The circular wooden escutcheons on these keyholes are from the Renaissance Revival period of the 1870s/1880. Then top half of the upper escutcheon is broken off.

When you examine almost any older or antique piece of furniture which has doors, drawers, a drop front, a tambour or a lid you almost certainly, sooner or later, will find a lock. To operate the lock, naturally, there is a keyhole. And, except in some of the more primitive cases, the keyhole is almost always adorned in some manner; i.e. it is usually not just a raw hole in the wood. You may often find just such a raw hole in a piece that has been well worn, but closer examination will reveal that something is missing.

What is missing is the keyhole companion, that piece of decorative artwork that imparts that overall “finished” look to the piece of furniture. This little decoration generally comes in two major categories, key surrounds and escutcheons.

This is a typical mid 19th century American flush mount key surround, circa 1840-1850.

This more oval shaped flush mounted surround is of English make, late 19th century.

This is a surface-mounted surround (with key) from the early 20th century.

KEY SURROUNDS: These are the decorative items lining the keyhole and duplicate the shape of the keyhole in some other material. The most common surround is made of brass—either stamped or cast—but other materials are used as well. For example, in some Federal pieces the key surround is made of ivory. You may not even notice these items when you first survey a piece, and they generally aren’t of concern until either a key surround is missing or it must be removed for refinishing or repair.

Surrounds are generally found in two types: flush mount and surface mount. Flush surrounds are found in almost all 18th-century and mid-19th-century pieces, as well as many well-made modern reproductions. Flush mount surrounds are usually cast brass and inserted into the keyhole with a small amount of force and are held in place by the pressure of the wood. If the surround is tight and flush there is no need to remove it for refinishing. Just take care not to scratch it when sanding and be sure to get any stripper residue out of it before finishing. The lock should have been removed previously. If the surround is slightly raised above the surface it should be tapped back into place. Rather than striking the surround directly use a small piece of wood or the flat end of a dowel between the surround and the hammer. A smart blow should reset the surround. Be sure not to mar the surface. If it is loose, remove it and reinsert it using a small amount of five-minute epoxy. Be sure to put the epoxy in the keyhole, not on the edges of the surround or you will get glue on the surface of your work. If you are refinishing, be sure to keep the surround free of any additional color you may be using so the brass will be clear and bright when you apply a clear finish.

The other type of surround is surface mounted. These are found on late 19th- and early 20th-century pieces, especially turn-of-the-century oak and second-generation empire. These surrounds also duplicate the shape of the keyhole and may be stamped or cast, but the main part of the surround sits on the surface of the drawer or door and has a neck inserted into the keyhole to hold it in place. These surface-mounted surrounds should always be removed for refinishing, which can sometimes be a problem since you can’t always see how they are fastened, if at all. Some surface mounts are held in by the pressure of the neck, which has been bent slightly to grip the wood. Others, especially older cast surrounds, may have an incredibly tiny nail inserted through it on the inside to hold it in the keyhole. If you do not detect this nail and pry the surround off without removing it, you may tear the wood. Inspect the surround carefully before removal. Installation is similar to that of the flush mount. Slightly distort the neck for grip and use epoxy in the keyhole.

This Chippendale batwing escutcheon is from the 1940s.

This desk drawer combines a drawer pull with an escutcheon.

This is a simple surface mounted escutcheon, circa 1920s.

ESCUTCHEONS: These are the other major category of keyhole companions. Escutcheons are decorative plates which are nailed or screwed over the keyhole on the surface to protect the surrounding wood. Escutcheons are made of a variety of materials, including brass, copper, tin wood and plaster. Escutcheons, like surface mount surrounds, should always be removed for major work on the piece. Most escutcheons are held onto the surface by small nails cleverly called “escutcheon pins.” These can be removed by inserting a thin flat blade such as a table knife behind the escutcheon and gently lifting near the pin. This should raise the head of the pin enough to grasp and remove it using dykes or pliers. Just be careful not to damage the escutcheon or the surrounding wood with the tools. Save the pins if possible for reuse or install new ones if necessary. They are readily available at most hardware stores.

This turn of the 20th century bookcase drawer has a very unusual Star of David escutcheon.

If an escutcheon is missing, replacements are available from a variety of woodworking, furniture and finishing sources. The main trick in picking a replacement escutcheon is consistency of style. A Victorian walnut cabinet, which should have round walnut escutcheon, looks terrible if someone installs a Chippendale batwing plate. Likewise, an early 20th-century, second-generation Empire piece looks foolish with Queen Anne or Eastlake hardware. Pay attention to style and period in the selection of escutcheon plates.

One last note about escutcheons: If the plate is fairly small and the underlying lock mechanism is large, you may have trouble with installation since the pins won’t go into the sub surface lock. In this case you have to cut the pins with a pair of dykes to make them fit and fatter pins work better for this application.

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Fred Taylor is a antique furniture Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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The same kind of loose language approach has developed in the language of antique furniture. We have come to use proper names to describe a class or type of furniture and the use of these names have become so commonplace that sometimes the real people behind the generic names no longer exist. But I’m not talking about generally descriptive names that denote a large class or style of furniture, like Georgian or even George III. The Louis XV and Victorian labels fall in that same category. Even Chippendale and Eastlake fit here, but all these terms relate to a particular period or stylistic element.

I am referring to that select group of people for whom a very specific form of furniture has been named and the appellation has become so useful as to be generic. When you use the term no further explanation is necessary. Here are some examples of some generic uses of the names of real people.

Murphy Bed: In today’s market, almost any folding bed is called a “Murphy bed.” It is the Kleenex of beds. However, most folding beds are not Murphy beds at all. Murphy patented his first bed in 1900. Folding cabinet beds were very popular in the last quarter of the 19th century, well before Murphy was old enough to invent things.

