If you remember this post here, you would recall that I lose sleep over Victorian furniture attributions. Not really, but close. I just hate to see the same pieces over and over again show up in auctions and on Ebay, firmly or lukewarmly attributed to various makers while the true cabinetmakers roll over in their graves. If we don’t preserve this history now, it only gets worse a hundred years from now. To me it is like attributing a Ford to Chevy, though they have marked their products better than the furniture makers have, preventing any confusion.

Thanks to Lise Bohm pointing me to a new reference book, I have solved the mystery of the above chairs. The book mentions that chairs like the ones above were made by Charles Klein and ones like them had remained in the Klein family through the years (as of 1980, the book’s publication date). Unfortunately, it states that his other work is unknown. I hope that any Auction houses that read this can help attribute these correctly going forward since we see them fairly often pass through their doors.

Charles Klein was a New York Rococo cabinetmaker at the time of John Henry Belter and J & JW Meeks. He produced rosewood furniture that was laminated like the aforementioned makers. According to the “American Furniture of the 19th Century” book by the Dubrows, Klein “did not join his seat backs to the aprons in the same manner as John Henry Belter”. I would be interested to know the detail behind that statement.

I will profile the book that this discovery came from in a future post. It is now one of my very favorites and Lise might have one left at her store. It is “Victorian Detail: A Working Dictionary” by Priscilla S. Meyer. When Lise is out of stock, you can also check here at Amazon.

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So what does the consummate Belter collector acquire when they thought they had everything covered? Why, a child’s chair of course! This laminated rosewood chair has an amazing 28 1/2″ height and a diminutive 11″ seat height. It exhibits the 7 lamination layers common to Belter parlor furniture. Auction ends March 3rd with starting price at $900 and expected range of $1,800 to $3,200.

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Here is a beautiful rosewood John Henry Belter “Fountain Elms” pattern side chair up for auction for the next few days. I would have blogged about this chair earlier but the pictures on the listing are very dark and don’t highlight the carvings and the fact that this is a pierced Belter design. So after waiting a few days, I lightened the photo myself. There are other Fountain Elms side chairs for sale on the web and one in particular is listed for $9,500. You’ll see from the photo below taken from “American Furniture of the 19th Century” by Eileen & Richard Dubrow that Fountain Elms arm chairs can be worth $15,000+. This particular side chair is starting at $4,500 and the listing can be seen here. Listing ends February 25th.

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