Antique Furniture Shop – American Antique Furniture, a brief history…

The most highly desired antique American furniture was produced in the thirteen original colonies from the mid to late 17th Century through the early part of the 19th century.

The reason is because these pieces were impeccably hand made by skilled craftsmen in the finest colonial cabinet making shops. A number of these fabulous creations were even signed by their makers. The Goddard Townsend family of Newport, Rhode Island produced some of the most renowned and valuable pieces made during this period and a number of them were signed.

These pieces tend to get high-end auction houses like Sotheby’s really excited whenever  they come on the market. In fact, a single mahogany secretary bookcase made by Christopher Townsend in 1740 once sold at auction in New York for the astonishing sum of $8.25 million.

What makes period American furniture so unique and valuable?

If you’ve read Leigh and Leslie Keno’s book, Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture , you’re familiar with the passion period furniture pieces generate. If not, I believe it’s still available through major online booksellers, and definitely worth picking up if you want to learn more about antique furniture.

Lyn Sack Wall also discussed the merits of period furniture, in a guest feature here on About Antiques. As the niece of Albert Sack, who operates Sack Heritage Group as mentioned in the Keno’s book, she’s uniquely qualified to teach about this topic. “It takes more than being old to determine the value of an antique. Not only must an item be of high quality, it must have artistic merit,” Wall said. She also noted “there are many periods of antique furniture. The different periods and styles overlap.”

Wall emphasized that cabinetmakers didn’t stop making Queen Anne furniture on a specific date and start making Chippendale furniture the next day. Each subsequent period actually influenced the style of its successors. However, the major periods can be broken down into Colonial and Federal.

The Colonial period dates from around 1620 to 1780 and includes Jacobean, Queen Anne and Chippendale styles. The Federal period extends from 1780 through 1820 and incorporates Hepplewhite,
Sheraton and Classical styles. These styles are the epitome of American furniture design, and have been copied through the decades.

Who owned period pieces then? What about now? While we rarely run across these fine pieces now, you’ll find a number on display in museums. In fact, there are some lovely pieces on exhibit at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, including a fabulous shell carved chest crafted by John Townsend.

Colonial Williamsburg’s own cabinetmakers, in a shop where period reproductions are handmade while visitors watch, will tell you that the wealthier members of colonial society usually imported their furnishings from Europe. The consumers buying more ornately carved pieces of American furniture were from the up and coming middle class who wanted to display their new status.

These days it’s definitely only the privileged that can afford these beautiful examples of American craftsmanship. They often purchase them anonymously through phone bids in upscale auctions where prices can skyrocket in a matter of minutes.

What makes a masterpiece of furniture worthy of such attention? According to Wall, a piece must possess a “beauty and quality that transcends the bounds of the era or even the field of art it represents” to qualify for masterpiece status.

Even if you never find a period piece, why do you need to know about them? While you may never run across a piece of this caliber in your neighborhood, it certainly doesn’t hurt to learn all you can about the quality of fine American furniture. The more you know about craftsmanship and styles, the better you’ll be at separating the wheat from the chaff on your own antique furniture shopping adventures.

 Visit here if you’d like to shop for and buy antique American furniture.

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