The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog

On Saturday, October 24, Stair Galleries of New York will host an auction of the Hunt Slonem collection contained in Edgewood Terrace, also known as Cordts Mansion, “an imposing Second Empire-style brick mansion that stands at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Kingston in New York’s sprawling Hudson Valley.” Previews run from October 9 to October 24.

I’ve attached the press release and photos here for you, so there’s not much need for me to elaborate. Suffice it to say that this is going to be one magnificent auction. Here’s some more from the press release to entice you:

“After restoring his country retreat to its original Victorian grandeur, Mr. Slonem filled the rooms with an eclectic combination of 19th-century furniture and decorations, modern art and his own exotic, vibrantly colored, neo-expressionist paintings… The sale will feature an extensive selection of 19th-century furniture, decorative arts and fine arts as well as a number of 20th-century paintings, prints and photographs.

According to Mr. Slonem, ‘The collection represents nine years of gathering.’ The impressive array of 19th-century furnishings, spanning the years from 1830 to 1900 and encompassing all the major styles of the Victorian era, is heavily focused on the Gothic Revival. Throughout the house are chairs, center tables, dressing bureaux, secretaries, gilt-bronze mantel clocks, glass vases, porcelain teawares and ironstone toilet sets embellished with tracery, pointed arches, steep gables, pinnacles and cusping. Balancing the medieval-inspired pieces are furniture and decorations in other revival styles including Rococo, Renaissance, Louis XVI and Neo-Grec. Modern works of art, hung on brightly painted walls inspired by the colors in Mr. Slonem’s paintings, serve as a foil to the Victorian furnishings.”

Wow.

Click here to read the full press release.

Click here for the catalogue. You have to see this.

For information, contact Walter G. Ritchie, Jr. of Stair Galleries at 518-751-100 or walter.ritchie@stairgalleries.com. Visit Stair Galleries’ website at http://www.stairgalleries.com/.

Technorati Tags: 19th Century, Antiques, Chairs, clocks, decorative arts, Furniture, gothic revival, Hunt Slonem, louis xvi, modern art, neo-grec, paintings, Renaissance, Rococo, second empire, secretaries, Stair Galleries, tables, Victorian

Here’s a thought. If you go to Google and do a search on antiques or antique furniture or Victorian furniture, you’ll see sponsored links come up on the right side of the page, or even at the top. Look at all the people trying to sell antiques by advertising on Google Adwords.

You can try the same thing on Yahoo and Bing, too. More ads.

Do you think some of these advertisers are getting results? Those ads cost money every time somebody clicks on them, so they must be productive. If you’re not advertising your antiques in the same place, do you think you might be missing out on something?

Where do you think those people learned how to place those ads? Do you think they hired someone to do it for them or just started doing it themselves through trial and error. I can tell you from experience. It’s pretty easy to get an ad up and running, but it’s not easy to make it profitable.

I’ve been looking around for training on the subject. Here is simply the best thing I have found.

It’s an eBook put out by a company called Mastermind Pros. The ebook is called $1 A Day Plan, and there is a series of four videos that accompany it.

What this book teaches is how to apply real-world, offline principles of marketing to your online, pay-per-click marketing campaigns. It shows you how to research your market, which means researching keywords and competition, and how to test your campaigns with minimal risk. Indeed, for no more than a dollar a day.

A series of bonus booklets also shows you how to get started with Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search Marketing, and Microsoft Ad Center Bing.

This isn’t the usual online hype. This is for the serious marketer, newbie or pro.

Check it out. It’s actually a small investment, much smaller than placing ads in the offline media. Here’s the link:

http://www.one-dollar-a-day-marketing.com/Pros/

Technorati Tags: Antiques, bing, Furniture, Google, marketing, Online, pay-per-click, ppc, search, Victorian, Yahoo

According to a recent article in the Daily Gazette out of Schenectady, NY, there are a number of pressures working to push down prices of Victorian furniture and other antiques and collectibles.

Current economic conditions, for one, are leaving people strapped for cash. Mark Lawson of Mark Lawson Antiques of Sarasota Springs says that more and more people are coming in trying to unload collectibles. In the past he saw this only once in a while, and it was often the elderly trying to pay property taxes. Now he’s seeing younger people.

