Featured Latest purchase - thoughts/observations welcome

hello everyone
Latest purchase here. Would welcome any advice or information. Seems to be a small mahogany Georgian chest on shouldered (do legs have shoulders?) legs, stringing/beading around the drawer fronts, inlaid top and sides, non-graduated drawers, hand cut dovetails, pad feet. Any thoughts on period?
As ever, thanks in advance.

 

If not shoulders, could they be termed hips?

 

i believe you would call it a jewelry armoire. if its plywood in the drawer bottoms then you know it newer than 1870ish

peace

 

Do those dovetails look as recent as 1870 potentially? I thought they looked older than that...

 

We had a similar (actual period) piece that was called a silver chest and was used to store - no surprise - silver flatware in the dining room. Not certain if that was the original intent, but I have seen others similarly termed and used.

oops! forgot to mention that ours had dust panels between the drawers and was not "fitted" but was lined in cloth and had polished wood dividers. Ma had it relined with pacific cloth in the 1950s.

 

Plywood means later in the US, but this is English. It was patented here at the end of the eighteenth century.

That looks an older piece to me: it's more like slices of probably deal glued in the middle than what we know as ply now.

WHat do the backs of the handles look like? And are there metal studs under the paws?

Other than that, at first look,it does look earlyish 19th - 1820s/30s? I'd think cutlery. I'd use it for jewellery now, it would be brilliant for that. Lovely patina on it.

 

Amend my opinion with the caveat that there appear to be no locks on the drawers - something I would have expected if originally designed for flatware, but maybe the original owner trusted his servants????

Lovely piece, and I have just the place for it and just the flatware to fill it with...................

Hey! A fella can dream can't he? Yeah, I know, most fellas dream of "that special evening" or at least of the object of that evening - me? not so much anymore. Age tends to colour your outlook and desires........

 

Geeze -if I could formulate a single thought and get it out all at once, youse guys would not have to "see" me as much - sorry............

I remember that when we sold the piece the first thing the auctioneer did was to remove all of the drawers and try to place them back out of order. The premise being that while the drawers were all designed to be the same size, since they were hand-crafted there was just enough variation that they were not actually interchangeable. I'm not sure how professional that is, or even if it is helpful, but there it is, cluttering up your post...................

 

You can never post too many times.

You're much too entertaining!!

 

Thanks for this. Early 1800's is just what I was thinking! Alas, these are (once again) my sellers images and I can't investigate the piece further until it arrives... which it may not, given the not-very-princely sum it sold for. Irrespective of age though, I think the quality looks to be there. Very many thanks.

 

that looks like rotary lathe plywood to me invented by nobel after 1850ish.
anyone can make old looking dovetails. our term projects [hall tables] in junior high woodshop had them. they were ok looking and i supposed almost antique by now. sigh.

 

Phil, I'll be interested to see the reality of it.

I'd have bought that as a nicely made and really useful thing.

 

Well, one thing i do not see is, a "scribe" line which you would always see in an american piece. It could have been sanded off and/or it is english so.......

Agrees, does look like ply from here as well

 

Not seeing laminations on that.

I need to take photos of some comparative dovetails when I get time. Some have scribe lines, some don't.

 

What you typically see in english drawer construction,18th-19th century
Notice the vertical scribe line, gives builder a guide to stop sawing

 

That's veneered. OPs is a thick solid front. It varies.