This is a folding cabinet bed, not a Murphy bed.

Gov. Winthrop Desk: The story goes that the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century, real man named John Winthrop, had a desk like this. Winthrop was born in England in 1588 and died in the Colony in 1649. This was at least 50 years before the drop front desk appeared in England and about 100 years before Thomas Chippendale gave it the famous form that commonly bears the governor’s name. In other words, Gov. Winthrop did not have a desk like this. So who is responsible for the name given to the form of the drop front desk? The Winthrop Furniture Company of Boston has that honor. The company introduced a new model of the desk in 1924 and called it the “Gov. Winthrop,” a clever play on words that has polluted the trade vocabulary for more than 80 years.

The real name for this form is not “Gov. Winthrop.” It is called a bookcase/secretary.

Breuer (not Brewer) Chair: This is the ubiquitous, bent chrome chair with separate seat and back, usually caned in modern pressed cane or “Viennese weaving,” as Marcel Breuer, the designer called it. Breuer was born in Hungary in 1902 and became an important part of the German Bauhaus school of design in the 1920s, where he helped shift the focus from “Arts & Crafts” to “Arts & Technology.” After stops in Paris and London, Breuer came to America in 1937, where his architectural skill was in the forefront for many years. The most reproduced of his works is the bent chrome chair, design #B32, but his most famous chair is the “Wassily” chair, #B3.

Beau Brummel: This a common name given to a form of dressing table made popular in late 18th century France when men paid as much or more attention to their dress and make up as women did. The form was actually known as a “poudreuse” meaning “powder” in French, or, in French slang, “duster of the man,” referring to the generous use of face powder in make up. It was a very rare example of the combination of an attached mirror and wooden case in the 18th century. Fixed mirrors were not usually a part of the dressing table until the early 19th century. The popularization of the poudreuse predated the heyday of the celebrated English dandy, George Bryan Brummel, 1778-1840, by several decades, but his name became associated with the form merely because of his notoriety.

This is a French poudreuse, commonly called a “Beau Brummel.”

Pembroke Table: The true origin of this form of drop leaf table is rather vague, but most people conveniently attribute it to the Countess of Pembroke, who reportedly ordered the first one in the 1750s or 1760s. Who actually designed it is up for further discussion, but Thomas Sheraton was so impressed he called it the universal table and Chippendale introduced one of the first designs with a drawer in 1766. It has been continuously produced for over 250 years and no matter what the style it is always called a “Pembroke.”

Sutherland Table: This last example is a variation of the Pembroke table. It has a flat middle section so narrow as to be unusable as a table until one or both of its deep drop leaves are opened. It was introduced in 1850, almost exactly100 years after the Pembroke form came to light and, interestingly enough, this form of table was named after Harriet Sutherland, who just coincidentally happened to be the Duchess of Pembroke at the time.

A Sutherland table with a very narrow top is also sometimes called a “tuckaway” table.

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Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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Ideally, there are several important pieces of information that a truly enlightening tag should carry, but that is seldom the case. Those tidbits of information should include the form of the piece, the style, the wood, the age, any embellishments or unusual features, attribution (the maker or manufacturer) if known, and of course, the price.

Form: This seems self explanatory, but the real names of objects can enhance their value and add to the buyer’s overall knowledge. There is a difference between a vanity, a dresser and a chest with a mirror, and they are important. A canterbury is a much nicer name than “old magazine rack,” and a nice Arts and Crafts piece should be called a “settle” instead of a couch. Form does count.

Style: In some cases, the style is not important or indeterminate, but that is not often the case. Correct identification of the style can help verify the age or origin of a piece and may even help support the price. Mislabeling of styles is commonplace, and the most common error is the use of the term “Victorian.” Victorian is used to refer to the era between 1837 and 1901 when Victoria reigned as Queen of England. It was an age, not a style. There were a myriad of styles, most of them “revivals,” during the Victorian era and they were all different. You can get style points for correct identification.

Wood: This is perhaps the most difficult category for most people, dealers and buyers alike. It really can be difficult to tell old brown mahogany from walnut or old air-dried red walnut from mahogany. How many people can actually tell the difference between oak, elm and ash? Many people think all light woods are pine and all red woods are cherry. Actually, there are only about seven basic woods and their sub-families commonly used in furniture. They are walnut, mahogany, cherry, oak, maple, pine and the close-grain fillers like gum, poplar and birch. Correct wood identification can often verify the authenticity of a period piece.

The tag says “Solid mahogany chest…” Open up the first drawer and take a look at the joinery. The fact that the drawer is veneered is indicated by the light colored line at the rear of the dovetail. That is the fifth layer of veneer in the lumber plywood drawer front.

Age: This is a key piece of information and goes directly to the heart of what is an antique and what is just old furniture. Since very few pieces actually have dates on them (there are a few), dating to a specific year is almost impossible and most people settle for a range of years or a “period.” Use of the word “circa,” meaning about, covers up a lot of uncertainty but is perfectly acceptable in narrowing down the possibilities to just a few years. Its use is preferable to a strictly arbitrary date without substantial supporting evidence.

The tag says “Early 1800’s Eastlake...” Unlikely. Charles Locke Eastlake was an English architect whose book, “Hints on Household Taste,” was published in 1865 and his style was not popular until the 1870s.

The tag says “200-year-old, hand-carved Renaissance Revival bed...” Renaissance Revival was mid-19th century. It has another 50 years to go before it could be 200 years old, and most RR furniture was factory made, not hand carved.

Embellishments: Items that might be missed altogether or need to have special attention drawn to them fall in this category. Hidden document drawers or concealed spaces are common embellishments. Signatures, date stamps, patent dates and foundry emblems are all examples of embellishments or special features. So are working locks with original keys, original hardware and original old glass.

