New York empire chest of drawers

ttalma

ttalma

Well-known member
I am currently restoring a chest of drawers my wife found on Craigslist. Alot more work that it's worth, but she fell in love with it. I had to plane 1/16" off the top of the chest to get Amy's name out. The drawers are in good shape and only needed a little work. The case is solid and well built, but the cross banded veneer was in rough shape. To make things worse someone did a real half-a$$ job of a restoration and made the work twice as hard. The case is made from walnut, poplar, pine, and cherry, with the front veneered walnut. The case was dyed deep red to look like mahogany, and someone sanded through the dye on one side, slopped on some poly and gave up. 

I am dating the piece to around 1820, there are no marks from power tools only hand tools. The screws are machine made, but are the flat tip style. The wood is all local to NY and I think the chest was local (Rochester NY) made, as Rochester was doing quite well at the time. But since the erie canal came right through the city, it may be from somewhere else in NY. The hardware that was on the chest were some cheapies from a hardware store. I am thinking the originals were glass.

I thought everyone might like to see the New York construction style, as opposed to some of the other styles posed in other threads.

Here's a link to the pics:
https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/14006061/1/NYchest?h=66553f

I like the last pic, it shows the fingerprints of the original finisher.
 
Looking at the grain in picture 7 which seems to be a photo of the underside of the walnut top? , I was surprised to see the light colored hint of sapwood by a glue line , but even more striking the grain it self almost looks like a sort of quilt pattern which I had never experienced in walnut. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what I am viewing.

It can really be disheartening to work on a piece that does not strike ones fancy - I have particular problems disciplining myself to do repairs on some old English antiques  which are favorites of SWMBO. I know intellectully that they are far more valuable than my own projects and well worth the effort, but it is just hard to get emotionally involved.

Karl
 
Yeah, mama ALWAYS wins these arguments when it comes to decorating & furnishing the old homestead, guys may think they are in charge but as anyone whos ever been married can tell you, thats all nonsense, women rule.

Neat hand built chest however, its not really Empire, its Late Classical or sometimes referred to as pillar & scroll. The Classical era was really composed of three separate and very distinct phases of fashion , Neoclassical (1790s to 1820s), Empire (1820s to 1840s) and Late Classical (1830s to 1850s). I dont know why but dealers, auction houses & the public in general lumps Empire & Late Classical into the same fashion but they are quite different. Heres a post on another blog by Hollie Davis that explains these 3 styles much better than i can with pics of each style.

http://rarevictorian.com/2009/06/empire-furniture-isnt-always-empire-furniture.html

Thanks for sharing pics of your chest as i dont often see furniture of this style posted here, very refreshing. Hopefully, you can post pics when the restoration is finished.


 
Karl, you are right that is a quilting pattern on the top. the sapwood does not show through on the face. I was worried about that when planing the top. There are still a few small dings in the top that were deeper than the 1/16th I planed off. But i stopped at that point since I didn't want the sapwood to come through.

I've never seen figure like that in walnut either, and the top is 2 pieces book matched together.

As for the style, it's not my 1st choice either, but my wife is an artist and has an excelent eye for proportion etc. and this piece does have good lines.

I should have mentioned that at the point these pictures were taken I had replaced the veneers and don't the 1st step of coloring. My process (and this is only the second piece i've restored) is to replace the veneer as close as I can. Then my wife uses water colors (paint) to match the existing. On this piece I will try to get the mahogany coloring back to even everything out. I am using solorlux dyes. Then I will finish with shellac brushed on.
 
"As for the style, it's not my 1st choice either"

Yeah, in the antique furniture market this style is not exactly what one would call "hot" at the moment but hey, its very reasonably priced & many of the early pieces are hand built which was the end of the line for hand built furniture in america. Another thing, just because its not desirable at the moment does not mean it wont be at some future date. Fashion, even in antique furniture world is constantly changing and for all we know, in the next 10 or 20 years this could be the "hot" item, ya just never know.
 
Similar construction to the one I restored two years ago.  I wonder if mine came from NY?  Was there a factory in Rochester where these pieces were made?
My mother-in-law bought ours for us many years go and my wife used it exclusively.  I too never cared for the style and it was near black from the aged shellac.  The large glass knobs would always fall off the drawers and my wife always complained about sawdust on her clothes because the sides of the large heavy drawers and drawer glides were worn down to the nub.
I never paid much attention to the piece until one day while repairing a piece of cockbeading (cogbeading) that had come loose, I noticed that the dovetail scribe line was still visible on the drawer sides and all of the dovetails were sawn past the scribe line.  That was when I realized how much handwork had gone into its construction. 
I enjoyed restoring mine.

Good luck with yours.

-Chuck
 
Similar construction to the one I restored two years ago.  I wonder if mine came from NY?  Was there a factory in Rochester where these pieces were made?

Chuck, it very well could have been NY as one of the most important cabinet-making firms to disseminate this last phase of Classicism in America was Joseph Meeks & Sons (active 1797-1868) of New York. During the early 1830s, American manufacturers first began to use steam-powered machinery in the production of furniture. One of the first companies to experiment with this new technology was Joseph Meeks. This style of furniture does tend to be a bit chunky (hey, pilgrim is chunky too!) with massive S & C scrolls band sawn from blocks of poplar and pine & veneered with mahogany (usually). It was advertised as ready made furniture and there was a wide variety of quality, from hand crafted with hand cut dovetails to some that was poorly built of inferior quality.



 
I don't know if was factory made. Every joint and surface has visible signs of hand work. One of the panels on the side is noticably thicker on one edge that the other.

The surfaces that were untouched have marks of vertical sawing, probably from an up a down saw mill.
 
ttalma, It could very well be all hand built, particularly if built early during this period. As time went along though i think it would be increasingly difficult to market as steam power revolutionized not only the furniture industry but many others as well.
 
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