As a website owner, I use a lot of tools to assess traffic patterns on my sites, and while doing so recently, I decided that I could use one of them to roughly judge global and U.S. trends for the antiques industry. I wanted to know how the public’s interest in antiques currently stood against historic trends.

Google “owns” web searching globally with an 81% market share that may someday soon become 90% (Yahoo is a distant second at 10% and MSN at 3%).  I reasoned that if any data out there can best capture the public’s interest in a particular topic, it is web search traffic.

My not-so-scientific methodology is not meant to be a precise view of the industry, but it should be an interesting window into the general trends over time.  There are some obvious errors with my methodology such as not having normalized for search traffic increasing overall since 2004 as more people get online.  However, for all I know, Google may have already done that for me within their data.

The charts below shows a relative scale of Google web search activity on a scale of 1-100 from 2004-present.  A datapoint of 100 anywhere in the chart denotes the peak of search interest over the past 5 years.

Let’s analyze each one individually (images can be clicked to expand size).

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No this isn’t the predecessor to Ikea, but it is an interesting look into furniture designs in areas of the world other than the France, Italy, U.S., and U.K. that we’re used to.  This is an original catalog of furniture from Sweden in the late 1800s depicting furniture in a variety of styles of the period: Renaissance Revival, Eastlake, and Rococo.  Aside from chairs, cabinets, sofas, mirrors, and stands, one page even depicts ornate window drapery that they were offering.  More photos of the catalog at the Ebay listing for it.

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I was contacted by the recent buyer of the above bedstead, which is part of a two-piece suite. There is no question it is a very desirable set and I’d be happy to have it in one of my bedrooms. It is constructed of solid Rosewood, has gilt incising and a bronze plaque inset into the headboard.

The buyer contact me to see if I had any opinions on whether it was Allen & Brother, which was the attribution during the sale, or Herter brothers as had been seen on a similar bed sold recently as well.

One aspect of the design of this bed stood out for me as something that needed further research - the broken pediment. I have heretofore not seen either a Herter or Allen piece exhibiting a broken pediment, let alone one terminating in rosettes.

I have a Rosewood and Ivory inlaid cabinet that I believe to be an English piece that demonstrates a similar broken pediment style and from my research is representative of “Queen Anne” revival from the late 19th century. Not a style I’ve heard much of in the American Victorian decorative arts timeline.

Anyway, I’m not suggesting yet that the bedroom suite is not necessarily American, I just feel that a jump to Herter or Allen & Brother attributions might require further dissection. The bedroom set is highly desirable however, regardless of maker.

As a side tangent, I continue to be concerned with the state of attributions and the upward impact on price for the buyer and the potential for lost history.  Here’s a recent example.

Turned furniture is not always = Hunzinger; aesthetic, ebonized, inlaid furniture is not always = Herter Brothers; hunt sideboards are not always = Alexander Roux;  Modern Gothic with strap hinges is not always = Kimbel & Cabus; laminated Roswood parlor furniture is not always = Belter … I can go on forever.

With hundreds or thousands of makers active at the time in EVERY major city throughout America and Europe, each copying each others’ work and using the same commonly available design guides published at the time, it’s a wonder we can determine who made anything without a label or stencil or tag.

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