The tag says “Hand-carved oak headboard...” The tiny nails in the “carvings” attest to the fact that they are applied molding.

Attribution: It is impossible to attribute most older and antique furniture to a specific person or company, but some pieces are marked, and if they are, that should be noted. Even later manufacturers’ labels are important. A Kittinger mahogany chair is certainly more interesting than just a chair, and a Berkey & Gay emblem can double the selling price of an early 20th-century bedroom set. Even proper regional or geographical attributions such as “Appalachian” or “Grand Rapids” can add interest and value to a piece.

Price: Naturally, an informative tag should carry the price of the piece. Sometimes it is written in code so that you have to ask the proprietor, thus initiating a conversation about the piece, but my guess is that this strategy quells as many sales as it makes. If a piece is fairly marked and the price is adequately supported by the evidence of all the preceding information, then the owner’s asking price should be clearly displayed on the tag.

These are the major things that should be on an informative furniture tag. Just a few facts can turn “tagging”—going antiquing just to read the labels—into a hobby all by itself. Enjoy.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

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Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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As early as the 15th century, curved runners or skates were added to cradles so they could rock the baby. Skates were added to the occasional English chair in the early 18th century, and by the 1740s, the Windsor chair had sprouted rockers for use as outside garden seating in southern England. At the same time, the Swedes were making their own version of the rocker; a six legged affair with curved skates known as a “gungstol.”

On the other hand, we can rightly take credit for the successor to the regular skate mounted rocker: the platform rocker. Platform rockers came about because of several problems inherit in the design of the standard rocker. The first problem is that if the rocker is used on a plank floor, the rockee has to face in the direction of the length of the planks in the floor or the rocker will uncomfortably bump along across the joints in the floor boards. And if the rockee pursues a vigorous rocking motion, the chair will creep across the floor, moving forward in the direction of the rocking motion. Finally, if the rocker is used on a carpeted surface the constant motion of the skates, added to the weight of the inhabitant, will eventually wear a telltale path into expensive floor covering. The platform rocker solves all of these problems, allowing the rockee to face any direction without discomfort and remain in the same vicinity without wearing out the rug.

A Lowentraut rocker, featuring a springless rocker mechanism designed by George F. Hall. This kind of rocker produced a flatter arc and was ideal for nursing and general recuperation, as well as being plain old comfortable in its motion.

Late in the century, along came a New Yorker named George F. Hall. Hall devised a springless rocker mechanism that was actually more of a glider than rocker. It produced a flatter arc for the rocker owner and was ideal for nursing and general recuperation, as well as being plain old comfortable in its motion. Hall patented his design on May 29, 1888, but assigned half the patent rights to Peter Lowentraut of New Jersey. For some reason, the mechanism and the style of the chair thereafter was known as a “Lowentraut” rocker.

An arm on the Hall/Lownetraut mechanism. The patent covered only the mechanism, not the design of the chair itself, and its pattern was copied extensively by other manufacturers.

The Hall/Lownetraut mechanism was a pair of arms at the end of a cross spindle that allowed a gliding rocking motion but the patent covered only the mechanism, not the design of the chair itself, and it was extensively copied by other manufacturers.

But as with all technological advances—which the platform rocker certainly was—there are always technological problems with the equipment. In the case of the platform rocker, the weak link in the chain is the spring mechanism that keeps the rocker rocking with minimal effort. There were some very innovative approaches to the spring problem just after the middle of the 19th century, but eventually the standard spring became the coil steel spring in a cast iron mounting plate. Coil steel springs were first used in furniture upholstery in the US in the mid 19th century and it was not a long step to adapt them to the platform rocker.

One of George Hunzinger’s rockers. Hunzinger probably held more patents on chair parts and designs than any other American designer/inventor and he held his share for platform rocker designs.

George Hunzinger probably held more patents on chair parts and designs than any other American designer/inventor and he held his share for platform rocker designs. He started making his own design of platform rockers with fairly conventional mechanisms around the time of the Centennial Exposition in 1876. But George was never one to let it rest. In 1882 he patented his “duplex spring” mechanism that looked and operated like no other system to date.

Hunzinger’s rocker mechanism used a series of metal brackets called a combination hinge attached to relatively thin, longer coil springs.

Hunzinger’s rocker mechanism used a series of metal brackets called a “combination hinge” attached to relatively thin, longer coil springs. The result was an almost effortless rocking motion with no noise as long as maintenance was performed. Paper labels on his chairs stated: “One drop of oil from your Sewing Machine can in every joint of hinge will prevent noise.” Good advice.

But the problem was that eventually, like all springs, the rocker springs lost their tension and the chairs became sloppy seats sitting atop a platform with the feeling that they are about to tip over. That is a common problem with almost all platform rockers from the mid to late 19th century that have survived into the 21st century, especially if they have been ridden hard over the years.

This type coil spring rocker was patented in 1897 by a man named A.H. Schram of Sheboygan, Wis.

If the rocker is just meant to be a showpiece and not for human use, forget about the springs and just show off the rocker. However, if the chair is meant to be used as a rocker, the problem with the old springs must be addressed before somebody tumbles headfirst out of the seat. Since there is no commonly known way to rejuvenate the old springs, the answer is replacement. But most of the old springs are a single heavy coil on an iron base. New springs don’t look like that. Most new springs come as a two coil unit mounted on a stamped steel frame. They are available from almost any upholstery supply house or from a number of supply houses such as Van Dyke’s Restorers.

When they lose their “starch,” old style single coil platform rocker springs (top) can easily be replaced by modern double coil units.

