Driscolls Antiques – Antique Furniture Blog

Large Edwardain desk – item of the week

The item of antique furniture  of the week this week is a Large Edwardian Mahogany Twin Pedestal Desk. It is a beautiful antique desk and is of a very large size. It has a very nice gadrooned edge with black faux leather and has lots of drawer space with swan neck handles. This beautiful piece of antique furniture is made from mahogany and is finished on the back so can be placed in the centre of a room. It is an ideal piece of office furniture and would suite all spaces from a home office to a large office as it has lots of paper storage and is large enough to hold a full computer set up. See our antique desks section for more details and to see lots more antique mahogany desks for sale.

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Antique Upholstered Seats and Hall Seats interesting facts

The smell of food in 18^th century dining rooms was considered terrible and so the drop in or stuffed seats of dining chairs were mainly in leather or horse hair rather than fabric, which was thought to not store any odour. The antique furniture designer Robert Adam stated that there should be no wall hangings or curtains in a dining room to prevent smells.

First found in the reign of George II, hall seats were made for the entrance halls and corridors of fine houses where people sat and chatted or visitors waited.

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The History and Styles of Antique Chairs

In the early periods most people sat on benches or stools in medieval times, because the chair was a symbol of rank and position and only the master of the house and his wife would be able to sit on the chair. It was not until the sixteenth century that chairs became more common. At first they were constructed of a boxed construction, but soon they lost the box panels under the arms and seats and were known as joined chairs.

In the early seventeenth century the back stool evolved. This was a stool with a half back and was portable unlike the earlier chairs.

Almost all early chairs were made from locally available woods, such as oak and beech. The elaborate styles introduced into England from continental Europe were most often found in walnut, which was a highly figured and solid wood which was suitable for carving and it did not crack or split.

By the eighteenth century, English chairs begun to develop their own characteristics and style. By early 1700s in England the Queen Anne chair was produced, with its bold curved lined and a solid vase shaped splat running from the crest to the seat rail from the back and the famous curved cabriole legs.

Hepplewhite and Sheraton styles at the end of the 1700s and leaned towards the more robust forms of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt.

Regency dining chairs, had curved top rails, sabre legs and scrolled arms, were an elegant form of seating. Carving was limited to the top rail and splat, with motifs usually in the style of Greek architectural decoration. As time went on a chair, known as the antique balloon back chairs, was most popular between 1850 and 1870 in Britain.

Antique chair styles varied largely during the early nineteenth century, with French , Chinese and Gothic designs and the Neo classical look was very popular and copies from earlier designs.

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Antique Stools, the earliest form of seating.

Since the ancient times, the stool has been seen as a main form of antique seating. Early rural houses and kitchens would have the three legged stick stool and in towns and public rooms stools of a simple trestle construction could be seen. By the mid sixteenth century better made joined or joint stool had become more common and the antique chair was a rare luxury only for use by the head of the household .

In court life, strict rules governed who was entitled to sit on a stool, in the 17^th century England there were low upholstered stools known as tabourets for the ladies who would sit in the presence of the King.

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We have been approached by the THE HOME SHOW, a Channel 4 interior design program by Tiger aspect productions and have been asked if they can show one of our georgian desks on there show. above are the pictures that are being shown on the show and it is a Georgian antique mahogany desk. It has twin pedestals, has a solid mahogany rectangular moulded top above a central oak lined cock beaded drawer and large kneehole. They have the beautiful original handles. We are also sending pictures of other desks that may be shown on the program.

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Antique furniture Woods and patina.

Timber from coniferous trees is known as softwood, like pine while woods taken from deciduous trees is called hardwood like mahogany or oak. Antique furniture can be made from more common woods but many exotic timbers have been used over the centuries as well. The main timber of use over the years was mahogany or oak and pine was popular in construction. Some of the most popular woods for veneering and inlay were mahogany, oak or for finer verneering amboyna, a light brown East Indian wood with a speckled grain, kingwood, a purplish South American wood and satinwood, grown in both the West and East Indies.

Ash and oak was often used for country furniture and pine until the early 1900s was used for making frames or carcasses of furniture.

The term patina describes the layers of polish, dirt and grease that build up naturally on furniture over the years, particularly in carved decoration and crevices, and give it a rich look. Patina cannot be reproduced.

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Here are a few pictures of the outside and inside of our antique furniture warehouse. We have 6500 sq feet of quality antique furniture.

each isle is set up so you can browse around and view all our furniture at you pleasure.

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Nineteenth Century styles of antique furniture

In England Regency antique furniture styles remained largely neo classical, but chinoiserie, French and Gothic influences can also be seen. Napoleon’s ascendency meant that across Europe the Empire style was copies, and American furniture of the Federal period incorporated both French Epire and English Regency motifs. In the 1840s the Biedermeier style of antique furniture was popular in Austria, Germany and in France and a more simple Empire style was created, using light coloured woods. One of the main features of the 1800s furniture was the revival of older styles, such as Rococo, Greek and Gothic. Furniture began to be constructed from the help of machinery but this led to some designers and craftsmen toward more traditional methods of construction like the Arts and Crafts furniture movement, which emerged in Britain and America in the late 1800s. The Aesthetic movement in furniture was influenced by Japanese design and Art Nouveau, which was fashionable from the 1880s to 1914, looked to the past for inspiration or produced forward looking styles such as those of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and were usually seen with fine inlays.

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we have a very rare pair of edwardian bookcases for sale – see our website for details.

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Neo Classical style in antique furniture

In the late 1750s (mid Georgian period) the antique furniture styles returned to those of Greece and Rome, with geometrical forms replacing bombe shapes and with strictly classical ornamentation such as urns and rams heads. In England Robert Adams neo classical designs covered many aspects of interiors and furniture. Chippendale made furniture in this style, while in the late eighteenth century, Hepplewhite and Sheraton introduced a more lighter style of antique furniture.

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