Here’s What an Antique Analysis Dug Up on Our Dresser
THE FARMHOUSE
Have you ever bought an antique piece of furniture and wondered where it came from? Or how old it is? The sturdy dresser we have in our Farmhouse bedroom was a Craigslist find from 2016 and when Hayley and Craig of @tilttopliving asked us if we wanted to know more about it, I said heck yes! Hayley and Craig research antiques and can pinpoint when and where pieces were built. The findings our dresser were so interesting that I had to share it with you guys. Let’s get into it…
Let me acknowledge that I know next to nothing about antiques, despite buying lots and lots of them over the years. But I do know what I like, which is usually wood pieces that are well-crafted but not too ornate, and have a great patina. And if they have a good story behind them, all the better. That’s why I bought this dresser back in 2016, and if memory serves me correct, I even hauled the entire family over to the San Juan islands to pick it up.
For their analysis, Hayley and Craig asked to see five pictures of the dresser: a close up of the leg and feet, a picture of the side of the drawer pulled out, picture of the wood close up, picture of the inside of the drawer, and a picture of the side of the piece. I snapped iPhone picks at night with the lights on for Hayley, but I’ll spare you those and share some taken in the day light with my real camera instead. Also, let’s just pretend there isn’t a fine layer of dust under the dresser ;)
I threw that last photo in for scale (I’m 5’7” or so). So it’s a large and stout dresser and the perfect place to prop a giant bouquet of lilacs. BTW these blooms smell like sunshine and spring and growing up in the PNW and I can’t get enough of them! But we only had this arrangement in our bedroom for one night before realizing they’re too fragrant for this space - we felt like we were sleeping in a lilac bush 🥴😂 - so we swapped them out to the kitchen.
psst: here’s how to keep your lilacs from wilting in a vase
Okay, now for Hayley and Craig’s analysis of our dresser…
From Hayley and Craig of @tilttopliving:
We’ll break down the wood types, style, and construction details to see what further insight they give us into this piece’s story.
Wood: The primary wood of this piece is cherry. Cherry is a North American wood, so this piece is American! The secondary woods appear to be poplar and white pine. White pine is generally used Mid-Atlantic and north, which helps us start narrowing down our search. Since cherry isn’t as expensive as mahogany or walnut, this piece is likely not from a coastal urban center.
Style: Your piece blends the Neoclassical Sheraton tastes of the early 1800s with the Classical Empire tastes of the 1820s-1830s. The reeding on the stiles (vertical supports on either side of the drawers) and the feet turnings are Sheraton designs. The overall form of the chest with the two super small drawers over a much larger drawer with gradually smaller drawers below matches the innovative Empire tastes of the time. The reeding on the stiles matches designs popular in Pennsylvania and its sphere of influence (such as Western Maryland). The feet might have once given us more information but they have been cut down in size. Sheraton style feet are often taller and have more turnings. The foot on this chest end with an upward curve, which the original maker would not have done because it is prone to chipping (one of the feet has a chip). The feet on antique furniture have to withstand a lot of stress and use over the years. What likely happened was that one of the feet broke or was damaged, but instead of replacing it, someone cut all the feet down.
Construction details: The drawers are held together by dovetail joinery and they are handmade, which we can tell due to the pins and tails being different sizes. Handmade dovetails verifies that this piece is antique! In this case, the pins are quite thin and delicate, which shows off how skilled the maker was. The quality of the dovetails reflects urban work but the mixing of styles and use of cherry means this piece is likely interior urban rather than coastal urban.
Putting this all together, you have a cherry chest of drawers built in the 1820s-1830s in a small interior city, most likely in Pennsylvania or western Maryland. It lost some height over the years but it’s such a charming piece, and we are glad it’s in a home where it’s being valued!
*Note: Our analysis is based on what we can see from the pictures provided. Please keep in mind that seeing a piece in person will always impart more information than pictures. The information we use to determine a piece’s story should be viewed as a series of clues. We will be straightforward about the degree of certainty those clues give us, but they may be interpreted differently by another furniture expert.
How cool is that? This dresser was built a full 75+ years before our old house even existed! And thankfully the old house and the dresser are sturdy enough to last another 100+ years even with our family ;)
Thank you Hayley and Craig for lending us your expertise! Follow @tilttopliving on Instagram for more about antiques or ask them about one of your pieces!