Installation is fairly simple if you know the trick. It is very important that you do not change the pivot point at which the rockers reach equilibrium on the base. The center point of the original springs identifies the optimum pivot location. Measure and mark this point on both sides of the platform and the rockers before removing the old springs. The new springs come as set with two springs enclosed in frame as opposed to the open spring you are replacing. This means you will need to drill new pilot holes for screws in both the rockers and the base. Place the new spring unit on the base, centered over the pivot point, with the edge of the spring frame slightly below the top of the base. Mark and drill your pilot holes on both sides of the base and install the spring unit securely, parallel to the top edge of the base. Then, with the chair on its side, place the top part of the chair in position on the base and mark and drill pilot holes where the rear screw hole of the spring unit lines up.

Now comes the tricky part. The location of the front screw holes must be identified while the spring unit is under tension. Otherwise the chair will just flop back over when you are done. Use a small crowbar or a screwdriver inserted into the middle of the front coil of the spring unit and open the spring ¼ to ½ in. With the spring open under pressure, mark where the front screw hole is. Release the pressure, drill the pilot hole and install the spring unit after opening it back up with the crowbar. Repeat the procedure on the other side making sure you open the spring the same amount on both sides. Be very careful and get someone to help you if needed. Those springs can really pinch you if you are not in control at all times.

Installing springs by this method may result in the chair appearing to tilt too far forward at first. This will cure itself over time as the springs loosen but if the tilt is too severe just relocate the forward screw positions.

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Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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How many times have you heard an appraiser on TV or an auctioneer in person use the term “patina” in describing an antique piece of anything, be it furniture, jewelry clothing, whatever? But if you were able to stop them in mid-sentence could they, in fact, precisely define the word for you? Probably not. As it turns out, the definition of patina is a lot like the definition of pornography. It’s hard to say what it is but you know it when you see it.

There is even discussion about how the word is pronounced. My ancient “American College Dictionary” by Random House places the emphasis on the first syllable so the word is “PAT-ina.” So does the “Columbia Encyclopedia,” Sixth Edition, 2001. In everyday use however, many people—including me—rightly or wrongly, put the emphasis on the second part of the word so it is “pa-TINA.” It doesn’t matter as along as we all know what it means. Or don’t know what it means, as the case may be.

So what does it mean? To some people, the answer is a simple two words: “old dirt.” But that is too simple and not entirely correct. My antique dictionary defines it as a film or encrustation on the surface of an object indicating great age. That’s a good start, but with furniture I think it involves a great deal more than that. The “Encyclopedia of Furniture,” by Joseph Aronson, defines it as “Color and texture of the surface produced by age and wear. In wood furniture the varnish, shellac or oil has a tendency to deepen yet retains transparency; edges wear smooth and sharp outlines are softened.” Now we are getting somewhere.

The crackled old shellac finish on this early 19th-century drawer is certainly original and probably qualifies as “patina,” but is it desirable?

But that still doesn’t quite cover it. All of those characteristics can be duplicated to some degree by an experienced finisher, so there must be more to it than that. But at least Aronson tried. Many antiques reference books either avoid the subject altogether because it is so hard to handle concisely and accurately, or else they just gloss over it. An example of that treatment can be found in “American Furniture,” by Marvin D. Schwartz, which states that patina is the “Mellow and worn aspect a surface acquires through age; highly desirable quality on most antique furniture.” That steps nicely around it.

The color on the arm of this birch chair with a mahogany finish is certainly worn. Is this patina? Would you like it on your chair?

John Obbard, in his recent book “Early American Furniture” (Collector Books, 2000), gets a little more precise in saying “Patina is the cumulative effect of age, sunlight, wear and grime on old surfaces of wood and metal …” The “Antiques Roadshow Primer,” by Carol Prisant (Workman, 1999), takes a more humanistic approach. It says patina is “the sheen on a surface caused by long handling …” and that it is “… the accumulation of wax, soil, stains and oils that human hands have left on furniture over the course of many years, have created a smooth film of, well, dirt.” There we have the short of it again—dirt, and we humans are to blame; not sunlight, humidity or atmosphere.

This turn-of-the-century oak table top sure looks-well worn by long handling – and abuse. It still probably qualifies as having patina.

So, by the definitions of the trade, a piece that has patina is dirty, oily, grimy, worn, beat up, faded, rounded and generally disagreeable. By those standards, I have some extremely patinated sneakers. Surely that can’t be the whole thing.

It turns out that patina, whatever it is, has not always been universally desirable. Surely Goddard, Phyfe, Belter and Jellif did not send out their masterpieces all dirty and grimy. They were shiny and clean, new and fresh, and 20 or 30 years ago that was the way much of the antiques trade—including some museum curators—preferred their antiques. And that’s the way many buyers wanted their new old pieces to look. They didn’t want all that dirty old stuff in their new dining room or bedroom, with a crackly old dark finish that could be hiding almost anything, especially the beauty of 200-year-old mahogany. The current emphasis on originality and patina is just that; current. It wasn’t the case 30 years ago and may not be the case 30 years from now.

Perhaps the definition of patina is not as important as we thought it was. Perhaps patina, which, in and of itself, is not always a beautiful thing, judging by the industry definitions, should just be regarded as one more tool of the inquiring collector, used to verify the apparent age of a piece.

Next time you are tempted to discuss the patina of a piece with a dealer or auctioneer, just ask yourself, “Does the piece LOOK, SMELL and FEEL old?” That may be the best definition of all.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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1. The presence of veneer on a piece of furniture indicates recent production?
2. The presence of veneer indicates inferior quality?
3. A piece of furniture with veneer on it cannot be stripped, sanded or refinished?
4. When veneer chips, it’s best to remove the old veneer and finish what’s under it?

They are all false, of course, or at least mostly false.

