For the complete list of all art object articles on this blog, with links, go to http://94stranger.wordpress.com/introduction-to-the-blog/art-objects-index/
Perhaps because I have to deal in words to earn my living, I have never really been inclined to read up on anything to do with antiques. I enjoy having conversations on the subject, and am always avid for knowledge, but I baulk at any attempt to systematically study. Hence, for example, I know very little about the wide differences in appearance of items of mahogany furniture. I’m aware that there is typically more than one source of mahogany, and I seem to remember that Cuban and African mahogany have different colours. Mahogany furniture I believe is often stained also, and then there is the matter of the action of sunlight on the wood. The most beautiful chest of drawers I never bought (I didn’t want to pay the price) was a Georgian bow-front whose mahogany had faded to a very pale orangey-brown: this paleness I ascribe, perhaps mistakenly, to bleaching due to greater age than the typical Victorian piece. Mind you, I have a Georgian mahogany table – yet to feature on this blog – which is not pale like this – but I believe it’s had some staining.
As you see, I get a maximum 2 out of 10 for actual knowledge of the origins of differences in the look of mahogany furniture. The piece above does satisfy my idea of the look that an antique piece of mahogany furniture should have. It tells us with confidence that it is not oak, beech, ash, satinwood and so on. I wax my furniture once in a while with beeswax, which apart from producing a lovely soft sheen, smells divine! This piece could do with a re-waxing in fact. I’ve just bought a new tin of wax, so I’ll give it a going over and then re-photograph it, to see whether the difference shows up.
As regards the piece itself, it did, as with so many of its kind, once have a back which has since been lost. Whether or not they all used to look more or less like my coiffeuse - http://94stranger.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/art-objects-28-english-victorian-coiffeuse-antique/ - I’m not sure. The feature which totally sold me on this piece was the funky extra bits sticking out at each side – something I have yet to see on another chest of drawers.
I bought this from that same town which was the source of the Persian rug featured in the last art objects post. The place it came from is a large warehouse-type of space at the extremity of the main shopping area. One of the main people renting space there is a furniture restorer, who I believe told me that he had started 20 years ago with £200 and gone from there. He is an expert craftsman, and has made his expertise pay handsomely. Like Les whom I have spoken of elsewhere, ( http://94stranger.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/art-objects-48-mahogany-desk-chair-early-20c/) I like to do business with this guy, Graham, because with him you know that the price you pay is a true reflection of the value: a good piece costs, but if it isn’t quite ‘right’, (i.e. it has later additions, repairs etc) you’ll pay less. In fact I did not buy this from Graham himself, but from one of his cohorts. I remember vividly that it cost £300, which is probably £400 today (2008) given inflation in the interval. Strangely, all this furniture has fallen in price recently, and it would probably fetch little or no more than £200 today.
I’m sure I have referred more than once to the way that I was brought up to feel guilty about spending money ‘unnecessarily’. For this reason, when I first became interested in antiques, I was hobbled by a number of self-imposed restrictions – among which, the outlay which I could accept on each individual purchase without feeling too guilty to be able to make the purchase at all. I’m sure that, at the time of this chest of drawers, my biggest single outlay thus far had been no more than about £170-180. This chest was therefore in the nature of a quantum leap.
I had seen it, but not taken the plunge, and went to sit by the river with my picnic and mull over what I should do. I was not a happy bunny. Suddenly, I had a light-bulb moment: a way to get myself off the horns of an apparently irresolvable dilemma. I would toss a coin for it! And I would stick by the decision of the coin: heads I take it, tails I don’t. When my coin came down heads, I had one or two bad moments, but I was able to deal with them without too much anguish, because I would equally have walked away from the purchase if tails had come up. I have, as readers of these articles will know, become somewhat of a past-master in the art of letting the coin (i.e. universe) decide. The only stricture – which I did NOT, exceptionally, follow to the letter in the case of the ‘Victorian’ mirror is that you mustn’t cheat on the result – you must obey the decision in both directions. Otherwise, don’t start what will, after all, be a sham.
This, then, was one of my earlier purchases – not the beginning, but the second wave, during which I began to replace the bargain-basement stuff of the first wave with items more carefully (and less frugally!) chosen. Nevertheless, this piece has survived all the subsequent waves and remains in my possession. One of the main reasons for this – bearing in mind that I have since been through a chest of drawers fetish almost as severe as my chair fetish – is the functionality of this piece. The drawers have the most beautiful action: they glide as if upon greased rails. At the end of the day, for a person whose life includes, like my own, the wearing of clothes on a regular basis, the smoothness of slide of the drawers in one’s chest is a significant factor in one’s overall well-being!
By the way, to conclude, take a look at the proportions in the width of the three rows of drawers: it’s beautifully harmonious. I do wish I had the Georgian one (not instead, but as well as the above), but that was not 3 but 4 hundred, and I never even tried to bargain on it. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing like antique collecting on a restricted budget to imprint your psyche with the reality of the limits of existence. But then there are moments, like the one where an antique middle-eastern cradle suddenly appears as it were out of nowhere at a knock-down price, which make it all worthwhile.
