Sometimes I think that there is a rush to judge too quickly that antiques that we run across have been made in America. This bookcase is certainly a very nice one, but I think the tile inserts led the seller to believe it must have been made by a prominent American maker. The reality is that during that time, most of the skilled craftsman that were in America were of German or French, or at least European, descent. The reason we have all these great pieces is that these European craftsman came to the U.S. and brought their extensive training with them. Many of the names whose furniture we value most are 1st generation immigrants. But not all of them came to America! Some stayed behind and they still made furniture over there!

All you need to do is look at the book by John Andrews, “Victorian and Edwardian Furniture“, and you’ll get a taste for what European (primarily English) Victorian furniture looks like. Guess what, it looks a lot like ours. You’ll see there a lot of French-inspired designs that look like pieces that we would jump to attribute to Roux, Marcotte, etc. There are pieces in there that mirror pieces that I have recently seen attributed to Kimbel & Cabus and Herter Brothers.  In the case of the bookcase above, they are attributing it to Pottier & Stymus. I haven’t done enough digging to say that they are correct or not, but a quick glance had me reaching for the Andrews book on a hunch that more research is necessary.  If you’re interested in researching Victorian furniture and their attributions, I feel it very necessary that you remember to also look abroad when identifying furniture.

More detail and images on this bookcase that is selling are here.

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I ran into these photos on Craigslist yesterday as I was looking for a Victorian bed. Craigslist listings may provide some good deals but their minuscule photos do not provide any means of checking the condition of the item that you’re looking at. When photos are uploaded to Craigslist, they’re downsized to reduce the storage requirements on their servers. The result is a 5-7 kilobyte image. The average size of a file produced by today’s 7 MP cameras? 3.5 Mega-pixels, which is 500-700x more detailed than a photo after it is uploaded to Craigslist.

Looking at the photos above, I was not tipped off that the bed wasn’t an authentic antique (the seller didn’t state one way or the other). The pictures are dark and not detailed. I asked for some better pictures from the seller and once the “normal” pictures arrived in my Inbox, I could see some things that told me that the bed was relatively new.

I own one modern reproduction bed from Indonesia - something we purchased for our first home when we were newly married before Victorian fever hit me. Their indigenous mahogany wood and stains have an unmistakable look that once you see it a few times, you can spot them a mile away. Their carvings, while smooth, are slightly wavy in a way that Victorian carvers didn’t produce.

The bed above is missing some things that you would expect from an antique:

1. Age-Appropriate Wear: old dings, finish wear, patina. No old bed has feet that aren’t scraped up
2. Dust: although furniture gets cleaned, the average non-professional will leave some gunk impacted in the nooks and crannies somewhere
3. Walnut Composition: most of these mid-quality Renaissance beds were walnut - not mahogany
4. Variation in Color: refinished or new furniture looks uniform in color as this bed does
5. 19th Century Dimensions: probably the most telling tip-off is the fact that this bed is King Size and wasn’t modified! Not possible in the 19th century; at least not in the mainstream market.

I got this from the seller after inquiring as to the age:

“This bed is hand-carved, reproduction, solid mahogany (no particle board). My error was to leave out the word “reproduction” in the ad, but I am certainly not trying to present it as an antique!”

Since I’m not a fan of reproductions, I’ll skip this bed and keep looking.

Hopefully the hints above will be helpful to some. Some of the smaller regional auction houses that I visit don’t have printed catalogs (with detailed lot analysis) - what you see is what you get and you need to be able to identify these on your own.

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