The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog

The Jan. 26 episode of Antiques Roadshow featured a particularly interesting piece of antique Victorian furniture, owned by a woman named Cathy Crocker from New Hope, TX. A recent article in the McKinney Courier-Gazette Star Community Newspapers tells the story.

The piece was identified as a Texas Fall Front Victorian desk, valued between $2,000 and $2,500. It had been abandoned in a barn that Crocker’s grandparents bought back in the 60s. The drawers had to be chiseled open because of the rats nests. Crocker stripped and cleaned it and has been “hauling it around” for years.

She sent a picture of it to Antiques Roadshow and was selected to appear. She was told that essentially some pioneer cut down a tree and built the desk. Now she understands its value and gives the desk due honor in her home.

You’ll have to take a look at the photo. It’s a fascinating piece of furniture. I never cease to be amazed at the ingenuity and creativity of the Victorian cabinetmakers.

Click here to see the desk and read article.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Antiques, Antiques Roadshow, cabinetmakers, Desk, Drawers, fall front, Furniture, Texas, Victorian

Here’s a passage from Wilkie Collins, the great Victorian author of detective fiction. This is from a short story called “A Traveler’s Story of A Terribly Strange Bed,” originally published in 1852. The room described here is in a gambling house in Paris, but that strange bed is very British. It has a sinister functionality, too, which you’ll discover if you read the story.

“I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room–which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window–to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at all clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre’s delightful little book, “Voyage autour de ma Chambre,” occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be made to call forth.

In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre’s fanciful track–or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing more.

There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris–yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz–the regular fringed valance all round–the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs, with my coat, waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large elbow-chair covered with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and shirt collar thrown over the back. Then a chest of drawers with two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very large pincushion. Then the window–an unusually large window. Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward–it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.”

I absolutely love the remark about the “multitude of associations.” Do you notice how the ornate beauty of the sentences written by Victorian authors closely resembles the beauty of antique Victorian furniture?

Technorati Tags: Bed, Chair, Chest, Drawers, Furniture, Literature, Mystery, Table, Victorian, Wilkie Collins

Back on October 26, I wrote about a post that I’d discovered on the Rainring blog, in which the author talked about his purchase of an antique Victorian mirror. He has just directed me to another of his posts, in which he discusses his acquisition of a Victorian chest of drawers.

It’s a pretty piece of furniture, made of mahogany, with three rows of “harmonious” drawers. Also, as “94” puts it, it has “funky extra bits sticking out at each side.” These extra bits look a little like shoulder pads and give an air of confidence to the piece.

What I really like about this writer is the entertaining insights he gives into the psychology of an amateur antique collector. He analyzes himself as much as the furniture. He admits to having no formal knowledge of antiques, and he refuses to read up on the subject. So he allows his own taste to guide him, along with what he has learned through the process of shopping and buying.

Having been raised to be careful with his money, he struggles when he comes across a desirable antique with a price-tag that stirs his sense of guilt. This chest of drawers was such a piece, and his description of how he reached his decision to buy it is a lively bit of writing. You’ll know if you’ve read the post on the Victorian mirror that 94 has a way of allowing the universe to decide for him.

Click here to read about it in his own words.

Technorati Tags: Antiques, Chest, Drawers, Mirror, Victorian