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<p>[QUOTE="Jeff Drum, post: 4385207, member: 6444"]No, on the contrary these circles are not decoration. Every drawer on this piece has them and has them at the same spacing, including the drawers where they are mostly covered up with the replacement brass pulls. When wood, in this case veneer, is replaced it almost always ages differently than the original wood. A match is made for how it looks when the replacement is done, but it will age differently. In this case the veneer patch to replace original pulls was probably done quite some time ago, probably early 20th century.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are no patches needed on the doors because there were never any pulls on those - those were kept locked and opened with a key - common on these 19th century sideboards.</p><p><br /></p><p>So why were pulls replaced? Almost certainly because this mid-19th century piece had pressed glass pulls. Being made of glass they are relatively fragile. Once one pull is broken it is easiest to replace all of them because there were so many different styles being made by different pressed glass manufacturers. In addition, at the turn of the 20th century when the original antique craze happened glass pulls were considered too recent so not popular, and many original pieces had their glass pulls replaced with what were assumed to be more "correct" brass pulls.</p><p><br /></p><p>So finally, why were such large patches used rather than small ones? If you have done any veneer work, you know that matching an irregular shape is very difficult, so round plugs are often used because they are easy to cut. And indeed the large size points to what type of glass pulls were used. If you have studied the history of pressed glass pulls you know that there were many different styles being produced by different manufacturers. Some of them required quite large holes (either round or square) to be cut in the drawer. Here is an example from the met museum of one requiring a large round hole, produced 1810 to 1860. Clearly if you had to replace a pull like this you would need to use a large veneer plug.</p><p><img src="https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/14242/44703/main-image" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><img src="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/14242" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="Jeff Drum, post: 4385207, member: 6444"]No, on the contrary these circles are not decoration. Every drawer on this piece has them and has them at the same spacing, including the drawers where they are mostly covered up with the replacement brass pulls. When wood, in this case veneer, is replaced it almost always ages differently than the original wood. A match is made for how it looks when the replacement is done, but it will age differently. In this case the veneer patch to replace original pulls was probably done quite some time ago, probably early 20th century. There are no patches needed on the doors because there were never any pulls on those - those were kept locked and opened with a key - common on these 19th century sideboards. So why were pulls replaced? Almost certainly because this mid-19th century piece had pressed glass pulls. Being made of glass they are relatively fragile. Once one pull is broken it is easiest to replace all of them because there were so many different styles being made by different pressed glass manufacturers. In addition, at the turn of the 20th century when the original antique craze happened glass pulls were considered too recent so not popular, and many original pieces had their glass pulls replaced with what were assumed to be more "correct" brass pulls. So finally, why were such large patches used rather than small ones? If you have done any veneer work, you know that matching an irregular shape is very difficult, so round plugs are often used because they are easy to cut. And indeed the large size points to what type of glass pulls were used. If you have studied the history of pressed glass pulls you know that there were many different styles being produced by different manufacturers. Some of them required quite large holes (either round or square) to be cut in the drawer. Here is an example from the met museum of one requiring a large round hole, produced 1810 to 1860. Clearly if you had to replace a pull like this you would need to use a large veneer plug. [IMG]https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/14242/44703/main-image[/IMG] [IMG]https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/14242[/IMG][/QUOTE]
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