Compare this 1872 catalog image of a J.W. Hamburger sofa, model “King William Suit”, to a 7-piece parlor suite currently for sale as a John Jelliff.

The overall form is strikingly similar and a few decorative elements are very close to being the same but there are a few key differences:

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This past week, we had a huge brush fire burning just blocks from our home and it made me think long and hard about the contents of our house and what we’d be able to save if disaster struck. It was a frightening few hours and not ones I want to experience ever again, but it was a cruel reminder of how important it is to update your home owners insurance on a regular basis.

Ironically, insuring antiques is one of the topics that came up for discussion in the forum this week. Monkecmonkedo asked for advice about insurance appraisals and our members were only too happy to oblige. Home owners insurance — you hope you never need it but you’ll be glad it’s there if you do.

On a lighter note, here are a couple of things you don’t see everyday . .

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Sorry if this series of posts is hitting the press slowly, but that is intentional as I am getting new information real-time and I want to be sure that you get it as it rolls in.  As we’ve been exploring in the past two posts (Part I, and Part II), we’re trying to determine if Zeke Feldhaus’ chair was made by George Hunzinger.

Lookie what we have here.  It seems that, surprise, surprise, the  chair in the Bruschke & Ricke catalog which appeared to leverage the Hunzinger brace patent from 1869 happens to be a Hunzinger-manufactured chair all along.  Thanks to Rare Victorian reader John Himes sharing his with us, we can show a real-life instance of the “Reception Chair” in the Bruschke & Ricke catalog with a Hunzinger stamp on it.

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Continuing from where the last post left off,we were trying to determine if an unlabeled chair that Zeke Feldhaus recently purchased was produced by George Hunzinger due to the patent-protected brace design (very bottom image) in the chair or whether another manufacturer either infringed on his patent or perhaps had licensed it.

Zeke had also ran into another instance of the chair which has a variation in the back splat but is certainly from the same manufacturer.   I wrote the owner to ask how they came to the conclusion that it was a Hunzinger and learned that it was based on word of mouth from the prior owner as well as some dealers who had seen the chair. Continue Reading »

I hope everyone had a great holiday break as did I, but it’s time for us all to get back to normalcy.  Let’s kick off year 3 of Rare Victorian with a little furniture analysis triggered by a recent series of emails from Zeke Feldhaus, a Rare Victorian regular contributor who purchased the chair to the right.

George Hunzinger patented a chair design, #88,297, on March 30th, 1869 that he felt was superior to conventional chair designs in it’s structural rigidity.

George’s patent provided the following reasoning for his design:

The backs legs of chairs are very liable to become loosened at the point of connection with the seat.  This is particularly the case with the more expensive character of chairs, where there are not any side rails between the back and front legs.  This looseness arises from pressure against the back of the chair, and from tipping the chair backward upon the hind legs.

My invention is to strengthen the chair; and consists in a brace running on each side diagonally from the upper part of the chairback to the lower part of the front legs, and connected near the middle with the side of the seat or seat-frame.  By this construction the back of the chair is braced to the sides of the seat, and the front legs are similarly sustained, so that one part aids in sustaining the other under the strain to which it may be exposed. Continue Reading »