I would get slapped if I brought this piece home today in 2008 and said, “honey, I bought you a workstand”. Not that I would attempt to - but it’s interesting to observe how times have changed in 150 years.

This is a stamped Mahogany Mitchell & Rammelsberg ladies workstand/sewing stand being sold by Cowan’s Auction on June 21st. They have it marked as being ca. 1840-1850. Although I can’t say when this particular model was first produced, it was present in the 1863 M&R catalog which is enumerated in the Victorian Details book.

There is a photo of this workstand in the book and it is suggested that this is model #3 which cost $35.00 at the time, “with silk bag & scroll leg, carved, mah & rosewood”. I don’t see any Rosewood on this particular one at Cowan’s, so I wonder if it came in either Mahogany or Rosewood vs. the combination of both.

Mitchell & Rammelsberg was acknowledged as the largest furniture maker in the world by a New Orleans newspaper in 1870. They were based in Cincinnati on the Ohio River and could send furniture up and down the Mississippi as well. They had a branch in St. Louis, upriver from New Orleans. An account by Isabella Lucy Bird documents that the factory turned out 2,500 chairs a week as one data point.

There is a Mitchell & Rammelsberg attributed Etagere also up for sale at Cowan’s made of Walnut but hand-grained to look like Rosewood like this previously sold piece by M&R. Looking at their 1863 price list, it appears that the hand-grained (faked) Rosewood was used on their lower-end pieces. I guess that means that the labor, with this particularly impressive skill, was cheaper than using real Rosewood in the first place. Their pricelist also includes American White Ash as an option for wood in their furniture and it occurs to me that I can’t remember ever seeing a labeled M&R piece made of Ash.  I can’t find any on the web currently as well.

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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:

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