No this isn’t a high-end piece of Victoriana. This chair is “Rare” for another reason - that is not silver paint.

This Victorian-era chair is clad completely in Tin and appears to have been done so originally. I’ve never heard of this treatment for furniture before, but it must coincide with the tin ceiling tile era, which began mid-19th century when mass-produced sheets of tinplate became available and continued through it’s peak in the 1890s.

If you go to the listing you can see where a few of the seams have given way and expose the underlying wood. It’s hard to say whether the raised “carvings” are from stamped Tin or from the underlying wood with unembossed Tin having been stretched over it.

Won’t see another one like that for a while …

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Some good friends of mine asked for a recommendation on a repair shop and I mentioned to them that Rose Valley Restorations does good work for me, so they brought the chair to me to take in to John Hutchinson.  This will be the first of two short videos on the repair.

This is a repair that I or many of you would attempt on our own - a clean break in the crest of this antique chair. You might be tempted to throw some glue in the break and strap it down for pressure and be done with it. However, I’m a firm believer that for the modest cost that this will involve to get it done professionally, it is better to go that route so that the small details can be attended to properly.

In this case, properly means to embed up to 3 dowels to reinforce the crest against future instances where re-breakage might occur when this chair is exposed to mis-handling.  The insertion of dowels is not something I would have attempted myself.

You can view the video by using the player below or follow the instructions to view it in full-screen, stereo and High-Definition.

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I thought I’d share this excerpt from a 1980 dissertation by Page Talbot, “THE PHILADELPHIA FURNITURE INDUSTRY 1850 TO 1880″. This dissertation was written to partially fulfill her requirements to achieve the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Page’s name shows up often in our niche and is author, co-author, and editor of several books and wrote some of my go-to articles from The Magazine Antiques. Kenneth Ames was the Supervisor of Dissertation for this paper and he is equally visible in books and articles related to decorative arts.

This is mostly a clarification for us all to be aware of. It’s not a big deal, but I think worth a blog post. The following excerpt discusses the reality behind the term, “hand-made” when used to describe furniture during the Victorian era. While vast amounts of mainstream furniture were manufactured at the time using machinery, many of the great makers are known to have produced “hand-made” furniture. The reality is, that, many of these great cabinetmakers did indeed use machinery for parts of their furniture:

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Well, the table is finished and it looks fantastic.  In this final episode, John Hutchinson of Rose Valley Restorations in West Chester, PA explains the process that he, Kyle, and Bill followed to bring the table to this final condition. There is a luminescence to the color due to the shellac that John mixes himself from imported flakes that can’t be captured on the video.

The table is now in my foyer next to my other golden Oak pieces, including a tall lion-crested Oak hall bench from around 1910.  They all look like they belong together.

Thanks again to John for allowing me to film the process and for creating a work of art for me.

You can view the video by using the player above or follow the instructions to view it in full-screen, stereo and High-Definition.

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A quick update on the table’s progress in this video. It is fully stripped and sanded and the quartersawn Oak shows in all it’s bare glory. We select stain for the wood and paint for the griffins.

Video Part I and Part II - if you haven’t already seen them.

You can view the video by using the player above or follow the instructions to view it in full-screen, stereo and High-Definition.