Featured Birdseye and Tiger maple antiques

Mentioned in another thread about tables, thought this thread could work to hold different antiques made with birdseye or tiger maple. I'll start with this drop leaf table. I have a chest that matches this (but with graduated cock-beaded drawers), and a chair I'll try to post later, but this one was out since I bought it recently and haven't had a chance to clean or wax (or apply a dab of glue) yet. This is fairly early (no circular saw marks, hand-planed drawer bottom, single board tops, see how thick veneer is in third pic) so early 19th century. Not the fancy sheraton style being made in Salem with inlays, but an honest period piece that I like. Works well as a bedside table.

 

I am LOVIN' the birds eye contrast!!!!! Actually Love the whole 'night stand'!!!!!! It sure doesn't LOOK like it needs anything done to it!!!

 

Dust it off and sit a lamp on it.

 

Sheraton, looks like cherry? 2 drawer drop leaf with birdseye maple drawer fronts. I would guess more towards 1840ish rather than early 19th century because of the joinery on drawer blade/sides.

 

There's never any right answer to exactly when any antique was made. I think 1810 to 1840 is the range that it most likely was made in; the hand work on the drawer and the thickness of the veneer makes me think it is on the earlier end of that range rather than the latter end of the range, but it is as always a judgement call. By joinery are you talking about dovetails?

 

No, the mortise & tenon joinery (sides of case/drawer blade) was most likely done with steam powered machines making a very precise dry fit on those joints which required only glue at assembly.
If the mortise & tenon were hand cut with hammer & chisel (prior to 1840), it would have been assembled with a wood pin making a "drawbore" joint.
Generally speaking, drawer boxes in america were largely done by hand until 1900 when they finally figured out the machinery that would cut dovetails. Almost everything else associated with furniture making though was done with machines, starting around 1840 or so.
This is why you see late victorian furniture that is clearly machine made with the exception of the drawer boxes that have hand cut dovetails.

 

Drawbore joint, as you can see in this pic, there is far to much "slop" or "play" in a hand cut mortise & tenon joint to rely on glue. Additionally, the holes drilled for the wood pin are offset just a smidge (about 1/16"- 1/8") so that the more you hammer in the pin, the tighter the joint becomes.

Cutaway Drawbore Joint



Pic of the holes showing the offset prior to driving in wood pin

 

Agreed.

 

Ah, yes I know about draw-bore joints. So you're looking for pegs. But I disagree that draw-bore joint was always used prior to 1840. I agree to look for it in 18th century furniture, but early 19th century furniture often lacked pegs - especially in a small piece where the stresses were much less and the joinery was well enough made that there were no huge gaps as shown in your example (which is a poorly made mortise and tenon). Here's an 1815-1825 signed Boston Museum Fine Arts table (obviously different than mine so I'm not suggesting mine is comparable except in lacking pegged joints):

 

Is sewing table from Boston veneer or solid wood construction? It looks veneered, It makes a difference as you would not see construction details & joinery if veneer is applied over piece from a photo.
I have maybe 7-8 first half 19th century stands, some single drawer some 2 drawer, some are drawbore joints & some glued and, i would say without much doubt, the pinned stands are earlier & hand made and glued ones are later and machine made. Naturally there can always be exceptions in old furniture but generally speaking, you just don't have the close tolerances required for gluing a mortise that is chopped with a wood chisel. There is a reason those drawbore joints have survived since the 16th century & are just as tight today as the day the joiner drove the wood pins. That all changed in the 1840s when steam powered machines took over all that & glue replaced wood pins.

Yeah! lol, I am gonna mention that to Peter Follasnsby, tighten up that sloppy joinery! It's an example Jeff, where he is showing a drawbore cutaway.
Here is a 5 min video of him making a wainscot chair & chopping a mortise in part

 

James....Jeff..... very interesting conversation !!!

 

Not complicated, furniture building 101. Certain build techniques were used at different times. In america, steam powered machines took over building furniture in the 1840s and except for custom work, never returned to the hand made ways.
Even in rural areas, the country cabinet shops had to convert or die because of railroads. Those rail cars didn't make one way trips empty, they were loaded both ways. Carried farm product to cities & finished goods back to the country. By 1860, all the cities on east coast were connected by a network of rails and that extended into the MidWest as well where every farm was within a few miles of a railroad.

 

Yes, I know Follansby from his appearances on PBS Roy Underhill show, and I have seen plenty of pinned joints. And you are correct about the importance of steam power in the changes seen in American furniture. But you have the way in which steam power was applied to the making of furniture incorrect.

By far the most tedious, time consuming and dangerous part of preparing wood for furniture was the splitting of logs into usable planks of wood. That used to be done with a pit saw, and it was dangerous, slow, and dirty work:

Circular saws able to replace that work were invented, but they needed to run at much higher speed than could be achieved by animal or water power, so that is where steam power was first and most crucially employed in woodworking:

Note that this was done at the lumber yard and not by the craftsman - craftsmen, who turned the planks of wood they bought into furniture, did not have large and expensive steam engines because they didn't need them. Some of the large factories in New England probably had them, as well as water power. But until the mid 1800's the New England factories did not produce a significant quantity of furniture; since a lot of it was still made by craftsmen working in small teams scattered all over the country. Production in a central factory didn't make sense until steam powered locomotives. So it wasn't really until electric power was available that small workshops and craftsmen would have the same power tools found in factories.