As he explains, “Because of the economy, people are desperate to raise money to live or get by on. That’s really new.”

Unfortunately, what these people don’t understand is that the market has sunk because of online sites like Craigslist and eBay. Collectibles relatively rare in the past are now widely available and therefore less valuable. Hummel figurines, for instance, that used to sell between $100 and $200 are now worth no more than $30.

Also, the market has simply changed. Young people aren’t collecting. It’s not fashionable. Antique Victorian furniture used to sell well. Today the market for it has shrunk.

David Ornstein of New Scotland Antiques in Albany tells of a woman who brought him a Victorian marble-top table. He offered her $100, thinking he could get $150 for it, but the woman thought she was being cheated. “We’re caught in a tunnel we can see no end to,” he explains, “and I’ve been in this business for 30 years.”

Is there really no end to this? Or does this represent an unusual opportunity for the more astute? The greatest investors have always bought when the masses were selling.

You’ll find the article here.

And here are some earlier posts of mine that deal with the current market for antique Victorian furniture: Dec. 9, Dec. 8, Nov. 27, Oct. 25.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Antiques, collectibles, Craigslist, ebay, Economy, Furniture, marble, Market, prices, Table, Victorian

I just came across a blog called Slip Into Something Victorian. Its most recent post is about Lizzie Borden. Mystery and the Victorian era sure do go hand in hand.

Denise Eagan, the author of the post, recently visited Lizzie’s Victorian home, which is located in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was in this house back in 1892 that Lizzie’s father and stepmother were found murdered in exceptionally brutal fashion. Lizzie was brought to trial but acquitted.

To this day the crime is unsolved, although Lizzie remains the primary suspect in the minds of many. The post gives a very nice summary of the circumstances of the mystery, with some interesting details about such things as possible sexual abuse and the miserly nature of Lizzie’s father.

And here’s something you probably didn’t know. The home today is a bed and breakfast. You can actually sleep in Lizzie’s room, in a nice antique Victorian bed, I might add! I don’t think I would shut my eyes for a second, and not just because I was admiring all the furniture in the room.

Slip Into Something Victorian contains a gallery of pictures, among which are an excellent selection taken at the Borden house. There’s a lot of antique Victorian furniture in there. You’ll see beds, chairs, mirrors, dressers, a dining room table, a striking medallion back sofa, and more – all within the confines of one of the world’s eeriest Victorian homes.

And maybe you’ll be inspired to visit the home and spend the night. I understand you’ll be treated to the breakfast the Bordens had that morning. The contents of Abby Borden’s stomach actually provided an important clue as to the time of her subsequent murder. Food for thought.

You can read the post here. If you have trouble finding the picture gallery, click here.

And here are some earlier posts of mine involving mystery of one kind or another: Nov. 24, Nov. 20, Nov. 17, Nov. 16, Nov. 13.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Bed, Beds, Chairs, Dresser, Furniture, Home, House, lizzie borden, Mirror, Mystery, Sofa, Table, Victorian

I almost missed this article out of London from the Kilgore News Herald. It talks about the Christmas traditions that we owe to the Victorian era, especially the meal. And it discusses the influence of Charles Dickens’ description of Christmas at the Cratchit’s, the family of Tiny Tim, in A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol was published on December 19, 1843. Within a week 6,000 copies were sold!

Dickens, the article says, was the first to paint this “portrait of celebration,” complete with a stuffed goose, mashed potatoes, gravy, applesauce, and plum pudding. Apparently, in the early 19th century, Christmas was not a cause for great celebration; but Dickens’ picture of “everyone sitting around the table with a great big goose” helped to change all that.

It’s not just the feast, either, that we get from the Victorians. The Christmas tree itself, although already a long established tradition in Germany, became widely popular in England only after a print was published showing Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the children all gathered around one.

There’s so much more to antique Victorian furniture than cabriole legs. Perhaps that Victorian table you’re thinking of buying offered up numerous Christmas meals for a happy Victorian family, who feasted under the intoxicating influence of Dickens. You may not know it, but those ghosts of past Christmases are still sitting there.

Read about Tiny Tim’s Christmas table here.