1. It is true that a recently made piece may be veneered, but the presence of veneer in and of itself does not mean the piece is new. There is evidence that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with veneering techniques, based on furniture retrieved from their tombs. The Romans also used the process, which has fallen in and out of favor over the centuries. It was the absolute rage in the 18th- and early 19th-centuries, as evidenced by the magnificent Regency furniture of France in the 1720s, the Georgian mahogany output of England and the colonies in the late 1700s, and the American Federal outburst in the early 1800s. But the technique fell out of general use after that and not revived until the early 20th century, when it was used as a conservation method as an effort was begun to use less of the world’s hardwood resources.

Generating a piece of veneer is a technology-driven process, extremely dependent on the quality of the saws used to slice a log. Early hand-operated reciprocal saws wasted about as much wood as they cut, and the veneer slices were necessarily thicker than what we usually think of. Water-powered rotary saws came along about 1825 and enabled the slicing of an entire log into a long, thin, continuous sheet of usable, albeit usually bland, veneer. Advances in technology have changed the thickness of veneer from the 1/8 inch of 1725 to the standard 1/64 inch or even 1/110 used in some modern productions.

One sure sign of the presence of is the repeated, matching pattern seen on the front of this Colonial Revival sideboard. It is almost impossible to create this pattern using solid wood.

So it is not the presence of veneer that indicates a particular period of production, but rather the thickness of the veneer and its corresponding underlayment.

2. It is true that a piece of inferior-quality furniture may be veneered, but again, it is not the presence of the veneer itself that determines that inferiority. More important to quality is the overall design and construction of piece, e.g. blocked corners in the case, good dovetail joints in the drawers, etc. But, perhaps more important than any of these items, is the underlayment of the veneer. In the 18th century, thick veneers were applied to solid wood under-layments, and secondary woods using primarily hide glue. Expensive mahogany veneer was applied over less costly woods such as pine and poplar. The veneer was so thick that slight imperfections in the underlayment did not “telegraph” through the veneer. As veneers became thinner, the sub surface became more important. In the early 20th century, the five layer process known as lumber core plywood (pages 68 and 69 in my book) came into general use solving that problem.

This shows the five layers of 20th century lumber core plywood.

For example, a well-made drawer front of 1925 started out as a piece of solid poplar or oak with its grain running the length of the drawer. A sub-layer of inexpensive veneer, gum or poplar of 1/20 inch thickness, was then applied to both sides of the core with its grain at right angles to the grain of the core. Then a face veneer, walnut or mahogany of 1/28 inch was applied to the drawer front with its grain running the same direction as the core. Another inexpensive face was applied to the inside of the drawer front to finish it off. With the sub-layer of veneer to cushion it, the expensive face veneer can be very thin. Of course, modern production solves that problem another way. It is very common to see veneer laid over a perfectly smooth manmade material, such as particle board, chip board or even highly compressed paper known in the trade as “medium density fiber core,” a fancy name for cardboard. What’s UNDER the veneer is more important than the veneer itself.

3. A piece of furniture with veneer on it can be stripped, sanded and refinished successfully as long as reasonable care is used. Water is the mortal enemy of veneer and must be avoided since most veneers are laid using water-based or hide glue rather than solvent-based glue, such as contact cement. This is because most factory finishes are solvent based and will loosen solvent-based glue. Solvent-based stripper will not harm sound veneer, but avoid water-based or water-rinsed strippers, which might dissolve the water-based veneer glue.

Most veneer is only 1/28 of an inch thick, but that is plenty thick to allow reasonable sanding if required. Using your hand and a piece of sandpaper, you would have to work awfully hard to sand through a standard piece of veneer. A machine sander will do it quickly, though, so you must be very careful. Other than that, treat veneer as regular wood in your preparation and finishing procedures.

4. When veneer chips or peels, it usually is indicative of structural problems such as drawer runners being worn out, or it indicates a glue problem. None of these problems can be solved by removing the old veneer and finishing the underlayment, which, as we have seen, is usually much less desirable than the original veneer anyway. First, you must determine why the veneer is chipping and peeling and solve that problem first.

This veneer problem is not a veneer problem at all. It is a drawer problem. The drawer must be fixed before the veneer can be fixed.

It may be as simple as re-gluing a loose length of veneer that just dried out or gotten damp. Or it may be as complicated as rebuilding drawer runners or stabilizing a loose top or case. In any event, this has to done first or you are wasting your time trying to patch and touch up the veneer. If the veneer is not salvageable and must be removed as a last resort, use household vinegar in a mustard squeeze bottle to get under the veneer. Use a long, dull knife to gradually work the veneer loose as the glue is dissolved by the vinegar.

The point of all of this is to rehabilitate the good name of veneer, which sometimes gets wrongly maligned by the uninformed and perpetrates some the old “furniture myths” that still circulate.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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Glass panels are some of the more attractive features of any piece of furniture especially if the piece is an antique and the glass is original to the piece and has survived unbroken. Old glass, like an old dog, is happiest when left alone because it is set in its ways, brittle and can be cantankerous. Both should be left alone as much as possible and disturbed only in dire circumstances.

The two circumstances under which old glass should be disturbed are when the glass is broken and must be replaced or when major work such as refinishing or structural repair is about to be undertaken. Don’t kid yourself about not removing the glass to refinish a piece. Not only will the refinish job not be done as well as if the glass were removed but as much glass is broken in the refinishing process as in the removal and reinstallation. The same holds for structural repairs to a cabinet. If the piece is to be clamped or otherwise stressed in any way, the glass really should come out.

When this happens to an antique with curved glass, it can it be costly to replace and dangerous.

CAUTION: In all cases of glass removal, whether broken or unbroken, remember that the primary objective is to end the job with the same number of intact body parts that you started with. All other results, including glass removal, are secondary. In other words, use your head, and be careful. One of the most important tools used in glass handling is attitude. If you are very tired, very pushed for time, very tense or very almost anything else, wait until some other time to deal with old, irreplaceable glass. Also make sure that those around you understand your need for concentration at this point and can leave you alone for a while.

