Chest of drawers repair
Joanne
25 days ago
I picked up this chest recently and am now wondering if it’s worth having the damaged leg repaired and the rest of it cleaned up. I love the style and the size works for me. The drawer bottoms are a bit rickety and there are dings and scratches, and it looks like it was previously refinished at some point.
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Joanne
24 days agoRelated Discussions
Help in IDing this Flame Mahogany dresser or chest of drawers
Comments (3)Your memory serves you well. It's an American interpretation of the French Empire style. It could be as early as 1815 but probably not much later than 1830. Virtually every fashionable furniture maker at the time was making them, even Duncan Phyfe, but unless you can find marks (often written in pencil, somewhere out of sight) you're simply not going to be able to attribute a name to the maker. In general the carving on the columns is called "acanthus". The feet are somewhat more plain then the columns but this could well be a matter of the date it was made and/or the place. Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all possible areas for a chest as nice as this. In any of these urban areas we would expect the feet to be equally well carved paw feet. But get a little ways out of town, find a capable furniture maker, and the plainer foot could easily be explained. Whether you call it a chest of drawers or a dresser is more or less up to you. I'd call it a chest of drawers. (A dresser would have been a member of the household staff.) The wood face is definitely "Flame Mahogany" although generally it will turn out to be a veneer. That's not a fault; the best figured mahogany was already becoming scarce by that time, and what they called veneer was likely at least 1/8th inch thick. You should be able to see it on the drawers, looking at the thickness edge, but it's much easier to simply look at the inside surface of the drawer front. If it doesn't have the same figure as the face, then the face is a veneer. The only negative that I note is this set of drawer pulls. A piece made very early in that 1815-30 period could have originally had drawer pulls that looked like this, but I'd be VERY suspicious of that set... I'd have to see and feel them to be certain, but they simply do not appear to be period pulls. Even so, in my opinion this chest is well above average. The one thing I won't comment on is value, save to say that in this market it won't be as high as you wish, perhaps not as high as you paid "years ago". But, nice as it appears to be, it will sell....See MoreAge of this old chest of drawers?
Comments (4)I know nothing about your dresser - it's lovely to my eye, though. However I just had to say I love your name addendum and might have to steal er, borrow it to tag onto mine! This whole combining of Houzz and Gardenweb is a fiasco....See Morechest drawers dark mahogany age/worth
Comments (9)We apologize if there was a misunderstanding. There can be, of course, loss of value in the refinishing process. However, that doesn't apply equally to all antiques. Our original suggestion was to repair and/or refinish this piece if you found that to be an option, something that we miss-typed on the previous comment. We have now edited it to show this. User lindac92 is actually correct, once again: perhaps light cleaning and repair would be more feasible and valuable for this particular item, not necessarily refinishing. I'll leave you, Helen, another article from The Spruce on finding out which option is the best for you: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/restore-or-not-antique-furniture-148809 With that in mind, we would still suggest you find somebody that can help you through the Houzz platform, as there are many talented Pros here that can provide you with sound and detailed advice. That was the original intent of our comment. Cheers, and good luck!...See MoreChest of Drawers with front and back access
Comments (3)Thank you so much. We are building a guest quarters to our garage. Imagine a low door like opening between the living area and bedroom. This would slide in and a TV would sit on top that could be rotated between the rooms. If someone gets up and takes a shower they could access the drawer they need from the living area. Again, thank you so much!...See More
Izzy Mn
23 days agolast modified: 23 days agoJoanne
23 days agoIzzy Mn
23 days agolast modified: 23 days ago
HU-723692230
13 days ago
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