I’d like to start a new feature on Rare Victorian, which I hope will last beyond this one post, called “For The Record”.  The aim is to profile some less prolific, less visible, or “lost” cabinetmakers from the Victorian era.  I’ll especially try to target makers whose pieces seem to be anonymously floating (or wrongly attributed) out there in the marketplace under our very noses, but that may not always be part of the criteria.  I may profile a maker whom a pocket of RV readers are familiar with, but the goal will be to expose the broader readership of Rare Victorian to them as well.

The above table was made by Israel Fellows of Salem, Massachusetts.  Israel was born Aug 28, 1814 in Ipswich, Massachussetts and died Mar 07, 1881.  He married Catherine H. Goldsmith June 14, 1838 in Salem and they had five children together.  That’s about all I could glean from the world on Israel Fellows.

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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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For those of you who collect books on antique furniture and cabinetmaking, you may want to call Joslin Hall Rare Books and have them send you this catalog, number 313.

It just arrived in the mail yesterday and it has 41 pages of 288 books dating back from the 1800s to present. I spotted about 3 books relating to 19th century furniture that I purchased and a few others that I couldn’t justify spending the money on, but would love to have.

Rather than ordering the catalog, you can peruse the full list of books here at their website.

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