First Mystery from Texas

My wife and I have spent years enjoying the gift of antique chasing, one bestowed on us by our parents and grandparents, a love of the ‘old’.
Our home is a bastion of items inherited, gifted, purchased or found, things which, like many on this website, have enjoyed having. Luckily for us, we seem to have gifted this to our sons, a benefit as everything may actually move to their house when we’ve moved on.
As an introduction, we’ve a puzzle that we would like assistance and advice on.
We found a gentleman’s dresser with a hat box for $100 before Christmas, one we’d like to refinish for a grandson. While we believe we have an idea what it should be, we’re not confident to approach it without some research.
1) Looking at the pictures, the approximate build date timeframe would be useful.
2) The wooden pulls are obviously not original, but having difficulty in determining what brass would be appropriate.
3) The carving in the floor of the hatbox definitely was a surprise and no idea what this signifies.
Anyone have any input on these? Any help would be greatly appreciated. View attachment 237890 View attachment 237891 View attachment 237890 View attachment 237891 View attachment 237890 View attachment 237891

 

nice wood for a C note !!

 

I think the "double" knobs definitely seem wrong, but I see a lot of period pieces with a single round hardwood knob like (some of ) yours...

Others seem to have a mix of the round knobs (whatever material) and more victorian/queen anne type pulls on the lower drawers.


There may be a proper style to use, but so many of them are different and most of them look really nice. Peanut gallery opinion, I am no furniture expert.

 

I can't decide if your dresser is American oak or if it is pine.
@verybrad @Ghopper1924 @Jeff Drum

Time period roughly 1890s-1910s.
The pulls were originally brass - Called a Bail pull handle.
You can see where the plate was on yours.

This is what a lot of restorers use now.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=American+Oak+bail+pull+hardware&FORM=HDRSC2

Some 1890s hat box dressers
https://www.bing.com/images/search?...-33&sk=&cvid=CA55C0FAA5D94CD584D56682F7A97D54

 

I'm thinking oak, ca. 1910-1915. They may have worked a few pine boards in there as well.
It's very observant of Cluttered to point out the lighter areas of finish between the wood pulls, underlining that the present knob pulls are replacements. My guess would be the originals were brass as Cluttered illustrated. She's pretty much nailed this one.
The carving on the floor of the hatbox is odd for a furniture company; I wonder if it wasn't done by some latter-day artist?
BTW...welcome, Shepard! Your house sounds wonderful. And how fortunate you are to have passed your love of antiques on to your sons, when most parents have had no such luck. Keep up the good work!

 

Agree oak circa 1910. As suggested some kind of brass plate pull would be the original. The first example flipper showed is spot-on. The pressed "carving" in the hat box it probably an anomaly. The factory probably pressed this design into other furniture and had a random piece of scrap with the design on it that they decided to use for the interior.

 

Welcome, Shepard.

A wonderful love to inherit and continue.

 

Greatly appreciate all of the input, it does answer some questions. For the $100 paid, with some hardware and ‘elbow grease’ we hope to restore it to some semblance of shape for looks and use.
Thanks again all!!

 

Agree with everyone american oak ca 1900. Usually you can find some vestigial outline of the original pulls if you remove the ones that are there now and check for an outline at every location. If you don't see any outline to indicate what you had, I'll make a different suggestion based on a piece that I once owned.

Mine was very similar construction but unlike yours with the unusual door, mine had all graduated full-width drawers, except for three very shallow ones on the top. It was a purchase back when I was first buying old furniture, and was missing one drawer pull plus it had been badly refinished, so it had some remaining paint and drawers were sticking. By the time I would have worked on it my interests had moved on to older furniture, but I liked the design so I kept it as a project in my basement for decades (moving it from one basement to another when we moved).

A couple years ago I finally decided I needed to do something with it, so made a replacement pull to match the ones I had using some scrap oak. That only took a few minutes, but repairing, gluing and refinishing it to make it right would have taken hours, so I finally moved it out and put it on the street in front of my house, all drawer pulls included, and it was gone within a few hours. (I have found that although brown furniture has "no value" to most people, that if you put old furniture in front of your house that there are a lot of people who are interested in it for free. I am taking full advantage of this as I am sorting through the things I've collected - put out five 19th century unmarked Hitchcock factory chairs needing replacement rush last week and they were gone almost immediately. But I bet I couldn't have sold them for $20 for the set at a yardsale).

I don't have a picture, but the drawer pulls were period correct, and would look good on your piece I think (you could leave the three single hole wood pulls as they are). Pulls looked a lot like this:

 

Greetings, Shepard!