Featured Old Empire chest age?

Hi everyone, this is my first post. I picked up this piece yesterday from a woman cleaning out her storage building for what I thought was a pretty cheap price. The current top is just a nice slab of Carrara marble not pictured, that I removed for cleaning and may be worth more than the chest!

I wasn't sure if it was an antique when I bought it, I just thought it was really pretty. The front picture I have at the moment doesn't really showcase how pretty the veneer on the drawers is, even with chips. You can tell another tier of some kind was removed from the top, sadly. As I was cleaning the drawers I noticed all of the dovetail joints were irregular and appear handmade? The knobs also, there are no screws behind them. The bottoms of each drawer has been replaced with some type of plywood, but the front, sides and back of each drawer all seem original.

The back of the chest appears all original and very old. What do you think about the turned legs? I also noticed the nails on the back are all square. I know this can mean it is old, but how old? I love it as is regardless and have no intentions of trying to restore it or God forbid chalk paint it. I can provide more pictures if requested.

 

Welcome to the forum, SarahAR.

 

Late Classical or Pillar & Scroll, mid 19th century or later, machine built. Many confuse this style with Empire, it has the same lines but none of the decoration like hand carving, gilded metal & carved paw or beast feet.
http://rarevictorian.com/2009/06/empire-furniture-isnt-always-empire-furniture.html

 

Unfortunately, that's about correct, prices are way down for most antique furniture forms, it's just not fashionable at the moment. There are exceptions of course but late Classical isn't one them, there is A LOT of this furniture still around as it was popular and built for many years, like close to 100.

 

Thanks for the clarification! If you Google "American Empire" you get all sorts of results for antique dressers with these same simple aesthetics. Is that a made up term? When you say machine built, what are the giveaways? And is that a bad thing? Why are the dovetails all cut differently? Apologize for all the questions, just trying to learn

 

Well, it's a term made up by people who WANT it to be American Empire when they sell it. American Empire is rare and quite valuable as each piece was hand made, unique and was expensive even when new.

 

Late Classical was built from large chunks of pine or poplar wood sawed on steam powered band saws & mahogany veneer applied over that for decoration. No, it isn't a bad thing to be built mostly by machines & dovetails were still being hand cut during this period as they did not have that worked out machine wise until 1900 or so.

 

As you can see from that Blog link i posted above, these 2 furniture forms are related but very different as well. The lines/form is the same but the decoration is totally different. One is hand made (empire) & one is machine made (late classical)

American Empire



Late Classical

 

Thanks so much for that info. I had just read another posting of yours similar to this one and it gave lots of great insight. I wouldn't say this type of furniture is out of fashion entirely (I'm in the 30s crowd). Depends on the piece though I think. I like mixing old with new in my home and would much rather put this in my foyer than anything mass produced today. The real Empire furniture example you gave, maybe not so much

 

LOL, YEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAA, late classical is on the come back trail!
Agrees, much antique furniture is a bargain these days for many reasons but, I prefer it as well to the sawdust stuff you find when buying new plus, the hunt for it is at least half the fun!

 

Welcome. Sarah, and I agree with you. I used to own a piece like yours, (only about twice the size!) and I loved it. Surprisingly, it can be used in some rather disparate settings.

 

Welcome Sarah! Alas you're right about the marble, but it's a nice design. It has nice clean lines that ought to look good just about anywhere.

 

One more thing I thought was neat. The bottom of one drawer was replaced with what I'm guessing is a remnant of an old Finch furniture shipping container.

 

Neat, Finch started in the lumber biz & building furniture in the 1860s i think & it later became "Thomasville Furniture" around the turn of the century. So says a quick google anyway, the company with that HUGE chair out front.

 

Could you take a picture of the front of one of the drawers but from the side instead of from the top? I don't see how a hand-cut dovetail could be used in that configuration so I'm curious what the side looks like.

 

These look like some kind of sliding dovetail which is new to me. They're hidden from the sides.

 

I think those are called "french" dovetails. There were a lot of dovetail experiments with drawer boxes in america from 1850-1900, probably the most famous was pin & cove or "Knap" joint. They struggled with mechanizing dovetail construction with many furniture manufacturers just doing it the old fashioned way, by hand. You often see victorian era furniture that is mostly machine built except the hand dovetailed drawer boxes. By 1900 they finally figured it out and all these dovetail experiments went nite nite.
Knap Joint