Technorati Tags: 19th Century, Cabriole, Christmas, Dickens, Table, Tree, Victoria, Victorian

I ran into a column written by a woman named Anne Gilbert. Anne is known as The Antique Detective, and her column appears in the publication ElmLeaves, which is part of the Sun-Times Group in the Chicago area. People send Anne photos of their antiques, in order to get her expert assessment of them.

This particular column contains some interesting pieces. There’s a desk that converts into a bed, c. 1916. There’s an Arts and Crafts table in the style of Gustav Stickley, which currently has little value because of its poor condition. But Anne reports that if it could be attributed to a specific maker like Stickley and then professionally refinished, it could fetch $5,000 at auction.

And for us? How about an antique Victorian parlor table, Renaissance revival, c. 1875. Excellent carvings. Shop value in the range of $800.

Have a look.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Antiques, Arts, Auction, Bed, Crafts, Desk, Renaissance, Revival, Table

I chanced on an entertaining and informative article by Fred Taylor in Auction Central News. It traces the human interest in animals and our use of animal imagery in art and ultimately in furniture.

You may not know this, but Egyptian furniture from as far back as 3,000 years ago has been found with legs that end in lion paws. The design of Egyptian beds was unchanged for 2,000 years. The beds typically had the legs of animals, from bulls to gazelles to cats. The Assyrians, Greeks and Romans likewise carved animal imagery into their furniture.

The practice largely disappeared, Fred tells us, until Thomas Chippendale in the 18th century, with his mix of French Rococo and Orientalia, brought it back. Thereafter, and throughout the 19th century, as Fred puts it, “the barn door was open.”

Fred treats us to a gallery, or shall I say menagerie, of photos of 18th and 19th century pieces, with a number of shots of antique Victorian furniture. Keep your eye out for the sideboard that celebrates the elements of the Victorian table.

You can read Fred’s article here.

Technorati Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, Animal, Antique, Antiques, Chippendale, Furniture, History, Imagery, Rococo, Sideboard, Victorian

Which is the most famous of all Victorian mirrors? Well, obviously, that’s a speculative question, if you’ll pardon the pun. But here’s a piece of writing containing a mirror that would rank pretty high:

“Now, if you’ll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there’s the room you can see through the glass — that’s just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair — all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they’ve a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too — but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I’ve held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room. How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink — But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it’s very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking- glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it!”

Now admittedly, that’s a fictional mirror, or looking-glass, not a real one. But it’s a famous one nevertheless. Those lines were written in 1872 by English author Lewis Carroll. And the person talking to her Kitty is of course young Alice, in Carroll’s wonderful book Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There.

It dawned on me a while ago that there must be an enormous number of descriptions of furniture contained in the great works of British Victorian literature, written by the likes of Carroll, Dickens, and the Bronte sisters. And that there could be a rather interesting perspective to gain by reading them. What could be more intriguing to a lover of antique Victorian furniture than getting a description of a period Victorian table from the pen of Charlotte Bronte?

I got the idea of quoting Carroll here by reading a post in some random forum by a man who was thinking of doing a scholarly investigation into the symbolic meaning of mirrors in Victorian literature. He was led to this idea not only by Through the Looking Glass, but also by Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Hmmm. He could be onto something there.

In any case, I’ll pursue my own idea of tracking down passages in Victorian literature with furniture in them. Whenever I find a good one, I promise to share it here on The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog.

Technorati Tags: 19th Century, Alice, Lewis, Literature, Mirror, Victorian

I bumped into an article written by Frank Herendeen of the Historical Glass Museum in Redlands, CA. The article is about a collection of Victorian knife rests that the museum received for display in September, but it’s also quite informative from a historical perspective, as it discusses the use of knife rests at the Victorian table.

Here are some of the things that Frank tells us.

Knife rests were part of the Victorian convention, along with fish knives, lettuce forks and individual asparagus tongs. Depending on whether the host or the butler did the carving, two large knife rests would reside either at the head of the table or the sideboard.

At the wealthier Victorian tables, each diner would also get a set of knife rests. These rests were frequently of cut glass to match the glassware pattern of the table overall.

Etiquette called for putting your knife on the knife rest as your plate was removed between courses. As you were eating, on the other hand, you put your knife down on your plate, not on the knife rest. And the knife would never be on the rest at the beginning of the meal.

Click here to read the full article and see the photos of the knife rests.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Antiques, History, Knife, Rests, Table, Victorian