How does wood age? Mystery dresser

I was (and Am) hesitant to put this up here because I know most people here don't have a great deal of experience of nordic antiques and are quick to jump into conclusions. I just hope we can all discuss this from a neutral point of view and read the entire post + view the links before commenting.

I bought a country-ish pine dresser that's supposed to be from the late 1800's.

The seller (store owner) has a lot of experience of this type of furniture and woodworking, etc.

Some (a lot) of the wood inside the cabinet looks very flawless and light in colour to me. Some (less) other parts look darker and what I might expect 120-year old wood to look like from my short experience.

Several things about it rub me the wrong way so to speak: One of the major ones are the "feet" of the dresser. The unpainted parts look very pale to me as well. Some of the lighter parts are in bizarre spots that I wouldn't assume were redone or something, like the back of a decorative column in between the two doors.

The hinges have bizarrely two different sorts of screws. At least 30% of the screws used in the hinges are modern-looking ones. Elsewhere I've seen some big old-looking iron nails and smaller ones that look more neatly made and round at the top.

The hardware (handles and such) are original 1890's grotesque renaissance revival style ones, but of course that has very little to do with the wooden parts. The screws connecting the hardware are those that I've seen in 1890's furniture as well.

Now, the seller said that because most people use these as linen closets, he usually treats the interior with something (I can't remember what, might have been either baking soda or some detergent) to make the wood less stained and such. But is it all that?

The back of the dresser almost looks more worn and deeper in colour than the bottom. Is that usual?

If this was a reproduction, it's clearly a very determined custom-made project and probably made with different motives than most repro's. I still don't understand why someone would go through the effort of making such a piece later on, hand-carving some of the details and using old hardware and what I'm pretty sure is a drawer that is definitely old (the rest of the dresser might be as well).

Another assumption is that the piece has been restored heavily somewhere in the past 30 years time. I just don't really understand how some parts that I'd expect to be original look newer than others. There are some cursive writing woodworker's assembly marks in some of the parts and I've seen similar in other antique furniture.

All in all, it's a very impressive, and for a country pine dresser quite upscale piece of furniture so it's possible because of it's good looks that it's never been stored away in a basement or an attic like most antique furniture at some point. That could explain partially why the wood is in such good shape (conditions). Also it's from Sweden, which is not the most humid of climates so maybe that slows down the ageing process as well.


I M P O R T A N T :

I just don't know how to feel about this, or what to think. I searched Bukowski's market for similar dressers and most looked slightly darker on the interior or back. However, I found some that have parts that look quite light to me as well. These are all from the late 1800's:

https://www.bukowskis.com/fi/lots/452414-skank-nyrenassans-1800-talets-slut

Btw, "skänk" means "sideboard" or "dresser" in swedish and "slut" means "end"..

https://www.bukowskis.com/fi/lots/504438-skank-nyrenassans-sent-1800-tal

https://www.bukowskis.com/fi/lots/626389-skank-nyrenassans-1800-talets-slut

https://www.bukowskis.com/fi/lots/503676-skank-nyrenassans-1800-talets-senare-halft

After seeing those pictures, what is Your conclusion?

COULD it be a timber thing? Do different types of pine age faster?

The pictures of MY dresser are below. I didn't enlarge them because the page would probably load quite slowly. Just click on them to zoom in.

 

Additional pictures of the details of my dresser. All pictures are taken with flash so unfortunately it makes the colours look different from reality. The wood is slightly more yellowish in my opinion. The camera makes the wood look a bit older I think. Or maybe it just shows what naked eye can't detect.

 

Btw, "skänk" means "sideboard" or "dresser" in swedish and "slut" means "end"..

This must make American English confusing for Swedish visitors.

A picture of the whole piece of furniture would help, but to me it sounds like a kit of parts job, made up from what was available.

Sometimes referred to as a marriage, sometimes as a dog's breakfast. If it does the job and was not expensive, that's all fair enough. If it was sold as an original antique you are right to question it.

 

Do you really think so? Did you also look at all the Bukowski's dressers I provided links to? That's important for comparison in this case.

 

No, I did not follow all the links. That looks like a wardrobe with shelves in rather than anything I would call a dresser but furniture names do vary from country to country.

 

The piece of furniture is 54 inches tall, so I don't know what that makes it.

 

Could be the top section of what I'd call a dresser with the feet added. That corniche top is meant to be up near the ceiling, not at chest height. I think what you have is half of a much taller piece, adapted or orphaned from something too large to sell easily.

I'd agree that it is probably late 19th C.

 

Or maybe one of these things with different kind of feet (added):

https://auctionet.com/sv/82458-skap-nyrenassans-sekelskiftet-1800-1900

 

I suspect everything that looks like this is the top of something.

