English Antique Furniture
13-Dec-2008
English Furniture
There are beyond any doubt numerous pieces of deceptive English furniture on the market among the mass of good honest pieces. But provided you are aware of exactly what a piece is, can use it, will enjoy it and can afford it, there is no reason not to buy. Problems arise only when a piece that is not genuine is passed off as the authentic article – and at the price of the authentic article.
A great many pieces that are not quite genuine took on their present form with no trace of fraud and no motive of greed. Cutting down a large piece of furniture to make it fit in a room smaller than it was designed for is a perfect example. The ignorant repair of a badly damaged piece of furniture with wrong materials is another.
Fashion, too, is of the utmost significance. We may scorn the ignorance of our forebears who chose to update old fashioned furniture be reshaping or redecorating it, but we change our styles too.
Furniture, however stylish, always has a practical purpose. If that purpose becomes redundant – as with the thousands of washstands that were made before modern plumbing – do we simply throw away a mountain of furniture? Or should we adapt it?
Thus if we combine the triple motives of economy, fashion and practicality it is not difficult to see the reasons why so many antique pieces exist that are not quite what they seem or are not quite as they were made.
For complex reasons, attitudes to furniture were changing by the 1830s. Throughout the 18th century one new style had followed another, but by the end of the Regency, the taste for older things which the dilettanti of the late 18th century had fostered in elitist seclusion was becoming the public taste. The prices of Queen Anne, Georgian and earlier items started their erratic rise, the cost of manufacture fell with mechanization and a margin appeared in which the faker, reproducer and pasticheur could operate.