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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