven Koszek Gumnut Antiques