If you are a Herter Brothers collector, here would be a special item to add to that collection.  In 1879, Christian Herter began his “magnus opus, the William H. Vanderbilt residence on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-first Street.  It was the largest, most elaborate commission in his career.”¹

This dresser is branded “Herter Bros” and is signed in pencil, “N 411 Vanderbilt Esq.”  below the marble and “Vanderbilt” behind the mirror.  There is a reasonable chance that this was either Mr. or Mrs. Vanderbilt’s own personal dresser.  Since Christian designed each room with it’s own theme in the house and the owners’ bedroom(s) was done in the Anglo-Japanese taste, this dresser would have been an appropriate part of the decor.

To explain the “N 411″ written on the piece, on a whim, I Googled “411 Vanderbilt” and turned up another prominent New York businessman’s home in Brooklyn, Cornelius Hoagland, who became very wealthy making baking powder and his home was built in 1882.  It’s address was 409-411 Vanderbilt Ave.

He had the money and lived in the timeframe in which he could have bought a dresser like this from Herter Brothers, but it is an unnecessary diversion from reality.  “Vanderbilt Esq.” ties the dresser directly to William Vanderbilt Esq.  “N 411″ is likely a number to identify the piece: a model number or order item number.

The dresser will sell on August 26th, starting at $20,000 with expected range of $40,000 to $60,000.  More at the listing.

¹ “Herter Brothers Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age“, Howe/Frelinghuysen/Voorsanger

I thought I’d share two photos of Herter Brothers pieces from my recent Philadelphia Museum of Art trip. You’ll have to excuse the photography as it was with a camera that was foreign to me and since the Herters’ pieces were behind glass, I think it created some challenges for the auto-focus.

The first photo shows a Herter Brothers half-tester bed and a side-char.

The next photo shows an inlaid table attributed to Herter Brothers.  You can see the bottom left corner of what is a large wall mirror that I should have photographed, but the camera was running out of juice.

Taking a quick glance at this set, many Victorian antique collectors familiar with the turn-of-the-century gods of Renaissance carved furniture (Horner, Flint, etc.) would assume that this piece was by R.J. Horner. Fortunately this set is labeled and we can be sure that it was made by Oriel Cabinet Co. from Grand Rapids, MI. It was constructed in 1911 of Mahogany and demonstrates some of the best carving done in America at the time. In my mind, this is an important find since all furniture that resembles this style of furniture carving always gets labeled a Horner and the skill involved in these pieces rivals Horner’s best work.

In addition to this dining set, there will be many other famous-maker pieces, labeled and attributed, going up for auction by Meeks, Belter, Allen and Brother, Herter Brothers, and Mitchell & Rammelsberg. You can peruse the photos at the sale page here.

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I had previously mentioned that I’d be giving you a little more of a review on my latest book purchase, Victorian Detail, by Priscilla S. Meyer, so here goes.

Lise Bohm tipped me off to this book, as she occasionally does, and this time I hit some research paydirt immediately upon receiving it. I had been trying to identify a particular chair that repeatedly shows up at auctions and was finally able to point to Charles Klein as the maker due to this book.

The full official name of the book is Victorian Detail: A Working Dictionary. The latter part of the title is the important part. For those of us who didn’t major in Decorative Arts in college or haven’t worked at an auction house for 25 years, it’s good to find a Victorian-specific “Dictionary” that educates the reader on the decorative elements of furniture - specifically Victorian furniture. Yes, there are other furniture anatomy books but they are so broad in scope that they aren’t helpful. Although I’m interested in it, I don’t currently desire to learn about the finishing touches of a Chippendale highboy.

I’m going to detail the Table of Contents because I believe that it gives you a complete picture of the value of the book:

Continue Reading »

I took a breather from Rare Victorian this weekend to attend to important priorities - gambling in Las Vegas. I’m sitting in the Las Vegas airport on the wireless with hours to spare before takeoff so I thought I’d peruse the wild world of Victorian furniture. I’m operating on about 12 hours sleep accumulated over 3 nights so if you catch me conveying gibberish then you have something in common with the Blackjack dealers on the strip.

I had to write about this chair that I ran across today due to the lengthy writeup that was done on the attribution that they are providing. It is obvious that they went to a lot of trouble to write it up; which I applaud. The seller makes an attribution to this chair as either R.J. Horner or Herter Brothers and date the chair to the 1880s. I am highly suspicious that this chair is actually made by Karpen Brothers, though we don’t have a label or photo of a comparably labeled chair, nor a surviving catalog image to prove it.

As an attribution exercise, I will point out a few issues with their conclusions:

• This chair is undoubtedly done post 1880s - closer to the turn of the century. This chair could even date into the early 1910s. This is suggested to me by the cumulative combination of the smooth scroll arm design and chair back, griffin and satyr detailing, and type of Mahogany and stain used in this chair. There are many images on the web of Karpen furniture and you can use Google or use the search on this site in the rightmost column to find other Karpen furniture images to see the stylistic similarities.
• The seller points out that:
  

  THE BOOK OF HERTER BROS SHOWS VANDERBUILT [sic] ON PAGE 201.SITTING IN A CHAIR, WITH THE FEET IDENTICLE [sic] LIKE THE ONE, WE ARE SELLING & WE GOT OURS FROM THE FAMILY WHO DEMOLISHED THE VANDERBUILT [sic] ESTATE.

  In reality, they are not “identical” to the photo that they mention and provide from the book. The feet in the chair above has 3 toes while the Vanderbilt photo has 4 or 5 toes, so the qualifier “identical” does not apply here. As is commonly known, paw feet have been pervasive in furniture for many centuries and have been employed by many makers in many configurations, with varying detail.  A labeled Karpen sofa at Flomaton Auction exhibits 4-toed paw feet as a recent example of a paw foot Karpen piece.

They’ve obviously received a few phone calls asking them to not attribute this chair to Herter Brothers:

WE JUST RECIEVED A FEW PHONE CALLS TO SAY DAVID PLEASE DO NOT SAY THAT THIS MAY BE A HERTER BROS CHAIR .UNLESS YOU CAN BACK IT UP WITH A PHOTO, OF VANDERBUILT SITTTING IN ONE LIKE YOURS & LET US BE THE JUDGE

I agree with the callers that I would not mention the name Herter in conjunction with this chair. The heydey of the Herter Brothers had ended over a decade prior to the creation of this chair, not to mention that none of the Herter pieces I have seen or are in the Herter Brothers book show anything comparable.

Horner, however was a contemporary to Karpen Brothers and did produce furniture of similar style, and quality, and materials, so Horner’s name cannot be removed from the equation. My feeling is still that this fine chair was produced by the Karpen boys.

You can decide for yourself, but any way you look at it, this is still a fine chair and one that I would be happy to own. Please stop by this disabled Vietnam Vet’s listing for the chair and take a look for yourself. Thanks, nineballdave, for the service that you provided to our country and good luck with your sale.

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