The idea of the corniche top was to more or less blend in with the ceiling and the concave coving commonly found in 19th C ceilings.

Anywhere you see one not at the ceiling or near it you have something cut down.

If the top is slightly recessed, the edge of the corniche an inch or two above the main top of the piece, that is certainly cut down. It may be disguised by a false top flush with the edge, but measuring inside and out will show this up. If the top seems to be up to 6 inches thick, it's been modified.

 

I found this though. And it has a cornice, even though it's most likely not the top of anything:

http://online.auktionsverket.se/1508/324324-skank-nyrenassans/?fr=la



If you @afantiques by "cornice" mean the entire shape of the drawers and the top part, I need to say that it's a very common structure in swedish late 19th century chest of drawers, dressers, etc. The top part 'comes out' a couple of inches and there are columns below it.

 

That piece has a chamfer to the top edge leading down, indicating it was made to be viewed from above. The top is not the widest part until the chamfer ends an inch or so down. A true corniche top has the widest part at the highest point, and usually any moulding is concave, not convex like the smaller chest you show.

 

Here's a picture of the actual top:

 

I refer only to the top edge moulding. All the other examples you show are not widest at the very top..

Your close up looks different from the impression given in the picture of the whole item.

 

Different camera angle.

I just noticed a drop of pine tar inside the piece of furniture. It wasn't soft but I managed to crack a piece of it off and it smelled like pine tar. I would assume that in 120 years such smell would disappear. Am I wrong?

 

Bluemoon, some thoughts I have (not necessarily for you and this particular piece of furniture) about what I have highlighted above.

I'm suggesting the following for "new to antiques" (or semi-new to antiques) members here who (may) have questions about case furniture/case goods. Whether these "questions" for people to "think about" will be of any help or not who knows but . . .

"Case furniture" is most often placed with its back against a wall. Has a piece of case furniture spent most of its life against an interior wall or with its back against an "outside" (but still inside the building/dwelling) wall?

Has it spent most of its life in close proximity to an operable window?

Were the doors (if applicable) usually open for viewing objects inside? Or was the furniture kept closed unless in actual use (retrieving items inside or placing items inside)?

Was it originally constructed of "green" or "semi-green" or "fully-aged" wood?

 

I see your point about the wood looking new. However, after seeing some of the others in your links, I see similar new looking wood. The picture of your cabinet open looks pretty consistent, as does the bottom. The inside of the case where the drawers insert is lighter and I can see how that might be the case. I don't like those hinges and, perhaps, they are replacements for some smaller ones. I also think the wood on the feet looks too new so they could be replacements as well. The modern nail you see in the detail pic of the top could be an indication that the molding and maybe even the top are replacements. I am not really seeing any honest wear to that corner of the top. Consequently, this brings up the point that the paint would be newer as well.

As to this being a top for a taller piece, I understand AF's point but don't necessarily agree with it. While the top does look like a cornice on a tall piece, I would not expect there to be drawers in it as we see here. They would be too high up to be usable and I can't imagine anyone going to the trouble of modifying a cornice to accept drawers.

The conclusion I am coming to is that this may be a legitimately old piece with some modifications. Whether or not there is enough of it that is old to satisfy you that the piece is legitimate is up to you to decide. I imagine that what you paid for it might be a determining factor in this decision.

 

Yours looks like a linen press made, at least in part, from yellow pine. Some parts of it appear to be newer. There is a piece of wood horizontally inside (looks like a 2x4") with a chamfered (or beveled) edge that looks rather newly machine cut.

Albeit not yours, the white piece with 2 drawers and 2 doors appears to be a jelly cabinet (or pantry). The main difference is in appearance. Yours looks to have gone more in a bedroom than in a kitchen. What does your dealer specialist think about yours?

 

I vote newish made to look older .Even if those doors werent opened in100 years , that wood should look more aged .

 

What do you mean by "modern"?

Oh, the paint is new. It was refinished just some weeks ago.

This one has almost identical hinges though:

https://www.bukowskis.com/fi/lots/503676-skank-nyrenassans-1800-talets-senare-halft

That's what I thought, but then again, look at this late 1800's one from Bukowski's:

https://www.bukowskis.com/fi/lots/452414-skank-nyrenassans-1800-talets-slut





@verybrad Btw if you zoom in to the upper end of the right column on this dresser, isn't there a similar-looking round nail? I don't know if that makes it modern though.

 

The last couple of pieces appear to have been dipped and refinished. There was a lot of this in Britain in the 1980s but I have not seen any lately. It seems to have died out here.