REMOVAL: The first step in glass removal is to get rid of whatever is holding the glass in place. In some cabinets, this may be only a piece of braided rope nailed into the cabinet. In other cases, molding strips of various woods may be present. Study the piece before attacking, and make sure you understand where the real structure is. In some cases, only the side molding is used with no top and bottom pieces. In others, only one piece of molding is used.

The glass may slide into a slot on one side of the cabinet and fit flush on the other side, held by the molding. Molding is on the inside of the cabinet 95 percent of the time, but there are cases where the glass is installed and secured from the outside, making removal and reinstallation a lot simpler and safer. Speaking of simpler and safer, if you are dealing with a door or other such removable panel, by all means remove it from the cabinet first, and do all the work with the piece flat on a padded surface.

Using a 1-inch-wide putty knife and a table knife, carefully remove whatever molding is in place. It’s usually easier to start in the middle of a long piece rather than on an end because the molding is more flexible in the middle. Carefully work under the molding trying to lift it a little without breaking it. Work your way toward one end carefully. You don’t have to completely remove the strip as you go. Just loosen it. Then work your way from the middle to the other end.

Once the entire strip is loose, work on removing it intact. As soon as a piece is removed, label it with a piece of masking tape indicating which side of the cabinet it came from, which side of the glass it belongs on and which way is up. (You’ll thank yourself later when it’s time to reassemble.)

After the last piece of molding is removed, leave the glass in place, and check to make sure that all the nails in the molding strips came out with the strips. One nail sticking out can break a piece of old glass as you remove it. Don’t trust your eyes here. While holding a vertical piece of glass in place with one hand, trace the outline of the glass with the other, searching for “invisible” nails or even broken pieces of nails that might snag the glass. Carefully remove any found nails using pliers, wire cutters, etc., and a block of wood as a cushion to reduce scarring of the case.

Once all obstacles are cleared, remove the glass to a safe place after labeling it the same as you labeled its molding strips (especially the part about which way is up). The safest way to store the glass is standing on a blanket or towel leaning against a wall in roughly the same position it was in the piece.

INSTALLATION: After the refinishing or whatever is done, installation is almost the reverse of removal. Have a clean, padded, uncluttered work surface available to lay out the glass panels and clean them BEFORE installation. Yes, you are going to get fingerprints on them during installation, but that’s minor. Use a new, single-edged razor blade to scrape old finish and paint from the edges of the glass before using any commercial glass cleaner.

Next, lay out the molding associated with the glass panel, and check it for protruding nails. All nails should be hammered back to their staring point. Any missing nails should be replaced with a comparable new nail, usually 1/2 inch or 5/8 inch by 18 or 19 gauge wire brads. Start new nails through the molding so they barely protrude. Fit the glass into its bed following your label marks, and fit the molding the same way so that the nails will fit back into their original holes and new nails will line up.

The objective here is to minimize the number of hammer blows in the area of the old glass. This eliminates a lot of stress on the glass and on you. If the old nails do not provide enough “grip,” extract them, and replace with the next size up in the original hole.

To reduce the chance of mishap during installation, visit your local picture-frame shop first and pick up scraps of mat board from the cutting-room floor. As you hammer nails through the molding strips, hold a piece of mat board against the glass. That way you can actually hit the glass without breaking it. Mat board is tough stuff. When installation is complete, clean the glass again, and use a crayon to fill up the nail holes.

If you do have to replace a piece of glass, especially curved glass, there are two sources that may help you. I have used both a number of times. The first is Van Dyke’s Restorers, use the keyword search “curved glass. The other is Standard Bent Glass. They have always been very polite and helpful on the phone.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book, “How To Be A Furniture Detective,” is now available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

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In order to help the less artistic of us understand when we are looking at a certain piece of furniture that it should be considered “art,” some furniture styles have the term incorporated into the name just to make sure. In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s there was that style called “Art Moderne.” That was the style that came from the 1925 Paris convention known as the International Exposition of Decorative Arts. It evolved into the “streamline” look of America in the 1930s, with waterfall bedroom sets and round nose trains. The name of the style was updated in the 1960s to “Art Deco,” still retaining the “art” part just so we remember.

Just before that was the Art Nouveau movement, the “new” art that came at the turn of the century that incorporated elongated organic forms into the structure of the furniture. It was primarily a European phase in furniture but it did have some influence in this country in other decorative arts.

But there was an “art’ movement even before that one. The 19th-century version of the “art” movement can sometimes be very confusing to the average shopper for older and antique furniture. It sort of looks like something else but not really. And sometimes the color is awful. The movement actually started around the middle of the 19th-century with some of the same people involved in the advent of the Arts and Crafts movement, Charles Eastlake among them. The new movement gained a significant foothold on the American furniture market after the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The American public was smitten with the Japanese exhibit in Philadelphia, and furniture styling immediately picked up an Oriental flavor. At the same time, people were beginning to tire of the overwhelming size, complexity and severity of Rococo and Renaissance Revival furniture. They were tired of high Victorian styling. Eastlake’s simplistic approach to furniture design suddenly was very popular even though he didn’t design much of the furniture himself.

The desk on the left illustrates the Oriental approach. It is ebonized with gold incising. The desk on the right, in a wood finish, is the Moorish approach to the style with geometric fretwork. Both desks are based on Eastlake’s design principles.

His concepts were linear and the guiding principle was that of visible craftsmanship. It didn’t take long for the basic Eastlake style to be adapted to the new movement. By adding a few Oriental touches to this simple idea, the form of “Art Furniture” was born, characterized by shallow carvings, devoid of veneer and excessive ornamentation. The entire movement, in architecture and decorative arts as well as furniture, became known as the “Aesthetic Movement,” implying that the existence of art was for art’s sake; a direct conflict with the Victorian concept that art must serve a moral purpose by reinforcing moral values. Even the name, “Aesthetic,” means artistic or beautiful.