So then what do you look for to decide whether something was made before or after the application of steam power? You look at the unfinished surfaces of large pieces of flat wood. In other words, you look at the drawer bottoms, or the bottoms of table tops, or the inside surfaces of the side pieces of wood. Which is why I pointed out way at the top of this thread that the drawer bottom in this piece has a hand planed surface - and NOT a circular saw cut surface. From the birdseye piece:

Compare that to a different stand made at a later time and shown in an earlier thread. See the telltale curved lines under the table surface - that DOES show a circular saw cut:

 

What i look at is, is the case pinned or not pinned? are the legs machine turned? or are they turned with a pole lathe? How is the top attached, is it pinned to the case? Are the boards all exactly the same thickness or vary slightly?
And no, the drawer bottoms are not indicative of machine VS hand made because, drawer boxes were largely hand crafted until 1900.
Look, if you think your stand is early & hand made that's fine. I really don't know for sure without looking at it personally however, in looking at pics, i am standing by 1840s, machine built. Naturally, i could be wrong.

 

This is all totally not correct. Thomas Day, a free back man from Virginia set up a cabinet shop in Milton NC in 1827.
"Scholars estimate that Day employed five white and at least seven black workers in his workshop. Although some scholars have attributed certain lower-quality pieces of furniture to Day himself, it is more likely, according to other researchers, that some of the pieces sold by Day's workshop were produced by his less-skilled, apprenticed craftsmen.[11][6]:170 To craft his veneered cabinets and other furniture pieces, including beds and bookshelves, Day worked with hand tools in his earlier years, but in the 1840s he introduced steam power into his workshop. This steam power quickened Day's crafting process and increased production levels, because Day could easily replace structural pieces made from standardized design templates using steam power, and could have ready-made elements for when orders were placed.[4]:219[3][5][15][16] Notably, scholars today can often pinpoint which pieces of furniture were created around this time because they are partially hand-crafted and partially machine-fabricated, indicating that the steam power was new and still being integrated into the crafting process.[16]:86–87"

Considering this was a black man in the south pre civil war in a state where 96% of all cabinet shops were owned by whites at that time, it's a bit far fetched to assume Day was the only furniture shop that had steam power. Indeed, it's far more likely that a cabinet shop that didn't have steam power by the 1840s was not going to be around for long.

 

I guess you want to keep discussing this, which I'm happy to do. So you found a factory that started using steam power somewhere in the 1840's. That is not really surprising, and I suggested as much, though I thought the factories (and the steam locomotives to transport the factory goods) were mostly located in New England. But clearly that is not correct and a parochial view on my part, probably due to my living in New England so that is what I see so much of here.

What this doesn't address is your central presumption that all furniture made prior to steam power had pinned joints and that evidence of circular saw cuts is of limited value in dating furniture. I am quite certain that is not the case. I'll post an example when I am not at work where my internet browsing is constrained.

 

I am not trying to keep "anything going" but the notion that cabinet shops in america were left out of the industrial revolution until " So it wasn't really until electric power was available" is simply wrong.
It is generally accepted by furniture scholars that anything built after 1850 in the furniture world in america was largely machine made (excluding custom work), long before electricity became available.
You seem to be suggesting that machine made furniture didn't occur until "electric power was available", this is simply wrong & ignores the historical record.

No, I didn't say that, some drawer blades for example were dovetailed into the case & not pinned however, i don't think i have ever seen a hand made piece of furniture where ALL the joints were glued.

 

Well, I wouldn't exactly call Day's shop a "factory" as his work force consisted of 10-15 guys. The reason i mention Day is, it was very unusual for that particular man in that particular place at that particular time. Reasons i guess his life/work has been so well researched and documented.
The point being Day realized with his small operation that to continue selling furniture, he was going to have to compete with machine built furniture or the factories in Grand Rapids were going to put him out of biz, simple as that. He was not alone on that score, trust me.

 

I've made it clear that I agree with the first part of your statement, that furniture built after 1850 is almost always at least partially machine made - most notably the planks being produced by lumber mill circular saws.

But I certainly disagree with your second statement, that all handmade pre-1850 furniture has pinned (or dovetailed) joints. I already showed one example but here is another perfect example, from the Winterthur collection of Boston furniture. It is described as Federal furniture, and dated 1780-1850 - so an even broader range than I suggested above for the birdseye piece (1810-1840) and extends back into the late 18th century. But note that the Winterthur dating is for a piece of handmade furniture, and there are clearly no pins on the joints (see the closeup on the link). In fact the description states: "The fixed aprons and back are attached with mortise and tenon joints to the legs, reinforced with glue blocks." So mortise and tenon with glue blocks, but no pins needed. As I said earlier, they are not needed on a small piece of furniture like this.
http://content.winterthur.org:2011/cdm/compoundobject/collection/bostonfurn/id/429/rec/25

 

LOL, yeah, 1780 - 1850, they really narrowed it down there. I am goin with the 1850 side of estimate on Winterthur table. I also notice they call the style Empire which it clearly is not.