The Flomaton sale snuck up on me today since it isn’t being conducted with an online Ebay bidding capability.  There are several Victorian items up for bid including a few Belter chairs and the bed above, whose provenance, according to Flomaton is:

Purportedly Southern and owned by General Robert Patterson, he served War of 1812, Mexican War and Civil War. Lived in Philadelphia and owned cotton mills in Louisiana.

You can view the full catalog here.

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When speaking of John Henry Belter and J & JW Meeks furniture, there are several “patterns” that were typically made by the makers as original designs or commissions for wealthy clients and subsequently produced again and again.

Some Belter pattern examples are “Tuthill King“, “Henry Clay“, “Cornucopia“, “Fountain Elms“, “Rosalie” and “Rosalie w/Grapes“.  You may not have heard about the Belter “Milwaukee Pattern” which doesn’t seem to show up too often.  Meeks examples are “Hawkins” and “Stanton Hall“.

If we are really lucky in this lifetime (and with the Swiss bank account that we have amassed), you get a chance to buy “THE” first/reference set for a particular pattern, which recently happened with the Belter Henry Clay pattern - $105,000.

Once the reference set was produced, the patterns adopted their name from an identifying feature (e.g. Cornucopia), name of the mansion (e.g. Rosalie), or person (e.g. Tuthill King).  Usually, these “patterns” represent the best that those makers had to offer at the time and since they were made for special commissions, tend to be fairly well documented, and thus, we know who made them.

Cut to the sofa in the “Bird Pattern” above, which leaves me scratching my head.

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The sofa depicted above is coming up during James D. Julia’s “Spectacular Maine Auction” on August 26th.  I’ll be profiling more of the delectable Victorian pieces in future posts as we near the sale, but let’s talk about the sofa above for the moment.

Priscilla Myer’s 1980 book, “Victorian Details” dedicates two pages to theories on the maker of the above sofa.  The sofa photo is unfortunately intentionally split at the spine of the center of the book and some details, like the crest, are missing.  However the rest of it is there and it is undoubtedly the same sofa design.

Myers examines two theories on the couch above - could it either be the logical progression for Belter to a more elaborate design later on, the “Birds” pattern, or could it be a transitional pattern for the Meeks’ to the Hawkins pattern?  Here are examples of each: the Birds, another Birds, and Hawkins.  Also, here is a table that Stevens Auction described as the Meeks Bird pattern, though I doubt they intended to draw a relationship to the aforementioned sofas.

James D. Julia is attributing it to Belter and Grand View also had one and attributed it strongly to Belter, so it looks like any mystery that existed in 1980 is no longer present.  I, for one, also have my money on Belter but some better provenance on one of these sofas would be nice to have so that we can lock it in.

Stay tuned for further discussion on the “Bird Pattern” furniture and how it seems that no one is sure even today who made that furniture.

In the meantime here are a few more items from the upcoming Julia sale.

If you’ve ever wanted a pair of Rococo style Victorian beds, QUEEN size no less, then this is your chance. There are minor differences in the carvings, but you can see that they appear to have come from the same shop, possibly the New Orleans area.

The main difference is that one is made of Walnut while the other is of Mahogany.  They have been refinished so they will have a like new appearance.

With four days to go they have been bid up to $7,600 with reserve not met.  More details at the listing.

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Some good friends of mine asked for a recommendation on a repair shop and I mentioned to them that Rose Valley Restorations does good work for me, so they brought the chair to me to take in to John Hutchinson.  This will be the first of two short videos on the repair.

This is a repair that I or many of you would attempt on our own - a clean break in the crest of this antique chair. You might be tempted to throw some glue in the break and strap it down for pressure and be done with it. However, I’m a firm believer that for the modest cost that this will involve to get it done professionally, it is better to go that route so that the small details can be attended to properly.

In this case, properly means to embed up to 3 dowels to reinforce the crest against future instances where re-breakage might occur when this chair is exposed to mis-handling.  The insertion of dowels is not something I would have attempted myself.

You can view the video by using the player below or follow the instructions to view it in full-screen, stereo and High-Definition.

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