One of the favorite finishes of Aesthetic movement craftsmen was the ebonized look. Cherry was a favorite base material because it did not telegraph the grain or nature of the wood through the solid black overcoat yet it somehow retained the warmth found in natural wood. The wood was stained, not painted, a jet black and then highly polished. The black background further enhanced the contrast with the gold incising or the lighter woods used in marquetry panels and floral inlays. But not all Aesthetic furniture is ebonized. Walnut and rosewood were popular mediums, and bird’s eye maple was a favorite accent wood. And not all decoration was Oriental. It ranged from classical molding to medieval spindles, inspired by Oriental, Moorish, Gothic and Egyptian influences. The furniture was complex and often very expensive in both material and labor to construct.

This desk is somewhat plainer than the others but it is still in the style It may have been ebonized originally and refinished somewhere along the line.

This period of American furniture is perhaps one of the less-distinctly defined periods in both style and time. Styles were often eclectic and forms ranged as far back as updated versions of the 17th-century court cupboard to interpretations of the modern, for the time, Davenport desk. The Aesthetic Movement in American furniture generally is regarded as being from the mid 1870s to just after the turn of the century. This minor aberration in furniture style served as the bridge between high Victorian morality and the radical lurch about to come in the form of Arts & Crafts, a true revolution.

So now you may have an idea about that mystery piece you have seen in a shop or at an auction. It looks sort of like late Eastlake but it is a little too fancy or elegant. It also seems to be a little foreign, Oriental or Near Eastern but it obviously is a domestic piece. It could very well be an Aesthetic Movement piece from the late 19th century. And whatever you do – don’t try to strip that awful black paint. It’s part of the “aesthetics” of the piece.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3.00 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info [at] furnituredetective [dot] com.

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Owning a piece of the past, however, is often an expensive proposition—even a luxury in some cases—and most of us cannot afford to own something of significant size or extreme value if it does not contribute something concrete to our lives; something more substantial than the esoteric “feel good” things we often associate with the ownership of antiques. This is especially true of older and antique furniture.

Furniture in its barest form is functional sculpture. The key word here is “functional.” Furniture is made for a specific purpose to fit in our daily lives. It may be no more than a box to put our clothes in or frame upon which to rest our frame at night. But whatever it is, it was first built to fill a physical need. The beauty and art must come later.

This is a nicely made 1920s era Victrola cabinet.

With a little work and no damage to the cabinet, it can be fitted to hold audio equipment; its original intended use.

This is especially true when the piece of furniture is not a Federal Pembroke table from New York, ca 1800, worth many thousands of dollars, but is a second- or third-generation, machine-made, factory-produced, American Empire drop-leaf lamp table, circa 1900, worth only a few hundred dollars at best. You may really like the dark rich mahogany veneer on the lamp table and admire the solid feel of the thick brass lock in the top drawer, but that broken base that makes the whole table tipsy is starting to bother you, not to mention putting the $500 lamp in jeopardy.

And as nice as the lamp table is,, and as much as you admire the style and historic references incorporated into it (Duncan Phyfe, Honore’ Lannuier et. al.), you can acquire a brand-new, very nice looking and most important of all—stable—new lamp table at the mall for about what you paid for the Empire piece, or less. In other words, the Empire piece is no longer fulfilling its prime function: that of providing a stable platform and is being tolerated merely for its form.

Don’t do it! If you like the lamp table, for whatever reason, invest in getting the old one properly repaired—for less than the cost of the new table—but get it done before you break both the table and the lamp beyond repair. If you don’t want to invest more money in the old piece then sell it, at a bargain, to someone who will. They aren’t making those old tables anymore and when they are broken beyond repair that’s one less there will ever be.

If this old Empire Revival table is not strong enough to support the lamp, be prepared to: 1) properly repair the table; 2) replace the table, or; 3) replace the lamp.

The same especially holds true for chests of drawers. Most of us confront a chest at least once daily to retrieve clothes and other personal items. Is it one of those transparent events in your life that you barely notice, or is it a struggle to be dreaded with drawers that are either stuck shut or falling out? Older chests are notorious for recalcitrant drawers, and drawers that have problems like this are creating other problems for the older or antique chest. Prominent among the secondary problems is the chipping of veneer on the lower rail, the horizontal piece below the drawer.

Also, if the drawer sides are worn and allow the front of the drawer to hit the rail each time it closes, it damages the veneer or at least the finish on the rail. It probably is also wearing a notch in the rail at the corners. Tugging at stuck drawers eventually will weaken the case structure and will cause the pull or hardware to break sooner or later. Don’t continue to frustrate yourself and cause further harm to the chest. If you like the piece, have it repaired so that it is functional as well as old and pretty. Be aware that drawer repair is often a difficult job and usually requires some work inside the case. It may be expensive, but a good professional repair will add many decades to the life of the piece and increase the quality of your daily life.

The channel gouged in the lower rail below this drawer and the loose veneer on the side are early warning signs that this drawer has problems. Fix it.

This drawer has already been repaired with an extra piece added to the bottom of the side.

Older beds are notorious for being less than stable sleeping platforms. If your antique bed wakes you at night with its squeaks and groans, get some help before it dumps you on the floor. Most truly old beds are assembled with some type of bolt arrangement and the fix may be as simple as tightening the hardware. Twentieth-century beds with hooks, rather than bolts, are harder to repair but it can be done. The most important item of bed care is not to attempt to move a bed ANY distance at all—even just two inches—with just one person. It takes two no matter how strong you are because you can’t drag a bed. It must be carried. A bed frame is built to withstand downward pressure, not lateral pull. But whatever it takes, either fix it or get rid of it!

