I took some photographs of what is probably the most well-known Elijah Galusha sofas in existence.  The sofa resides (with it’s twin) at the the Rensselaer County Historical Society, Troy, NY.  I tried to capture closeups of the details so that we can have a reference of Galsha’s carving conventions.

The last image is what may likely be the original receipt from 1861 and I will confirm that with the curator, Stacy Draper, next week.
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I have good and bad news to share with you. First, the bad news is that I’ve been traveling and haven’t had time to profile all the great auction items coming up for sale TOMORROW, November 21st.

Kamelot Auction House in Philadelphia, Neal Auction in New Orleans, and Fontaine’s in Pittsfield, Mass. are all having sales with great Victorian items.   If the Allen & Brother credenza at Fontaine’s doesn’t sell for a small fortune – don’t tell me – I don’t want to know.

Here’s what you should check out:

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I think an equally important problem with making attributions is that we, on the whole, have long forgotten many fine makers from the Victorian era, probably numbering in the thousands – America alone, let alone globally. With an absence of labels, tags or stamps, we have nothing to remember them by except for old, buried newspaper articles of their factories closing or burning down.

There is no better example than this parlor set retailed and likely made by J. Ziegler & Co that was recently shared in the forum. “ThePeacockRoom” dug up a quote from Zeigler that “The firm offered “a large stock of plain and artistically rich furniture, all of their own manufacture...”.  So, according to them, they did not resell the work of other cabinetmakers.

The set has a surviving label on the underside confirming it is from J. Zeigler’s “Furniture and Decorations Warehouse” in New York.

If you would have been tempted to put a Herter Brothers tag on it, there is a reason that it wouldn’t have been too far-fetched to do so.  If you haven’t already read the whole forum thread, and to read about the connection between Herter Brothers and Zeigler, read the rest in the forum.

Also, see lot 110 in the upcoming Neal Auction sale this weekend for a comparable chair.

A recent Rare Victorian site visitor, Jim, asked the following fair question and rather than get the discussion lost in the comment section of the post that triggered his question, I thought I’d address it in detail as a posting.

Q: I am confused. how do you know these are variants by the same manufacturer and not different manufacturers using the same old stock parts ? it seems that items on this site get rounds of applause for being “attributed” with variants and on other highly respected sites the items are similar and made with stock parts by different manufacturers.

It makes me suspect of the attribution and the reviewers.

Jim’s right that stock parts that were available broadly at the time across all manufacturers and that many similar pieces of furniture could be produced by different manufacturers.  This is true and creates problems when we attribute to a single manufacturer today.  Thus, all the issues with John Jelliff attributions.

Ornamental Wood Company is a great example of how these component pieces were centrally  made and distributed to many makers.

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A recent Rare Victorian site visitor shared with me some images of a set of high-style Renaissance Revival chairs with very high quality mounts.  I have done a fair amount of digging on deciding whether the set is properly categorized as Egyptian Revival or Neo-Grec.  I have even consulted with James Stevens Curl who wrote the book on Egyptian Revival and his response was as follows:

the female head is not Egyptian, though it is influenced by Egyptianising figures: the uraeus has been replaced by what appears to be a bird, and the head-dress is not the Nemes of Egypt, but a sort of Red Indian concoction.

I was on the same path as Curl that the head-dress is not what is typically seen with Egyptian Revival.  There is almost seems to be a representation of feathers.  The ruffle around the waist of the figure also does not lend itself to suggesting Egyptian Revival.

So, for those of you who also like to nit-pick the details, what say you of classifying this set?  I’m almost tempted to leave it categorized at the “Renaissance Revival” level due to the lack of pure direction with the themes.

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