Sometimes a bed repair is as easy as tightening a bolt like on this Empire bed.

The last category of chronic disrepair is chairs. Probably more than 50 percent of all older and antique chairs that you will ever see are loose and in need of repair; most of them not for the first time. Virtually all chairs that have legs entering the seat bottom, especially Windsors, are loose somewhere, as are most turn-of-the-century oak press backs. The longer you wait to have them repaired the less likely you are of getting a good repair. Eventually, they are not worth the cost of making the broken pieces from scratch or not repairable at all.

Upholstered chairs and sofas are almost as bad. When a spring goes or webbing starts to poke out the bottom, its way past time to visit an upholstery shop. Continued use with broken springs and rotten webbing places undue strain on the frame of the chair and the longer you wait to fix the upholstery the more likely you will need to fix the frame too.

In other words, make your antiques work for you and pay their way as functional pieces. It usually costs less to repair an antique than it does to buy a new piece, and the satisfaction of owning an older piece that actually functions well generally exceeds the cost of repair.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Visit Fred’s website at http://www.furnituredetective.com/. His book “How To Be A Furniture Detective” is now available for $18.95 plus $3.00 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture,” ($17 + $3 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “Common Sense Antiques,” by Fred Taylor ($25 + $3 S&H) are also available at the same address.

For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.

Cabinet and chest locks come in three major designs: full mortise, half mortise and surface mount. Mortise refers to the cut out portion of wood in which the lock is mounted. A full mortise lock is fully enclosed by the drawer front or door in which it is mounted. Only the selvage—or top edge—of the lock is visible on the lip of the drawer or door, and nothing shows on either side. Full mortise locks are usually found on higher-quality 20th-century pieces, although they are used in rare cases in 19th-century goods.

A full mortise lock is completely enclosed in the wood with only the selvage visible.

A half mortise lock is exactly as it sounds—half exposed. The top selvage is visible, but so is the back or lock plate of the lock on the inside of the drawer front. Also, usually visible on a half mortise lock are the screws or nails that hold the lock in place. The half mortise lock is almost universal on 19th-century American and English case goods.

A half mortise lock is implanted part way in the wood but leaves the back plate visible form the inside.

The simplest design is the surface-mounted lock that is not inset in the wood at all, but is mounted with screws or nails flush to the inside surface of the drawer or door. These locks are most common on early 20th-century pieces and on inexpensive reproductions, and are commonly used as replacement locks by inexperienced restoration “experts.”

A surface mount lock is simply nailed or screwed to the interior surface.

The purpose of a lock, of course, is to keep someone out of a private place. But since most locks are designed only to keep honest people honest, a determined trespasser can almost always find a way in. Most older and antique furniture locks work on the simple idea of a key moving a bolt through the lock and into the adjoining frame member. The key usually fits over a center pin of a given size and rotates around it. The blade of the key engages a semi-circular cavity in the bolt and moves it forward or back as the case may be. The bolt, however, may have a built-in resistance to impede the use of an unauthorized key. The resistance is a notch in the bolt that engages a surface of the lock housing and prohibits the bolt from moving. A spring holds the bolt notch fast to the face of the lock housing. The key must not only be the right size to move the bolt forward and back, it must be the right size to compress the spring and release the bolt so it can move. Most bolts have two notches, one in the locked position and one in the unlocked position.

This diagram show the parts of a half mortise lock.

In addition to correct barrel size and blade size, a lock may employ other features to prevent the entry or use of a bogus key. The most common is an inside ring of raised metal, concentric to the pin that requires a notch in the key.

These keys are all “notch” keys with cuts in the face of the blade.

This illustration shows how a notch key works over the internal security ring of a lock plate.

This feature is easy to overcome by inserting a new blank key in the lock and working it back and forth. This will put a mark on the blank where the notch should be and it can be cut out with a hack saw. A little practice makes nice notches. A variation is two inside rings of different heights that require two notches of different depths but that’s a detail. A more serious impediment to the interloper is the accursed English “lever” lock. This lock relies on a series of spring loaded levers, each of different thickness to deny entry. The levers must be aligned in a perfect line to allow the bolt to pass but since their thickness is random and hidden, figuring out a cut pattern is very difficult. This lock requires notches to be made on the bottom of the key blade rather than on the face of the blade and is much more difficult to fabricate. Most lever locks are labeled as such. Apparently, the 19th-century English had more of a need for security than we did. This is one case where if you don’t have the key, don’t worry about it.

The key to a lever lock requires notches to be made on the bottom of the key blade rather than on the face of the blade and is much more difficult to fabricate.

The second most-common problem in the old locks, besides no key, is a broken spring. Symptoms of broken springs include bolts that can be moved without keys, bolts that don’t lock into position or bolts that do not line up with the holes in the selvage. Removing the housing around the pin and bolt will reveal the condition of the spring. Most springs are merely flat pieces of tension steel inserted in a slot in the bolt and wedged against the housing. If the spring is broken, remove it from the slot by punching it out with a small screw driver. Then replace it with the spring from a salvaged lock, or better yet, with a piece of a modern bobby pin. It works very well.

The most common problem with old locks is neglect, especially if the piece has been worked on before and the locks were not removed before stripping and finishing. In this case the locks should be removed, cleaned thoroughly and submitted to liberal applications of WD-40 before any key is tried at all.

Blank keys are available from lots of places including, Van Dyke Restorers in Woonsocket, SD., or your local locksmith and flea markets. Collect as many steel keys as you can to try stubborn locks with before you cut soft brass ones. Brass keys may break in a reluctant bolt. Good luck.

Fred Taylor is a Worthologist who specializes in American furniture from the Late Classicism period (1830-1850).

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